Christmas Shopping for a Billionaire (3 page)

Declan shrugs, eyes glued to my breasts. “You said
sexy
elf costume,” he says in a weird voice.

“This isn’t sexy?” My eyebrows are buried in the mall skylight.

“This is a
slutty
elf costume.”

I glare at Greg. “Told you.” I turn to Declan. “I’m sorry. I know it’s a bit much—”

“What are you apologizing for? Slutty beats sexy any day.” His hands slip around my waist and he pulls me into a kiss that curls my toes.

Greg texts and clears his throat. “Um, guys? I have a serious problem here. No replacement Santa, and I have to take Judy to a doctor’s appointment.” Greg’s wife is a long-term breast cancer survivor, and while I don’t know the details, everything has been in a good place for a while. The look on his face makes my stomach sink, though. 

Declan goes somber, too.

And then Greg and I turn simultaneously and give Declan the once-over, like Clinton and Stacy on
What Not to Wear
.

Except we’re doing the Christmas Mall Edition: Santa Style.

“Oh, no,” Declan says, reading our minds. “No.”

“It pays $30 an hour and you can get a free picture on the next Santa’s lap.”

“I make $30 every time I cough,” Declan snorts. I’ve never heard him snort before. Today is a day for discoveries and revelations. Grumpy Cat looks and snorts. What’s next? Farting in bed and not excusing himself? Or, worse, pulling the covers over my head and Dutch Ovening me? 

Mom says men save that for the second anniversary.

“Your nipple is, um…” Greg says. To me. Speaking of revelations. I tuck it back in. I might need to walk over to the scrapbook store and get a little rubber cement so these puppies will stop trying to escape.

“What’s your currency, man?” Greg asks Declan, gone from begging to outright negotiation. “You’ve got me by the balls.” 

“I’ve got my own balls. Don’t need yours.”

The parents in line are murmuring louder and louder. “If there’s no Santa, the entire mystery shop is compromised, and twenty kids out there are going to start crying,” I say to Declan, pleading.

His eyes rake over my body, angry and determined, the deep “no” in there. He means it. I know he does. I use the only leverage I have.

“Greg says I can take the costume home with me. If you fill in for Santa.” I reach between us and make a suggestive stroke. The North Pole does indeed exist.

Declan groans. “Ho. Ho. Ho.”

I stand on tiptoes and lick his ear. “I will be one for you if you do this. It’s only for an hour or two,” I plead.

“I look nothing like Santa,” he says in a hard, flat voice, but arousal flickers in his eyes. He looks behind the wall and sees the sea of kids. Those green eyes look worried. He’s an old softy underneath this granite-like appearance. 

I think. I hope so.

“Name your price,” Greg adds, already taking off the costume, handing Declan the hat.

Eyes the color of my suit flash at Greg, angry and exasperated. “Quit calling her for mystery shop jobs. Forever.”

Greg’s hand shoots out. “Deal.” He takes the jacket off and hands it to Declan with a warning. “It’s hot in the suit, so you might want to take your sweater off.” 

“I don’t have anything on under it,” Declan explains.

“That’s fine,” I peep. My mouth waters. He gives me a glare. I stand by my words.

“Where’s the pillow?” Declan asks as he slips into the Santa pants. Luckily, he’s wearing black leather shoes that are perfect.

“What pillow?”

“The pillow for my belly.”

Greg laughs, his real belly shaking. “I didn’t need one. I think there’s one back on the counter.” And then he’s gone, calling back, “Merry Christmas to you, and to you a good hour.”

“You are going to pay for this,” Declan grouses. “And these pants are a little wet.” He sniffs one leg. “Is that pee?” 

“No,” I lie.

He’s standing just behind the wall on the back of Santa’s throne, jeans peeking out from his Santa suit, red suspenders hanging down. In one fluid movement, like something out of a stripper show, he reaches for the hem of his green cashmere sweater and slowly pulls it up, biceps flexing, his skin gleaming under the calibrated Christmas lights in the mall.

It’s one of those moments that should have a soundtrack attached to it, something Barry White. Slow and sensual, the kind of music that gets you wet and throbbing. Time stops, and all the moms walking by telepathically communicate the presence of my hot boyfriend taking his clothes off, pecs on display, a free peep show at the most stressful moment in the Christmas rush.

