Page 41 of Naughty Santa

As Joe slipped out the back door and the icy air hit him in the face, he thought about how conceited that sounded. She hadn’t said she’d fallen for him. He didn’t know her well enough to know how she acted when she was in love. This was all about how he felt when he was with her. How she looked at him. How everything about them from the way she fit in his arms to the way she fit into his nephew’s life felt so fucking right.

Joe jogged across the backyard to Lydia’s house and let himself in the back door. He quickly stripped out of the Santa suit, shoving it into a sack in the mudroom in case Jaden came over here before he could collect it.

He pulled his regular clothes on quickly because the mudroom wasn’t heated like the rest of the house. After running a hand through his hair, he laced up his boots, shrugged into his coat, and headed back.

Jaden would want to show him the toy bulldozer he got, and Joe had to act surprised. He also needed about a dozen cookies and maybe some fudge. Then he needed Paris.

He would always need Paris.

Joe knew, deep down, it was too soon to tell her that, but the urge to blurt it out kept bubbling up.

He made his way to the front of the Holly Jolly and pulled the door open. Jaden thought he’d had a job that ran late outside of town helping a guy with his barn. Thankfully, his nephew didn’t need any further details than that to believe it, and when there were new toys and sugar involved, the young boy wasn’t good at telling time, so he wouldn’t realize how long Joe had been absent.

The noise had died down significantly, and the crowd was starting to thin out a bit as the families with younger kids headed home. Joe waved to his mom and started in their direction.

“Look what Santa gave me!” Jaden said, running at him as soon as he spotted him.

“Wow!” Joe caught him and swung him up in his arms.

“It’s just like the one you and I looked at online!”

“It’s even cooler than it looked!” Joe said. “I bet Santa did something extra to it for you when he found out you’d be here tonight.”

Jaden’s eyes got wide. “How did he know I’d be here?”

“He knows everything,” Joe told him with a wink. Jaden told him all about the toys his friends got as Joe scanned the crowd, looking for Paris. He finally found her over by the registers. She was talking to a couple of men he didn’t recognize, who didn’t have any kids with them.

He frowned and shot Sandy a look, tipping his head in that direction.

Sandy shrugged. “Hey, Jaden, I really want to see that cool basketball that Marcus got from Santa.” She held out her hand, and Joe swung Jaden to the ground. “Come on over there with me.”

“Okay! See you later, Joe!”

“See ya, kiddo.” Joe turned immediately toward Paris and the two men.

“I’m so pleased to know that you see everything I do in this place,” he heard Paris say as he approached.

“We absolutely do. I’m sorry that wasn’t clear,” the one to her right said. He was probably in his late forties, with gray peppering his temples and a used car salesman smile.

Paris tilted her head. “I’m fairly certain I didn’t misinterpret what you said about the Christmas side.”

Her back was to Joe. Both men were engrossed in what she was saying. They’d clearly been tuning out all the hubbub around them and that included him now.

“We were actually quite surprised by how taken we were with everything,” the older man said. He had a completely white head of hair, but his smile was much less fake than the first guy’s.

Joe scowled but hung back. He hadn’t been invited to this conversation. He didn’t like the looks of these guys, but it was clear that Paris wasn’t displeased to have been pulled off to the side, so he would just have to hang back until she was done.

“This place reminded me so much of the store in the little town in Ohio where I grew up,” the older of the two men said. “I was quite overcome when we were last here.”

“You had a store that was half a feed store and half a year-round Christmas shop?” Paris asked, her tone light.

The man chuckled. “No. But the local department store would decorate the entire first floor like a Christmas village starting in the first part of November,” he said. “It was…well, quite magical really. Walking in here the other day brought it all back. Your website doesn’t do it justice.”

Paris nodded. “I would agree. That’s something we need to work on.”

Joe felt a surge of pride. For her. She’d worked her sweet little ass off on getting the store cleaned and decorated, and it looked amazing. He liked hearing more people telling her that.

“And I want to apologize for how long it’s taken us to get back to you. We got tied up in some last-minute complications with another merger, and I’m sorry to say that it’s taken more time and attention than we’d expected. But we are very interested in the Holly Jolly and would like to talk numbers,” the younger man said.

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