It felt wronger than wrong, but I couldn’t go after her, no matter how much I wanted to.
Candy Kane deserved someone better than me. Someone who could set the world at her feet. And sure, I had a great, thriving business and my own home, but the place was still a disaster zone under construction. Not to mention the age difference between us. Oh, and the fact she’d heard me say something ridiculously stupid, which in turn made her hate me. I hated the guarded way she looked at me after that stupid thing this summer. Four long damn months, I’d let her believe I’d meant it.
I shook my head and with it the thoughts of that disaster and made my way straight to the hardware store. I knew she’d said not to mention anything to her uncle, but fuck, the old man had to know what he was doing to his niece. The bell rang over my head as I stepped foot into the place I’d walked into countless times in my life as a lifelong Moonlit Pines resident.
“Onyx!” Russ called out from behind the register. The man was more weathered than I had noticed recently.
“What’s up, Russ? How’s your day been?” I asked, a little calmer than I felt. He’d upset Candy to the point of tears. From everything I knew about her, she didn’t do that. Not ever. Not even when I’d stupidly insulted her. Twice.
“Good. Good,” he mumbled, staring out the window. I could only guess he was staring at his niece as she hurried home to the apartment over the new bookstore that had opened in town. “You see Candy?” he asked, even though we both knew he’d probably watched her break down and cry in my arms.
Shit, I could still feel her warm, curvy body leaning against mine. Just the reminder made my cock stir behind the zipper of my jeans.Not the time for this shit, I reminded myself. I simply grunted with a nod, and he winced.
“Getting old is shit,” he complained. Maybe it was the tone he said it in that made me chuckle.
“No shit,” I muttered back.
“What do you know about getting old? You’re still a kid yourself.” He chuckled good heartedly.
“Uh, Rusty, do I have to remind you I’m thirty-five?” I grumbled.
I was eight years older than his niece. If he knew the shit I wanted to do to her, he’d kick me out or clobber me over the head with one of the snow shovels he had on sale and use it to bury me in a place no one would ever find my remains.
“Son, thirty-five is nothing.” He chuckled. “You’re just starting out…” he said with wistfulness in his gaze before he shook his head and looked at me. “What can I do for you? You in here to bitch that she messed up your paint again, or you here to pitch about the Christmas thing because I told Bash I would help with?—“
“The Christmas thing?” A brow rose, and this uneasy feeling started to grow in my gut.
“Shit. Let me guess, Bash and Mayor Lindley haven’t talked to you yet?”
“Shit,” I cursed, closing my eyes as I counted to ten. “What did they say?” I asked as I opened my eyes. The old man looked at me with a smidge of sympathy. The man was known for being a hard ass, so I knew it was going to be bad.Or at the very least a huge pain in my ass.
“As you know, there have been budget cuts,” he started off, and I sighed with an eye roll.
“No shit. I heard all about them before Halloween,” I interrupted, but Rusty simply shrugged. “What now?”
“Look, kid, sugarcoating shit isn’t my thing, just don’t kick the messenger. Long story short, they want the brewery to help with a toy drive.”
“Oh.” I nodded. “So, what? Like, build a box to collect toys?” That wasn’t the end of the world. It was totally feasible. “That’s not so—“ I didn’t finish speaking because I saw the old man’s head start to shake.
“It would have been as easy as that, but you know the mayor’s new assistant? The Shephard girl?”
“Okay,” I sounded slowly.
“She suggested we help build a Santa’s workshop.”
“Santa’s workshop?” I repeated slowly.
“A cute spot at the brewery where people could stop by, take pictures when they drop off toys from the week before Thanksgiving all the way through to the fifteenth, and then...” There was something in the old man’s face that had me worrying.
“Then?” There was a then? What more did they want? “Then what, Russ?”
“Well… look, kid, I hate having to be the one to tell you this…”
“What?”
“Well… they need a Santa to have the kids come by and take pictures with him and tell him what they want. Almost like another fundraiser. A twofer, she called it. Two birds, one stone kinda thing.”
“Santa?”