A regular community service Declan’s performing here.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Mommy Masochist taking pictures and texting someone. Whatever. Tycho managed not to crease for his photo and now he’s running around with a $9 cupcake from the gourmet bakery in the mall, chocolate smears everywhere. He looks like a Tide commercial. 

The sweater makes Declan’s thick, dark, wavy hair stand up a tiny bit with static electricity, and he reaches one perfectly sculpted arm up to smooth it back. I hear a decidedly female moan from behind me, and then look.
Really
look at the moms around us, most biting their lower lips and squirming.

That’s right. Look all you want.
I’m
the one who gets to touch.

He slides the red suspenders up over his shoulders and looks like something in a Santa firefighter’s calendar. If he had a big hose in his hands right now.

Boy does
that
sound porny.

Let’s try again: “Hey!” I murmur, sliding up next to him and placing a strategic hand on his hip.
Mine
, I communicate telepathically in a voice designed to make all the other women’s heads explode like a cantaloupe dropped from a second-story window.  

Mine.

“Hey what?” He’s still pissed. Doing the Santa bit, but pissed.

“How about you bring the suit home, too? We can play Santa Disciplines the Naughty Elf,” I whisper in his ear as he dons the fake beard. 

“That’s one of your father’s favorite games,” Satan says from behind a fake ficus across the way.

Chapter Four

“MOM?”

“Just look at you two! I knew Shannon was here as a beautiful little perky elf, but Declan as Santa! You two were meant to be together,” Satan, a.k.a. my mother, says, reaching in to give Declan a kiss, ignoring my protests. 

My sister Amy is with her. “Perky is right. Shannon, your, um, headlight is…” I look down. One is pointed toward New Hampshire and the other toward Antarctica.

I turn around and readjust. “What are you two doing here?”

“Amanda texted to let us know.”

“I hate her.”

“She’s your best friend. You can’t hate her.”

“Why isn’t she here doing the elf impression?”

“She’s delivering toys to needy kids.”

“Flimsy excuse.” I look around the wall and see that Mommy Masochist is back in line, dragging a very chocolate-y Tycho. The line’s gotten a lot longer suddenly. Doubled, even.

“Wow,” I say. “The line’s really getting long.”

“Blame it on Hot Santa,” Amy says, pointing to Declan, who scowls.

“You look just like Chuckles!” Mom gasps.

It makes Declan’s frown darken. Even Mom backs off.

“Please don’t call my boyfriend ‘hot,’” I chide Amy. “It’s gross.”

“No,” she explains, pulling out her phone. “#HOTSANTA. Some mommy blogger who’s here at the mall started it on Twitter with pics of Declan getting dressed, and now Jessica Coffin’s made it go viral.”

“What?”

She’s holding up a picture of Declan in all his broad-chested, thick-pec glory, adjusting one red suspender and looking good enough to ride.

Like Santa’s sleigh.

“But, but—” he protests. “That was five minutes ago!” He’s rattled, and Declan doesn’t
do
rattled.

“Five minutes is like a day on Twitter. You could end up with a flashmob,” Amy says.

“Hot Santa, huh?” I smack his ass and send him on his way. “Time to go make some good little girls and boys very happy.”

“I think he’s got mostly naughty girls out there,” Mom says.

“Humph,” is all I can reply. I see the photographer out there, working the longer line, more cash changing hands. Greg trusted me to get this right, and I will. I march out there, ignoring my mom and sister, wondering if the day can get any weirder. By the time I get to the guy, he’s worked his way to the front of the line.

The new photographer ignores my outstretched hand as I try to introduce myself and says something in a clipped, accented voice to the mom standing with her little boy. She smiles nervously at him, clearly not understanding a word he says. He sounds like a mix of a Russian hit man and the Swedish chef from the Muppets.

Which means he’ll probably shoot me dead with a silenced gun and have my body made into something they serve at the shady burger joint in the mall food court before he finishes a cigarette.

“Come here! Look here!” he says in that severe accent, his eyes dead. The guy could be anywhere from twenty to fifty, with a face so angular you could use it to dig a hole under the Berlin Wall (circa 1988).

The little boy who is about to perch himself on Declan’s lap begins to cry as the photographer sighs, throws his hands up, and spews a stream of foreign-language invective that might well be the words to
Goodnight Moon
but sounds like a laundry list of all the ways he’s going to cook this boy’s pancreas for dinner.

