Chapter Sixteen

So this was it. Mira could kiss her Christmas bonus goodbye.

All the bullshit she had put up with to get that end-of-season lump sum ... it had all been for nothing. She still had her regular take-home pay, but that was it. There wasn’t going to be any prize at the finish line.

What surprised her the most was that the defeat didn’t completely crush her. It should have. She didn’t just want this money, she needed it: it was supposed to make sure her parents could spend their golden years in happy, peaceful safety. Their retirement community needed its entrance fee ASAP, or the spots opening up would go to someone else. This was a real problem.

But with Wade at her side, it felt manageable. Somehow, the two of them would figure something out.

She just wished she knew how . And what .

And she wished that tonight wasn’t her mom’s famous not-Christmas dinner. She felt a sick sense of dread at facing down her parents and telling them that all her plans had fallen through. They would be nice about it, but this was a major blow to their future.

Not very Christmassy, was it? Even now that she was back on duty, standing there in a whirl of fake snow and listening to the piped-in carols, she couldn’t seem to access any holiday spirit.

Well, now she had talked herself into having a lump in her throat anyway. It wasn’t as bad as it would have been if she hadn’t met Wade, but it was ugly. She could feel a kind of hot pressure behind her eyes as the urge to cry kept building up.

She had told Wade that under no circumstances were they scaring the hell out of some poor reindeer, even if that would ostensibly let her keep her job.

“It doesn’t matter,” she’d said, rubbing at her eyes. “You heard him. No matter what I do, he’s not going to let me walk out of here with my bonus. He likes hanging it over my head, but he’s never going to actually give it to me. It’s like how Lucy never lets Charlie Brown kick the football. If I cave to him on this, he’ll just find some other excuse to stiff me in the end.”

“He’s running out of time for that.”

Mira had smiled grimly. “He’ll fire me two seconds before closing on Christmas Eve, if he has to. You know it as well as I do.”

Even on the worst day of her life, she had to admit that Wade smoldering with barely repressed fury on her behalf was a very good look. Very hot. She especially loved the way his eyes literally darkened.

“Even if that happens,” Wade had said finally, “you’re still getting your bonus.”

She didn’t know how he could be so sure of that, unless he was buddy-buddy with someone in Honey Brook management—but if he had been, Marsh would never have dared act like this around him. He already dialed down the dickishness with the Elf Mafia, since some of them had powerful parents. He had kept it to a simmer with Petey, too, since Petey knew Mr. and Mrs. Arbogast on the board of directors. He was too chickenshit to push around anyone with enough clout to actually push back. Bullies were usually like that.

So she didn’t think Wade had any connections that could help her out. But she trusted him. Maybe he had an ace up his sleeve she didn’t know about—especially since Marsh had interrupted them right as he had been about to reveal something .

The big thing that he had first meant to tell her the day she’d lost her voice. The reason he was so sure, even only a few days into their relationship, that they had a real future.

I’m sure too , Mira thought, and the idea made her stand up a little straighter. Something genuine crept into the fake smile she had been wearing for the guests. He fits inside my heart. We fit each other.

He’s my Christmas miracle.

So if these were her last few hours—or even her last few minutes—in the Christmas Village, she was going to make them count. She was going to lean into the sparkle of wonder and possibility Wade had given her, not to mention all the corny-but-sweet festivity around her. She wasn’t going to let Marsh ruin her Christmas, and she wasn’t going to let him make her into a sourpuss on her last day on the job. She was Galadriel, dammit. She was better than that!

“Do you want to feed one of the reindeer?” she asked a shy, quiet little girl.

The girl gasped. “Yes, please!”

Mira scattered some of the reindeer’s food pellets around in a bowl and handed it over to the girl, letting her hold it up so the deer could bend down and lip at it. That was safer than her using her bare hands.

“I can feel them breathing,” the girl whispered. “Their noses keep flaring up, and they puff on my hands.”

Mira nodded. “I like the little snorts they make, don’t you?”

The girl returned her gesture so exuberantly that for a second Mira was worried she would nod her head right off. “They’re cute!”

Suddenly, big adult hands snatched the bowl away from the little girl, who instantly teared up.

“That’s enough .”

It was an all-too-familiar voice. Marsh’s intrusions into her happiness usually made Mira feel a damp, chilly kind of disappointment and stress, but this time, her reaction was all fire.

She kept it to a controlled burn, though. Wade was currently coaxing a Christmas list out of a boy who looked even shyer than the reindeer girl, and Mira instinctively knew that if she raised her voice and he could tell she was upset, he wouldn’t be able to pay attention to much else. That wouldn’t be fair to the kids.

“What is wrong with 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 not my Christmas!”

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’s mean ,” 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.