That was why it was in her best interest to not piss him off, but sometimes it was too hard to keep her mouth shut.
Now that he was narrowing his eyes at her, though, she belatedly remembered that she’d promised herself she would stay out of trouble.
“This doesn’t concern you, Mira,” Marsh said icily. “But thank you for your input. I already know that you don’t understand the value of a cohesive experience at the Christmas Village.”
“I don’t think shewantsto be dressed as Galadriel,” Wade said. “I thought you just didn’t have another elf outfit for her?”
Of course he thought that Marsh was implying she was breaking up his cohesive vision with the Galadriel costume. That made so much more sense than what Marsh wasactuallyimplying.
If Marsh scowled any harder, his face was going to turn inside out. “Galadriel is not the problem. Galadriel is notsupposedto be a Christmas elf. Subtly non-matching elf costumes are far more distracting.”
Wade looked like he was a split second away from incredulously asking if Marsh was sure about that, and if he did, Mira would laugh, so she nudged his foot under the table to cut him off.
She succeeded better than she ever would have hoped. Wade’s facechangedwith that little brush of her foot against his. He didn’t look like he’d gotten her hint, he looked like he had forgotten everything else that was going on. He might as well have been a cartoon character with a dreamy thought bubble that saidWOW!
It was ridiculously, wildly flattering. Mira had hadsex—good sex, even!—with guys who hadn’t looked like that afterwards. She had never seen those kinds of hearts appear in someone’s eyes before.
Maybe it didn’t even have anything to do with her, of course. Maybe he had a foot thing.
But she didn’t think so. She was willing to bet that even most foot fetishists didn’t look that enchanted by a tiny little sneaker-to-sneaker nudge. It wasn’t even like she was wearing high heels.
No, she was pretty sure Wade just really, really liked her.
Well, she really liked him too. Maybe they could make a date to watchChristmas in Connecticuttogether and see where this charge between them could go. But they would have to survive the holidays first, and right now, she wasn’t even sure if they could survive what was left of their lunch hour. Not with Marsh of Mordor looming over them.
“Where is Petey?” Mr. Marsh said through gritted teeth. “Why do I have to hear from mall management that my Santa has taken a leave of absence, and why am I stuck with someone I didn’t even hire?”
Wade seemed to recognize that as much of a pain as Marsh could be, this was probably a legitimately frustrating situation for him, one that would have leftanybodyscratching his head.He dropped any sense of pushback and gave Marsh a simple, straightforward rundown:
“Petey won the employee holiday raffle, with two tickets to Hawaii for a week’s stay in a suite. He didn’t want to sell the prize to someone else, so he talked to Honey Brook management. Probably Mr. and Mrs. Arbogast—he’s friendly with them.”
“Why didn’t he talk to me?” Marsh said.
They all knew the answer to us: because Marsh would have said no.
But Wade, still being polite, avoided saying anything so blunt. “I don’t know. He was in a hurry, so he probably wanted to go to the top to make sure he could get it all sorted out. Anyway, they cut him a deal and said that if he could find another mall employee, someone already preapproved by our HR, to take over for him, he could go. He found me. I’m his brother, Wade—I own Wade’s Workshop.”
Marsh wasn’t interested in Wade’s Workshop. Honestly, Mira would find it hard to believe he had that many people in his life to buy Christmas presents for in the first place, so he probably hadn’t been doing a lot of holiday window-shopping.
“I should have been consulted,” Marsh said in a half-snarl.
His tone was enough to get Wade’s hackles back up, but—perhaps because he remembered Mira’s nudge and its suggestion that he not take things too far—he just pressed his lips together and stayed quiet. Besides, what could he possibly say? He hadn’t been the one to go over Marsh’s head. Mira guessed he could promise that ifhesuddenly won tickets to Hawaii, Marsh would be the first one he’d tell, but she doubted that would do any good.
Honestly, at least all this had distracted Marsh from yelling about Wade not wearing the fake belly.
Wade kept things low-key and reasonable. “I’m sorry about all this. But I’m here, I’m approved by HR, and I can cover the last week of the season without any problems. I think I did okay before lunch.”
“He did,” Mira said. She didn’t know if Marsh would listen to her, but it still seemed worth chipping in. “He was really good with the kidsandthe parents.”
One mom had even asked the elves to pass on a thank you to him, since he had coaxed her daughter into whittling her massive Christmas list down to a more reasonable length. But Mira decided not to mention the specifics there. Marsh wouldn’t actually be thrilled about his Santa aiding and abetting the crime of spendinglessmoney at the Honey Brook Mall.
Marsh gave her a look that said he was going to take her opinion with a grain of salt, but he clearly knew there wasn’t much he could do about the situation at this point. There was no way he could vet and hire an outside Santa on this short a time-frame. And if the Arbogasts, the mall’s premier power couple, had already signed off on the replacement, he couldn’t say no now. He was stuck with Wade whether he liked it or not.
“Get back on duty as soon as you finish your lunch,” Marsh finally said. “You need the extra time to familiarize yourself with the job.”
That wasn’t fair to Wade, who deserved a full break. Mira doubted that Marsh was going to compensate him for the lost part of his lunch hour.
But Wade must have known that it wasn’t worth arguing about, not for a job he was only doing as a favor to his brother. He nodded and let Marsh seethe his way out of the food court.
