#ChristmasHatesYouToo by E.F. Mulder

Author:E.F. Mulder [Mulder, E.F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gay romance
ISBN: 978-1-63533-174-5
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2016-12-12T05:00:00+00:00

THE POLICEMAN arrived within fifteen minutes. “Noel Beebe…. Hoda and Kathie Lee had some words for you this morning.” It was the police captain, who shook his head as he looked down at the baseball in the middle of my living room and patted Red on the rump. “What the heck kind of trouble did you get yourself into now?”

“Noel didn’t do a thing,” Hung protested. “He’s the victim. Some holiday vigilante is tossing things through his window in the name of tinsel and ‘Jingle Bells’! How dare you turn it on—?”

“Four-H…. My hero.” I gently poked my elbow into his ribcage. “H number five. Captain Tinker’s kidding. Right?” The cop was my best friend’s father.

“Right. Noel, here, was only in trouble one time in his life. You want to tell him what you did, Noel?”

“Not really.”

“When he was five….” Captain Tinker went right ahead. “He decided Duke Wallace’s cows would be happier back in the wild. Yeah.” He reacted to the expression on Hung’s face, one of bewilderment, brows raised, jaw dropped. “You heard me. They’d been on a field trip up the line a little bit—the kids in Noel and my Drew’s class, not the cows—to the Wallace Farm. Noel went back on his own the same night and opened the gate, so the herd could go live with the lions and tigers. We have a lot of those around Westchester, as you know, if you’re from here.”

“I am,” Hung said with a smile.

“So we hauled him in and booked him—him and his accomplice, my son Drew, who chickened out a couple feet from the gate. Threw them in with other hardened criminals. Actually, one of my fellow patrolmen pretended to be a bank robber to scare them straight.”

“It’s been twenty-five years.” I hid my face behind both palms. “Your son’s a preacher! Are we ever going to live that down?”

“As for the baseball…,” Captain Tinker said. I still called him that, even though we went to Drew’s church together and I’d been told a hundred times to call him Frank. “I assume this is due to your newfound celebrity.”

“Apparently.”

Captain Tinker picked it up.

“Aren’t you going to check it for fingerprints?” Hung asked.

“Ours are on it. Hung and I both touched it, then I put it back where it landed, in case you wanted to see.”

“Don’t have to. I recognize the handwriting,” Drew’s dad said. “It’s my granddaughter’s.”

“Emily?” I asked quite stunned.

“Don’t cancel Christmas Christmas hater,” Hung read over Captain Tinker’s shoulder. “Why Christmas twice?” he asked.

“She ran out of room for the comma, I figure. She writes big.” I told him.

“And you’ve attended enough of her Little League games to know she has quite the arm, even if she’s not much for accuracy,” Captain Tinker added. “Maybe she wasn’t aiming for the window?”

“She’s my buddy,” I said.

“You’re like a daddy to her.”

“I thought I was.”

Drew’s father shrugged. “Kids get mad at their daddies when they knock Santa.”

I finally exhaled and offered a gentle chuckle. “Well… you’ll take care of it? Let her know I’m not planning on canceling Christmas.

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