by Zoe Chant
Any other time, Meaghan might have thought it was just a couple of drunk bros playing a prank. She would have gone after them regardless—no way she was letting anyone endanger the sweet doofus dogs she worked with—but this wasn’t the first “prank gone wrong” that had hit Pine Valley in the last few months.
And Meaghan knew that if anyone was going to take her suspicions seriously, she was going to need some evidence.
She just wasn’t expecting the evidence she found to be so hot.
Or so half-naked.
“I’m not going to run away,” the man said. “In fact, I don’t think I can.” His voice caught slightly at the end of the sentence and Meaghan’s stomach lurched.
She looked at him again. Properly this time.
He was wearing a jacket, but it was half-unzipped over his bare chest. No shirt. His pants were sweatpants, barely better than bare legs on a winter’s day in the mountains, let alone when the sun was down. The laces on one of his boots were only half-tied.
Once she got past how incredibly blue his eyes were, it was impossible to miss the deep shadows around them. And the slight tremor that shook his body with every breath.
Meaghan swore under her breath. “Some friends you have, leaving you out here like this.”
“Friends?” The man sounded surprised. Genuinely surprised. For the first time, Meaghan felt a hint of doubt.
She opened her mouth. The words You know, your friends who helped you steal the dogs were on the tip of her tongue when the surprise on the guy’s face flickered into an expression of anxious but unmistakable guilt.
“You look like you’re about to pass out,” she said instead, and it wasn’t difficult to make her concern sound genuine, because she was genuinely concerned that if the guy fell into some sort of hypothermic coma, she’d never get the answers she wanted. “Come on, let’s—damn it, Loony, what?”
Loony—so called because she had a sort-of moon-shaped white splodge over half her face and levels of irrepressible idiocy only matched by her littermate Parkour—had somehow managed to wrangle herself out of her harness and was snorfling urgently at Meaghan’s legs.
“I know you’re missing your dinner, babe, but—oh shit.” Meaghan looked past Loony to the other dogs and the upturned sleigh.
Loony wasn’t snorfling for treats. She was the dog equivalent of the kid going Mom Mom Mom look he’s doing something ba-a-a-a-ad!
“Parkour! Get off of there!”
Meaghan reluctantly let go of the man’s arm. Parkour—who was just as patchwork-colored and at least three times as stupid as his littermate Loony—was scrambling up the side of the Santa sleigh.
The Santa sleigh that was upended in the snow drift.
The Santa sleigh that was upended very precariously in the snow drift, with all the sled dogs except Loony and Parkour tied together in its shadow. The shadow that, as Parkour clambered up the side of the upturned sled, was starting to wobble...
“Parkour, no! Down!”
Meaghan raced back across the clearing. Let the dog-napper try to run. If that sleigh falls down and hurts any of the dogs, hypothermia is going to be the least of his worries.
“Heel!” she screamed as the sleigh toppled slowly down.
The dogs tried to obey. The four dogs standing under the sleigh surged toward her, dragging Parkour down by his harness. He yelped and scrabbled against the sleigh as his lead tangled around one of the runners.
Meaghan had just made it into the sleigh’s shadow as it gave an enormous groan and began to topple down. Loony wove herself between Meaghan’s legs as she tried to back up.
“Look out!”
A pale-man-colored flash whipped past her. Meaghan barely had time to realize she’d come within an inch of being brained by the falling sleigh before it was crashing into the snow six feet away.
Loony nudged against her legs again and Meaghan sank down to her knees. The rest of the dogs trotted up, tails wagging. Meaghan unclipped them from their tangled leads. They were all covered in snow. Some of them were wriggling with excitement, but skinny Chubbs was shaking with exhaustion. Meaghan ruffled his ears as he tried to climb into her lap.
“Come on puppies, let me see—oh, you’re all fine, you’re all wonderful. Good dogs. You’re all so good. Even you, Parkour, you massive idiot.”
She didn’t cry. Hours and hours of freaking out about what the assholes who’d terrified her coworker and stolen the dogs might do to them, and following sled tracks through paths that weren’t even paths, just gaps in the forest, and it was all okay, they were all fine and not run past the point of exhaustion and not squished under the stupid Santa parade sleigh. Everything was fine. There was no reason for her to cry.
So she buried her face in Chubbs’ fluffy shoulder and waited for her chest to stop heaving.
“Are you all right?”
Meaghan raised her head.
The guy was still there. He hadn’t taken advantage of her being distracted to run away—not that he would have gotten far, half-naked in the frozen wilderness.
And then she would have had to chase him down. Again. Bad enough that she was probably going to have to check him in at the doctor’s clinic before tossing him in the lockup and throwing away the key.
Forget crying. She was still mad.
“Oh I am better than fine.” Meaghan stood up and brushed clumps of snow off her knees. And your bad day is only just getting started. The man looked dazed. “What’s your name?”
“Caine. Caine Guinness.”
“Right.” Now I know what to have engraved on your gravestone, she added silently.
“And...” Caine licked his lower lip. Meaghan clenched her fists, reminding herself that this guy was an asshole of the highest order and she was not attracted to him. “You are...?”
