Unwrapping Mr. Roth (3 page)

Gillian was starting to have serious doubts about Nick not being real, and to compound her confusion, Nick didn’t fit the mold of who she thought Santa was.

For one thing, he didn’t actually travel by sleigh. Apparently, the sleigh was a vehicle his long-term sub, Claus, had to use by sheer necessity due to the fact he didn’t possess Nick’s elfin magic. The sleigh was enchanted with the ability to exist in multiple planes of time simultaneously so Claus could oversee the delivery of gifts to children worldwide the night before Christmas. Nick’s slew of helpers were the ones depositing the majority of gifts under trees and into stockings. The gifts were manufactured at the North Pole, delivered to major storage centers from there, and then trucked to city hubs by human teamsters like Merle where they were distributed to homes by elves.

Nick had had to explain it twice as they waited in a quiet hospital office for the nurses to get kids together. She still wasn’t sure she understood, but she got the gist that Nick only
personally
delivered gifts to very ill children and certain troubled ones.

Nick more or less ignored Gillian as they waited to be called, which suited her fine because she was still waiting for her brain to catch up and process the past twenty-four hours and to provide her with some insight.

She paced in front of the door wringing her hands and occasionally smoothing wrinkles out of her ugly dress, and he sat in a chair in the dark corner, fiddling with his phone.

Noticing his still unchanged attire, she had a thought. “Aren’t you going to change your clothes?”

He tucked the phone into the inner pocket of his jacket and crossed his legs at the knees. “No need. They can’t see me like this. They see me as the jolly fat guy.”

“You’re certain of that?”

“Absolutely.”

“Any guesses as to why
I
don’t see the jolly fat guy?”

“I could make a few.” He turned his wrist over and stared down at his watch face.

“Care to share them?”

“No time.”

She opened her mouth to rebut, but a gentle knock sounded on the door, and a grinning nursing assistant stepped in. “They’re all ready for ya!”

“Oh, boy,” Gillian said weakly, and then followed Nick down the hall.

They entered the rec room to the sound of raucous clapping and hooting from the kids, and she felt like a small-time celebrity.

The staff had already set up a special throne for Santa, which Nick guided her toward with a hand at the small of her back. The small contact somehow managed to feel efficient and possessive at the same time. Normally, she would have minded it. The guy was practically a stranger and she wouldn’t have invited his touch, but it for some odd reason, it brought her comfort. That was hard to come by in her lonely life, so she wasn’t so eager to toss it away.

He bent and whispered, “You stand nearby and write down what the tots ask for. Don’t worry if you miss a few items. I’ll catch anything you don’t.”

“Okay.” She positioned herself near the side of the chair’s platform, but Nick tugged her by the apron strings and pulled her so her back was pressed to his front.

He wrapped an arm around her waist and spun them around one hundred eighty degrees. The room had gone completely quiet, and it wasn’t because the kiddies were ogling Nick’s odd dance. They were
frozen
.

Gillian gasped. “What’d you do?”

“We’re in between one moment in time and the next,” Nick said at his usual volume, still clinching her against him. “I wanted you to see some of the magic I use to pull off Christmas. And while I have your attention, I want you to be aware of the intern in the corner. You see? The shifty-eyed one with the glasses?”

“What about him? Is he going to eat all your figgy pudding?”

“Hush, pet.” Nick gave her ass a dominating grab that had her pushing up onto her tiptoes.

She wasn’t quite sure that was covered in her employment contract, but she’d be lying if she said she didn’t like it, and obviously the guy knew when she was lying. She wasn’t going to waste her energy on trying anymore. It wasn’t like anyone else had to know, and she was pretty sure Santa could keep a secret.

“I skipped his house the last five Christmases of his childhood. I suspect he’ll make a play for you, and I suggest you avoid him.”

“How freakin’ old are you, anyway? And why should I avoid him and not
you
?”

Nick didn’t answer either question. He put his lips against her ear and trailed his tongue along the shell of it.

“Nick,
tell
me,” she said on the tail end of an indulgent moan, crushing the fabric of his pants inside her fists.

“Fine,” he muttered, pulling away, so she had to release her hold on him. Letting go seemed unnatural for some reason. “I’ll share everything I have except my woman. No one gets to touch her.”

