I owed him an apology. And I hated apologizing.
From downstairs, Kringle gave another bark. “I’m coming!” Jeez. Demanding dog. I took a final sip of coffee and set my almost empty mug in the sink before grabbing my coat and rushing down the stairs.
I froze at the bottom step as Chris knelt in the entryway to the store, his black peacoat dotted with snow, unclipping a leash from Kringle’s collar.
“Did you… did you take my dog for a walk?”
“Yeah. I hope that’s okay. It seemed like he really needed to go.”
“What if I had come down here and freaked out that my dog wasn’t here?”
Chris tapped his finger against a piece of paper taped to the wall between me and the front door. “I left a note. Besides, we didn’t go far… I just took him quickly across the street to do his business.” Chris lowered his chin and gave me a look. “And good lord did he have business to do.”
I chuckled and scratched at Kringle’s head. “Yeah, he’s like the CEO of business.”
Kringle rushed to his toy bin to grab his favorite Kong and plopped down on his bed to chew.
“Thanks… for, um, walking him.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And Chris—” I started, trying to find the words for the apology that was so owed. But his next thought quickly interrupted me.
“I also brought you breakfast.” He grabbed a paper bag that was sitting on the counter and thrust it toward me. “I wasn’t sure what you’d like, so I grabbed a bagel and cream cheese, a Danish, and an egg sandwich.”
I opened the bag as the scent of delicious warm bread flooded my nose. “Breakfast? What for?”
He shrugged. “I felt like I needed to make up for last night.”
“You felt that you needed to make up?”
“Yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “I’m really sorry about the sweater thing. You told me not to take it off and I did anyway, totally ignoring you. I didn’t mean for you to lose the contest, but I wasn’t respecting your priorities.”
“I…” I stood there stunned. Chris didn’t strike me as the kind of guy to apologize too easily. Maybe I had misjudged him completely. “I was planning to apologize to you today.”
“You were?” He slid his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels.
“I think I overreacted.” I paused and pinched my fingers together. “Just a tad. It’s a stupid contest and… admittedly, I get pretty competitive. But I had no right to yell at you for that. You didn’t expect to be thrust into a competition last night.”
His grin was slow and languid and heat pooled low in my belly at its low, graveled tone. “Does that mean I’m not Hans Gruber?”
“I don’t know… let’s see how the rest of the week goes. Come on.” I jerked my head to the storage room in the back where I kept the folded craft tables. “We need to set up before the kids get here.”
“Kids?” I could hear the click of his dress shoes against the floors as he followed me toward the back.
“That’s right. Tons of them are coming here in about thirty minutes.” I hoisted one side of the table up. “Grab the other end. Then after this, we can eat breakfast.”
“Man, you’re intense.”
You have no idea. I glanced up at him to find his eyes locked onto mine. And though I didn’t think he meant it to be so sexy, the moment shimmied between us like the current in a live wire. One step in the wrong direction and either of us could be zapped.
It was our busiest letter writing day at the store in all my years here. There was a line of families outside the store, wrapping around the block. And since we could only take about twenty kids at a time at the table in the back, that left dozens of people outside waiting in the cold.
My employee, Tina, came running up to me, urgency twisting her brows and mouth into a frown. “It’s below twenty-degrees today,” she said to me. “I’m getting worried about the people outside waiting. Plus, they’re blocking the entrance and we have people who aren’t here for the event… people who were planning to just come in and shop who are turning around and leaving because they think the line is to get into the store.”
Crap. I knew the event was getting bigger and bigger each year… I didn’t expect it to grow this exponentially. I blew out a breath and looked around to find Chris behind the register, helping ring up other customers who were here shopping.
“I have an idea,” I said and rushed to the other side of the register. Ducking below the counter, I shoved items to the side until I found the roll of tickets from last summer’s carnival where we had a Christmas in July booth.
“Here.” I handed the roll of tickets to Tina. “Pass these out and make a note in your phone the numbers you’re distributing—they’re all in numerical order, so you just need to know that if the roll starts on number 104, the next ticket is 105 and 106, etc. Tell them to wait over at Latte Da and we will swing in there to call them by their numbers when it’s their family’s turn.”
“Latte Da can only hold around twenty… maybe thirty people tops,” Chris said, chiming in on the conversation as he handed a shopping bag to the customer. “There’s at least fifty out there in line.”
I threw my hands up, frustrated. “Do you have a better idea?”
“Tell them to go to either Latte Da or Nick’s Pizzeria… where he is now serving StoryBook peppermint hot chocolate.”
“Nick’s is two blocks away… Latte Da is right next door. Who’s going to run two blocks every time we have a spot open up at the table?”
“I will,” A low voice said from somewhere behind me.
I spun to my right, and thank God I wasn’t drinking anything, because I was pretty sure I would have snorted it out of my nose. There stood Grumpy Ed Williams in bright green leggings, a red and white striped tunic, and a pointy Santa hat perched on his head. The outfit combined with his hunched back, cane, and his glasses hanging precariously on the tip of his nose was hysterical. “Ed?”
“This week, I’m known as Wrinkles, the Elf.”
I pressed my lips together to hold in my laughter.
“Uh, wow,” Chris said. “You’re uh, really taking this elf for a week contest win seriously, aren’t you?”
“You promised me hot chocolate and cookies,” he said, his voice darkening and his gaze shifting beside me where the hot chocolate station was. We had premade pitchers of it warmed in the crock pot and had several canisters of whipped cream and sprinkles for decorating.
“And you will get all the hot chocolate and cookies you can eat, Ed.” I lunged for a plate of cookies stacked high on the counter, pushing them toward him. I wasn’t about to kick a gift horse in the mouth. We were swamped today and could use all the help we could get. “Although, I don’t think I feel comfortable sending you back and forth from here to Nick’s several times today.” My gaze fell briefly to his cane clenched tightly in his fist. I’ve seen that man try to walk around the park… it would take him thirty minutes just to walk there and back once.