Chapter Four

The doesn’t-fit-in weirdo is getting some cozy one-on-one time with Santa , Mira thought. I’m practically Rudolph.

But while the lunch was funny if she thought about it as her misfit Galadriel having lunch with Santa Claus himself, it felt completely natural at the same time. After all, they had both left their costumes behind at the Outpost. They were probably the only workers at the Christmas Village who bothered to change for their lunch break—most of the elves didn’t think it was worth it, not when they would have to put the pointy ears back on in an hour.

But then, they were a recognizable presence in the food court, and she wasn’t. If the Galadriel costume was weird inside the Christmas Village, it made even less sense anywhere else. She wouldn’t have looked like a mall employee on break, she would have looked like someone who treated every day like Comic Con.

And Wade would have looked like Santa Claus. Adults would have understood he was on his break, but children wouldn’t have. Taking off the suit was the only way to get around having to work straight through lunch.

It was nice to leave the intensity of the holiday season behind them for an hour and be two ordinary people in the midst of all the hustle and bustle. Just a man and a woman doing what men and women had been doing for time immemorial: trying to choose between mediocre pizza and equally mediocre Chinese food.

“I’m going to go with Chinese,” Mira announced. “At least then I get a fortune cookie out of it.”

“Good call,” Wade said, joining her in line. “It’ll be nice to know how the rest of the day is going to go.”

“Nice or terrifying?”

He laughed. It was a pleasant rumble of a laugh that made her own stomach muscles tighten up, like she wanted to feel what he was feeling.

“Probably both.”

They got their steaming piles of brownish, overly sweetened Chinese food—with fortune cookies as consolation—and headed to an out-of-the-way table. Mira hoped the huge plastic fern next to it would provide a little soundproofing. It was amazing how busy the mall could get even on a weekday, but the Christmas season had a way of bringing shoppers out of the woodwork. Even people who spent the whole year doing all their shopping online would often turn up as December 25 crept closer.

She settled in, separating her chopsticks and taking the wrapper off her straw, but all of that was just busy-work to give her more of a chance to properly check out Wade.

She had come so close, back at the Outpost, to saying that she recognized him out-of-costume because of his eyes, which would have been so embarrassing that she might not have survived it. She was pretty sure the sizzle of attraction between them was mutual, since he’d stammered a little bit around her too, but her fascination with his warm gray eyes still felt like way too much for the first day of an innocent little workplace flirtation.

Now that he had abandoned the floofy white beard and the red hat, she could say for certain that his eyes weren’t his only good feature. He had a strong jawline and gorgeous dark hair with the tiniest bit of natural wave to it. It was hair that anyone would want to touch—or so Mira was going to tell herself.

Maybe weeks of stress had driven her around the bend. Maybe she was succumbing to a frenzy of lust.

Maybe her fortune cookie, when she got to it, would clarify everything, but she had a whole heap of B- Chinese food to get through first.

She took the first gluey bite, made a face at it, and then said, “So what do you do normally? What did Petey pull you away from?”

“I’m a woodworker.”

Mira almost dropped her chopsticks. “You’re that Wade? Wade’s Workshop Wade?”

His smile made his eyes crinkle in a way Mira found intensely cute. Cute was one of the words she was thinking of, anyway.

“I know,” he said, “I shouldn’t have named the shop after myself. I liked the alliteration, but now it seems kind of cheesy.”

“I wasn’t thinking it sounded cheesy,” Mira said honestly. “I’ve been in there a couple times—”

Never when he was there, she already knew, because she would have remembered him.

“—and everything’s so beautiful. Did you really hand-carve that chess set?”

Wade abandoned his lukewarm Chinese food. The chess set was clearly one of his favorite pieces, and he looked like she’d made his day by bringing it up.

Mira didn’t know anything about woodworking, but the way Wade talked about it made it sound not only interesting but possible , like it wasn’t as much an art as a hobby anyone could take up. He described the wood grain so vividly that it felt like she could trace one finger along the block of wood he was talking about, following the line like it was a drizzle of spilled honey.

