“What iswrongwith you?” Mira said, low and furious. “She was having a great time! You made her cry!”
Without waiting for an answer, she knelt down beside the girl and offered her a red-and-green Christmas tissue from her bag.
“You say you want everyone to have a perfect Christmas Village experience, but you just hurt hers,” Mira continued, glaring up at him. “The Christmas Village can be great, but you keep messing it up.”
“I can see you no longer care about keeping your job,” Marsh said.
And I can see you no longer care about not being an asshole—but she couldn’t say that in front of a small child.
She could say, “Bite me,” however, and she did.
Well, technically even that was a little over the line, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself in time.
“Very mature,” Marsh said sarcastically, like snatching away a child’s fun had been the epitome of adulthood.
“Seriously, why couldn’t you just let her feed it? She wasn’t hurting anyone.”
“Because that’s notmyChristmas!”
And before Mira could do anything to stop him, Marsh grabbed one of the reindeer by its bridle and started marching it over towards Wade. She had her hands full with the now-sobbing little girl, so she would just have to hope for the best.
“He’smean,” the little girl said, her face scrunching up.
“Yes, he is. I’m so sorry, honey.”
It was all she had the chance to say before all hell broke loose.
Chapter Seventeen
“And a beluga whale,” the boy on Wade’s knee said. His cheeks darkened with embarrassment. “I mean, a stuffed one. I know I can’t have a real one.”
Wade nodded. “We definitely have stuffed beluga whales at the North Pole.”
He wanted to be encouraging. The poor kid’s older brother had apparently spent the car ride over roundly mocking his Christmas list, despite their parents’ protests, so he’d seemed grimly resigned to the idea that Santa might call all his wishes silly and babyish. Wade was going to make sure he left here feeling better about himself and knowing that Santa was on his side. Nothing wrong with a stuffed beluga whale. The real ones lived up in the Arctic circle, on his polar bear’s native ground, so Wade felt a certain kinship—
Oh, shit.
Marsh had taken one of the reindeer out of its pen. And Wade had been so busy talking to the boy that he hadn’t noticed Marsh bringing it over. They were already close, and they were getting closer by the second.
Marsh saw Wade see him, and he offered him a smug, toothy smile that said,See, I win.
“Son,” Marsh said with obnoxious heartiness, “would you like a picture with Santa and, um, Masher here?”
Dasher. The name he was trying to think of wasDasher. So much for Marsh’s claim to have more Christmas expertise than anyone else.
The boy tentatively stretched out a hand.
The reindeer’s nostrils flared.
And Wade realized that the cologne he had practically bathed in this morning had taken a beating over the course of a long, hotworkday. His scent may have been a little muddled, but it was still coming through.
The reindeerfreaked out.
It stamped its hooves, bringing one of them right down on Marsh’s wingtip and making him yelp. It let out an ear-splitting, outraged bleat that made everything in the Christmas Village stop dead.
Then lowered its head, huffing hard and turning its rack of antlers towards Wade like it was ready to gouge him right in the heart. Wade needed to get the child on his lap safely out of its waystat.
Wade had to stay calm. “Here,” he said, in a low and level voice, “why don’t you go back to your mom?”