“We have our own photographer, actually,” the mother says nervously as she comforts the sweet boy, whose eyes are teary. He has bright blonde hair and a giant cowlick on his forehead hairline. The green eyes make me think of Declan. 

The photographer starts screaming in what I now realize really
is
Russian, making a handful of kids in line start crying, parents on smartphones texting and calling and trying to look like they’re doing something.

And then: Santa starts shouting back at the photographer. In Russian. Declan speaks
Russian
?  

The Russian man spits on the ground. Santa hands the kid off to his mom and stands, grabbing the photographer’s arm and pulling him behind the wall on the other side of Santa’s chair.  

A massive wave of anxiety and fear spills through me as Amy and Mom hide behind a planter and my nipples decide to try to run away, too. I can’t catch my breath and everything happens so fast I feel the room spin.

There is this 1980s movie that Mom and Dad loved to watch over and over when we were teens. It’s
A Fish Called Wanda
, and there’s this scene where John Cleese speaks Russian to Jamie Lee Curtis and it makes her so hot and horny she turns into a sex machine. I always giggled with embarrassment, and later lots of eye rolls, at the idea when we watched the film.

But finding myself horny, wet, and suddenly turned on from zero to humpgirl by the sound of Declan speaking Russian makes me see that Jamie Lee Curtis and I are soul sisters.

Getting
that
aroused while wearing a too-tight elf costume that turns into a g-string when I stand up straight is all kinds of
wrong
.

Declan’s hissing in his deep, clipped voice, so angry and cold looking that I wonder if he’s really a Russian hit man and the American stuff is just an act. Maybe he’s not actually the VP of marketing for his father’s mega-billion corporation. Maybe he’s a secret double agent working for some shadow government and I’m just his cover. 

I take a careful inventory of my elf costume.

Green satin. A skin volcano up top. Sequins unthreading. High heels with candy cane striped stiletto points. If I’m a double agent’s cover, then the Illuminati are in really big trouble.

The photographer tosses his camera onto a chair and barrels down on Declan, snatching Declan’s Santa hat off his head and throwing it down, stomping and spitting on it. His face is inches from my boyfriend’s, red rage all over as the Russian words are flying back and forth in a volley that is making my little red nub try to break away and drown itself in a fifth of vodka. 

The Russian dude wrenches Declan’s arm, then rips his red jacket off Declan, who is now shirtless and bearded, fighting this guy.

“Beat his ass, Santa,” one of the dads in the crowd shouts. A bunch of the fathers have let go of their kids’ hands and are craning to catch a view of the fight. I grab the first thing I can use as a weapon, just sitting there on the counter, and run after, whacking the Russian dude over and over. 

With the belly pillow from the Santa costume.

And then the photographer reaches for something on his hip, and everything goes into slow motion. Declan grabs his arm and twists it, hard. The guy headbutts Declan, a sickening crack breaking through the pan-flute version of “The Little Drummer Boy” that fills the mall’s sound system. Every parent is still, eyes wide and mouths shaped by shock.

Blood trickles into Santa’s beard and down his bare chest. I scream. 

Declan ignores the blood and reaches for the guy’s hip just as a swarm of overstuffed mall cops (any of which could easily play Santa) arrive on their Segways. He lifts up the guy’s jacket and exposes the hip where he was about to reach and—

A gun.

As the security guys cuff him and call for police backup, some of the dads have phones high in the air, taping everything. Not a single mom or dad has covered their child, pulled them behind a post or a piece of furniture, or walked away. Fortunately, the kids just stayed in line, good little do-bees who haven’t had every Santa fantasy crushed. 

Something falls out of the photographer’s pocket as he’s half dragged off. A giant pile of money. Then another. 

“Hey! We paid extra for the good pictures!” a parent calls out. “You can’t take the photographer away!” The mall cops step in and try to calm the crowd while I run to Declan. 

“You speak
Russian
?” I gasp as Declan walks toward me with a swagger. Either that, or he’s staggering.

“My nose is fine, thank you,” he says, irritated. “And yes, I speak it. Have since high school.” He glares at me. Mom and Amy run up, Mom holding out a tissue. He takes it and presses it against his nose as he tips his head up, eyes locked on me. “I go through that and all you can ask me is…”