Surprise Gifts by Drew Hunt
For Dave who didn’t and Sam and Ted who couldn’t.
Climbing the stairs to the second-floor walkway of the motel, Nick Dailey cast a critical eye over the faded, sun-bleached walls. He couldn’t help it. He was an interior designer and his mind teemed with ideas on how, if this were one of his commissions, this whole environment would be transformed into something much more welcoming to guests. The straggly tinsel streamers wound around the balusters were, to put it mildly, pathetic. As was the tinny Christmas music being piped to all the public areas. He’d hated Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” as a child when his mom used to play it repeatedly every December, and he hadn’t changed his opinion of it as an adult. And it was singularly inappropriate for the sub-tro
