I narrowed my eyes. Actually, I could blame her. I mean, I was standingright there.
When the door closed behind them, after Eleanor rang up their purchases, Jack followed me over to the counter and started laughing.
"Did you hear that? Luckyyou… pudding."
"I will punch you in the head and it will hurt," I threatened, but I couldn't keep from laughing. Luckily, I had a great sense of humor. I could see I was going to need it, because Jack got this reaction from lots of women and a few men wherever we went.
Not that I could blame them.
Jack was six feet, four inches of muscle. He'd spent a decade as a soldier and rebel leader, and he'd never lost the desire to stay in shape. Plus, being a shapeshifter gave him a racing metabolism that burned calories so fast it let him consume as much as the entire hot-dog-eating championship team at the Dead End Swamp Cabbage Festival and still be hungry again a couple hours later. He had bronze hair, high cheekbones in a starkly beautiful, very masculine face, and eyes the color of polished emeralds.
He also weighed about five hundred pounds—when he was a Bengal tiger.
In jeans and a chocolate-brown sweater, though, he was one hundred percent gorgeous, dangerous, sex appeal.
And he was a born protector and still learning how to be a boyfriend without trying to wrap me in a bubble when anything dangerous happened. In Dead End over the past year, that would have been a lot of bubbles.
So. Many. Bubbles.
"We all know that I'm the lucky one," he said, his grin fading and his eyes turning serious. "You are beautiful. And kind. And mine."
I felt myself blush. "Um. Thanks?"
Eleanor groaned. "You two are impossible to be around these days, and I'm a newly engaged woman, so that's saying alot."
I put my hands on my hips and gave her a pointed stare. "Didn't I fire you?"
She just laughed. She was my best—and my only—employee. She waved a hand in the tree's direction. "Go. Figure that out. I'll handle the customers."
I led Jack to the tree and pointed to the pile of gifts beneath it—which seemed to have grown.
"Oh, no." I grabbed the present on top, which someone had beautifully wrapped with flower-pressed parchment paper and tied with gold-flecked raffia ribbon. "This is new."
I looked at the tag and groaned.
"What?" Jack took the gift out of my hand and read the tag. "'To Baby Boo from Grandma Q.' What does that even mean?"
"It means Mrs. Quindlen, who is famed in at least three counties for her handmade gift wrap, is missing this present she got for her new granddaughter. And all these others with that same paper, if I'm not wrong." I started piling packages into Jack's arms, reading off the labels as I did so.
"Grandma Q, Grandma Q, Mama Q, oh my goodness. We're in so much trouble."
"Can't we just take them back?" He stared at me over the growing pile of gifts in his arms. "It's not our fault. Everybody who has lived in Dead End for more than a week understands that weird stuff happens here."
"I know, but this isChristmas. And those are kids' presents. It would really tick me off if they were gifts I'd gotten for Shelley. I don't know what to do about the tree. Clearly, it's enchanted, but we don't have any witches in town anymore to deal with it, or at least none that are openly practicing. If it's going to keep stealing things, we need to get rid of it."
Jack shrugged. "We can burn it behind my office, in the gravel next to the dumpster. Maybe inside a circle of salt?"
A couple who looked to be about Aunt Ruby and Uncle Mike's ages gave us apprehensive looks, dropped the DVD they were looking at back in the movies bin, and scurried out of the store.
Jack watched them go, a mischievous look on his face. "They probably thought we were talking about something nefarious."
"We usually are," I muttered. "Let me grab a box from the back. We can pile these gifts in them and make deliveries and apologies if you don't mind coming with me. If you don't want to be associated with stolen Christmas presents, I totally—"
"Tess." He put a hand on my arm. "Your felonies are my felonies."
We were still laughing when the woman came running into the store, holding a dog in her arms.
"Somebody help me! She … she just ran out in front of me. I couldn't stop in time! I slammed on the brakes, but—my tire is flat, so I ran over here holding her. Please help me!"
