Tic-Tac-Mistletoe (Hartbridge Christmas, #1)

by N.R. Walker

Frazzled and trying not to cry— Yes, cry. A thirty-one-year-old man can cry; shove your toxic masculinity in your cakehole and stop judging me. I was having a jetlag-fuelled shitastic day meltdown, trying to keep my shit together the best I could, and clearly not doing it very well. I was allowed a little saltwater leakage.

Because of course they didn’t have my booking. Why would they? My rental car was waiting for me in Spokane. In Washington. Not in freaking Montana. “Oh,” I whispered, and my left eye twitched. “That’s nice.” I looked around the airport, at the line of annoyed people behind me. “Excellent. I’ve seen that movie where Tom Hanks lives in an airport. It wasn’t so bad. Could be worse. Could’ve been the one where he’s stuck on the island, I guess. Though I didn’t pack a volleyball, so that would’ve sucked.”

But this was happening! And I was stuck in some wall of snow with no engine, which meant no heating and the snow was still coming down and I could already feel the cold. So I did the only thing a completely sane person could do. I thumped the horn while I wailed and screamed and lost my shit. “Such. A goddammed. Disaster. Hamish. You. Idiot.”

God, I was going to have to get out and walk. Were there bears in Montana? Oh my God, there were bears in Montana. I’d just had the worst twenty-four hours ever, my life was an on-going shitshow, I ran my car off the road in a freaking blizzard, and now I was going to end up a frozen human popsicle or mauled to death by a bear two days before Christmas. Then something big and dark and remarkably bear-shaped tapped on my driver’s window and scared the ever-loving shite out of me so bad, I let out a high-pitched scream of terror, and I swear to God, I almost peed a little.

A car had run off the road. I pulled up behind them and jumped out, leaving Chutney in the truck. I raced up to the driver’s side and knocked on the window, making the driver scream. Panicking now that something was terribly wrong, I opened their door. “Are you okay?” A man put his hands up, terrified and a little hysterical. “I’m too pretty to be bear poo!”

“Oh, God.” “Close, but not quite.” He beamed. “You’re a coffee bean. Most prized bean in all the world. Or maybe that’s vanilla. I don’t know. But coffee. That’s the one. I’m going to get you a can of coffee beans.”

“Well, my current celebrity crush would have to be Chris.” “Chris who?” “Hemsworth, Evans, and Pine.” “All three?”

“You drove your new car up?” “I did! Very slowly, and I screamed and panicked more than I’d care to admit, but I did.”