Her Christmas Elf Read online

  “Lincoln is terrible,” he slurred adamantly while still managing to sound affronted on her behalf. Then he opened his arms like he’d give her a hug.

  She took a step back, relieved to see a car pulling around and slowing to an idle. “I think your ride’s here.”

  He shot a swift glance at the car and grunted before returning his focus to her. His arms slowly dropped. “Can I have your phone number?”

  After she’d dumped all over him, he still wanted her number? She couldn’t decide if that was sweet or weird. Both? “No, but it’s sweet of you to ask. Io Saturnalia to you and yours. I hope you have a lovely holiday season.”

  He looked so frustrated she almost felt bad about turning him down. The car behind him honked, but he didn’t get in. Instead, he caught her fingers in his warm hands in a grip that was firm but not so much that she couldn’t escape it. Maybe it was because he was handsome and had made her laugh or maybe it was because he’d listened to her and not shown a sign of disgust or pity, but she didn’t pull away. His bright eyes caught hers as his voice turned serious. “I owe you a sweater.”

  “It’s all right. Forget about it.”

  “I owe you a debt, then.”

  The car honked again, and she hoped the driver wouldn’t take off without him. “Okay, sure. You owe me a debt. Now go home and drink a lot of water, okay?”

  He squeezed her hands as a relieved smile lightened his face, making him even more handsome. She could swear a touch of cool energy sparked from his hands to hers, making her shiver, but in a good way.

  “Elves pay their debts, Carrie.” He kissed the back of her hand, his gaze never straying from her eyes with a crackling warmth like a fire in the cold. Then he got in the car.

  Without her phone number. So it would be the last she saw of him, debt or no debt. That was a good thing, she reassured herself, despite her glimmer of disappointment. A drunk guy in a mall elf costume ruining her favorite sweater was not a promising start. Still, he’d been a nice break from the gloom.

  She turned back toward the restaurant to find Lora’s face literally plastered to the window, watching over her as “Silver Bells” played softly over the restaurant’s exterior speakers. For once, instead of the hospital, she thought of a poetry spouting elf’s jingling footsteps as he followed her out of a restaurant.

  Chapter 2

  No good memories shielded Carrie from the tear-inducing strains of “All I Want for Christmas is You.” She refused, however, to have a mental breakdown in front of a Macy’s. So she stood stiffly, just barely holding it together as the frenetic energy of a packed mall whipped around her.

  Shoppers zipped and elbowed their way through last-minute gift-hunting, everyone with packages on their elbows and a Starbucks cup in hand, while hell’s own soundtrack played over the speakers. Carrie had been to five stores already in her quest for an affordable dress that would make Erica in her couture look like the unimaginative, status-grubbing lemming that she was.

  She’d met Erica before the affair; that was not pettiness speaking.

  But finding a perfect dress in short order was hard enough. Finding one she could pay for without going into debt for the sake of her pride was proving near impossible. A rare buzz of regret that she hadn’t accepted any of Lincoln’s fortune dashed through her.

  After what he’d done, she could’ve raked him over the coals if she’d tried. But it was his money, from his family and his software empire. Her writing career, while personally fulfilling, had brought in an income they’d made much good-natured hilarity over. But there was no way she’d soothe his conscience by taking his money.

  Of course, having a few hundred extra bucks lying around did have its perks. Like now, when every dress that came near the mark was well out of reach.

  Carrie sat on a bench near a plastic pine tree and slipped her feet out of winter-white ankle boots with soles worn too thin for marathon shopping. Where to go next?

  A wail pierced the air as a harried mother dragged her unwilling son toward the line creeping to Santa. Carrie huffed an angry breath. People might carry on like her holiday attitude was crazy, but there was a legit case to be made that everyone went a little crazy when chestnuts were roasting and angels heard on high.

