“We do,” another elf volunteered. “It makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.”
Marsh’s already purple face now turned stiff and masklike. His smile was brittle. “Well, Wade, if you feel so strongly about that, then shouldn’t you, as Santa Claus, show the rest of the North Pole that you’re willing to try out their work too?”
“Oooh,” a bunch of teenage elves crooned in unison.
Mira had bit back her grin at Wade’s suggestion—Marsh was already so prickly this morning that she wanted to be on her best behavior—but she couldn’t stand by and let Wade get stuck with the worst job in the village.
“You just said Wade has to sit in the chair,” she said. “That’s what people want from Santa.”
“It’s okay,” Wade said instantly. “I’m sure I can make it work. I’ll figure something out.”
“Make sure you do,” Marsh said, in a faux-velvety voice he probably thought was more intimidating than it was. He made sure to shoot Mira an icy glare before he moved on to the next item on the agenda.
Mira sighed. The problem with Marsh was that he didn’t actuallyneedto be genuinely intimidating. He could be an annoying, buzzing pest whose bluster was more ridiculous than scary, and it didn’t matter. He could still fire her, and that would still mean losing the bonus she was counting on.
He didn’t have to have a strong presence. He just had to have the clout to smash her flat, and he did.
Luckily for her, Wade’s quick agreement to Marsh’s bizarre suggestion had taken the wind out of Marsh’s sails for now. Even he couldn’t keep his petty sadism at a full boil all the time.
But what had Wade been thinking? Maybe it wouldn’t be outright impossible for him to take occasional breaks from meet-and-greets to host carol-oke, but it would be a huge and thankless hassle. All it would do was make his day worse and harder. He had to know that: everyone’s frustration at this being dragged out into an all-day event made that much extremely clear.
So why was he hiding a smile behind his hand as he scratched at his itchy stick-on beard?
“What are you up to?” Mira asked him when Marsh finally gave them the all-clear to start opening up. “You know you’ve doomed yourself to visiting me in the ninth circle of hell, right?”
“It can’t be that.”
“Fine, maybe not the ninth. Maybe just the seventh or eighth. But it’s bad. You have to know it’s bad. Didn’t Petey tell you?”
“Sort of,” Wade said. Mira had to stop herself from getting distracted by the sheer number of collapsed folding chairs he was able to pick up at once, all without missing a beat or breaking a sweat. How strongwashe? “But I think it’ll be okay.”
“So you’re just one of those blithely optimistic people.”
He shot her a grin.
God, Mira thought as every nerve ending in her body seemed to light up at once.I’m as bad as he is. I brush his foot yesterday, and he looked like it was better than sex. He smiles at me while hauling chairs around, and I feel like a slot machine that’ s just hit the jackpot.
“Something like that,” Wade said.
She took her measly two chairs across the room with him to stack them out of the way. There was all kinds of noise around them as everyone else banged their own chairs together, startedrunning the ancient and always-groaning snow machine, and more, but all she could focus on was Wade.
“By the way,” he said, slinging his own chairs onto the rack and then reaching for hers, “I listened to some of your podcast last night. Actually, I guess I should saywelistened to it.”
The sinking feeling from Marsh sticking her with carol-oke was nothing compared to this. This was like falling into a bottomless, ice-cold well.
He had a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend. No wedding ring, so it wasn’t official, but—he hadsomeone.
If that was true, then why was he flirting with her? She couldn’t be imagining the chemistry between them, could she? And it wasn’t like he was fighting it.
“We?” she said, trying to sound as casual as possible.
“Me and Fiona. My cat.”
Hiscat!
“Oh!” Mira exclaimed. So much for casual: her relief had to be obvious. She did what she could to spin it in a less embarrassing direction. “I have a cat too! A tiger-striped boy named Bigfoot.”
“Does he have big feet?”
