“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