Page 267 of A Merry Mountain Christmas

“Hardy-har-har,” she groaned, but he caught the hint of a grin before she went back to scowling. “And you should take that stand-up act on the road.” Then she quickly added, “But I refuse to watch any of your acts. I don’t need more embarrassment. Thanksgiving may have been a week ago, but the memories will last a lifetime.”

“That’s okay,” he said, making sure his voice still sounded breezy. “I’ll stick to karaoke.”

“Karaoke?” she asked, swinging her head around to face him.

He’d had a feeling that would pique her interest. “Addy took me and Georgie. You should have seen Georgie singing Bruno Mars’s ‘Uptown Funk.’”

Iris started to grin, but it didn’t stick the landing. She remembered she was supposed to be mad and scowled again.

Seeing her struggle to keep the chip on her shoulder reassured him that she’d eventually come around.

“I can’t see Georgie doing that unless she was drunk. She seems uptight.”

While Iris was partially right, Jack still felt the need to defend his other sister. “Georgie’s got a lot on her mind.”

“Her wedding?” Iris scoffed.

“The brewery. It was a mess when we took over, remember? She put a lot of her own money into it, and it’s just now starting to pay most of the bills, like the payroll. A lot of people need the brewery to work—you and me included—and it’s pretty stressful.” He still felt guilty about that. He’d put a lot of pressure on her not to sell, but they never would have made it this far if she hadn’t invested the capital from the sale of her new age women’s product company into the brewery. Sure, she’d met River because of it, but she’d gone through tons of stress those first few months while he’d flown off to Chicago to deal with a different kind of stress with Iris and his mother.

Iris was quiet for several seconds, then said, “So bringing me to this dog shelter is your lame attempt to make me feel like I belong in Asheville?”

“It’s my lame attempt to help you make up for those mediocre grades.”

“I already turned in most of my college applications,” she said with a huff as she looked outside. “So there’s no point.”

“News flash—they still look at your grades for the rest of your senior year, Iris,” he said, irritation bleeding into his tone for the first time since he’d picked her up after school.

She didn’t respond.

“You like dogs, and this will be a great way to get some community service hours. And yes, I know,” he added, “you’ve already turned in most of your college applications, but like I told you, they’ll see your second quarter grades. Doing somegood for the community might help offset the dip.” And they needed her applications to shine. He’d saved up a little college fund for her, but it was nowhere near enough to pay for a degree at Northwestern. If she didn’t want to take out loans she’d be paying until she was forty, she’d need a scholarship. It took grades and extracurriculars to get a scholarship. But she wouldn’t thank him for saying any of that.

Jack saw the shelter up ahead, and as he pulled into the small parking area up front, he shot Iris a glance, asking her something that had been on his mind for weeks. “What’s a harridan?”

“What?” she asked, scrunching her nose. “Why are you asking me that?”

“Because you scored a 32 on your reading ACT. So what’s a harridan?”

She pushed out a breath in exasperation. “A mean, cranky woman. A shrew. Now why do you want to know?”

He’d gathered as much, but a slow smile lifted his lips. “I read it in a magazine.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Since when do you read magazines?”

He reached for his door handle. “Since I moved to Asheville. Come on.”

He got out, telling himself he only felt eager because, for all her objections, Iris actually looked a little excited as she got out of the car. The one-story building looked like it had seen better days, but he supposed most of the money they acquired went to the animals, not into beautification.

Iris joined him and they walked in together. A man with long white hair and a neatly trimmed beard sat at the front desk, his fingers flying over the keyboard of his laptop. He glanced up and smiled. “You must be our new volunteer.”

Iris hesitated, then said, “Yeah. I’m Iris Durand.”

Jack was relieved she sounded more like herself and not the changeling she’d become upon moving to Asheville. “I’m Jack,” he said, “her brother.”

“I’m Dustin,” he said, walking around the counter. “Former volunteer turned employee.” He said this last bit proudly, as if it were a new status. “So you know anything’s possible.” He winked at Iris, who responded with a flat expression.

Jack had been told he looked like that too, when confronted with something he didn’t know how to react to. It had happened a lot in Asheville.

“Maisie asked me to let her know when you two showed up,” Dustin continued. “Why don’t you follow me?”

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