“Well, yeah,” she sputters as her small, ringed hands fall on my chest. She doesn’t shove, but I can feel the warmth of her seeping through the layers between us, right down to my beating heart. “I work at Macy’s as head elf. You know, for the big guy?”
A horn blares next to us causing both of us to startle and realize we are both still standing in the street, still blocking traffic. Some cab driver yells at us to take it somewhere else, and I watch in fascination as the blush creeps up her neck anddarkens her ears. I wonder what else is covered in this beautiful color.
Shaking my head to dislodge the train of thought my mind is attempting to take, I pull both of us back onto the busy sidewalk in front of the very building she claims she works at as the “head elf”.
I can’t help it—one corner of my mouth twitches as I wonder just how much she knows. “The..big one? As in Santa Claus?”
One of her perfectly arched eyebrows quirks as she looks at me. “Yeah, I mean I’m not talking about the Pumpkin King. So who else is called the big man?”
I hold up my hands in surrender as I laugh. “Fair enough, you look as though you escaped the North Pole.”
She rolls her eyes as she pushes playfully on my chest, causing me to take a slight step back. “You sound like someone who would know for sure.”
“Yes,” I say before I can stop myself. “And no.”
Her mouth opens before she snaps it closed again and gives me a small smile. “Smooth answer, Kris Kringle.”
I let out a low, rumbling laugh. She has no idea how close she is to the truth. “Not Kris Kingle,” I hold out my hand for her to shake. “But I’ll take the compliment. You can call me Ryatt.”
“Holly,” she replies as her soft hand wraps around my larger, calloused one. “Yes, like the plant, not the jolly guy.”
Of course, she’s named after something that embodies the Christmas spirit. I’m not the least bit surprised that fate would give me a mate fit to be in the world of Christmas and everything Sugarplum Hollow.
The magic thrums between us, refusing the ebb, and only pushing harder for me to hold her against me again. If she could see my skin right now, who knows how she would react. I can feel it tingling as the bond pushes against my skin. She doesn’tseem to notice, thank the snowflakes. But it’s there, brushing along my body, whisperingmine.
She glances down at the puddle of hot cocoa decorating the curb and groans. “Great. Now I’m sticky, late, and I don’t even have the yummy goodness of hot cocoa to make it better.” She looks over longingly at the hot cocoa stand only a few paces away from us. “Jonathan is going to really jump down my throat over this. I wish I had time to grab another, or you know call in sick.” She mumbles to herself as she reaches down to scoop her wet elf hat off the sidewalk.
A laugh bursts out of her, startling both of us, as she finally wipes the dollop of whipped cream off her cheek. She steps up next to me, looking up into my eyes with a shadow of sadness deep within those caramel irises. Something I deeply want to ask about so I can wipe that look from her eyes permanently.
Her smile wobbles even though she was just laughing a mere second ago as she reaches up and pats my arm. “Thanks for saving me, probably should have just let the taxi take me out. Would have been far easier than dealing with my boss and the rest of my hot cocoa less day.”
She doesn’t even slow down after that awful statement as she pushes her way through the crowd and towards the entrance of Macy’s. It takes only one blink for her to be swallowed by the crowd and only one more blink for my brain to come back online. I don’t follow her or even attempt to stop her.
No, instead I aim to make her day better even if it’s something as simple as a fresh hot cocoa with whipped cream and…I look down at the melting pile of white goop and see dark flecks that I hope are chocolate chunks. I push my way through the crowd and back to the hot cocoa stand. I don’t wait in line. This is an emergency.
With a stomp of my foot, a wad of cash appears in my hand. Reindeers aren’t overloaded with Christmas magic, like the bigman, as Holly called him, but we have enough to keep us out of trouble. Or get us in trouble, depending on who you ask. When the person in line shouts about me cutting, I turn around, giving her my signature smile as I hand over a crisp $100 bill.
The lady sputters as she looks from the money dangling between my two fingers and my face. She reaches up, snatching the money, and tucking it into her pocket, all while saying something about charming men and their damn smiles.
I turn around, smiling as the barista looks up at me. The poor girl promptly forgets how to function.
That’s the thing about being a Dasher—women tend to short-circuit around us. I don’t blame them; something about our magic or genetics makes us look like we were handcrafted by holiday romance authors with no sense of restraint.
Most days it’s harmless. Occasionally it’s a logistical nightmare. Today… it’s just mildly amusing.
“What…what can I get you, sir?” The girl is stammering as she fidgets with the white towel in front of her.
“I’ll just take two hot chocolates with whipped cream and chocolate shavings.”
“Su…sure. Anything else?” Her cheeks bloom red as I hold out the money for her.
“No,” I lean forward, reading her name tag. “That will be all, Claire.”
She sets off quickly making the drinks, almost as if she’s worried about my reaction if she doesn’t make them in 2.5 seconds.
I check my watch, the tiny reindeer ticking around the clock face as they chase the present of the minute hand and the Santa sack as the hour hand. These watches are imbued with our magic and act as a sort of tracker of how much magic we have available.
Mrs. Claus insisted on them after the incident of 1994 when a certain person might have overused his magic and almosttrapped himself in the human world. We don’t point fingers, but he knows who he is.
