Page 17 of Tangled In Tinsel & Knots
“I need to drown in cookies.”
“No more cookies. You’re going to make yourself sick.”
I walk across the room and slump into a chair at a table near the window, head in my hands. “I’ll be blacklisted before Christmas.”
“Maybe I can help.” Chris’s voice cuts clean through the rising static of my panic as he strolls over to join me.
I look up and immediately regret it.
He’s sitting across from me, forearms braced on the table, looking entirely too composed for a man who spent the evening playing a vigilante Santa. The shirt he changed into clings to broad shoulders and arms marked with faint scars, hints of a life that should terrify me far more than it does.
I hate that he’s seeing me like this, all frazzled, anxious, one meltdown away from screaming. I wanted to be confident and put together tonight. Not… this puddle of professional failure.
But he doesn’t look put off. He appears interested. Which somehow makes everything worse.
“Unless you know someone with a mobile zoo,” I manage, trying to sound casual, “I’m screwed.”
His mouth curves, slow and sure. “I might. I know people with animals.” He leans back in his chair, casual, like he’s discussing the weather. “Small farms. Hobby ranches. And…” He pauses, and his mouth quirks. “I have reindeer.”
Silence.
I stare at him.
Lily stares at him.
James makes a choked sound that might be surprise.
“You what?” I finally manage.
“We have reindeer.”
He says it so calmly that I momentarily think I hallucinated it.
I blink. “You’re a bounty hunter… who owns reindeer.”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
I stare. “You keep saying that like it’s a normal sentence.”
“Technically,” he says, “I’m a bounty hunter whoinheritedreindeer. Noel’s grandmother left them to him. We tried to find them a new home, but…” He shrugs. Broad shoulders. Unfair. “They grew on us.”
“Who’s Noel?” I ask.
“One of my pack. We take down bad guys together,” Chris says with a shrug.
Lily is practically vibrating as she rushes closer to our table. “Wait, you have reindeer.”
“Yep. Eight of them.”
“Like… living on your property.”
“In the back pasture. Barn, fencing, the works.”
A laugh bursts out of me, too sharp, too tired, too delighted. “Do they have names?” I don’t know why that’s the thing I ask. My brain is melting.
“Yep. Noel named most of them after chess pieces. Rook, Bishop, Knight… whatever. Kane wanted to name one Sparkles. We vetoed that.”
“RIP Sparkles.” I press a hand to my chest. “Gone before his time.”
