“Need a hand?”
“You can’t possibly want to stay here for hours and wrap presents with me,” Mira said, biting her lip. “Marsh probably wouldn’t even pay you.”
Wade was sure he wouldn’t, but that was fine. He wasn’t doing it for Marsh, or even for the Christmas Village and its guests. He was doing it for Mira.
She was so reluctant to let him inconvenience himself that it took a little time to persuade her, but eventually—and with some obvious relief—she accepted his offer, and they took their hot chocolates over to the gift-wrapping stall.
This was the first time Wade had been in the Christmas Village after it had shut down and all the other employees had filtered out, and there was something magical about it in a low-key way. The Elf Mafia had turned off most of the lights on their way out, so only the gift-wrapping stand and the Christmastree were still bright and shining in the early winter dark. It was cozy, and the twinkling tree looked especially breathtaking without any hubbub to distract from it. The air was scented with peppermint and Mira’s gingerbread hand lotion.
No matter how many presents they had to wrap, Wade was pretty sure his bone-deep contentment was here to stay.
“Any rules for this?”
“Not many,” Mira said. “Keep a family’s presents together in their labeled section on the shelves. We’ll lock the cabinet when we leave. Each set of gifts comes with an inventory sheet, and we put down what wrapping paper and bow combo we use on what, so they’ll know what to write on the tags. Look and see if they’ve checked off any of the extra boxes, like if they’d like Hannukah-themed paper or don’t want us to use any of the goofy, cartoony stuff, even on the kids’ presents. But it’s pretty simple. And again, you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, or you don’t have to stay if you get bored.”
“As long as I’m with you, I’m not going to get bored.”
Was this when he should tell her about their mate bond?
He still wished he could have done it last night, before they’d made love for the first time, but he had the feeling that a human hearing about fated mates for the first time might have acoupleof questions. Last night, Mira hadn’t been up for any more talking.
But her voice was back in fine form now. He would have to see if the moment felt right.
“You’reridiculouslygood at this,” Mira said, watching Wade zip a pair of scissors through some red-and-green plaid wrapping paper. “I can never make the line that straight without a ruler.”
Wade grinned. “Practice. I do a lot with my hands, remember.”
Mira arched her eyebrows. “Oh, trust me, I remember.”
That hadn’t been what he’d meant, but he wasn’t going to pretend that her reaction didn’t delight him.
“So I was wondering,” Mira went on, so studiously casual all of a sudden that he knew this was a big deal, “if you wanted to have Christmas dinner with me and my parents. Well, December 23 dinner, actually—it’s a weird family tradition. My mom likes to have it early so the actual holidays are more for relaxing and leftovers. Anyway, I figured since Petey’s out of town and you said your parents are out of the country ....”
“I’d love to. It’d be great to still have a get-together to look forward to.”
Even more than that, it would be great to meet Mira’s family. She obviously adored her mom and stepdad, so Wade already liked them by proxy. And he wanted to get to know his mate’s family.
Mira beamed. “I was hoping you’d say yes. I want to show you off.”
Wade didn’t know how much there was to show off, technically. He was just an average guy. Well, an average guy who happened to also be a polar bear, but still.
“Don’t get their hopes up too high,” he said, stealing a brief kiss. “Make sure they expect a woodworker, not a movie star.”
He felt her laugh against his lips before he pulled away.
“What?” Wade said.
The laugh turned to genuine puzzlement.
“Wait,” Mira said. “Do you not know what a catch you are? Even the Elf Mafia agrees that you are, and I quote, ‘farmer’s market hot.’”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It’s my favorite kind of hot! Sure, technically I just learned about it when they called you that, but it’sbecomemy favorite kind of hot. It like you’re both hot and ... comfortable. Touchable. It’s easy to imagine having a life with you.”
That was how he felt about her too. Of course, unsurprisingly, he’d been thinking about it as more “mate-bond hot,” to the extent that he could put it into words at all, but he guessed this worked.
Mira said, “The really worrying thing is that Becky thought it was an expression I’d know, which means she thought it was ancient slang for old people, and I still hadn’t heard of it. But it’s comforting that you hadn’t either. We can be old together.” Her cheeks pinked. “Not that I’m—I mean, I know this is all pretty new—”
