Read Online Santa Viking by Sandra Hill - Free Book Online Page A

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