“Some grumpy Santa you are,” he muttered.
Her eyes darted about the area, casing the automatic exit doors a few feet away. She was the last person in line. The only other person nearby was a gorgeous guy with a long blond ponytail, leaning lazily against the wall, scratching off a lottery ticket. Amazingly, he wore a Santa Claus outfit, too, but his hat, beard, and wig were stuffed in his belt.
He resembled some kind of Norse god with his sculptured cheekbones and clear blue eyes. Thor never looked so good, even in a Santa suit. Norse god, Norse, rather North Pole . . . made sense, she supposed.
The Thor lookalike glanced over at her, gave her a quick once-over, and winked.
Darn! Caught smack dab in the middle of a leer! Her heated face probably matched her suit. Jessica lifted her chin haughtily and pretended she’d been looking at something else, like the bare wall behind him. Hah! Who am I fooling? And, Lordy, haven’t I had enough of womanizing egomaniacs in my life? I can’t believe I’m about to perform a criminal act, and I’m ogling some lech in costume.
Thor laughed.
She was about to snarl, but it was her turn at the service desk.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped forward. “Put up your hands. This is a stick-out,” she yelled in a too-shrill voice to the gum-chewing guy behind the counter whose name badge read “Frank Brown, Assistant Manager.” He gulped and swallowed his gum with a squeak.
Thor, who’d been studying his lottery ticket, peered up at her with faint interest through eyelashes that could double for brown feather dusters. Blond hair, brown lashes, nice! she thought with what was probably hysterical irrelevance. “Stick-up, baby. You mean stick-up,” he offered helpfully, his lips twitching with amusement.
“This is a stick-up, Frank,” she amended, brandishing her gun. Thank heavens the thing isn’t loaded, or I’d be in big trouble. Pointing the weapon at the smiling Santa, she ordered, “And don’t give me any of your lip, buster, or I’ll wipe you up, too.”
“Wipe out, not wipe up,” the long, tall Santa laughed.
His ridicule made her so mad she clenched her fingers over the gun, which, to her amazement, went off accidentally. And, holy cow, it shot a big hole in the Pepsi machine about three feet to the right of the jerk’s ear.
Her heart slam-dunked to her throat. Oh, no! Julio told me it wasn’t loaded. I even shot it once in the woods and nothing happened. It can’t have real bullets in it. It can’t.
She took another peek at the Pepsi machine. There was an opening the size of a baseball in the glass front. The bullets were real, all right. Oh, geez!
Frank screamed.
The hooker called out, “Way to go, big boy! Ho, ho, ho!”
And the Thor-Santa ducked.
Through her peripheral vision she saw a young girl at a cash register, a bag boy, and two customers throw themselves to the floor.
One man cried out, “Oh, God! This is probably one of those maniac postal workers taking us hostage. I’ll miss Christmas with my kids.” Then as an afterthought, he added, “Hallelujah!”
“Do you think we’ll make CNN News?” the female clerk asked. “Wouldn’t ya just know this would happen on a bad hair day?”
“Shit!” Thor exclaimed, his lottery ticket fluttering to the floor. “Are you nuts?”
Her heart was slowing down to a gallop. Okay, that was a close call, but I’m okay now. No serious damage. I can mail a check next week. Calm down. Pretending that her shot had been deliberate, she threw her shoulders back and aimed directly at the shivering assistant manager, being careful not to touch the trigger again. “You’re next, Frank, if you don’t give me my money.”
“An . . . anyth . . . anything you want,” Frank sputtered. He started to stuff bills into a cloth bag.
“No!” Jessica interrupted sharply. “Just thirty-nine ninety-five.”
“Wh-what?” Frank choked out.
Everyone was gawking at her like she was a psycho. She was, of course. “You heard me. Give me thirty-nine dollars and ninety-five cents. And make it quick. I’ve got an itchy thumb here.”
“Trigger finger, sweetheart,” the smirking Santa corrected again, snickering. “You gotta get the lingo right if you’re gonna follow a life of crime.”
She frowned in confusion.
“It’s an itchy trigger finger, not thumb,” he explained patiently.
