Page 9 of My Not-So-Secret Santa

“Sure, yeah.Yeah.What are you umm…”

I eyeball her nervously with no idea what comes next in the gorgeous stalker handbook.Is she going to call me Luke?Demand I strip off my pants to give her a lap dance in nothing but my service apron?Most of the Saturday night crowd at the Crimson Lounge comes from the Chicago area, but there’s always been a chance that someone from Beaucoeur would turn up and then connect the dots back to their friendly hometown brunch waiter.After a nervous few months working both jobs, though, I started to relax.What are the odds, right?

Fuck, I should’ve been more careful.I always dance in sunglasses, but maybe that’s not enough.I should’ve used hair-darkening gel onstage or done more to disguise my voice.And I definitely shouldn’t have given Ponytail any clues that I recognized her on Saturday, but my fucking cock overruled my already shaky common sense.And look where that got me.

I’m about two seconds away from a full-blown panic attack when she says, “I’m here about the job.”

An “ungggh” sound spills from my mouth as my sputtering brain lurches to a halt.Does this mean she didn’t track down Luke Lawless like some kind of well-dressed Terminator?In my confusion, I blurt out the first thing I think of.“The dishwashing job?”

Her gingerbread brows arch.“I suppose I can wash dishes if that’s what you need.”

She’s waiting with such calm patience that I start to realize she actually has no idea it was me under the Santa outfit on Saturday, which is ninety-eight percent great.My secret appears to be safe.Of course, there’s also the two percent that wants her to know I was the one who made her gasp and press her knees together—fuck yeah, I noticed—before she hauled herself back under control and made me feel about three feet tall.And right now, I need that two percent to shut the hell up so I can get out of this without losing any paychecks.

Ponytail clears her throat and shifts her weight from foot to foot, and I realize I’ve been staring at her like I’m the potential stalker and not the other way around.

I manage a jerky nod and say, “Right.Of course, right.Let me go grab Darryl.”

I hope it doesn’t look like I turn and sprint to the manager’s office even though I definitely turn and sprint to the manager’s office.So she’s not here for Luke, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t going to recognize me eventually.I’d been close enough to her on Saturday that I felt her breath catch as I dragged my fingers down her throat.Then again, I was in a hat, beard, and glasses, and it’s not like she had any reason to remember the details about her waiter from a few days before.

Get a grip, Jonesy.She’s in the restaurant foyer acting perfectly normal.I’m the one making it weird.So what if I spent huge chunks of my weekend obsessing about her while she clearly wasn’t giving me a second thought?That doesn’t mean I can make it her problem.I’m not going to make it her problem because it’s not going tobea problem.Everything’s fine.So far nobody figured out who Luke Lawless really is, and that isn’t changing today.

I take a second to catch my breath outside of Darryl’s office so everything seems normal before I knock on the door.

“Hey, boss.”Shit, my voice is an octave higher than it should be.I try again.“A woman’s here about a job?”

Darryl’s been hunched over his desk, frowning at the computer, and he brightens and hits save on his spreadsheet.“Great!That’ll be Olivia Fielding.She’s here for the hostessing position.”

“Olivia,” I murmur.Then I blurt, “Hostessing position?”

He looks at me like I’m speaking Martian.I’ve never been quite this scattered at Verdant before.Even when we’re in the weeds with a post-church mob here to order everything and tip nothing and I’m so sleep-deprived that I can feel the individual blood vessels pulsing in my brain, I’m unruffled and smiling on the outside.But Olivia’s sudden appearance—Olivia, fuck, I know her name now, it’s Olivia—has me wild-eyed and sweaty.

Darryl groans as he hauls his puffy sixty-something body out of his chair and stretches the muscles in his back.“Brita landed a spot in some kind of holiday chorale in Chicago and raced out of town Friday like her butt was on fire,” he says.“She’ll be back after Christmas, so we just need somebody for the next few weeks.”

“Oh.”I’m always a zombie on Mondays after performing all weekend or else I might’ve been curious about why one of the newer waitresses had been half-assedly working the hostess stand today.I sag against the wall as the rest of it clicks into place.

Ponytail—Olivia—wants a job here.Here, where I work and occasionally have dirty thoughts about her that I’m hoping will go away, like any day now.I let my head fall against the bulletin board pressing into my back, knocking an OSHA poster loose as I consider whether to laugh or cry or fall to my knees in gratitude.

“Well?Are you coming?”

I lift my head to find Darryl straightening his tie, his broad pink face a perfect match for the ugly paisley pattern.

“Coming where?”

“I want you to sit in on the interview.Get June to cover your tables.”

He’s gone before I can object or even ask why.And to be honest, I don’t want to fight it.I’m dying to sit across the table from Olivia as she talks about herself.God, please let her be so boring that I get over this weird obsession.

I push myself off the wall and give June instructions about covering my current tables, although I sneak constant glances at the four-top where Olivia and Darryl are seated.At least we’re in the lull between breakfast and lunch when the flow of guests has mostly slowed to a trickle, so I probably won’t lose too much in tips.Then again, I stand to lose a lot more than a few tables’ worth of tips if Olivia suddenly realizes she saw a hell of a lot of me on Saturday night and blurts it out to Darryl.

My heart starts to race again—don’t get fired, can’t get fired, not this close to Christmas—and I take slow, deep breaths until I’m calm enough to claim the chair next to Darryl.I even sound like a mostly normal human adult when I say, “Hi, Olivia.”

“Call me Liv.”A smile lights her face, and goddammit, I can’t help but smile back.“What should I call you?”

She cocks her head, clearly waiting for me to offer up my first name.Ha.The only person here who knows that is Darryl, and that’s only because he took the info on my Social Security card for my hiring paperwork and promptly forgot it.

“Jonesy.”The pathetic hurt feelings from our last two interactions bob to the surface, and I pointedly add, “Which you know from my name tag.”

Her face pulls into a frown as if she senses I’m annoyed but doesn’t know why, and now I want to smooth my thumb along that confused line where her brows meet to see if I can make her catch her breath again.Fuck, this woman makes me feel every feeling under the sun, and I’m not sure what to be most worried about.My wild attraction to her?Her general indifference to me except when I’m in a thong?Or the fact that she could blow my cover about wearing said thong for money?

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