Review: Cute story
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 3, 2012
Entertaining and cute story about Kellie, who has just taken up a new job as director of a mall, and Commander Miles Blake, who heads the mall precint. I liked their story, with Miles being protective of Kellie and helping her in any way he can, showing his interest in her right from the start. Kellie, too, enjoys being in his company although she's conflicted, because she wants to focus on her job and she's not sure whether she wants to get into a relationship right now.At the same time, all eyes are on them and gossip spreads through the mall like wildfire every time they're seen together. Kellie is uncomfortable with this because she fears she won't be respected or taken seriously as the mall director, especially since she's new at the job.The title of the story comes from a charity drive that involves collecting donations from various businesses in the community and then assembling and delivering gifts to needy families during the holiday season. Dolores is chairwoman of Santa's Posse and bulldozes both Kellie and Miles into becoming way more involved in it than they ever wanted to be. Miles didn't seem to mind too much, but Kellie was definitely unhappy about it and kept saying she didn't have time to do the extra 'volunteer' work on top of all the other work she had to do. What I didn't get was why Kellie didn't just tell Dolores to back off and find someone else. It seemed against Kellie's character because she's a strong, independent lady and she just didn't seem the type to be easily railroaded into doing anything she didn't want to do. Yet in the story, she can't seem to say 'no' to Dolores.Another thing I don't quite understand (and was never fully explained) is why people kept warning Kellie off Miles. Perhaps the author wanted to show the gossipy and nosy nature of the people around them, but it sounded like people were both unreasonably protective of Miles as well as hostile to Kellie. This simply didn't make a lot of sense to me. If they liked Miles so much, I'd have thought they'd be glad that he was taking an interest in someone again and grabbing a chance to find happiness. They might still have warned Kellie, but it would have been done in a friendlier way. It seemed almost like they didn't want Miles to get together with anybody, not just Kellie. I couldn't account for this at all. At the same time, Kellie's responses to these warnings was out of character as she would just smile and nod and take it even when the hostility and suspicion offended her. Like I said earlier, she's a strong character; I expected her to politely but firmly thank each person for their concern and inform them that she had no intention of breaking Miles' heart... but she simply said nothing in each case.Overall, I enjoyed this little story and would read other works by this author.