“Thumb, trigger finger, big difference!” she said, waving her gun dismissively at him. “And stop interrupting me.”
“Hey, be careful where you aim that thing,” he growled, edging toward her. He probably planned to tackle her. Not a good idea when the curse was in motion.
“Stay where you are,” she warned, raising the revolver higher.
He stopped, eyeing her warily.
“Thirty-nine ninety-five!” Frank squealed. “Hey, I know who you are. You’re that whacko nun who came in here last week demanding her money back for a defective Buzzy Burp Bear.”
“I am not a nun,” Jessica said weakly.
“Piggly Jiggly has a two-week refund policy,” Frank explained to the wino and Thor, “and the damn nun . . . I mean, the nun . . . had it for a month before she brought it back. Said it wouldn’t burp. Hah! She’d probably been playing it nonstop all that time and wore out its burp battery.”
“A nun?” the wino whimpered, backing away from her as if she had something contagious.
“I am not a nun.”
“Hot damn!” the Santa-with-an-attitude whistled. “A holy bandit!”
“I am not a nun.”
“Clara . . . that’s your name, Sister Clara,” Frank chortled. “Boy, you are in big trouble, lady. I’m gonna report you to the police . . . and the Pope.”
“I’m not Clara, I tell you. I’m . . . I’m Clara’s hit guy.” She realized her mistake at once, and before Santa could pipe in, she corrected herself. “Hit man.” Then she added, “And I’m not in big trouble, because you owe me . . . I mean, Clara . . . the money for the stupid bear, and that’s not stealing. And I’m going to pay for the damage to the Pepsi machine. So there!”
“And here I thought I was gonna have a dull Saturday night. This is more fun than playing the lottery or doing laundry.”
Jessica gave the crud-that-would-be-a-Viking a withering appraisal. As if he had any difficulty filling his nights! He probably had women lined up with numbers. He probably drove a Porsche. He probably had a penthouse. He probably posed for centerfolds.
Unfortunately, she knew a few guys just like him; in fact, one of them had been her Christmas Curse six years ago. Except he’d looked like George Clooney with a paunch.
The guy’s arms were folded casually across his chest, and he grinned from ear to ear. Even with the padded Santa suit, she just knew he didn’t have a paunch.
“Give me my money,” she demanded, turning back to Frank as she felt the situation deteriorating around her. “I’m not leaving without my thirty-nine ninety-five, dammit.”
“Tsk-tsk, nuns aren’t supposed to swear,” Santa chided.
“Tell it to your reindeer, bozo.”
She had no choice then, she had to show she was in control. She aimed for the Little Debbie cupcake stand over to the left. Although she fired two shots, the second one came up blank. That must mean the gun was empty.
But, more important, instead of hitting Little Debbie, she winged the pyramid display of Buzzy Burp Bears. Immediately, brown fur flew everywhere as stuffed animals careened to the floor, and a chorus of bears began burping to the tune of “Jingle Bells.” It was a scene out of an I Love Lucy episode, or her worst nightmare.
Jessica groaned.
Everyone’s mouth dropped open in surprise, including the jerk Santa’s.
“Now . . . give . . . me . . . my . . . thirty-nine ninety-five,” she spat out evenly in her best Clint Eastwood voice, and tacked on in a gravelly rumble, just for effect, “or make my day.”
Frank didn’t hesitate. With quivering fingers he counted out the b
ills and coins and shoved them across the counter.
She put the money in her pocket and was about to leave when she saw a flash of dark blue race through the exit door. A security guard. Immediately, a loud alarm began to ring throughout the store. Oh, great! What should I do? What should I do?
Jessica tried to think what a genuine robber might do. A hostage. I need a hostage. Quickly, Jessica scanned her possibilities: Frank, the wino, the cross-dresser, the sales clerk, the two customers, or Thor.
“You’re coming with me,” she yelled at good ol’ Thor.
“No, I’m not,” he said, backing up.
“Yes, you are. You’re my hostage.” She leveled her now-empty gun at him—first, at his chest, then lower. Yep, a guy like him would care more about protecting those assets than his heart. Her upper lip curled with disdain. “Listen, Mr. Viking Santa, I’m in the middle of my Christmas Curse, and I’d hate to see your dead body be my bad luck this year.”
