Page 37 of Falling for the Grinchy Bad Boy

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COOPER

Iwoke up Sunday morning feeling oddly decent. Which was weird, because I hadn’t felt decent about much of anything in almost a year. But there was something about yesterday that dislodged the pit that I’d been carrying around in my gut for more than three hundred days.

Decorating the tree had been strange. Not that I did the decorating, but I watched how happy the people had been. How happy Joy had been. I knew she didn’t want to work with me any more than I wanted to work with her on Christmas nonsense.

She didn’t let my bullshit bring her down, though. And then when that star was perched perfectly on top of the tree, Joy’s whole face had lit up. Seeing the finished product had left me in an unexpectedly good mood.

And that was even weirder. I had almost forgotten what it was like to be in a good mood. I wouldn’t say I was happy, but I was less pissed and irritated than normal. I didn’t want to go on a rampage and rip off Rudolph’s nose or ride a reindeer over grandma.

I stretched and made coffee. My limbs felt lighter as I moved around the kitchen. The good mood lasted exactly until I read the paper.

People laughed at me, but I still liked to read the actual newspaper. I hated staring at screens. I wanted to drink my coffee, eat one of my frozen breakfast burritos, and read the paper. If that made me an old fart, so be it.

I sat down at the table, coffee in hand, and my burrito nuked and cooling. I flipped open the paper and froze.

There I was, splashed across the entire front page. The photographer had caught me right at the moment I was positioning the star on the tree. I had to admit it was a decent shot—dramatic angle, good lighting, the whole nine yards.

What made me want to crawl into a hole and die was the headline blazing across the top in big shouting letters: “HERO SAVES CHRISTMAS (TREE).”

Hero.

“Fuck me.”

Below the main photo was a smaller one of Joy clapping, her face absolutely radiant with excitement and relief. The caption read: “Event Coordinator Joy Murphy celebrates as firefighter Cooper Frost places the traditional star atop town square Christmas tree.”

The article was thankfully brief—something about community spirit and the importance of tradition, with quotes from Mayor Winslow about how proud she was of everyone who had volunteered to make the tree lighting possible. Joy was quoted too, calling the whole thing “absolutely magical” and thanking everyone who helped, “especially Cooper Frost, who saved the day with his quick thinking and generous spirit.”

Generous spirit. Right. More like terminal inability to watch a pretty woman look heartbroken without doing something stupid to fix it. Not just any pretty woman, though. Joy had always been special.

Now my good deed was biting me in the butt. And just like that, my good mood was gone. I already knew I would never hear the end of this. I put my burrito in the fridge, appetite gone, and went to get ready for work.

If I was lucky, none of the guys had seen the paper. Those neanderthals didn’t read.

I walked into the station at eight sharp to find the entire day crew gathered around the kitchen table. Every single one of them had a copy of the newspaper spread out in front of them.

They looked up when I entered. The grins on their faces told me everything I needed to know about how the rest of my morning was going to go.

“Well, well, well,” Matt said and leaned back in his chair with the biggest shit-eating grin I’d ever seen. “Look what the elves dragged in. It’s our very own Christmas hero.”

Tony smiled too, not even trying to hide his amusement. “How’s it feel to be famous, Christmas Cooper?”

“Shut up,” I muttered, heading straight for the coffee pot. “It’s just a stupid newspaper article.”

“Stupid newspaper article?” Chief Bryden looked up from his plate of eggs and bacon, eyebrows raised. “Son, you made the front page. Above the fold. That’s more coverage than we got when we rescued those hikers from Eagle Point last summer.”

“That’s because rescuing hikers is our job,” I pointed out. “Putting stars on Christmas trees is not.”

“Maybe it should be,” Elijah, the newest guy on the crew, said. “You looked pretty natural up there. Very heroic. Very... what’s the word... dashing?”

The rest of the crew erupted in laughter. I seriously considered walking right back out the door. Instead, I poured myself coffee and tried to ignore the way they were all chuckling like I had provided them with the best entertainment they’d had in months.

“Here, hero,” Tony said, patting the empty chair next to him. “Sit down. We saved you some breakfast. Can’t have our local celebrity wasting away.”

“Make sure he gets extra bacon,” Matt added with mock seriousness. “Heroes need their protein.”

I sat down because the alternative was standing there while they continued to mock me. At least sitting down meant I could eat something while enduring the inevitable ribbing. I should have eaten that damn burrito at home when I had the chance.