“I’m not your woman.”

“Obviously, you are.”

“What are you talking about?”

He pulled them back into the stream of time and Nick took his seat on the stage as the first infirm child approached with her list.

His broody demeanor gone, Nick was an absolute pro—his focus only on the kids and their happiness. He told them jokes, tickled their cheeks, and just
listened
when they needed it.

Gillian listened, too, smiling as she took their lists and jotted down notes. They really did see him as Santa, and she didn’t have to use her imagination to see the happiness radiating off them.

And again, that made her wonder about his age. How old must he have been for him to have gleaned that sort of experience? He looked to be around thirty—maybe thirty-five—in human years, but something about him felt
old
. The ladies in her family always claimed to be a little psychic—going way back to their fortune-telling days in Eastern Europe, but Gillian had always thought that was just a cute story.

Maybe there’s some truth to it.
Her family had always had more secrets than money.

When all the kiddies had been escorted back to their rooms by their nurses and aides, the intern—whom Gillian had nicknamed ‘Dr. Slick’ in her mind—sidled over to her with his hands clasped behind his back. Nick was busy confirming the next year’s appearance date with the program coordinator and obviously didn’t see him.

“Well, you must be new,” Slick said, squinting at her. “I don’t remember you from last year or the year before. What happened to Camellia? Such a sweet old girl.” He stared down into Gillian’s cleavage.

She hiked up her neckline.

Jerk.

She gathered up the stack of lists the children had thrust at her during their sprints, hobbles, and wheelings toward Santa. In between Billy and Tyrone, Nick had quietly informed her that the lists had their own bit of magic and that she should be very respectful of them. She didn’t know if he’d been pulling her leg, but she was going to be careful just in case.

“Yes, I’m new,” she said simply.

“Well, pleasure to meet you,
New
.” He laughed at his own joke.

She gritted her teeth and put on the fake happy face she always wore when her preschoolers’ parents showed up making unreasonable demands about the tots’ educations. Preschoolers weren’t
supposed
to know things like the names of the three branches of government, and some of those parents needed serious reality checks.

“Say, do you live here in the area?” he asked. “Haven’t seen you around.”

“Imagine that, in a city this size.”

“Oh, I remember faces. I’d remember
yours
.”

“Well, nice to meet you.” She started walking toward Nick, hoping Slick would get the hint, but the doctor jogged around her and got in her way.

“Well, we haven’t really
met
. What’s your hurry? I’m on lunch.”

Nick, having finished his administrative discussion, walked over and looped an arm around her waist.

The gesture probably seemed platonic enough coming from a jolly guy in a red suit, but Gillian knew he wasn’t that. She could hardly wrap her mind around the magic stuff, but she’d seen the proof, thanks to some Polaroid pictures. On film, Nick was Santa. Gillian’s eyes had damned near fell out of her head when she’d glanced down at Tyrone’s keepsake shot.

“The lady wants to be left alone,” Nick said.

“Well, she can say that for herself if that’s the case,” Slick said. “We were having a nice conversation.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Fine, we have to leave now, so sorry for cutting your conversation”—Nick made air quotes around the word
conversation
—“off abruptly.”

“Oh, I see.” Slick narrowed his eyes and rubbed his bare chin. “You’re carrying a torch for her, aren’t you, Mr. Roth? I didn’t know you had it in you, grandpa!” He gave Nick’s arm a playful cuff.

Gillian tried to imagine what Slick must have been seeing: a portly, pink-cheeked old man with white hair, a full white beard, and a handlebar mustache—someone who probably wouldn’t create a ruckus. What
Gillian
saw was Nick’s brow furrowing with anger and his slightly pointed ears turning red at the tips. The pupils that hadn’t dotted his irises before suddenly began to spiral to the surface.

Oh shit. Elf rage?

Gillian twined her arm around his, suspecting mad Santa might turn out to be a very bad Santa. “We have to get moving,” she said. “Remember? That private party down in Cupertino? They’re holding the kids up late.”

Nick narrowed his eyes at the doctor who was smiling smugly. “Right.
Cupertino
.”

