Page 426 of The Parkers' Handsome Holiday
At least that was what I told myself as I stormed back into the office, ripped one of Chadwick’s suits off the rack, and marched back out.
“Oh Santa,” I called. “No flashy designer suits this month, remember? This month it’s strictly velvet.”
Aleena hid her mouth behind her hand as she started cackling.
Chadwick’s hazel eyes drifted up from Hugh’s binder and narrowed briefly on the suit dangling from my hand. The sour expression disappeared as quickly as it came, and his cheeks stretched in a grin.
“Could be worse,” he said. “It could have jingle bells on it.”
CHAPTER 8
CHADWICK
I hid my smile as Tinsely, standing beside me on the front steps of the new Times Square Bamford store, struggled with the giant tutu on her costume. It seemed that with each new outfit she wore, the skirt got bigger and bigger. Today, her skirt was dark green and full of glitter that left its mark wherever she went. There had been a pool of it on the limo seat when we got out of the back a mere fifteen minutes ago.
“You’re drawing attention to yourself,” I said out of the corner of my mouth as she scratched at the wrists of her shirt. A crowd of roughly five hundred people waited at the bottom of the steps up to the front door of my father’s—soon to be mine—new department store, eager to get through the doors and shop. All around us pedestrians swarmed toward the base of the stairs to join the throng of eager Christmas shoppers.
“This stupid stuff is so itchy,” she hissed, digging a nail under the cotton fluff on the hem of her sleeves. “You can’t tell me there wasn’t room in the budget for me to get a classy velvet costume instead of this.”
“Then you’d be the Mrs. to my Mr. Claus.”
She balked. “I’d rather itch.”
“There’s always next year.”
“Absolutely not. This charade is a one year only deal. I am not going to put this stupid costume back on after the twenty-fifth, and if you think next year is going to be any different you have another think coming, Naughty Santa. Wipe that smug—”
“Play nice, Tinsel. Aren’t elves supposed to be downright jolly all the time?”
Her mouth worked to form words, but none emerged, and as she turned red in the face we were interrupted by Hugh, who climbed the front steps while holding a massive pair of gold scissors.
He held them out to me and the crowd cheered.
“All yours, sir,” Hugh said.
“Thank you, Hughie. At least some of us are still aware of our responsibilities,” I added under my breath to Tinsely. I nodded down at the red rope draped from one pillar to the next in front of the main doors of the store. “Are you going to stand there looking cute, or are you going to help?”
If Tinsely had been a cartoon character, her eyes would have turned into red spirals and smoke would have billowed out of her ears to the sound of a steam engine’s whistle.
Right before my eyes she shrugged off all her anger. She inhaled deeply, closed her eyes, and exhaled. The red in her cheeks faded to a more reasonable hue, and she walked around to the other pillar while smiling at the crowd.
“New York,” I called as I wielded the giant gold scissors, “it is my pleasure to cut this ribbon and invite you all inside for the grand opening of Bamford’s Times Square. Enjoy your time inside, feel the cheer of the season, and buy all the gifts on your shopping list in one stop.” I hovered the jaws of the scissors over the ribbon and the crowd tensed with anticipation. I paused and turned back to them. “Oh, and it’s worth pointing out, please don’t trample one another to get to any of the inventory. There’s plenty to go around. This isn’t Walmart.”
Snickers passed through the crowd.
Tinsely scoffed. “Smooth. Insult the clientele of our biggest competition.”
I shrugged, snipped at the air, and finally brought the jaws of the scissors closed over the red ribbon. It fell apart and each cut end fluttered away to linger along the pillars. Tinsely and I hurried to the doors and each pulled one open. The crowd rushed up the steps and poor Hugh was swept away by a throng of middle-aged women with asymmetrical haircuts and clenched jaws. I waved at him as he vanished inside the belly of the store.
Tinsely and I smiled and offered greetings as people made their way inside. I heard gasps of awe and waited excitedly to get my first look at the finished, brand spanking new department store. In general, department stores had been a dying breed for some time. One might argue decades. But Bamford’s hadn’t suffered the same plummeting sales as our rivals. In fact, we’d climbed the ranks when we jumped on the social media bandwagon and learned how to cater our stores to the new age of shoppers.
We opened a tech department to offer the latest and greatest phones, tablets, cameras, and all things digital. We opened an online store long before our competitors to secure our place in the ecommerce section of business. Even though we might not have been able to compete with the prices of some online retailers, we did well enough. One of our more recent additions and success stories had been the decision to open a lounge of sorts in the middle of our department store that served specialty coffees and, during VIP events, liquor.
You know who spends the most money at a store like Bamford’s?
Drunk women with high credit card limits, that’s who.
The final swell of the crowd went inside, and Tinsely and I exchanged bracing looks.
