Page 39 of Deck the Hauls

After four more unsuccessful attempts, I crept forward. “Do you want me to have a go? Put my vet skills to use,” I whispered through the fabric.

Dana looked at me for a second before handing over the stick. “Sure. My skills are clearly lacking.”

I crouched down, reached out with the stick and slowly lifted the latch. The trap door sprang open and we both jumped up and bounded toward a tree ten feet away. My heart thumped in my ears.

“Good job,” Dana said.

Tense, I watched the cage closely. But there was no flash of the furious skunk I’d envisaged racing toward us in attack mode. In fact, there was no movement or sound at all. Had it gone to sleep? Or was the poor thing petrified in a corner?

“Talk about anti-climactic,” I said.

“Here we go,” Dana said, smiling as a little nose poked out from behind her jacket, sniffing.

Slowly, the skunk emerged from the cage, its tail low to the ground. It was kind of cute. With its back to us, it trotted away. I exhaled.

Dana pulled some gardening gloves from her backpack and then collected her jacket and the cage. “Well, after all that excitement I think I need to go home and take a shower. There’s a distinct smell of skunk following me around. I usually clean cages after use, but I will be giving this one a particularly good disinfecting.”

I sniffed myself. There was an unpleasant stench, but it was hard to tell if it was on me, Dana, the cage or just the spray lingering in the air.

“Thanks for pushing me out of the way. If you hadn’t acted so quickly, I would have been coated in the stuff,” Dana said as we walked back through the trees.

“My pleasure.” I grinned at her. “It benefited me too, since we’ll be spending Friday afternoon together. As much as I love Christmas I’m not sure I could stomach decorating surrounded by skunk smell.”

We began to walk again, the silence broken by both of our phones pinging.

Confusion must have been written on my face, because Dana chuckled. “Reception is very spotty out here, but every so often you get coverage and all your messages come in at once.”

Dana pulled her phone out of her backpack and frowned, quickly shoving it back in.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, I just need to call my mom,” Dana replied.

I tugged my own phone from the back pocket of my jeans.

My stomach plummeted as a new unknown number flashed on the screen. Calm down, Emily. It was probably an actual scammer this time.

I shoved my phone back into my pocket, a flash of yellow catching my eye as I looked up. “There’s another patch of bark missing.” I pointed to the base of a fir. “Or is this the one you’ve already seen?

“Goddamnit.” Dana sighed, stooping to inspect the tree. “This looks fresh. Hopefully we’ll catch the culprit soon.”

We’ll. My chest warmed. That was nice. Dana and I were a team against this mysterious, Christmas-tree-eating animal.

“Let me know if there is anything else I can do to help.”

“You’ve done more than enough, saving me from skunk spray and helping the little fellow in his quest for freedom.”

My heart dropped. What was I hoping for? That Dana would suggest we go on nightly recon missions into the forest to search for mysterious creatures? With anyone else, the thought would have been terrifying.

I was clearly digging for excuses to see her before Friday, which currently felt like eons away. It’s for the best. You need to focus on filming, not hanging out with a stunning lumberjane. But the thought of not seeing her for five whole days was distinctly unappealing.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EMILY

Blythe yanked open the oven door, sending it clattering to the ground.

“Cut!” Charles yelled. “Blythe. As I said the last two times this happened, you can’t open the oven. The door doesn’t work. Just leave the cake tin on the counter like we discussed.”