Chapter 1 Holly #2
It just figured that the one creature in this place who was willing to come to her rescue was a twelve-pound bald dog.
That puts you one up on all the humans around here, pupper.
“Want to take a break and get coffee, honey?” Now that she was this close to him, she could smell the booze on Rob’s breath.
“I’m not your honey either,” Holly muttered. Her shoulders were up around her ears, partly trying to hold off Rob, and partly from sheer discomfort at the situation.
It was only when they stopped moving that she realized Rob had not been steering her by pure chance. They were now standing under the mistletoe.
“Come on, baby, the flame is still there. Let’s prove it to this whole town.”
He still stank of booze. Holly stared at him in disbelief. By now she had turtled so much that she was in danger of disappearing into her own collar. She could feel her face turning hot. She was so flustered she couldn’t think.
“Hi, honey, is this guy bothering you?”
Holly had never heard that voice before in her life, a deep quiet voice that sent a shiver straight through her. A strong arm moved between them, firmly separating her from Rob, and when she turned, she was looking into the face of the black-haired maintenance guy.
She had a brief impression of sharp-cut features, strong cheekbones, a square jaw beneath the stubble—and a crease of uncertainty between heavy brows over gold-flecked brown eyes.
Next to her, Rob was tensing up, and Holly threw herself into play-acting with a will and a vengeance.
“Oh, it’s so good to see you,” Holly burbled. She had to look up into the guy’s face, and this brought her attention to the mistletoe dangling above them. Perfect distraction. She had to make this look good, had to get rid of Rob once and for all.
Not waiting for a reaction, she flung herself against the startled stranger, threw an arm around his neck, and pressed her lips to his.
She didn’t plan for it to be a real kiss. Just a quick lip-mashing, enough to sell it.
But his lips were soft under hers, and parted slightly, allowing her a taste of the warm heat underneath.
Her arm, wrapped around his neck, pressed against bunched muscles and firm shoulders.
His hair brushed the side of her face as he tilted his head downward to make the angle more comfortable for her.
Something sharp sparked across her lips, an unexpected flash of strangely pleasant pain.
It jolted her out of the haze she had slipped into, and she abruptly realized she had been kissing him for an unknown amount of time, so long that she was going to have to stop to breathe.
She jerked back, fully prepared for an awkward apology, but then she met his eyes.
Before, they had been deep brown with flecks of startling yellow, like flakes of paint.
Now they had changed. The gold had spread outward to the rims, turning his eyes to blazing yellow.
Shifter eyes.
They stared at each other for an instant that seemed to last forever, before he wrenched himself away. Holly was so caught off guard that she stumbled back and slammed into the side of the puppy pen.
In the instant before she fell over backward, she was aware of the stranger—the shifter stranger—already whirling around and striding away from her, pushing carelessly past old ladies and little girls clutching puppies, all but running.
Then the flimsy child-gate style wall of the pen collapsed under her weight.
The next thing she knew, she was flat on her back with fluffy, curious puppies crawling all over her.
Holly frantically felt around to make sure she hadn’t landed on a puppy and permanently ruined Christmas for a whole room full of grade schoolers.
Fortunately the only casualties seemed to be the pen, her tailbone, and her pride.
Cupcake was still barking, trying to climb over the wall of the adjoining pen, which wobbled dangerously.
“I’m fine,” Holly squeaked out, to the dog and the curious collection of kids and parents who had been drawn to her predicament. She removed a puppy from her neck.
Her lips felt strange. Tingling. Oddly sticky. She touched her fingertips to her mouth and felt that bright spark of pain again.
He had ... bitten her.
“Goodness, dear, are you all right?” a matronly voice asked from somewhere above her.
“Mommy, that lady is in the puppies. Can I be in the puppies?”
“I’m fine,” Holly said again. She took a deep breath and sat up, removing another puppy from her lap and flushing like a tomato.
Hot Shifter Guy was gone. He had literally sprinted out of the building to get away from her. She wiped at her mouth again, unable to understand what had happened.
He had bitten her.
Holly had grown up around shifters. Her dad was a shifter.
Neither Holly nor any of her sisters had come out with the shifter trait themselves; female shifters were rare.
But she had never heard anything about shifters randomly biting people.
The shifter trait was passed down genetically, not through biting, no matter what the Halloween monster movies had to say about it.
Her lips still tingled where he had touched them; her entire body seemed to thrum with that contact. And he’d run away from her like she was a leper, Typhoid Mary, and a plague carrier all rolled into one.
Rob was gone as well, so that was one good thing about this entire mess. Holly didn’t think she had ever been so embarrassed—no, humiliated in her life.
Or so confused.