Not letting myself get distracted by your face. Or chest. Or the fact that you just saved me from being splatted when you could have been making your getaway.
Asshole.
She narrowed her eyes. The guy—Caine—was acting all meek and innocent now, but how long was that going to last? She needed to get him back to town. And if he’d leapt to her aid once...
Meaghan let herself fall backwards, arms windmilling dramatically. Caine jumped into action. He moved through the knee-deep snow as though it was nothing and caught her before she hit the ground.
This is just to get him to the truck, Meaghan told herself firmly, her eyes two inches from Caine’s carved-marble chest.
“Are you all right?”
Meaghan faked a gasp of pain. “I stepped in a hole—twisted my ankle. Can you help me get back to my truck?”
“I...” Caine hesitated, and the frustration and worry that had been gnawing at Meaghan since Halloween flared.
“Get me to my truck!”
So much for pretending to be a damsel in distress. But it worked. Caine lifted her up—like she weighed nothing, holy shit, she might not be a damsel but he was doing a damn good job of pretending to be Prince Charming—and carried her to her truck.
Meaghan had driven as far off-road as she dared, following the sound of dogs barking. Her rust-bucket truck had four-wheel drive... technically. Some days it felt more like one-wheel drive.
But it had made it up the mountain. She was sure it would make it down again.
She patted her phone in her jacket pocket. When she’d originally come haring after the stolen dogs, she’d figured she would call her boss when she found them and get him to drive up with the dog truck. But that was before she had a near-hypothermic dog-napper on her hands.
Meaghan narrowed her eyes. The dogs would be happy enough in the back. And as for Caine…
"Help me get the dogs in?” she said casually.
Caine nodded and set her down. She grabbed a blanket from the trunk and thrust it at him.
“You’d better take that. Wrap yourself up. And—here. Crush these up and hold onto them, they’ll keep your hands warm.” Meaghan passed him a handful
of the self-heating handwarmers Olly was always slipping into her pockets.
“Thanks,” he said, awkwardly trying to wrap the blanket around himself and take the handwarmers at the same time.
Don’t thank me, thank the woman you left freaked out and crying after you stole the sleigh! Meaghan bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself yelling at him.
The truck’s back door stuck a bit, but she jiggled it open. The dogs were clustered around her and Caine’s legs, waiting for her orders.
“Up!” she chirped. Caine jerked, and the dogs jumped in, each finding somewhere to snuggle in on the cracked vinyl seats.
Chubbs tried to jump up last of all, but missed his footing and fell back, feet scrabbling. Caine leaned over and lifted him in, apparently without thinking.
He reached into the back of the truck to scratch Chubbs behind the ears and looked at Meaghan over his shoulder. The truck’s inside light backlit him, putting his face in shadow.
“I came to Pine Valley expecting—I don’t know what. Not this.”
Was that a smile, or a rueful grimace? Meaghan felt herself softening despite herself. There was something strangely... compelling about Caine. God knew she had more than enough reasons to hate every inch of him, but every time he glanced at her, or smiled—he was smiling now, wasn’t he?—it took her off guard.
The shadow at one corner of his mouth deepened. “You knew what I was the moment you saw me, and—”
Right. Good feelings gone.
“You're right,” Meaghan snarled. “Thanks for reminding me!”
She shoved him as hard as she could into the back of the truck and slammed the door shut. Caine yelled in surprise but Meaghan ignored him as she ran to the driver’s seat and started the engine.
“I know exactly what you are. And what you’ve been doing. And you might be—” Handsome, and charming, and distractingly half-naked... “—ugh. You’ve been a pain in my side for two months, but that ends now! I’m not going to let you ruin Christmas!”
3
Caine
Ruin Christmas?
The truck lurched into reverse and Caine slid face-first into a pile of dogs.
What the hell just happened?
A damp nose whuffled in Caine’s ear. He pushed himself up and the dogs made space for him on the battered-looking seats.
The woman was hunched over the wheel. She glanced at him in the rear-view mirror just long enough for her eyebrows to clang together in a ferocious glare, then swung the truck around and kept her eyes firmly forward.
He cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he said, pitching his voice to cut through the grumbling engine. “If you’re kidnapping me, I feel like I should at least know why.”
“You know what you did!”
“Can I at least know your name—”
“Stop asking questions!”
Caine’s mouth snapped shut. He sighed and sat back. One of the dogs noodled its way onto his lap and he petted it absently.
Clearly, this woman had him mixed up with someone else. Caine opened his mouth to explain that he hadn’t been in town long enough to cause any trouble—and then shut it again.
His head was spinning. He didn’t know what was going on, or who this woman was or who she thought he was—but one thing he knew without a doubt.
His demon was gone.
He closed his eyes, hunting deep in the shadows of his soul. There was nothing there. For the first time in twelve months, he was alone in his own head.
Caine breathed in. The truck smelled of diesel and wet dog—and that was it. No underlay of scents that should have been impossible for him to smell, let alone identify. He heard the truck’s engine and the soft grumbles and whines of the dogs piled up around him. Nothing else. The headlights lit up the road in front of them, and he couldn’t see into the shadows.
He was human again.