  For example, this woman manhandling her panicked child into a Santa extravaganza—“It’s all right. We can photoshop out the tears and redness later!”—as she tried to live up to everyone’s expectations of cookie-cutter, jolly holiday bliss. Carrie would bet that woman didn’t feel any happier than the wailing kid. She felt frantic and stressed and secretly would be thrilled when the hullabaloo was over and life returned to normal. Carrie was just one of the few people willing to admit it out loud.

  Regretfully, she began sticking her shoes back on—the dress-quest must be vanquished—and noticed the boy had quit crying. Looking up, she found the calm was due not to candy or toy bribes but to an elf animatedly telling him a story.

  She froze, right foot only half in her boot as her heart did a funny little stutter step. Not just any elf—the one who owed her a sweater. That peppermint red was not coming out.

  Even in the same goofy green-and-red getup, Brett looked more dignified than he had last night. Probably due to not being hammered. His story made the child laugh. The mom tried to use the distraction to drag the kid into the queue, but he started screaming again. It was a different sound, though, like he was in pain. How hard was she squeezing his arm?

  Brett held a restraining hand out toward her without losing his merry grin. She ignored him, instead getting in the kid’s face with one hand gripping his arm and the other waving in harsh accusation. A little too harsh.

  Discomfort squeezed Carrie’s gut. There was nothing she could do. If yelling at your kid in the holiday-crazed mall was an offense, half the American population would be in prison, and she couldn’t call 9-1-1 on a bad feeling. Maybe she was overreacting, but reality showed time and again that people who didn’t want or didn’t deserve kids had no trouble whatsoever popping them out.

  Unlike her. Reality was violently unfair—sometimes in all-too-literal ways.

  The set of Brett’s jaw said he was getting a similar vibe from the situation. That must be awful to observe and be powerless. She wondered how often he had to see this kind of thing. Her elf-man seemed to give a damn about the kid’s welfare, but he was in the wrong line of work for someone with feelings.

  The mother stood, and the child’s cries grew more frantic. Brett stepped into her path and caught her gaze. She stopped, looking irritated. Then stilled. Brett’s presence, the way he held himself upright and firm but still relaxed, radiated strength. His eyes hardened and shined, and though his smile never lessened, there was an authority to it that was less “slacker with a mall job” and more... “heir to the throne.” It was incongruous with the setting and costume, almost Twilight Zone.

  Though Carrie couldn’t hear what he was saying, she had a sense that she, like that mother, might agree to whatever was being demanded. Apparently Brett was a Christmas elf with big honking, uh, bells.

  Sure enough, the woman knelt down to eye level with her son and ran a shaking hand through his hair, like she was apologizing. The kid immediately calmed down. Even cracked a smile. When he pointed away from Santa, fear filling his eyes as he looked at his own mother, the woman nodded her head, took his hand and they started away.

  Carrie gaped at them, wondering. The change was superficial—it had to be; a guy at the mall didn’t alter lives with a few words and a firm stare. But despite knowing that logically, the way the woman’s fingers entwined with her son’s and her stride slowed so his little legs could keep up felt like more.

  Admiration warmed Carrie’s skin. And was she biting her lip? Oh yes, she was apparently aroused by a dude in Christmas themed polyester. Embarrassed, she released her lower lip from between her teeth and buried the unwanted interest. She was not attracted to Brett. Was she? Then why couldn’t she take her eyes off of hi
m? He’d been so blitzed he probably didn’t even remember meeting her.

  Her cheeks were just getting hotter when he looked up. Their eye contact was brief before Brett turned to watch the mother and son go, but the recognition that crossed his expression, exchanging all signs of alpha dog for eager puppy, was clear.

  He remembered.

  Crap. Carrie had to get out of there. She was, indeed, attracted to a mall elf who couldn’t hold his liquor and thought he owed her a debt. She was not doing this again. She didn’t do Christmas or any other winter holiday—even Saturnalia—and she didn’t do love or any other form of relationship. All of it was pointless hokum that got people’s hopes up for nothing.

