Page 241 of A Merry Mountain Christmas

There was a backyard fence, so there was no real danger of them getting away. The only threat to their safety lay in whatever delicacies Dottie had included in the spread, but they were probably safe. Goats could eat practically anything.

“Oh, that happened earlier than expected,” Dottie said without a hint of alarm. “I was hoping everyone would be here by the time they got out.”

The animal wrangler finally shook out of his stupor. “You said nothing like this would ever happen again!” he shouted at Lurch.

“And you believed him?” Maisie asked in amusement, glancing at Jack again. The goose flapped its wings a little, and Jack shrugged and let him loose.

“Doesn’t seem fair that they should enjoy the feast without him.”

“I predicted all of this!” Josie said victoriously from behind her booth. “Feel free to approach my station for a painfully accurate reading.”

“She shouldn’t feel so vindicated,” Jack said in an undertone. “I think anyone could have predicted this wouldn’t go well.”

Maisie laughed out loud at that, then laughed a little harder when Stella bustled up to the buffet, shrieking, “No! Blitzen is lactose intolerant.” She released Grumpy to go after Blitzen, a rotund goat with a brown and black coat, only for Grumpy to immediately latch on to a breadstick and chow down.

The donkey wrangler had apparently had enough of this circus and departed without another word, literally riding off on his donkey to wherever he’d parked his trailer. Maisie and Jack exchanged a look, both of them laughing now, but they steppedforward to help wrangle the animals. By the time they got the goats back into the pen, Jack’s dress shirt was torn in three different places, and the bottom of Maisie’s dress was covered in some kind of bean dip. Lurch tried to do his part, too, and lunged for Diego, somehow managing to get a goose footprint on top of his bald head, made with some kind of red dip, it looked like. Apparently it burned—Dottie was sometimes big on making things look like they tasted—because Lurch shoved Diego at Jack before running to the ice bucket someone had put out for beer and sticking his whole head in.

As soon as the goats were contained again, Stella had run into the house in dramatic fashion. Maisie had thought she was going inside to change her clothes, but the back door opened again, and when Stella walked out, she looked much the same as when she’d gone in—dress eaten away in parts by Grumpy, a green stain on what remained of it. She was carrying a blank canvas, and she hurried over to her abandoned easel, threw the painting in progress on the ground, and started painting on the fresh one.

“She’s inspired!” Dottie announced joyfully. “I can’t wait to see what comes of this!”

She seemed genuinely excited, like she cared not one bit that the buffet table looked like a swarm of locusts had descended on it. People hadn’t even started arriving for the party yet.

Josie sat silently in her booth, staring into the fishbowl as if studying all of the secrets of the universe.

“Dottie, do you have any clothes Jack and I can change into?” Maisie asked. “And maybe somewhere safe we can stow the goose?”

“Oh, Diego can go anywhere,” Stella said, waving a hand dismissively. “He’s sweet as can be.”

“That poor goat would beg to differ,” Maisie said, although perhaps she was just arguing for the sake of arguing. The “poor” goat in question had bitten her leg.

Stella glanced at them and then tipped her head. “Oh, don’t be surly. Just look at the way he’s cuddling with that fine man.” She lowered her paintbrush, her gaze narrowing on Jack. “You know, I had my heart set on the other one—the one named after a fish—but his girlfriend is a harridan.” The harridan being Adalia, and the “fish” being Finn, Adalia’s boyfriend. “You’ll do just fine. You’re the Buchanan bastard, aren’t you?”

Something flashed in Jack’s eyes. Probably he’d been called that before.

But he just said calmly, “I prefer to be called that for the content of my character, not the circumstances of my birth.”

Which was just about perfect as far as responses went.

“Stella,” Dottie snapped in what was maybe the only time Maisie could remember hearing her lose her temper. “That’s an awful thing to call my grandson. Now, I don’t want you to leave, not when you’re clearly in the throes of inspiration, but you should apologize.”

Jack wasn’t her grandson, not really. But Dottie had been Beau’s partner for something like twenty years, and it was clear she saw his grandchildren as her responsibility.

Stella let the paintbrush fall—literally fall—into the grass, spraying red.

“Iamsorry,” she said, walking toward Jack with arms extended. He took a step backward, almost tripping on the baby gate, and Maisie moved in front of him.

“Don’t come any closer,” she said. “If you think Adalia’s a harridan, you’ll find my bite is much worse than my bark.”

The goose in Jack’s arms nudged Maisie with his beak, but she didn’t yield any ground. Jack had apparently shifted the bird into the crook of one arm, because she felt his other handwrap around her hip. Maybe he was just trying to keep her from walking into the goose’s danger zone, but his firm touch was putting her into a whole different danger zone.

“Oh, so he’s yours, then,” Stella said with a pout. “I never get to have any fun.” But she paused, then said, “Like I said, I’m sorry. I have an artist’s temperament, I suppose.”

Maisie didn’t attempt to hold in a guffaw. “And I’m sure it allows you to get away with all manner of things.”

Lurch looked up at them, head sopping wet from his dip in the bucket, water dripping all over his shirt. “I sensed that when I first saw you,” he said to Stella. “The artist thing.”

What gave her away? The paint all over her clothes and hair, or the fact that she had a literal easel out on the lawn?

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