Page 26 of The Hockey Grump Saves Christmas

The hip-swinging might have been entirely unnecessary, but I could have watched it for a couple of hours without losing interest.

“So it’s not just different locations, but different time periods?” My instinct to be sarcastic faded about halfway through that sentence and morphed into something vaguely resembling interest.

“Yup. Last year we did it with a Shakespeare vibe. It was all ‘forsooth this’ and ‘thine that.’ That was pretty popular. Oh, and my predecessor did a version of it set on the moon. I’ve seen a video. It was pretty good.”

She unfurls the crumbling cloak and folds it neatly. “I was thinking. Since we’re doing it on ice, it could be set in an icicle forest instead of a regular forest.”

“I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing as an icicle forest.”

“Only if you have no imagination. We could dress all the townsfolk up as icicles.”

She tips her chin up with indignation and, clutching the folded cloak to her chest, pauses to gaze up at the blackened ceiling. “Wonder what the new person will do next Christmas?”

“The one replacing you when you move to New Orleans?”

“Yeah, they’ve hired some old Broadway actor to start in the new year.” Natalie doesn’t seem particularly excited about moving to a new job in one of the world’s most vibrant cities. She sounds like someone who might be doing it only because she thinks it’s what sheshouldbe doing.

“Anyway, let’s see what we can salvagefor this year.” She drops the cloak on the garbage pile and bends over the bin again to resume rummaging.

The upside of this activity is her backside. She’s wearing tight jeans tucked into furry calf-high boots and a purple puffer jacket that stops at her hips and, conveniently, rides up as she leans over.

Her ass is the perfect balance of roundness and grabbableness. Just right for sinking my fingers into as I lift her up and she wraps her legs around my wai?—

“Look. See?” And suddenly she’s upright again and facing me. An accusatory expression under a bright green beanie fixes itself on me. “It is worth going through everything. Wendolyn’s veil. Totally survived.” She’s holding up a long piece of seemingly undamaged netting.

“Oh, good. I mean, how ever would poor Wendolyn cope without a veil?”

“It’s actually an important part of the story because?—”

Silenced by me pretending to nod off, she gives me that hard glare again, the one that’s either been honed by years of drama school or been handed down through so many generations that it’s baked into her genes. Talking of jeans…that dark blue denim is clinging to some very shapely thighs that I’m sure would feel mighty fine wrapped around my wai?—

“It’s pointless trying to talk to you.” She puts the veil on the “good” pile, which only contains one other thing—a heavy metal mallet that could probably survive a blast furnace and being driven over a by a tractor—and gets back to the rummaging.

“Are you going to even try to help?” She pops back up, holding two items. I’m clueless as to what the pink one in her left hand used to be, but I’m pretty sure that goldplastic lump in her right was once a goblet. “Or else why are you even here?”

“Because you blackmailed me, remember?” And maybe because looking at her ass might just beat what’s on the National Geographic channel this morning. Though the story of how some Antarctic penguins build nests out of pebbles presented to them by the males as part of their courtship was fairly fascinating and I didn’t want to walk away from it to come here.

“Isn’t it clear I’m here under duress?” I ask. “The team has a whole kids’ hockey thing I’ve always avoided. If I wanted to be involved in stuff like this, I’d be doing it there.”

It wasn’t an unpleasant drive through town to get here, though. Got to admit, Warm Springs is pretty damn quaint. Main Street, with its mom-and-pop stores and their striped awnings, was covered in a fresh dusting of snow that clung to the tops of the black wrought iron lampposts.

Shame they had those hideous colored lights strung between them and every door was adorned with a festive wreath. The little produce shop had even arranged its sidewalk display so the fruit and vegetables formed a snowman, and a thing next to it I think was supposed to be a goat. But why a goat?

“Look.” I move toward her, trying to dodge the daggers flying from her eyes. “How about I just find a construction crew able to take a rush job, you can have the play here as planned, and I can go home?”

And I can put all ideas of my hands on her body out of my head. Out of sight, out of mind—isn’t that what they say about asses you want to sink your fingers into?

“Jesus.” She looks toward the emptyseats as if she can’t even bear the sight of me anymore. “You see, this is why I don’t like you.” She tosses the pink thing and the melted goblet back into the damaged bin and flings her arms wide. “You’re the sort of person who thinks, ‘I’ll just throw some money at that and make it go away.’”

I shove my hands into my pockets—it’s fucking freezing in here—and stay solidly calm in the face of her fiery dislike of me. “Is there a reason I can’t?”

“Oh my God,” she cries again. It’s louder this time and accompanied by an infuriated foot stomp that snaps a charred floorboard and sends her teetering to one side, arms windmilling to stay upright.

“Careful. That was your good ankle. And you only have two.”

It’s hard to know if the flush of her cheeks is due to the embarrassment of almost falling flat on that glorious rear end in front of me, or from her internal bubbling fury.

Either is fine by me, because they both mean she might think better of wanting me around.

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