Free No Bunny But You (Holiday Romance Series) by Carol Rose

him by his
fur-covered arm and pulled him toward the garden party tent she’d
been using as her headquarters.
    “Jush give me a few minutes and I’ll be—I’ll be
fine.” Ty let her pull him into the tent. “Do you have a bathroom
here? I need a bathroom.”
    “Good grief!” Taking him by the paw, she hurried into
the small kiosk that housed the garden’s bathrooms. When she’d
opened the door to the men’s bathroom and shoved Ty in, she held
her hand to her thundering heart and tried to think.
    This was a disaster! There was no way she could put a
drunk Easter Bunny out there to interact with the Women’s League
members and the various underprivileged children invited to this
shindig.
    Pacing back and forth in the kiosk’s small hallway
outside the bathrooms, she furiously considered her options. None
of the other bunnies she’d interviewed was likely to be free at a
moment’s notice, but she scrolled through the recent calls on her
phone and tried.
    She got voicemails at the first three, an out-right
refusal on the fourth and spoke to a man with a bad case of the flu
when she tried the fifth number. Putting on the suit herself wasn’t
an option because she had to direct the rest of the tea party,
otherwise, Molly would have gotten into the furry get-up in a
second.
    Ty still hadn’t come out of the bathroom. He’d
probably passed out in there and she’d have to drag his comatose
body out before the underprivileged kids arrived.
    In desperation—not knowing who else to call—Molly
pressed on Drake’s number. They hadn’t talked in the week since he
kissed her in front of the skeletal gazebo. Having swung between
conviction that she’d done the right thing and a deep, aching
regret that she hadn’t kept kissing him back, Molly had barely been
able to get the garden party arranged. She hadn’t talked with him
because she just hadn’t known what to say.
    “Hello?”
    She’d never heard such a comforting sound as him
saying that one word.
    “Drake?” Her voice wobbled on the one word.
    “Molly?” When she didn’t respond immediately, he said
again, “Molly?”
    “Yes.” She tried not to burst into tears.
    “What’s the matter? Molly?”
    She could hear the concern in his voice and moisture
leaked out of one eye, despite her determination. “He came drunk,
Drake. My Easter Bunny is drunk out of his mind. I just shoved him
into the men’s bathroom.”
    “Geez! You’re kidding. This tea party is the lead-up
to the big day. What are you going to do? Is it too late to get
another person to play the bunny?”
    She sucked in a sobbing breath. “No, but I tried and
I can’t get any of them to pinch hit?”
    “None of them? How many did you call?”
    “Five. I called five people who contacted me about
the job—some of them were pretty bad,but I have to have someone. I
can’t get any of them and I don’t have any other cartoon character
people to call!”
    “Okay.” His tone was bracing. “Don’t freak out. Who
else could you get to fill in? Just for today?”
    “Okay, okay. Let me think.” She took a couple of
stabilizing breaths. “It has to be someone who can get here right
away. And someone who’s good with kids….”
    A sudden thought occurred to her in a blinding
moment. Drake. He could do it.
    In a rush, she blurted out, “You. You’re the only one
I know who could do it.”
    “Are you crazy?” He was clearly irritated. “I don’t
know kids or stuffed animals or any of that crap.”
    “Drake,” she said, staring blindly out the kiosk
door. “One out of two isn’t bad. You can get here. You’re my only
hope.”
    “Then you need to get another hope, honey, because
this guy isn’t an Easter Bunny.”
    * * * * * * * * *

CHAPTER FIVE
    Drake shoved at the bunny head he wore, trying to get
the eyeholes aligned where he could actually see the garden in
front of him.
    “It’s the Easter Bunny! The Easter Bunny!”
    A bunch of kids across the chilly garden spotted