  She began gathering her packages as actual, stupid fear made her motions hectic. Despite the lack of a dress, Festivus shopping for friends and family had been plentiful. A bag tipped, spilling the package of Legos she’d picked up for her nephew. She lunged forward to fix that, tripped on her shoe—which still wasn’t on right—and stepped on her purse.

  Her phone was in it!

  She jerked her foot up to keep from breaking it and tumbled backward.

  Solid arms caught her before she landed rump-first on the tile. “Huh,” Brett said. “I think I like catching you even better than being caught.”

  His voice was bemused and friendly-like, all traces of his earlier alpha display gone. Amusement fit naturally on his face, as if joy was his default expression. He cradled her easily, like she didn’t weigh a thing even though, as a restaurant critic, that was happily not the case.

  Carrie tensed, even as the kindness in his demeanor and confidence in his smile soothed her. It was an awfully nice smile. He smelled of winter, snow, and pine, clean and distinct but not overpowering. She couldn’t remember a cologne like it.

  “It’s okay,” he reassured. “I gotcha.” He steadied her on her feet and slowly, reluctantly it seemed, let her go.

  Carrie forced a smile as unwelcome butterflies toured her insides. “Thanks. I appreciate the catch.”

  “I definitely owed you a catch.”

  She shook her head. “You seem far too concerned with owing and debts and whatnot. Don’t worry about it. It was no big deal.”

  He grinned sheepishly and cocked his head, the bells on his hat jingling with the motion. “If I remember correctly, which I admit is up for debate, I spilled a drink all over you and fell into your lap, then you made sure I got safely home—a kindness I didn’t deserve at that point.”

  The sweater was disappointing, but his stumble into her lap had brightened up a bleak evening. She waved the whole thing off, hoping her cheeks weren’t as bright red as they felt. “I was having a bad day. You cheered me up. Now you’ve stopped me from falling on my ass. We’re even. I should probably…” She motioned toward the mall’s centrum and the dress shopping she still needed to do.

  In that centrum, a crowded North Pole display loomed large and bright. With overeager glee, several men and women dressed like him entertained parents and children queued up to enter a cave of Styrofoam snow, plastic trees, and enough twinkle lights to power a small town. Animatronic reindeer lifted and lowered their heads to the beat of “Jingle Bell Rock,” and a toddler-sized red-and-green train blasted its mini-horn as it chugged into view, carrying the smaller set of Santa’s visitors.

  “So... you really are an elf”—she read his nametag—“Toymaker General.”

  He grinned like he liked this job. “Indeed I am. And I’m glad you’re here. This way.” He scooped up her packages in one arm, grabbed her hand, and tugged her toward the snowy monstrosity, a frightening twinkle in his eye.

  “Wait! I didn’t come to see—”

  The mini-train blasted, cutting her off. Brett practically pranced back to the hill with her in tow, her packages held hostage for her compliance. Where was he taking her? She should dig her heels in and demand her stuff back, and yet her feet were following after him as a small part of her wanted to laugh at his antics.

  They hit the crowd of families, and he yelled, “Emergency elf business! Coming through!” The children squealed in delight as he danced her through a sea of them, saying, “Excuse me! Excuse me!” and “Excuse me, ma’am!” when he bumped into a family whose muscles bespoke extreme devotion to the Cross-Fit way.

  The family laughed, and he jingled his cap bells at them.

  Carrie tried to shrink to as small as her curvy 5’9” frame would allow, but she was being dragged by the tallest elf of the bunch, and he was making such a racket. She stifled a laugh as her cheeks burned even hotter and she prayed nobody she’d ever met in her entire life was anywhere near the mall.

  The closest way out of the spotlight was into the hill, so she let him pull her inside. Instead of heading for Santa—phew!—he took her through a side door into a tiny break room.

  Carrie rounded on him as he set her packages down beside the coffee stand. “What are you doing?” She slipped her hand from his grip and looked around the unoccupied space. Even the employee area was not free of “the spirit,” with its bedecked pink tree and posters of Christmas movies.