She hurried Nick back to the empty hallway and pushed him into a dark room. “Wow, Santa has a temper simmering under all that holly jolly mirth, huh?”

“I’m an
elf
, not an angel, Gillian. ” He straightened the wrinkles that had formed in his jacket sleeves during the hustle, and gave her a smoldering look. “And that’s why you want me, isn’t it?”

“Take me home. This whole ordeal is giving me a headache.”

“That’s the teleporting.” He pulled her body against his, ostensibly to whisk them away again. “You’ll get used to it in time.”

“I don’t want to get used to it.”

“You don’t have a choice, pet.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Naturally, he didn’t answer.

***

Nick managed to teleport Gillian back to her place without her throwing up for the second time in a night, but the mode of travel did aggravate her splitting headache even more.

He lounged on her sofa, watching her struggle to get the cap off a bottle of acetaminophen.

“I bet you could get this open with a mere flick of a finger,” she muttered.

“Perhaps.”

“It’s a damned good thing I don’t have to teach tomorrow or I’d be useless.”

“Why don’t you quit and work for me full-time?”

“Yes, that’d be an excellent use of the degree I earned by attending so many eight a.m. classes.”

“You’d still be working with kids. Just a different set and with…different needs.”

She dropped the Mrs. Claus bonnet and apron onto the kitchen table and had another go at lining up the little arrows on the pill bottle cap. “Why the hell did I buy a childproof bottle, anyway? I don’t have kids and Puffer doesn’t have thumbs.”

She finally got it open, and let out a emphatic “Alleluia.” Forcing two pills down her throat, she drank water straight from the tap.

Turning to him, she wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “How would working for you full-time benefit me? I doubt you’re going to make up the difference from my other jobs. We’re talking a lot of money annually.”

“Don’t worry about the money.”

“Easy for you to say.”

Nick loosened his cravat and fixed his inscrutable gaze on her.

“What?”

“Do you
like
living here? In this little place, I mean.”

“Yes, I like it.” She assessed the cozy living room where Nick lounged, appreciating her eggplant ultra-suede sofa set, the oversized distressed pine coffee table, her collection of salvaged bookcases, and the special little rolltop desk she’d stolen from her late granny’s house after the funeral while everyone else was at the repast. Granny had always wanted her to have it, and Gillian wasn’t going to let her aunt’s warning of ‘wait for probate’ to deter her. If she had, she would have never seen it again. She sighed, remembering the old lady who was like a mother to her for after Gillian’s own mother had died. Granny Sue had always told Gillian that she could have everything she wanted in life if she fed goodness into the universe. Gillian had believed that for a long time—until adulthood smacked her across the face with the vicious truth. She wasn’t going to be rewarded for being a decent person. The world didn’t work that way.

Still, she tried to be what Granny Sue had wanted her to be because the old lady had given up on everyone else. Someone had to try.

Gillian rubbed her eyes. “Listen, it may not be Xanadu, but it’s cozy and I like coming home to it.”

He grunted, straightened up to put both feet on the floor, and then stood. He picked up her jacket from the coat hook and held it out to her. “Would you like to spend the night at the Pole, pet? It would be easier to hop from there to where we’re going tomorrow.”

She gave her head a slow shake. “Stop calling me pet, and I don’t think so. I think the headache is enough pain for the night. Besides, where are we going tomorrow?”

“Alaska.”

She must have made a pretty interesting expression, because that pristine mien of his cracked into a smirk.

“I can obviously do long distances no problem,” he said, “but it’s easier if I jump sideways, as it were, and use the Earth’s rotation to skip through space. Making jumps up and down lines of longitude is trickier.”

“What would happen if you miss your target?”

“Nothing too bad. For an
elf
, anyway.”

She didn’t want him to elaborate and went to the door to start pushing him out. It wasn’t an easy feat judging by the way he didn’t move an inch. He may have looked to be around a hundred and seventy pounds, but he weighed a
ton
. “No, thanks. I’ll go to Happy Panda tomorrow and use the portal.” She let her fingers linger on his chest for a moment, feeling the hard ridges and cut valleys of his musculature through his fine shirt. She scraped her nails over his nipples, and didn’t realize it until his hiss jarred her back to clear-headedness.