Caine slumped backwards. Two more dogs took the opportunity to wriggle up onto his lap and stomach.
Human. And all it had taken was being kidnapped by a strange, gorgeous, shouty woman.
He could live with that.
The road wound through snow-covered pine trees. Caine didn’t recognize the route. He’d deliberately avoided going through town on his way into the mountains. From everything he’d heard, Pine Valley was like the North Pole on steroids during the holiday season. He hadn’t wanted to risk any of the locals getting on his hellhound’s bad side—and he’d wanted to avoid the fact that it was almost Christmas as long as possible.
Until now. Now, maybe he would have a happy Christmas after all.
4
Meaghan
The road back to the Puppy Express was mostly potholes. She tried to avoid them, but it was impossible to miss them all.
Every time one of Meaghan’s wheels hit one, her stomach lurched and her brain followed it down—This has to work, what if it doesn’t, you don’t even know why everyone’s been behaving so weird but what if you just make it worse...
Good thing about potholes, though, if you hit them hard enough you just went bouncing up the other side again.
This will work. And I might not know what’s made everyone act so freaking weird ever since I suggested that what’s been going on might be more than just coincidence...
...But I am going to fix it.
The Puppy Express building appeared through a gap in the trees. Meaghan hauled the truck around the last corner and parked in the middle of the empty lot in front of the building.
Her fingers tightened on the wheel. The Puppy Express “stationhouse” was built to look like a frontier-style log cabin, but sized for a giant. Its windows were painted red and the snow piled up on the windowpanes and roof was real enough—despite its rustic look, the Express building was snugly insulated, so not even a hint of the cozy heat from the open fireplace inside leaked out to melt the snow.
Warm golden light poured out the windows, green and red fairy lights sparkled along the eaves, and a huge sign proclaiming Home of the Puppy Express hung over the entranceway.
Just below it, someone with his own special sense of humor—Meaghan’s boss, Bob—had hung another series of signs that read: Merry Christmas Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve.
It was all very cheerful and festive and Christmassy, except for the fact that it was five days before Christmas and the only vehicle in the parking lot was Meaghan’s truck.
The Puppy Express was one of Pine Valley’s most popular tourist attractions during the holiday season. Visitors could take rides on sleds or Christmas-decorated sleighs pulled by adorable dogs along snowy routes that wound around the mountain. At special stops, they could get out, stretch their legs, maybe have a picnic, and definitely write a Christmas card to their loved ones and pop it in one of the special mail boxes.
Everything about it was one hundred per cent ridiculously cute, right down to the branded sweaters in the gift shop. Meaghan had been thrilled to get a job there when she arrived in town six months before. Hanging out with dogs all the time? What could be better?
If there were enough tourists to make it worth opening up every day, she thoughts grimly. Bob had started wincing every time he looked at the desk where he sat to do the weekly accounts. All those “pranks” and “accidents” the last few months had put visitor numbers into freefall.
Someone must have heard Meaghan’s truck roaring up the drive. A figure appeared at one of the windows. Meaghan recognized it as Olly by the way she stayed lurking halfway behind the windowsill. Olly might be chill most of the time, but she had some weird hang-ups around getting the jump on people before they saw her.
Like you have some weird hang-ups around bulldozing your way into other people’s business.
Meaghan grinned. It was a surprise she and Olly got on as well as they did, but somehow, being opposites suited their friendship nicely.
She jumped out of the truck and strode around to the back doors, rolling her shoulders to ease all the knots and tension that had built up during her
day of hunting for the stolen dogs.
“Here we are!” she called out, tapping on the side of the truck. “Who’s happy to be home, huh, doofuses?”
The dogs were already barking with excitement. It was already dark, and to them, dark plus home equaled dinnertime.
I hope my guest isn’t getting too trampled, Meaghan thought piously. Then: Nah. That’s a lie. Trample him to pieces, dogs!
The front door of the Puppy Express stationhouse burst open and Meaghan’s boss, Bob Lockey, jogged down the steps.
“That you, Meaghan? Thank Christ. The last thing we need is you disappearing on us as well. Olly told me some story about you going after the pricks who ran off without paying, but it’s all under control, Officer Gilles is here and...”
Meaghan leaned back against the truck’s back door with a grin, and Bob’s eyes narrowed.
“...Meaghan, what have you done?”
Bob Lockey was Olly’s uncle. He was in his mid-fifties, with light brown skin and hair so white-blond that even locals sometimes offered him a senior’s discount if they weren’t paying too much attention to who they were serving. Add the curly beard he’d been cultivating since Meaghan moved into Pine Valley six months ago and it was no surprise he’d been picked to play Santa Claus in the town’s Christmas parade and fair.
Right now, he was looking like a very suspicious Santa Claus.
Jackson Gilles, the town’s trainee police officer, trotted down the stairs behind Bob. When he caught sight of Meaghan, he heaved a dramatic sigh and slowed from a trot to a saunter. Meaghan snorted.
Jackson had popped up every time she’d gone looking into one of the “pranks” or “accidents” that had happened in Pine Valley over the last few months. He’d always seemed more interested in keeping her away than listening to her suspicions about how they were all connected.