  He cocked his head yet again, pondering her as if her pique confounded him. “We were cutting. I didn’t want them to get upset.”

  “We weren’t cutting. I’m not going to see Santa.”

  “They don’t know that. Besides, it made the kids happy, so why not?” He dismissed her glare with another goofy grin and shrug of his shoulders. From under the break-room tree, he retrieved a beautifully wrapped package. The confounding man shook it, listening, then thrust it at her.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Open it.”

  Her glare softened to a frown as she shook her hands at him. “It’s okay. You don’t have to...” do whatever it was he was doing. Had he gotten her a present? Why?

  He continued holding the box out toward her. With a startled kick to the gut, she realized it was wrapped in the same dancing Christmas cats paper her mother had used for “Santa’s” presents when she was a kid. Where on Earth had he found that?

  Her mom had wrapped a few gifts that way every year, even after all the kids in the family knew the truth, even after Carrie was old enough and teenaged enough to tease her mother about being silly. The year they quit printing the pattern, Carrie’s sophomore year of high school, her mom had sighed with regret and given up the tradition, admitting there was no point anymore when nobody believed in Santa Claus. But despite pretending she was too cool for such things, Carrie had missed it. No more presents from Santa.

  And somehow, here those silly cats were again, grinning maniacally at her as they cha-cha’d across the box. It was absolutely ridiculous paper. Still, she couldn’t help running a finger along the package as nostalgia for a more innocent Christmas welled inside her.

  He couldn’t possibly know, but the coincidence was staggering.

  A green bow took up almost a quarter of Brett’s package with gold netting and pine cones stuck into it, far more extravagant than her mother’s usual plain wrap. Across it, he looked at her so hopefully, like he wanted her to be impressed. They’d known each other for less than ten minutes. Why did he care?

  She looked into his eyes, willing him to offer her a serious answer. “Why are you giving me a present?”

  His eyes stayed wide, guileless, as his shoulders shrugged lightly. “I owe it to you.”

  The debt thing again. Men and their apology gifts… “Is this about the sweater? We were in a bar, and accidents happen. It’s okay. And why would you buy me something on the off chance that I might happen to come to this particular shopping mall, and you might happen to see me?”

  He smiled, a little of that smug confidence coming back into his eyes and the curl of his lips. Once again she felt it in her gut, a twist of gravitation toward his unexpected pull. “I had a feeling it would work out,” he said simply. He shook the gift at her. “Take it.”

  Curiosity beat good sense—she blamed the dancing cats. She sat in
a metal folding chair and carefully pulled off the bow, trying to preserve it as best she could, then slit the tape on either side. She didn’t really want whatever was inside, but the paper, oh, that she did want. She’d wrap her mother’s present in it this year, which would mean far more to the woman than the costume jewelry inside.

  Carrie wasn’t sure exactly how she was going to return the present to Brett yet keep the wrapping. But she’d figure it out. Maybe she should just ask where he’d found it and buy her own. That made more sense.

  Before she could ask, Brett snorted. “You’re one of those.”

  “Huh?” She ran a hand under the tape on the back, carefully slitting that, too.

  “Do you trash it after you neatly fold it? I always marvel at people who go through the trouble of carefully unwrapping so they can wad up and throw away the paper. Why not just rip it up to begin with? That’s part of the fun.”

  “I...” She flushed. Even without the incentive of her mother’s delight, Carrie had always meticulously unwrapped her packages. “I’m going to reuse it. It’s better for the environment.” She cleared her throat, unwilling to tell the real story to a stranger—even one she’d told her whole sordid marriage history to. Did he remember that? When she’d revealed those things, it’d been with the assumption she’d never see him again. She eyed the unmarked box inside the wrapping.

  “How conscientious of you.” She couldn’t tell if his tone was mocking or not, but it didn’t matter. Smiling with an unexpected anticipation she couldn’t stop and hadn’t felt in years, she pulled the top off the box.