Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
NATALIE
“I think you mean, who the fuck are you ?” Unable to get my knees to the crotch of the man kneeling astride me, I bash them into the two rocks of muscle that make up his ass.
The hulking human is holding my wrists above my head with his right hand while his left dangles my bunny head by its fluffy long ears—the battery-powered lights wrapped around them still flashing.
“And what are you doing at the Sullivans’ house?” I pant, breathless from the struggle.
Stunned and winded by the swift move that landed me on my back, I’m not as afraid as I probably should be. I’d have thought that if a strange man threw me to the ground and pinned me down it would be terrifying.
But for some reason, it’s just annoying. Also, I did jump on his back, and it turns out he’s not the person I thought he was so, to be fair, perhaps it was me who scared the crap out of him .
“This is my place,” he says, nodding the peak of his New York Apollos cap toward the house I’ve spent all afternoon decorating.
Oh, he must be a lost tourist. “It’s not. You’re confused. And could you please get off me?” I wiggle around between his legs to try to free myself.
It’s like being held down by a grizzly bear. If the grizzly bear had broad shoulders, thick thighs, a close-trimmed beard, and a twinkle in its green eyes. Or maybe that’s just the reflection of the fifty feet of Winter Emerald lights I spent ages winding around the porch.
He purses his remarkably full lips and scans my face. If I’d met him in a bar, I’d think he was eyeing me up. But there’s a clear flash of pissed-offness behind the Winter Emerald, and since I’m currently trapped under his body weight, which resembles that of a tractor, I’m guessing he’s not.
The scowl is another clue. The shadows of the deep ridges across his forehead are revealed every time the glowing, twirling holly bushes staked into the ground between the reindeer flash by.
Yeah, he’s clearly not feeling much goodwill to all men, or indeed any men…or women.
“Okay,” he says, narrowing his eyes and loosening his grip on my wrists. “I guess you look pretty…” He runs his gaze over the part of my bunny suit visible between his knees and my chin.
“ What ? I look pretty what ? Because I can tell you exactly what you look like. A jerk who’ll throw a defenseless woman to the ground just for saying Merry Christmas.”
“…harmless,” he finishes. “You look pretty harmless. An d that ’s what you were saying when you jumped me? Merry Christmas?”
“Hoppy Christmas, actually.” I rub my wrists where he’d been holding them and have to be careful not to brush against his groin, which is hovering directly above my ribs. “It’s a bunny joke.”
He doesn’t smile. In fact, he looks like his smile muscles have never been utilized. If he even has any.
“You know.” For some reason I feel the need to explain it. “Not Happy Christmas. Hopp ?—”
“I get it,” he grunts, rising from his knees to stand next to me and blocking so much light from the house that I’m suddenly lying in full shadow.
He offers me his non-bunny-head-holding hand to help me up. Not an act of chivalry I’d expect from someone who hurled me to the ground just moments ago.
“I can manage.” I am not going to give him the satisfaction of helping me, despite the fact that just walking in these giant rabbit feet was hard enough so I’m certainly not confident I can get from lying to standing in them. Particularly not with snow being blown right into my face and Mr. Muscles the impostor/trespasser man—or whoever the hell he is—watching me.
At least it’s only my face that’s cold—wearing this furry suit for the last two hours has kept me unexpectedly warm. They should market these things to Arctic explorers. Would certainly jazz up those North Pole flag-planting photos.
Bending my knees, I push my bunny hands into the snow and lever myself up.
“Argh.” A searing pain shoots through my left ankle, and I collapse onto my backside. “Oh my God. What have you done to me?”
“Thought you could manage.” There’s an amused titter under his gruff voice as he holds his hand out again.
“My ankle.” I point at the left bunny foot. “You’ve hurt my ankle.”
His barrel chest expands, then contracts with a heavy sigh as he nods toward his outstretched hand, clearly no longer deeming me even worthy of speech.
