Page 37 of Santa's Wish
I pointed to the box of ornaments still sitting on the coffee table. "Got too tired."
He pulled me off the couch. "How about now?"
I laughed. "Are you serious? I'm still too tired."
"I brought you a cookie." He pulled a folded and taped napkin out of the pocket of his Santa suit. It ripped open when I tugged on it. Inside was a perfectly round yellow cookie with hard, clear granules sprinkled over the top. I bit into it, and it melted in my mouth, all vanilla and sugary goodness.
"Okay," I said when I'd swallowed the last of it and tossed the napkin in the kitchen waste bin, "I might have enough energy now."
It didn't even matter that it was three in the morning, and I worked tomorrow at nine. Time seemed to stop when Santa told me about the strange mixture of baubles and round balls in the box. "These remindedme of Rome," he said, handing me several glass balls covered in glittering blue and gold paint. "And these." A delicate box held four tiny hand-painted porcelain bells.
"It's a good thing you don't have a cat," he said.
"Are pets allowed in the building?" I asked. I'd signed the paperwork sober, but I hadn't wanted to waste Santa's time by reading it over again after I'd spent hours giggling over the application the night before. I didn't remember anything about pets, though.
"No." He grinned. "You're trying to remember if it's in the contract, aren't you?"
I laughed. "Guilty."
"It's on the sign out front and in the top box on the contract." He rolled his eyes in mock frustration. "No one reads these days!"
More decorations left the box and made it to the tree, most without my notice. Whenever I caught Santa standing still, he shrugged and tried to look innocent.
The final decoration was a bunch of tinsel in an old shoebox. Santa and I took turns stringing the stuff along the tree branches.
"It looks much better in here," Santa said when we were finished. "Festive."
"Like you," I teased.
"No." He took my breath away with the intensity of his gaze as he pulled me closer to the tree. I could seethe reflection of the lights in his dilated pupils. "Brilliant, like you."
I laughed and tried to push him away, but he held me firm and kissed me. Then, he pointed up at the sprinkler head above us. A sprig of mistletoe I hadn't noticed hung from the nozzle.
"How did you even get up there?" I asked. It was a good three feet above my head.
"I jumped." He grinned and pecked my cheek. "I have a ladder downstairs, but that would have been too much effort."
Once the boxes were broken down and tucked away for use after Christmas, Santa motioned to the rest of the boxes scattered around the room. "Anything you haven't looked through?"
"No, I've seen it all, including your creepy gnomes and gargoyles."
"The gargoyles are for Halloween," he confirmed. "The gnomes … not my best garage sale finds."
"Do tell," I said, leaning my hip against the counter while he taped the boxes closed.
"Nothing much to tell about the gnomes, but the best find …" he grinned. "A high school production ofHamletbuilt a giant wooden coffin.I turned it into a glory hole."
"There's a coffin inHamlet?" I asked.
He shrugged. "I wasn't looking in that gift horse's mouth. I got it for a dollar."
"Age-old vampire loves garage sale bargains," I quipped. "What am I going to learn about you next?"
"Tonight, I'm offering to teach you how much I love to eat your ass after a long day at work."
"Didn't you get enough ass-eating at work?"
He laughed. "You'd be surprised. A lot of pole sucking and riding, but not enough ass-eating going on at Santa's Workshop this time of year."