“But I’m getting carried away,” Wade said sheepishly, like she wouldn’t have been happy for him to carry her away too. “What about you? What do you do when you’re not Galadriel?”

She felt her face heat up. Even though she was proud of her podcast and how far it had come, she hardly ever talked about it people in her day-to-day life. It was like she kept a thick wall between her online self and her “real” life. But wasn’t her online life just as real? It was how she made her living, after all.

Maybe she tended to downplay the podcast because the first few times she’d ever tried telling people, it had been obvious that they’d thought it was a little bit silly.

Is there really that much to say about those kinds of movies? They always end the same way.

People pay for that? That’s a pretty good racket!

But she was letting a couple bad blind dates—and a couple distant and probably envious cousins—get the best of her. Nothing about Wade said that he would be dismissive. He’d let his carefree younger brother force him into a Santa suit, and he wasn’t complaining about it nearly as much as Mira would have been. He’d been good with the kids.

“I have a podcast,” Mira said. For all her good intentions, she didn’t sound nearly as confident right now as she knew she sounded on the podcast. “I discuss romance movies. You know, rom-coms, old screwball comedies, romantic dramas—I cover some TV shows over on the Patreon—”

Why was she telling him that? It wasn’t like he was going to subscribe!

“Anyway, that usually keeps me busy for most of the year,” she said. “But I’m doing this for some extra cash.”

She almost started to tell him about her parents, but that was a lot to dump on a guy who had only wanted to have lunch with her so he could ask her about Christmas Village do’s and don’ts.

Although now that she thought about it, he hadn’t asked her about that so far, so he clearly wasn’t in that big of a hurry to find out.

“That’s awesome,” Wade said. “Have you done Christmas in Connecticut yet? That’s one of my favorite classic romantic comedies.”

Mira gasped. “That’s one of mine too! I covered it the first Christmas I had the podcast. God, the leads in that have such great chemistry. And remember how Barbara Stanwyck had to switch out the baby?”

“And try to convince everyone that it was totally normal for a baby to change that much after swallowing a watch!”

She’d always loved that scene, and even remembering it made her laugh. “I love it. So funny, and so romantic. It’s probably my favorite love-at-first-sight movie.”

“What’s the name of your podcast?” Wade said. “I’ll have to listen to your episode on it tonight.”

By now, she sounded more confident and more like herself again. “Silver Screen Romance. But you really don’t have to, I promise. I’m sure you’re busy.”

“Only playing Santa,” Wade said dryly. “I think once I clock out, things will calm down a lot. The store assistants are going to look after the shop, and I don’t have any urgent projects I need to work on for the inventory. Trust me, I have plenty of podcast time. It’ll help me unwind after all this.”

“Well, in that case, I hope it works.”

They finally tucked back into their lunch—each of them grimacing a little bit at each overly salty, overly sweet bite—and Wade did eventually get around to asking her some questions about the Christmas Village.

Mira told him that the elves had a pretty sweet deal there compared to Santa. Sure, they weren’t as beloved, but they also never got mobbed or interrogated.

“And I know I don’t have any facial hair to pull, but even if I did, I’m pretty sure no one would yank on it.” She pointed one chopstick at him for emphasis. “I’m surprised you took that beard off for lunch, by the way. I know it’s a bear to get on and off.”

Wade touched his chin and cheek and winced at the memory of it. “No kidding. I guess getting it on wasn’t too bad, just kind of a hassle with all the glue and making sure it looked right, but getting it off hurt. Am I all red?”

Now that he mentioned it, his tanned skin did look a touch irritated from having a spirit-gummed beard ripped off it a little too quickly. If he kept clawing it out off like that all week, he’d wind up with a hell of a rash.

Mira held her fingers up about half-an-inch apart. “Little bit. Not too bad yet, but you might want to leave it on for lunch in the future so you only have to take it off once a day. And do it slowly when you do.”

Wade made a face, but he nodded. “I mostly wanted it off for this lunch break. I can put up with it later.”

Why for this lunch break? If he was worried the fake beard would make it hard to eat, wouldn’t he be worried about it for every lunch break for the next week?

Before Mira could ask him about it, a shadow fell across the table. An ominous shadow.

