Page 101 of Falling for the Grinchy Bad Boy

38

COOPER

The radio crackled to life at seven-thirty in the morning, jolting me from a restless sleep that had been plagued by dreams of Lynn’s shark smile and Joy’s unanswered text message.

Lynn was the stuff of nightmares. I used to think that was just me being dramatic but no, she really was a witch. She jinxed me. She fucked me up just by showing up. I needed to burn sage or something. I had to get that woman out of my system. Not that I wanted her—not even a little. I just felt like she was some kind of voodoo priestess. She fucked with me by simply being near me.

“Let’s go!” Matt shouted and pounded on the wall.

“Engine 12, respond to 428 Maple Street for a rescue situation. Citizen trapped in…” There was a brief pause. “In a globe?”

I stared at the ceiling where the speaker was hidden. For a moment, I wondered if I had heard correctly. Trapped in a globe?

What the fuck was that?

The holiday season was serving up another ridiculous emergency call. I was already on the move, pulling on my jacket as I ran to the garage. This wasn’t a call I needed to put on my turnout gear for. Elijah was already in the seat. Matt hopped in just as I got in the jump seat.

Five minutes later, I found myself standing in someone’s front yard, looking up at what could only be described as the world’s largest inflatable snow globe. The thing had to be twelve feet tall and probably cost at least a thousand dollars. Inside the clear plastic dome, a middle-aged man was gesticulating frantically while fake snow swirled around him in an endless, mesmerizing dance.

His children—three kids ranging from maybe eight to fifteen—stood outside the snow globe with their phones out, filming their father’s predicament and laughing like this was the best entertainment they’d had all year.

“How long has he been in there?” I asked the oldest kid, a teenage girl who was clearly the ringleader of this particular circus.

“About an hour,” she replied, still giggling. “Dad thought it would be fun to get inside for a family photo, but the zipper got stuck from the inside.”

I circled the inflatable globe, looking for the entry point. Sure enough, there was a zipper that ran about three feet up the side, and it was clearly jammed. The man inside—who I assumed was the father—was starting to look a little claustrophobic, his movements becoming more agitated as the fake snow continued to swirl around him.

“Sir, can you hear me?” I called, tapping on the plastic.

He nodded vigorously and pointed to the zipper, mouthing words I couldn’t make out through the dome and the noise of the snow-swirling mechanism.

This was exactly the kind of call that would normally have me gritting my teeth and muttering about people’s poor decision-making during the holiday season. A grown man stuck in a yard decoration because he thought it would make a cute photo op.

It was ridiculous, preventable, and exactly the sort of thing that gave emergency responders headaches.

What if his kids had been stuck in there with him? I wasn’t sure how much oxygen the damn thing had, but that could have been pretty bad. My first thought was to pull out my pocket knife and solve the problem the easy way.

To my surprise, I wasn’t annoyed. I wasn’t rolling my eyes or making sarcastic comments under my breath. Instead, I found myself thinking about Joy.

She would be laughing her ass off if she saw this. If I wasn’t the professional I claimed to be, I might have taken a picture. But I was so I would just have to be satisfied with telling her about it.

But thinking about Joy reminded me of stupid Lynn.

Her words echoed in my mind like a broken record.

Joy hated this place more than anyone. There’s no way she’ll settle down with you and be happy.

You know Joy better than anyone. Do you honestly believe she’s going to choose Calton Hill over whatever opportunities are waiting for her in the big city?

“What do you think?” Matt asked.

We both stared at the contraption.

“Could cut it,” I said.

He winced. “Do we have to?”

“Alright, fine. Elijah, grab the bolt cutters.”