Chapter One
December 20
It was five days before Christmas, and all through the Honey Brook Outdoor Mall,everycreature was stirring—and Wade Moore was listening to his brother try to weasel out of playing Santa.
“It’s yourjob,” Wade said.
“It’s only my job until I quit it,” Petey said. “And I can quit it, no problem, the second I find a replacement Honey Brook HR has already approved. That means you!”
“Why can’t it just mean you?”
Petey grinned. It was the same exuberant, aw-shucks grin that had been getting him out of trouble for years. After all these years of covering for his good-hearted but feckless little brother, Wade should have been able to resist it. But practice didn’t always make perfect.
“BecauseI’mthe one who won the holiday raffle,” Pete said. “Two tickets to Hawaii! A luxury suite for the whole week of Christmas! I’m going to take Anne.”
Anne worked at the mall’s priciest and most exclusive designer store. Wade had never been in it—he wasn’t sure he could afford to cross the threshold—but its luxury was the stuff of legends. So was Anne’s elegant, model-like beauty and hauteur.
Wade couldn’t imagine her with his cheerful, rubbery-faced younger brother, who was always barreling headfirst into fresh new trouble.
“Do youknowAnne?”
Petey was undaunted: “I will after a whole week in a luxury suite.”
“I mean, I wish you luck. I do. But you have to find someone else.”
Petey groaned. “Thereisno one else. No one wants to take over as Santa in the last few days before Christmas. This is our busiest time of the year, and everything’s going wrong this year anyway. It’s a mess down there.”
“You’re not making this sound any better.”
“I’m not trying to. I’m trying to tell you why you, my loyal and heroic older brother, are my only option. No one else would drop everything to do this.”
“Unfortunately for you, I won’t either.”
But as much as he hated to admit it, he could see that Petey really was in a fix. It wasn’t like playing Santa at the Honey Brook Christmas Village was the kind of job most people were lining up to get: it meant an itchy fake beard, a swelteringly hot suit, long hours, and nonstop noise. The parents could be pushy. The kids could be bratty. When you were stuck in the mall’s Christmas fantasyland for days, all the holiday cheer quickly became a holiday headache.
What the job needed was someone like Petey, who was used to it and could let any annoyances roll right off him. But Peteys were hard to come by.
Wade was hard-pressed to think of anyone at Honey Brook who would be willing to step in. Even if they were, they might not be able to take the time off from their real job.
But he worked at Wade’s Workshop. And he was Wade. He could do whatever he wanted, especially if his part-time workers could be coaxed into taking a few extra shifts this week—for double the pay, he decided—so they could still stay open for any last-minute Christmas shoppers.
Petey could sense Wade was caving, and it made his infectious grin get even wider.
“Come on, Wade. Do it for the kids.”
“How about you juststayfor the kids?” Wade retorted. “They like you. You’re the most popular Santa Honey Brook’s ever had.”
“I know. It’s great. But I mean think ofmykids.”
“You don’t have any.”
“My future kids! My hypothetical kids! What if one day they ask me if I ever got to live my dream of spending Christmas in Hawaii, and I have to tell them no? Do you know what they’ll learn from that, Wade?”
“The value of responsibility?”
“That dreams don’t come true,” Petey said sadly. “Don’t kill their dreams.”
Sell the raffle tickets and use the money to live your dreamsnextyear, Wade almost said.
