Page 4 of Mistletoe Face Off

“I sure am, ma’am,” I reply. “Pleased to meet you.”

“We are so excited to have you here, Mr. Clarke. The kids have been going crazy for the idea of the whole team coming tonight. The Blizzard are quite popular around here, you know.”

“I hope to put on a good show for them, ma’am. And it's Harrison.”

“I'm Daphne. It's great to meet you, Harrison.” She eyes my bags. “Are those for the kids?”

“One of the bags is. The other is my costume.”

“Do you mean your hockey costume?” she asks.

“We don't usually call that a costume,” I reply with a smile. Daphne is clearly not an ice hockey fan, even if many of the attendees here are. “I'm Santa tonight.”

“You’re Santa?” she asks dubiously, eyeing me up.

“That’s me. Your six foot five guy in a red suit.”

Her face lights up in a smile as she claps her hands together. “Oh, goodie! The kids do so love a Santa. Although I have to say, you don't look much like him.”

I pat the bag. “That's what this is for, and there seem to be some other costumes in there, too. An elf, and some other stuff.”

I think of the missed opportunity for Lorcan to be my elf helper, or better yet, wear the short red dress in the bag, playing my Mrs. Claus. But I guess I’ll just have to store that imageaway for when he next says something that riles me up. So yeah, probably when I see him later today.

“All righty. Come this way, Harrison. Let's get you fixed right up before the kids get here. We need to keep the magic of Christmas alive, don't we?” Daphne says.

“We sure do,” I reply as she leads me to a small room at the back of the hall. As she pushes the door open, I notice it's filled with boxes and plastic tubs, with only a small floor space for where I can transform into Mr. Claus.

“It's not much, but it's the only privacy we've got here,” she explains. “Other than the front office, that is. But that's full of people working, and I'm sure you don't want to get changed in front of them.”

“This is just great,” I tell her as I scan the small room, wondering if there is even enough room for a guy my size to get changed without knocking stacks of boxes over.

I guess I'm about to find out.

“All righty. In that case, I'll leave you to it. The rest of your team should be here soon and then the kids are set to arrive in about fifteen or twenty minutes. Should I knock on the door when we're ready for you to come out?”

“Sure. Sounds good.”

“All righty,” she says once more before she closes the door of the room behind her.

Immediately, I get to work, unzipping the bag and pulling out of the first red thing I find. Only, it’s not the suit. It’s a Mrs. Claus dress. AsexyMrs. Claus dress with straps and a short skirt, at that.

Huh. No wonder Santa looks so dang happy all the time.

I reach in and pull out a plastic bag filled with white hair. That must be the wig and beard. I slip them on, trying not to think about who wore them last as I breathe in their mustiness.

There’s no mirror in the room, so I pull my phone from my back pocket and switch on the camera. Peering back at me is the most ridiculous version of myself I’ve seen since I last dressed up for one of Chase’s legendary Halloween parties a couple years back. He got the whole team to go as 70’s disco dancers, complete with bell bottom pants, medallions, and curly wigs and handle-bar mustaches.

This? This is a whole other level.

I remember the prosthetic nose and find it in a plastic box, which I snap open to reveal the creepy sight of a very realistic looking human nose. Pushing thoughts of Mafia-style horses heads from my mind, I fit the fake nose over my own, smoothing out the edges, and am surprised to see that I look nothing like me—other than my green eyes, peeking out from under the curly white wig.

I can hear voices and the sound of scampering feet coming from out in the hall. The kids must be arriving. Better hurry it up.

Next: the suit.

I rummage around some more and find the jacket and pants. They’re bright red with white fur trim, just as you'd expect them to be, and it has a belt with an oversized gold buckle, and a pair of black boots Coach assured me would fit my oversized feet.

I look doubtfully from my sneaker-clad size 15s to the boots that look more like they’d fit an elf. Or, you know, a more regular sized guy.

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