Maybe it was all those weeks in a Galadriel costume talking, but Mira felt like there was something distinctly Sauron-esque about this particular shadow. She wouldn’t be surprised if it came with an all-seeing eye of fire.

“Hi, Mr. Marsh,” she said.

“What is the meaning of this?” Mr. Marsh hissed at them.

Wade said, “The meaning of lunch?” in a bland, innocent tone that immediately told Mira that he knew that would only annoy Marsh more. Good for him. A little bit of edge crept into his voice as he added, “We’re on our break. If we want to eat bad Chinese food, that’s nobody’s business but ours.”

“We picked it for the fortune cookies,” Mira added.

She regretted it instantly. Somewhere along the line—maybe after she became the sad-sack elf mooning around the Christmas Village in the wrong costume—Marsh had obviously realized that she needed this job. She was the only elf over thirty who took full-time shifts at the Christmas Village: everyone else in her age bracket was a parent doing this part-time for a little extra holiday cash. The job was a plus for them, but it wasn’t a necessity.

She was relying on it ... and she was especially relying on the end-of-year bonus that Honey Brook Mall handed out to people who worked the holiday season from start to finish. That was the only way she could think of to ensure her parents got the care they needed.

Marsh knew that no matter how much of a hassle this job was, she wasn’t going to quit before she had that bonus envelope in her hand. And he didn’t have a problem with taking advantage of that.

That was why it was in her best interest to not piss him off, but sometimes it was too hard to keep her mouth shut.

Now that he was narrowing his eyes at her, though, she belatedly remembered that she’d promised herself she would stay out of trouble.

“This doesn’t concern you, Mira,” Marsh said icily. “But thank you for your input. I already know that you don’t understand the value of a cohesive experience at the Christmas Village.”

“I don’t think she wants to be dressed as Galadriel,” Wade said. “I thought you just didn’t have another elf outfit for her?”

Of course he thought that Marsh was implying she was breaking up his cohesive vision with the Galadriel costume. That made so much more sense than what Marsh was actually implying.

If Marsh scowled any harder, his face was going to turn inside out. “Galadriel is not the problem. Galadriel is not supposed to be a Christmas elf. Subtly non-matching elf costumes are far more distracting.”

Wade looked like he was a split second away from incredulously asking if Marsh was sure about that, and if he did, Mira would laugh, so she nudged his foot under the table to cut him off.

She succeeded better than she ever would have hoped. Wade’s face changed with that little brush of her foot against his. He didn’t look like he’d gotten her hint, he looked like he had forgotten everything else that was going on. He might as well have been a cartoon character with a dreamy thought bubble that said WOW!

It was ridiculously, wildly flattering. Mira had had sex —good sex, even!—with guys who hadn’t looked like that afterwards. She had never seen those kinds of hearts appear in someone’s eyes before.

Maybe it didn’t even have anything to do with her, of course. Maybe he had a foot thing.

But she didn’t think so. She was willing to bet that even most foot fetishists didn’t look that enchanted by a tiny little sneaker-to-sneaker nudge. It wasn’t even like she was wearing high heels.

No, she was pretty sure Wade just really, really liked her.

Well, she really liked him too. Maybe they could make a date to watch Christmas in Connecticut together and see where this charge between them could go. But they would have to survive the holidays first, and right now, she wasn’t even sure if they could survive what was left of their lunch hour. Not with Marsh of Mordor looming over them.

“Where is Petey?” Mr. Marsh said through gritted teeth. “Why do I have to hear from mall management that my Santa has taken a leave of absence, and why am I stuck with someone I didn’t even hire?”

Wade seemed to recognize that as much of a pain as Marsh could be, this was probably a legitimately frustrating situation for him, one that would have left anybody scratching his head. He dropped any sense of pushback and gave Marsh a simple, straightforward rundown:

“Petey won the employee holiday raffle, with two tickets to Hawaii for a week’s stay in a suite. He didn’t want to sell the prize to someone else, so he talked to Honey Brook management. Probably Mr. and Mrs. Arbogast—he’s friendly with them.”

“Why didn’t he talk to me?” Marsh said.

