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“Not bad at all,” Missie says with some surprise. “You want to try the chair?”
“Carly’s right, I’m going to cook in this,” I tell her. “I’m already sweating.”
“Stop grumbling.” She leads me around to the chair. “Go on, sit down.”
I lower myself into the chair. “Wow, this is hard.”
“What are you, eighty?”
“I’m going to be here for four hours. I don’t have a lot of padding.”
Carly chuckles. “I’ll find you a cushion.”
“Don’t pamper him,” Missie tells her. “He just loves complaining.”
“Come and sit on my knee and say that.”
They both laugh. “Don’t tempt me,” Missie says, “I’ll squash you.”
“Oh, that’s it—you’re on my naughty list. I’ll have to put youovermy knee instead.”
Immediately, she blushes almost the same color as my Santa suit. Carly stares at her and says, “Whoa,” laughs, and goes out, hopefully to find a cushion.
“Alex,” Missie scolds, tucking her hair behind her ear. “What’s got into you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m totally going to find all the badly behaved children now and make them come and see Santa.”
“Bring it on, girl. I can handle it.”
She rolls her eyes and gestures to the pile of wrapped gifts in the box by my side. “Every kid gets one of those, okay? They’re just small bits, coloring sets, that kind of thing.”
“Sure. Hey, I wanted to ask you something.”
She bends and switches on the fairy lights, illuminating the tent. “Ooh, nice. Sorry, yes?”
“Would you like to come to our staff Christmas party? It’s on the twenty-first. We’re holding it at The Pioneer. It’s Christmas trivia night, so we’ve booked half a dozen tables, and then there’ll be drinking and dancing.”
She studies me, bemused. “I’m not staff.”
“No…”
“Do you invite all your patients?”
“Technically you’re not a patient either.”
We study each other for about twenty seconds.
“You’re going?” she asks eventually. “I wouldn’t have thought you were the party type.”
“I’m not, normally. But this year…” I shrug. “I thought I’d make an exception.”
Still she hesitates. “I’m not sure…”
“I’m still prepared to put you over my knee if you’re not a good girl,” I tell her.
That makes her laugh. “All right.”
