Page 41 of The Santa Rules
“Did you have fun, baby girl?”
“Yup!” she says through a yawn. I sit there, stroking her hair, deliberating how to talk to her about Bella.
“What do you think about Daddy having a girlfriend?” I ask, and when I see her brows furrow, I tack on, “One day.”
“Does that mean I have to share you with someone else like the fire people?”
Something cracks in my chest at her words, and I know what I have to do, even if the thought of it hurts more than anything has in quite a while.
CHAPTER 13
BELLA
On Monday morning before class starts, Avery comes running up to me full of excitement.
“Miss Carlisle, guess what we did yesterday!”
“I don’t know, what did you do?” I totally played that off, I think to myself.
“My daddy made a movie theater in my house, and we had candy and popcorn, and he let me have the fizzy soda.”
“That’s amazing, Avery. What movie did you watch?”
“We watchedThe Santa Clause.”
“That’s a good one.” My heart somersaults in my chest at her words. Not only did he listen to my lesson, but he immediately took action for her. Fuck, do I love a man with follow-through. I mean, like. Ilikehim. I really fucking like him. But not love. It’s way too soon for that. Right?
There’s commotion from across the room, and we turn in that direction.
“They’re back! Look, they’re back!” Cade squeals.
It’s the first of December, which means my shelf is now the home of two little elves, one boy and one girl.
And after a lively debate, the class settled on Jingles McTwinkles and Bubbly Sparklepants. Don’t ask me whosename belongs to who. Several students start arguing over who gets to take the elves home, and I clap my hands to get their attention. “I was thinking that since we only have three weeks before winter break and there are more of you than there are weeknights, we could divide and conquer.”
“We can’t split them up!” Micah shouts, and I let out a resigned sigh, knowing this is going to derail my lesson plan for the day.
“Can we come up with our own elf names?” Penny asks.
“We already named our elves,” I say.
She shakes her head. “No, I mean for us. Like we have our name and our elf name.”
“I want an elf name!” Micah shouts.
“Me too!” Cade adds.
Pretty soon, the whole class is whining for an elf name, and I decide, fuck it, this is how we’re spending the rest of our day. I quickly print out some holiday coloring sheets and disperse them as kids come up one by one, and I look up possible elf names that are unique to each of their personalities.
When it’s Avery’s turn, she walks over with a nervous look on her face.
“Ready to pick out your elf name?” I ask.
She nods, and I turn back to my computer. “First, I’m going to look up the meaning of your name so we can find one that suits you best.” I stifle a laugh when I find out the meaning of Avery.Ruler of the elves. This is perfect. And then it hits me. No wonder she was so upset when her elf didn’t show up last year.
“Do you know what your name means?”
“I’m the ruler of the elves.” Something pinches in my chest at the pained look on her face. “Mommy used to call me ‘Elf Princess.’ It was her secret nickname for me. Daddy doesn’t know.” Her hands clench at her sides like she’s trying to squeeze back the tears with her fists.
