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Em rolled the ball for her, and Noelle bounced after it happily.
“Um,” I said, holding up my grocery bag. “I have stuff for the cookies.”
“Right. The kitchen’s through here.” He glanced at the girls. “Should we...?”
“Oh, no,” I said. “We can get set up without them. Let them get the dog love out of their systems first. And Noelle seems to be enjoying it.”
Noelle drooled happily on the floor as Em rubbed her belly.
Cass led me to his kitchen.
I unloaded my groceries on the counter and looked around while trying not to make it too obvious that I was looking around. There were a few magnets and takeout menus on his refrigerator, and a set of keys and some receipts in an otherwise empty fruit bowl beside me. There was a battered laptop and a stack of papers on the small kitchen table. Cass’s glasses were sitting on top of the papers, and there was a coffee mug beside them.
“Doing some paperwork, huh?” I asked, because I was nosy.
Cass made a face. “Yeah, not exactly.”
There was a sudden dull thump from the living room.
“Cass!” Em yelled. “Your dog hit her head on the wall trying to chase the ball!”
“Is she okay?” Cass yelled back.
“Yes!”
“Okay then!”
I slapped a bag of flour on the counter. “What sort of paperwork is not exactly paperwork?”
He looked slightly pained. “Eh. I was going to write up this thing for the Christmas Valley Business Association. To like...getmoney?”
“Oh! You mean like a grant?”
“Yeah. A small business grant.” He wrinkled his nose. “But it’s a lot of bullshit.”
I unpacked the butter and sugar. “What sort of business?”
“Promise you won’t laugh?”
“I promise,” I lied.
Cass let out a slow breath. “Well, a few months ago, I lost my job, and I’ve been getting by on savings and whatever work I can pick up.”
“Oh. Hence the Santa gig.”
“Yeah. Katya’s been a lifesaver. Anyway, I got to thinking, you know what Christmas Valley needs?”
“A targeted nuclear strike?”
“No.” But his mouth twitched. “A petting zoo.”
“A—” I’d promised I wouldn’t laugh, and the crazy thing was, Ididn’t. Because Cass was actually right. In a town that existed primarily to wring every last drop of schmaltz—and every last dollar—out of the festive season, how the fuck had nobody thought of a petting zoo before now? “That’s actually brilliant. How does it make money?”
“Well,” Cass said cautiously, “a small entry fee, then photos and merchandising. Like, one of those print stations where you’d get a picture of your kids with a lamb or a baby goat or whatever, then twenty minutes later you’d walk out with a calendar, a set of Christmas cards, a coffee mug, and all that other shit.”
“That could really work.” I leaned against the counter and folded my arms. “Who would have thought there was an actual gap in the Christmas market in Christmas Valley?”
Cass flushed. “Yeah, well those printing machines aren’t cheap, and neither is the cost of setting everything else up. And I’d want to partner with the local animal shelter too, you know? So some of the animals, the cats and dogs at least, would be adoptable. The livestock’s a little more difficult. Nobody wants to adopt a goat, you know?”