She accepted several offered hands pulling her up, and then tried to pull the pieces of the pen back into place, which only succeeded in collapsing the side of Cupcake’s pen, so now he was out too.
The puppies were too busy enjoying the sudden onslaught of child attention to really notice their freedom.
Holly scooped up Cupcake, who didn’t seem to be that crazy about running off either when he could be getting petted right here.
“I’ve got it,” Mags exclaimed, swooping in to put the folding pieces back into place. “There’s a trick to it. What happened? Is everyone all right?”
“She kissed that guy,” the little girl said, clutching a puppy. “And then he pushed her in the puppies.”
“That is absolutely not what happened,” Holly said hotly, and then realized she was arguing with a six-year-old.
She had kissed a total stranger in front of half the people she knew from high school, and he’d run away from her.
After biting her.
She buried her face in Cupcake’s soft topknot as if it could erase the humiliation. Cupcake snuggled against her and licked her chin.
“At least I have one friend around here who doesn’t think I’m a total idiot,” Holly muttered.
“Oh!” Mags exclaimed. “Thank goodness, I was starting to worry the poor little guy would never find his forever home. You two are adorable together.”
“What?”
A few minutes later, as she filled out adoption paperwork, she wondered how she was going to explain to her dad that she had accidentally adopted, not merely a dog, but the least adoptable dog in the Pine Junction animal shelter.
She was still holding Cupcake in one arm while she filled out papers with the other hand. It felt like having a hot water bottle cuddled up against her.
“Good news, he’s already fixed, chipped, and up to date on his shots,” Mags said cheerfully. “He’s five years old. We’ve had so much trouble adopting him out, because of his age and his unusual breed. Here’s a care package—do you need anything else, like a bed or pet food?”
“We already have another dog, so we’re pretty well set.
” Holly looked down at Cupcake’s mop of hair.
Part of what made him look so much like a cartoon character was he only had hair on the top of his head, leaving his muzzle and part of his face bare.
She had never even imagined that a dog could end up with a ‘90s anime spike of hair, but here he was. “I guess I’ll stop on my way home and get small breed pet food.”
“I have one bag left if you want to add it on!”
“Sure,” Holly sighed, watching Mags add the pet food to the adoption fees. She hoped her already strained credit card would absorb it all. “Uh, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure, go right ahead! If I don’t know the answer, I can look it up on my phone,” Mags chirped. “I have Google on my new phone, and I’ve had to look up so many things today. We had a young lady adopt an African grey parrot, can you believe it?”
Holly had a hilarious/horrible image of Mags looking up the name of the maintenance guy and chirpily announcing it to the room.
She was starting to think this was a terrible idea, but Mags was one of the few people who would probably be able to answer her question.
Mags knew everyone. “The guy who was working on the ceiling earlier—dark hair—”
“Oh, I thought you knew each other! Alice said she saw you kiss him.” Mags’s tone clearly was begging for more information.
“I tripped and fell on him,” Holly said stiffly. Under the mistletoe. His shifter eyes—wolf eyes—flamed in her memory. “What’s his name, do you know?”
“Jason. Or was it Josh? Maybe Joe. He comes to the free hot breakfast at the center, and he’s been fixing broken things around the place for free. What a nice man, and so handy.”
“Yes,” Holly got out, now thinking of Mr. Mistletoe’s big, capable hands. “Is he, er—local?”
“I’m afraid I have no idea. I can ask—”
“No!” Holly exclaimed. She’d probably already sent the rumor mill into overdrive, but this would make it exponentially worse. “No, forget I said anything.”
But if she was understanding Mags correctly, if the maintenance guy was coming to free meals at the community center, then he must be on hard times, maybe even homeless.
He hadn’t really looked like it—but what did she know about what homeless people were supposed to look like? She came to a sudden decision.
“Hey, if he comes back, could you give him something for me, please?” She set down Cupcake for a minute, wrapped the dog’s slender purple leash around her wrist, and turned over one of the shelter flyers to scribble on the back, writing down a few quick notes.
“You know how my family used to rent out vacation cottages, back before everything happened with Mom? We don’t do it much anymore, but I know Dad wouldn’t turn him away.
If he needs a place to go over the holidays, he can look us up. ”
“Thank you, dear,” Mags said quietly, taking the flyer. “That’s very kind of you. If he comes back in while I’m still here, I’ll see that he gets this.”
Holly nodded and gathered up Cupcake’s things. She had to resist the urge to touch her hand to her mouth. Her lip still stung, and every time she brushed it with her tongue, a strange thrill ran through her.
It was a long shot. In all likelihood, Mr. Mistletoe was just passing through, and she would never see him again.