They all knew the answer to us: because Marsh would have said no.

But Wade, still being polite, avoided saying anything so blunt. “I don’t know. He was in a hurry, so he probably wanted to go to the top to make sure he could get it all sorted out. Anyway, they cut him a deal and said that if he could find another mall employee, someone already preapproved by our HR, to take over for him, he could go. He found me. I’m his brother, Wade—I own Wade’s Workshop.”

Marsh wasn’t interested in Wade’s Workshop. Honestly, Mira would find it hard to believe he had that many people in his life to buy Christmas presents for in the first place, so he probably hadn’t been doing a lot of holiday window-shopping.

“I should have been consulted,” Marsh said in a half-snarl.

His tone was enough to get Wade’s hackles back up, but—perhaps because he remembered Mira’s nudge and its suggestion that he not take things too far—he just pressed his lips together and stayed quiet. Besides, what could he possibly say? He hadn’t been the one to go over Marsh’s head. Mira guessed he could promise that if he suddenly won tickets to Hawaii, Marsh would be the first one he’d tell, but she doubted that would do any good.

Honestly, at least all this had distracted Marsh from yelling about Wade not wearing the fake belly.

Wade kept things low-key and reasonable. “I’m sorry about all this. But I’m here, I’m approved by HR, and I can cover the last week of the season without any problems. I think I did okay before lunch.”

“He did,” Mira said. She didn’t know if Marsh would listen to her, but it still seemed worth chipping in. “He was really good with the kids and the parents.”

One mom had even asked the elves to pass on a thank you to him, since he had coaxed her daughter into whittling her massive Christmas list down to a more reasonable length. But Mira decided not to mention the specifics there. Marsh wouldn’t actually be thrilled about his Santa aiding and abetting the crime of spending less money at the Honey Brook Mall.

Marsh gave her a look that said he was going to take her opinion with a grain of salt, but he clearly knew there wasn’t much he could do about the situation at this point. There was no way he could vet and hire an outside Santa on this short a time-frame. And if the Arbogasts, the mall’s premier power couple, had already signed off on the replacement, he couldn’t say no now. He was stuck with Wade whether he liked it or not.

“Get back on duty as soon as you finish your lunch,” Marsh finally said. “You need the extra time to familiarize yourself with the job.”

That wasn’t fair to Wade, who deserved a full break. Mira doubted that Marsh was going to compensate him for the lost part of his lunch hour.

But Wade must have known that it wasn’t worth arguing about, not for a job he was only doing as a favor to his brother. He nodded and let Marsh seethe his way out of the food court.

“That’s unfair,” Mira said.

“It is,” Wade agreed, picking his chopsticks back up so he could pick at the remainder of his lunch. “But I figured that saying anything about it would have meant talking to him even longer than we already had.”

Mira had to bite down on the inside of her cheek to keep from letting out a very undignified bark of laughter. “Sad but true.”

She couldn’t imagine going back to her poor excuse for cashew chicken, so she picked up her fortune cookie instead.

“Want to see our future?”

“I do,” Wade said, and some light in his eyes made warmth spread through Mira’s whole body. He took his own cookie and slid it out of its crinkly plastic wrapper. “Ready to see what the future holds?”

“Ready. On the count of three ... one, two, three .”

They broke their cookies in unison, and there was the whisper of sliding paper as they pulled the fortunes out.

Mira looked at hers. She couldn’t stop her face from heating up. “‘Pay attention to new people in your life.’”

Believe me, cookie, I’m already paying plenty of attention to today’s new person.

A tiny bit of pink appeared in Wade’s cheeks, too. He said lightly, “Maybe you should go back up there and ask for another cookie. You were robbed. That’s not really a fortune, it’s more like ... advice.”

“But it’s good advice,” Mira said, just to see if he would blush more.

He did. Paying attention to him was already incredibly rewarding. She hoped the sparks between them would last through the holidays, so she would actually have time to go out with him and relax . It would be fantastic to be out with Wade without anything hanging over her head—not Marsh, not her troubles with her parents ....

“What about you?” she said.

Wade looked back down at the little slip of paper. “‘The next few days will be very interesting.’”