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“If I did, I’d save it for you.” He winked and pulled his keys from his pocket. “Come on, give me something. I’m trying to make it up to you.”
“There’s nothing to make up. We cleared that up. I’m supposed to meet Erin and Oscar to watch the lights get switched on. Why don’t you come with us?”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me so far.”
“Don’t get too excited. I just don’t want to be the third wheel.”
“And she’s back to normal.”
Rolling my eyes, I turned and walked in the direction of the house. “See you later, Nicholas.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Quinn!”
I shoved my head through the door of the grotto. “What?”
“The string snapped.” Nicholas held out the white, fluffy beard, and sure enough, one of the side strings that secured it to his face was dangling in one long string.
I motioned for Demi to give me two more minutes and stepped inside the grotto with a sigh. Honestly, it was times like this when my inner Virgo really came out.
Just tie the strings together.
Did nobody exercise their common sense anymore?
I took the beard from him and deftly tied the two pieces of broken string together in a tight little knot. “Remind me to take this home with me tonight so Mom can put some new elastic on there. Come here.” I waited until he stepped up in front of me and gently put the beard on him. He’d trimmed his own to be little more than stubble, and I supposed that was for comfort reasons.
I liked it.
The shorter beard, that was. Despite my previous feelings about his stubble needing to be longer so I could simply dye it.
Not that it was any of my business what he did with his beard, of course. If I were going to sleep with him, I’d suggest the most useful thing for his beard to do was be sat on.
Alas, I was not going to sleep with him, so I was not going to sit on his beard.
That was a little sad.
All good beards needed sitting on.
God, I needed to get a hobby. Like knitting or something. Cross-stitching. Maybe I could cross-stitch the inappropriate shit that passed through my brain.
Like the idea that all good beards needed sitting on.
That was a sassy cross stitch right the fuck there.
And how marketable was that? It was even fit for little Scrooges like me.
Fuck Christmas.
Screw Santa.
Resting Grinch Face.
That’s it. I was going to take up cross-stitching so I could stitch inappropriate things and sell them to other people like me.
“What are you smiling about?”
I shrugged. “My brain is a strange place to be today.”
“Just today?”
“Shut up and sit on that chair and be Santa.” I shoved him in the direction of the chair and went to my little stand to check my camera. It was clear and charged and ready to go, and the backup batteries were charging, so I was ready.
Night two.
We could do this.
I poked my head through the curtains and motioned for Demi to start bringing people up. We had a second elf tonight—my cousin, Alana. She was only sixteen, but she’d begged my parents for the past three years to help out.
Desperation this year meant she finally got her wish. Demi would control the lines and take their money, and Alana would guide people into the grotto on my command on a little pager-type thing.
Buzz buzz, bring me another demanding little human.
Couldn’t wait.
Couldn’t be more thrilled.
Alana guided the first person in with more enthusiasm in one sentence than I had in my entire body, and I flipped from Grinchy Little Bitch to Have A Holly Jolly Christmas in a hot second.
I was miserable.
I was not predisposed to cheery happy bullshit. Shocking, I know, but still. It was genuinely tough for me to be a cheery chestnut when all I wanted to do was hide under my bed covers, eat junk, and yell at whatever crappy sitcom I was watching on Netflix.
Alas, that was not in today’s plan.
I could do this. I could get through all this hell and live to tell the tale.
I was going to do it.
We moved child after child through the grotto. Requests were made, photos were taken, and books were dished out to every single little human who passed through the doors, even to the toddler who didn’t give a shit about Santa and just wanted to play with the tree baubles.
We only got her photo because she was allowed to hold a bauble in the photo.
It melted even my grinchy little heart for a moment.
Not too long, you know.
I had a reputation to uphold. None of it included having my heart melted.
I took a deep breath and took the final photos of the night, snapping some shots of Nicholas and two identical twin girls who had beaming smiles on their faces as they each perched on one of his knees.