“I can’t hold on.” I slap at it with my big bunny hand. “See?”
Without a word, he drops the head in the snow, bends over, scoops his hands under my armpits and lifts me up like I weigh no more than a bag of chips.
He lands me on my good foot, and I balance on the toe of the other, like a ballerina who’s just executed a perfect landing despite her shoes being two feet long.
“Is it bad?” he asks.
“Is what bad?” I ask, still a little lost in trying to figure out how I got from lying in the snow to a graceful standing position with no effort from me.
He sighs and brushes snowflakes from his dark whiskers. “Your ankle. Is it bad?”
Is that a hint of genuine concern in his voice? Or is he just worried I might sue him? I mean, he must have some cash if he really does own this house now—my favorite one in town. The Sullivans were definitely well-off, both respected New York lawyers.
I try to put some weight on my left foot, and a noise comes out of me that resembles a three-year-old trying to sing scales and not doing an awesome job of it.
“Oh, Jesus.” Mr. Muscles’ head drops forward, his hat hiding his whole face from me. As he rubs his upper arms, I process for the first time that he’s not wearing a coat. Just a hoodie .
“Aren’t you cold?”
“Very. I wasn’t planning on hanging around outside. I was just grabbing my bag and going straight inside .” He lifts his head just enough to peer at me from under the bill. “But I was grabbed from behind and thought I was being mugged by someone who’d staked out my new house and…well”—he gestures from my face to my bunny feet—“here I am.”
Christ, my hair must be all over the place after being shoved inside that head for two hours and he didn’t exactly pull it off carefully.
I go to run my fingers through it, but just smack myself on the head with the giant bunny hands I’d momentarily forgotten I’m wearing.
“Anyway,” he says. “What the fuck is all this shit doing all over my house?”
“Did you really buy this place from the Sullivans?”
“Probably. Maybe. I don’t recall the name on the papers.” He shakes his head. “None of your business. Who the hell are you anyway? And why have you turned my house into some sort of festive freak show?”
I pull off one of the hands and try to tidy my hair, which is a bit tricky in the wind.
“I watch the Sullivans’ kids whenever they’re here. It’s their vacation home. Or, I guess, it was.” I pull out a strand of hair that’s blown into my mouth. “If you’re telling the truth, that is.”
“Of course I’m telling the fucking truth. Which makes you a trespasser. A trespasser with appalling bad taste in Christmas decorations.”
“The kids love them.” I ease my left foot flat on the ground and wince. “I decorate the house before they arrive for the holidays. And they always arrive on December tenth at around six p.m.”
“And you’ve been standing there, pretending to be a Christmas bunny lawn ornament for”—he checks an expensive-looking watch—“two hours?”
“God, no. I’d have been frozen stiff by now. I set it all up and waited in the garage. That’s where the Christmas decorations and the ladder were. Just like usual. And they’d even left a large note on top of the box of lights that said, ‘Enjoy!’”
My shoulders droop inside the suit as the penny drops in my brain. “Oh. The note was for…”
He nods. “Probably me. Yes.”
“Ah.” So I really have decorated a complete stranger’s house and then jumped on him… dressed in a bunny costume. Most of which I’m still wearing. I suddenly feel incredibly stupid. “They didn’t tell me they were selling. Or had sold. Or anything. So I was all business as usual.” I sweep my non-bunny hand at the house and lawn.
Dammit. I really had outdone myself this year too.
“And you usually dress up in a completely non-Christmas-related animal costume and pounce on them?”
“No, that was a special surprise.” God, this does all sound so utterly ridiculous as I’m saying it out loud to a grumpy stranger while snowflakes pile up on his hat and get caught in the edge of his not unattractive beard. “At Thanksgiving, their daughter was super into rabbits. So I thought if I dressed up like this and pretended to be part of the display, then jumped out at them, she’d think it was hilarious.”
“How old is she?”
“Six.”
