Holiday Madness: A Boyfriend Thief Christmas Story by Shana Norris Page A

even snow here. It should just be warm all year
round.”
    “You want snow for Christmas?”
Zac pushed his coat sleeves up and then held his gloved hands to
the sky. “Allow me.” He cleared his throat. “Sky, I command you to
snow!”
    More pedestrians glanced at us
before quickly hurrying past. My boyfriend, the town clown.
    Zac frowned and dropped his
hands. “Sorry. I must have left my weather control gloves at
home.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Let’s go
inside. Mr. Throckmorton can come stand out in the cold if he wants
to, but I’m done for the day.”
    Zac held the door open while I
waddled into the restaurant. The woman and little girl waved to me
on their way out the door.
    “Couldn’t take it any longer,
huh?” Elliott asked as I made my way over to the counter.
    I struggled to pull the velcro
flaps in the back of the costume open, then freed my upper body
from the foam, letting out a sigh of relief.
    “You try standing in thirty
degree whether for two hours,” I told him.
    “I did it yesterday,” Elliott
said. “And I actually stayed out there the whole time.”
    I gritted my teeth. I would not
let Elliott Reiser get at me. He knew standing out in the cold made
me cranky. And he also knew that I could be a bit competitive
sometimes. He liked to see how far he could push me just to drive
me crazy.
    “Don’t be obnoxious,” Molly
told Elliott.
    “I thought you liked it when I
was obnoxious,” Elliott teased her, leaning across the counter for
a kiss.
    “Did we get any more cans?” I
asked, turning away from the PDA.
    But I knew the answer when I
looked at the Christmas tree. The collection still looked the same
as it had earlier that day. And yesterday. And the day before, and
the day before that.
    I sighed. “Where is everyone’s
holiday spirit this year?”
    The canned food drive was my
latest project. I had been volunteering at the local soup kitchen
every Saturday morning and I noticed how many families came in for
food. It had taken all of my powers of persuasion to convince Mr.
Throckmorton to hold a canned food drive inside Diggity Dog House.
It would be the perfect way to help all the needy families in
Willowbrook for Christmas.
    Or at least, that was what I
had hoped. It wasn’t turning out as successfully as I had
planned.
    Molly snorted. “You’re one to
talk. I thought Santa was supposed to be jolly. You practically bit
my head off earlier when I asked you to do the Diggity Dog
Shuffle.”
    “I was freezing my bun off, if
you hadn’t noticed,” I snapped.
    “I was trying to warm you up by
getting you moving,” Molly replied.
    Zac slipped an arm around my
shoulders. “It’s the economy. People don’t have much to spare right
now.” His dad’s locksmithing business wasn’t doing so well either.
Zac worked there part time, though he was now working for free
because his dad couldn’t afford to pay him. Everyone’s business was
slow, not just at Diggity Dog House.
    My single-parent household was
low on money too, as usual. That was the reason I was still working
at Diggity Dog House, even though I’d wanted to quit a hundred
times. I needed the money to buy gifts and to keep padding my
savings account for future expenses.
    “But they can spare a can or
two,” I insisted. “If all of our usual customers donated a can, we
could help out a lot of needy families.” We had only three days
left before Christmas and the team from Willowbrook Helping Hands
would come by on Christmas Eve to pick up the cans we’d collected.
It didn’t look like we’d be helping many people at this rate.
    “Maybe,” Elliott said. “But we
have to find a way to get them interested in helping out.”
    Molly patted me on the top of
my head. “We all know you want to save the world, Avery, but a lot
of other people are just apathetic. You have to give them something
in return for doing a good deed.”
    Elliott flicked the stack of
coupons I’d tossed on the counter. “No offense to Mr.