Blake wasn’t expecting to be wooed by someone playing Secret Santa twelve-days-of-Christmas style, but he certainly isn’t complaining. Presents are fun after all, especially when your Secret Santa seems to know all your favorites. Things get a little more mysterious when the gifts begin matching the oddly friendly coyote that’s started hanging out on his porch. Blake can’t help thinking fanciful thoughts, but shifters don’t actually exist…do they?
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Excerpt
Day Two
Feeling both silly and excited, I poked suspiciously at the little package sitting on my desk. It was wrapped with the same bright-Christmas-red tissue paper as the present I’d found yesterday. I grinned at the fringed ends of the brand new Scooby Doo scarf wrapped around my neck—yesterday’s awesome present—and poked the package again. It was squishy.
I heard snickering behind me and turned to see Eddie watching me. I pretended to glare, too cheerful to be truly annoyed. As he was both my long-time coworker and one of my closest friends he ignored the fake glare and chose to be nosy. I’d told him about yesterday’s mystery gift, so he would be as curious about today’s as I was.
Grinning, Eddie wandered over and propped his hip on the edge of my desk. “You going to open it, or just poke it all day?”
“I’m definitely going to open it.” I picked up the little package and started to carefully peel off the tape, trying to rip the paper as little as possible. It was annoying, but less annoying than yesterday’s reconstruction project had been.
“Dude. Rip and tear, man, rip and tear.” He made a grab for the package and I quickly yanked it out of his reach. He sighed heavily. “This is just painful to watch.”
My glare was more sincere this time as I edged further away. I resumed my paranoid tape picking. “Yesterday there was something written on the inside of the tissue paper. It took fifteen minutes to tape it back together.”
The last piece of tape came loose and I let out a triumphant “hah!” as I held it up by one edge to let the contents roll out. A pair of fingerless gloves tumbled down and landed on my desk. They were obviously meant to match the scarf, though they didn’t have the little embroidered patch of the Mystery Machine on them.
I let out a very loud gleeful laugh before I slapped my hand over my mouth to muffle my laughter. Eddie shook his head and picked up the gloves. He turned them over a couple times before holding them out to me. “Well, whoever it is, they know you pretty well. And they really like you, because these aren’t kid shit.”
I took the gloves and petted the soft knit before pulling them on. They were luxuriously soft, and I suspected that they would be warm, even without the fingertips. The scarf was just as nice. I carefully pulled them off again and set them down next to my keyboard. I started stripping out of the winter gear I hadn’t bothered to take off yet because I’d been distracted by my present. Hanging my coat up on the tiny coat rack in the corner of my office, I said, “Your guess is as good as mine. I have no idea who it is.” I ran my fingers through my somewhat shaggy light blond hair to settle it into place and turned back to my desk.
“What’s the paper say? Anything?”
I shoved my keyboard back and moved a few notepads out of the way so that I could smooth out the paper in the newly empty space. I snickered.
“Well?” Eddie demanded.
“It says embrace your inner Velma.”
“What does that mean?”
I stared at the paper. “I think it means be clever. She was the clever one, remember? The one that always figured stuff out. Either that, or they want me to take up pencil skirts and start wearing my glasses.”
Eddie snorted. “While you would probably be cute in a pencil skirt, I think your first guess is probably more likely. So you’re supposed to go all private investigator to figure out who your Secret Santa is.” He pushed off of my desk and slapped me on the shoulder. “You have fun with that. I’m gonna go dig up the paperwork for my nine o’clock.” He wandered aimlessly out of my office, not bothering to shut the door.
Not that it mattered. Outside of tax season, my workload was pretty variable and I wasn’t up to much today. Mostly I just had catch-up work to do on a few accounts. I didn’t have any meetings until tomorrow, so I didn’t have any new work until then. I grinned at my new gloves one more time before I settled in to work.