“You didn’t think she might be terrified? ”
“Like you were, you mean?”
He lets out a loud humph . “I wasn’t terrified. I was startled.”
“You always throw people to the ground out of startlement?”
“Startlement?” He rubs his forehead, pushing up his cap enough to allow the light to catch his lips. I swear to God they flick upward at the corners. “Did you not notice that this was not their car? And that I am not a six-year-old girl?”
I point at the bunny head at his feet that has quite a snow drift gathering around it. “Can’t see very clearly out of that.”
“Okay, well, look.” He picks it up and shakes off the snow. “You need to get all this shit off my house. But here’s the deal, as long as you tell me where to unplug it so I don’t have nightmares that I’m being invaded by a gang of glowing elves and a zebra in a sweater to a soundtrack of whatever the hideous din is that the monkey’s playing now?—”
“Good King Wenceslas.” To be fair, that is a fairly tricky one to figure out.
“If you say so. But as long as I can turn it all off, you have until tomorrow to make it disappear. Now, here.” He offers me his elbow. “I’ll help you to your car. Then you can go away. And I can go inside and try to avoid making my evening even worse by developing hypothermia.”
“Bike,” I say.
“What?” He sounds tetchy again.
“Bike. Not car. I rode up here.”
“You cycled up here. In this?” He throws his arms wide to indicate the general state of blizzardiness around us.
“It wasn’t like this earlier. And it wasn’t forecasted to be like this till much later tonight. I thought I’d be in and out before it started.”
He sighs again and looks around. “Where is it?”
“What?”
“Jesus Christ. Your fucking bike.”
“In the garage. With my coat.”
“And where do you live?”
“At the retirement home.”
“Oh my good God.” He turns away, plants his hands on his hips and throws his head back, his beard catching more snow. “I really have driven right into fucking Wonderland, haven’t I? Is there a Cheshire Cat and a Mad Hatter around here somewhere too?”
“With my aunt,” I offer by way of explanation. “She runs it. The Warm Springs Retirement Village, I mean.” He looks at me with a why-the-hell-are-you-telling-me-this expression. “Anyway, she lives in the manager’s cottage attached to it. And I’m staying with her.”
“And where is it?” He’s clearly a Just The Facts kind of guy.
“In town.”
“Okay. Get in my car. But take that suit off first so the snow doesn’t melt into the seats. You do have, like, clothes on under there, right?”
“Yes. I have clothes on under here. Do you think people are usually naked under these things?”
“Funnily enough,” he says, making full eye contact with me for the first time since he pulled off my bunny head. And it gives me the exact same feeling—one similar to the sensation right before you step out of the wings and onto the stage in front of a packed house. “I’ve never given a single second’s thought to what anyone might wear under an animal costume. ”
“Jeans and a sweater. It’s surprisingly roomy in here.” I wiggle my hips to demonstrate.
“Good to know. I’m going to get your bike and put it in the trunk. You can toss the suit in there too. Then I’m going to drive you home. To the retirement home .” He sighs like that’s the most ridiculous part of the evening. “Then I’m going to come back here, unplug the light show that would put the Vegas strip to shame, finally get the peaceful evening I came here for, and tomorrow you’re going to come back and make it all disappear.”
He turns away and stomps through the snow toward the garage, shaking his head.
“Um,” I call after him.
He spins around on the spot. “What now?”
“I can’t really, you know”—I waft the bunny hand I’d taken off toward my left ankle—“walk.”
His broad, square shoulders slump as far as solid muscle will allow, and he moves back toward me.
His eyes meet mine again for a fraction of a second as he offers me his elbow for the second time. And it makes me feel a bit…funny.
“Come on, Bugs,” he says, and I swear there’s a hint of good humor buried under that air of resignation.
I hook my hand in the crook of the strongest arm I have ever felt in my life. And the hunk of maleness attached to it leads me toward his Porsche SUV.