Unwrapped A Holiday Reverse Harem Romance - Cassie Cole

1

Christie

I put on my best smile for a woman walking by my table. “Good afternoon! Would you like free gift-wrapping for any of your purchases today?”

It had been a good day at the Flagstaff Mall. My table, which was positioned by the exit to Nordstrom’s, had gotten a lot of traffic for a Wednesday afternoon. Plenty of people who were taking advantage of the pre-Black Friday deals.

The woman stopped and glanced at my table. “Why, I would love gift-wrapping.” She pulled a box out of her shopping bag and handed it to me. “It’s free?”

“Absolutely. We accept donations, but they are completely optional. Which wrapping paper would you like?”

“The blue paper,” the woman said while examining my table. Her eyes locked onto the donation jar with the dog photo on the front. “You work with animals?”

I unrolled the blue wrapping paper and placed the box on the table. “I run Happy Bones. We’re a private no-kill animal shelter.”

The woman’s eyes lit up. “Oh, I absolutely love dogs! I have a Golden Retriever at home.”

I skillfully cut the wrapping paper with my scissors and began folding it over the box. “We have a small farm just outside of town. We take all the overflow dogs from the other Flagstaff shelters and foster them until they’re adopted. The money we raise here at the mall helps pay for their food, bedding, vaccinations, and of course plenty of dog toys.”

“And you’re doing this all by yourself?”

I smiled while wrapping. “I have two part-time employees who help me at the farm.”

“I mean the gift-wrapping!” she replied. “You’re here by yourself wrapping everyone’s gifts?”

“Well, we get yearly volunteers who help with the gift-wrapping fundraiser. I’m waiting for a few of them to arrive today, actually.”

Hopefully they arrive, I thought to myself. I had two regular volunteers who were elsewhere in the mall, but aside from them I’d had a run of bad luck when it came to volunteers. Lots of people signed up and then bailed on me.

I couldn’t get too upset about it since they were volunteers, but it wasn’t ideal. And it left me standing around, manning the gift-wrapping stations all by myself.

“How about a red bow to top this off?” I asked.

“That would be perfectly splendid!”

I added the bow to the top of the gift and slid it across the folding table. “There you go. If you would like to make a donation, our Venmo and PayPal addresses are listed here…”

“Oh honey, I don’t know what those are!” The woman pulled out a bill and stuffed it into the donation jar. I saw the face of Alexander Hamilton through the plastic. Ten bucks was a strong donation.

“Thank you for your generosity!”

She shook her head. “Thank you for everything you do. Will you be here on Friday?”

“We’re planning on having tables set up at four locations throughout the mall on Black Friday.”

“I will look for you. Happy Thanksgiving!” She took her gift, admired the crisp wrapping job one last time, then left the store.

I sighed happily. From a donations perspective it had been a good day. Better than normal for November. Usually things were slow until Thanksgiving, then quickly intensified. This might be my best fundraising year ever.

I wouldn’t know for sure until I got access to my financial information, though.

There was a lull in the customer line, so I called Pierce. It rang twice and then went to voicemail. In my head I pictured him pulling out his phone, seeing my name, and then ignoring it. It annoyed me as much now as it did during the four years we had dated.

“Hey, it’s me,” I said. “Just calling again to see if you’ve had a chance to send over all the financial information for Happy Bones. I know you’ve been busy, and you said you needed some space after… everything that happened, but I need that information sooner rather than later so I can get all my ducks in a row before Christmas. Send it over to me when you can. Thanks.”

I hesitated for a moment and then hung up. It still felt weird ending a call without saying I love you. Four years of habits died hard, I guess. And despite breaking up with Pierce two weeks ago, sometimes I forgot that I was now single. Maybe I hadn’t gotten closure yet.

That would probably change once he turned over all the financial information for Happy Bones.

The door behind me opened and two guys walked into Nordstrom’s. I did a double-take. Most of