“Curse?” Brad barked with disbelief. “You’re pulling a heist because of PMS?”
She blinked at him with confusion. “Oh, you idiot! Not that kind of curse. My Christmas Curse is the real kind—black magic, evil eyes, that sort of thing.”
“Give me a break!”
“Really. My parents died in an automobile accident on December twentieth when I was ten. The following yule season, I was in the foster home from hell. I broke my leg on Christmas Eve when I was twenty.”
“Coincidences.”
“Oh, yeah? Then how about the time my dog Fred impregnated a pedigree poodle at that fancy private kennel five years ago, even though he was fixed? That curse cost me a thousand dollars in legal fines.”
“Apparently Fred’s fix-job leaked.” His blue eyes twinkled with humor.
She sliced him a sneer of disgust. “I will never forget my Christmas-party blind date last year with the guy who arrived wearing a plaid hunting cap with ear flaps. The wheels of his pickup truck were so high I had a nosebleed for a week.”
“I once had a blind date with a girl who had tattoos on three-fourths of her body,” he contributed. “Does that qualify as a curse?”
“Quit stalling,” she ordered, realizing that he was trying to keep her talking until the police arrived. Even though she knew her bullets were gone, her hand still shook when she raised the gun in a threatening manner.
He said a foul word under his breath as his eyes darted to her trembling fingers. She could practically see the gears grinding in his chauvinistic brain. He was probably worrying about her panicking, or her fingers slipping.
Raising his arms above his head, he surrendered. “All right, all right, take it easy, babe. I’m all yours.” It was a real Kodak moment.
Actually, there was probably a security camera filming it for posterity. But she couldn’t think about that now. With the barrel of her pistol pressed into the back of the guy’s neck, she pushed him forward through the doors, yelling over her shoulder, “If anyone follows me, this creep is dead. Do you hear me?”
The creep looked at her over his shoulder and said, “Ho, ho, ho!”
Even Vikings get caught sometimes . . .
At first, Erik Thorsson had been amused by Dirty Harriet. But not anymore. He walked compliantly out of the grocery store, his arms upraised, a gun crammed into his nape, but he was really, really pissed. It was humiliating for a man of his background to be kidnapped by a dingbat Santa.
And he just knew that the six o’clock news tomorrow was going to have a stillframe from the security tape of Santa being taken hostage by Santa. The news media would make him the laughing stock of the country.
Erik could have taken the woman down in a flash . . . in the beginning . . . before she’d started ripping out bullets. Hell, he was a bodyguard. And he was wearing a bulletproof vest, having just come off of an assignment. It was his job to disarm potential political assassins or crazy celebrity fans. He’d been trained in the CIA and had done very well these past five years, thank you very much, operating his own private bodyguard business, “Watchdogs, Inc.”
But the worst danger in the security business was a looney-bird. And if a woman—who might, indeed, be a nun—dressed as Santa Claus, wielding a forty-five, ranting about Christmas Curses and robbing a supermarket for thirty-nine dollars and ninety-five cents wasn’t a looney-bird, he didn’t know what was.
It was all his sister’s fault, and he was going to tell her so, too . . . if he was alive after tonight. He’d already rented the Santa outfit for his gig protecting Fancy Nancy, the hottest young rock star, at her concert today at the Wells Fargo Center in Philly. Fancy Nancy was being called the female Justin Beiber. After the concert, Ellie had talked him into playing the jolly ol’ fellow for her third graders’ Christmas party. It had seemed reasonable to zip on over to the elementary school where Ellie taught, and it had been fun, too.
Later they’d gone out for pizza and she’d berated him ad nauseam about the dismal state of his personal life. Too many women—“bimbos” was her exact word. No commitments. “How long are you going to mourn Ginny? She’s been dead five years.”
Then she started in on his biological clock ticking away with no children in sight. “Men don’t have biological clocks,” he’d pointed out.
