Tic-Tac-Mistletoe - N.R. Walker Page 0,6

to my truck with Chutney on my heels. I turned the engine over and she rumbled to life. I threw her into first gear and we took off down the drive.

I’d heard the sound on the right side of my house so I turned that way, and sure enough, just a few hundred yards up the road I could see some red brake lights through the white of the snow.

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!”

I stopped, trying to get his words to make sense. “Huh?”

He looked at me, then, from behind his hands. “Oh my God. You’re not a grizzly bear?”

“Not the last time I checked,” I replied. “Sir, are you okay?”

Then he put his face into his hands. “It’s been the worst day ever.” He mumbled something else about some disaster. He had blackish hair, pale white skin with a bit of a dark beard, and when he looked up at me, I saw the brownest eyes I’d ever seen. “My car won’t go.”

Clearly there was nothing broken or bleeding; he wasn’t in any pain; he didn’t seem to have hit his head. “You need to get out of the vehicle,” I said. “Can you walk?”

He nodded and then proceeded to fumble with the seatbelt. He wasn’t wearing gloves. Actually, he wasn’t wearing any weather-appropriate clothes. Sweet mercy, the jacket he was wearing was no thicker than a shirt.

“Are you a serial killer? I really hope you’re not a serial killer, though to be honest, I’d probably just roll with it at this point.”

Was he for real?

“Not a serial killer,” I replied. He had an accent though. “Come on.” I helped him out of his car. He was shivering and I could tell he’d been crying. “Let’s get you into my truck.” He looked concerned, and probably rightfully so. He’d just been in an accident, but he needed to move. “Or you can stand here and freeze to death.”

He moved then and I ushered him to my truck and opened the door for him. He climbed up, shaking and shivering. “M-m-my bags. In the boot.”

“The boot?”

“T-t-runk.”

I was going to say to hell with his bags, but I had to go back and secure his car anyway. I ran back and took the keys out of the ignition, and seeing his phone in the console and a backpack on the passenger seat, I grabbed them before locking the doors. Pocketing the phone, I popped the trunk and wrestled the two suitcases out and threw them into the bed of my truck and climbed into the warmth of the cab.

To find Chutney perched up on the guy’s lap. He was still shivering and he was sitting on his hands, probably trying to keep them warm. “Uh, your d-d-dog just did this. I didn’t a-a-ask him to, he just s-s-sat on me. I’m sorry.”

I patted the seat between us. “Chutney, here.”

Chutney refused to move, which wasn’t like her at all. Jeez, maybe she could recognise near hypothermia and was trying to transfer some of her tiny body heat. “Okay, let’s get you somewhere warm,” I said. Putting the truck into first, I slowly turned us around and headed for home.

“What a-about my car?” he asked.

“We’ll worry about that in a bit,” I replied. “It’s off the road so no one will hit it.”

He nodded, still shaking. When I turned into my drive, he looked at me. “W-where are you taking me?”

“To my house.” I pointed up ahead. My driveway was a quarter-mile long. “You’re lucky I heard you.”

“Heard me?”

“Your car horn. I just went outside for a quick minute. Thirty seconds later and I wouldn’t have heard you at all.”

He lifted his gloveless hand to his forehead. “Oh. Thank you. I don’t know what I would have done . . .”

I pulled up by the house, just needing to get him inside before he caught his death. I jumped out and went to his door and he was still shaking so much I had to help him get down. I led him up the stairs and ushered him inside, sitting him by the fire. I pulled the throw off the back of the