“And you’ve got dirty laundry up the wazoo,” she’d added. Okay, she had a point about the laundry that had been stacked roof high in the back seat of his car before he hit the Laundromat tonight. And, yeah, for months now, he’d been just buying new packages of briefs and socks whenever he ran out. God bless Walmart! And who said T-shirts couldn’t be turned inside out in an emergency?
On and on, Ellie had ranted. So, she was responsible for his present predicament. If not for her nagging, he never would have come out at midnight to do his laundry and meet Ms. Psycho Santa.
“Where to, babe?” he asked with a sigh of resignation. “Where’d you park the sled?”
Ms. Santa hesitated, glancing toward a van hidden around the side of the mall behind a Dumpster. Emblazoned across its sides was the logo Clara’s House. Hell, she must be a for-real nun, like that Frank character said.
He immediately made a mental revision in his strategy. Taking the perp down at the first opportunity had been his original plan. He’d been unconcerned about whether the weird woman got hurt in the process.
But he couldn’t in good conscience risk taking out a nun. His sister would never forgive him. The news media would have a field day. His business would be shot to hell.
Besides, she was kinda cute.
“Where’s your car?” she asked, biting her full bottom lip—a nervous habit he’d noticed right from the start, which only called attention to her puffy, very kissable mouth. “The van’s too easy to follow. And stop jerking around so much. I don’t want to shoot you accidentally.”
“How about not-so-accidentally?”
“Don’t tempt me.”
Man, oh, man, she reminded him of one of those “Magic Eye” pictures. Once you saw the hidden image, you couldn’t stop looking at it. Her Angelina Jolie lips were like that. Now that his splintering brain registered how sensual her lips were, they drew his eyes like a magnet. Maybe I inhaled too many bleach fumes tonight.
“My car’s over here,” he said, chastising himself silently for his wandering mind as he indicated a metallic gray Bronco across the empty parking lot, “but, listen, I left all my clothes in the dryer over at the Suds ’n Duds.” He pointed to the Laundromat down a little ways in the strip mall. “That’s why I was in the supermarket. I needed quarters for the machine, and that slimeball assistant manager at the supermarket wouldn’t give me any change unless I bought something. So I got a lottery ticket. Hey, I left my ticket back on the floor. Maybe I’m a millionaire. We should go back and check.” He was deliberately babbling away in hopes of diverting her attention so he could grab for the piece.
“Forget the clothes and the lottery ticket, buddy. This is more important.” She walked him over to the car wi
th the forty-five still imbedded in his neck, too high for his lead corset to protect him.
“I hope you’ve got the safety clip on that gun,” he said.
“What’s a safety clip?”
He moaned.
“Don’t worry, I’m being careful.”
“Yeah, like you were careful with those farting bears.”
“Oh, you are so crude. They were burping bears.”
“Well, that’s better, of course. Did anyone ever tell you that you have incredible lips?”
She blinked at him as a current of electricity seemed to ricochet between them. “Oooh, you are smooth. And the answer is yes. My Christmas Curse eleven years ago.”
“Huh?”
“Larry the Lizard told me I had a sexy mouth. That was just before he slept with my best friend, Alice.”
“I wouldn’t sleep with your best friend,” he vowed. “I’d rather—”
“Get serious.” They were on the driver’s side of the car. “Now, slowly, I want you to take out your keys and open the front and back doors.” When he did as ordered, she told him to get in the driver’s seat. “I’ll sit behind you where I can aim my gun right at your head.”
“Puh-leeze!” Erik frowned. This is not good. He’d been hoping she would sit in the passenger seat where he could more easily grab for the weapon . . . or his own rod on the floor under the driver’s seat.
“What’s that thing?”
Oh, damn! Her eyes had homed in on the tip of his revolver peeking out like a beacon.
“Move back,” she demanded, training her firearm on his face while she leaned down and picked up his gun gingerly between a thumb and forefinger. For a moment, he saw fear flash in her eyes. “Are you a crook or something?”
He couldn’t help grinning. “You mean like you?”
“No, not like me, you jerk. I mean a real crook. A bank robber, or a rapist, or a murderer.”
He shook his head. “I’m not a bad guy. Well . . . uh . . . I’m not all that good, either, but—”