“Oh, the normal Santa things. Lots of ho ho hoing, I’d imagine. Sit on a chair and let people take pictures with you. I’ll be right there with you.” Lana flashed him a quick grin. “Don’t worry. I won’t let any of the women sit on your lap and pull your beard.”
“I thought you were trying to convince me I should do this.” He gave her a teasing look as they stood before taking their plates to the sink.
“I can promise you all the cookies and milk you want, plus a very grateful Grass. He’s the next in line. Hannah said she’d twist his arm to make him if I couldn’t come up with an alternative. You don’t have to though. No pressure.”
If she’d stayed her smiling, cheerful self, maybe Rick would have had a chance. But the moment her smile slipped, so did his self-respect, his self-awareness of what was best for him, and any generally intelligent decisions he was capable of making.
“I’ll do it.”
As her face lit up, Rick tried not to think about how good happiness looked on her. “Thank you, Rick. You’re going to make this party absolutely perfect.”
When she kissed him, Rick was more than happy to lean against the sink and do that for a while. Breathless, they pulled apart. “Do you have plans before the party?” he asked, voice lowered with desire.
Lana’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes half-closed as he pressed soft kisses along her neck.
“I have a remote conference scheduled with the company’s board of directors,” she said. “Then, Zoey and I are meeting for a quick Santa Moose catching planning session before I have to start setting up the party.”
The things this woman did on a daily basis made his flesh crawl. Rick didn’t even like video calls on his cellphone.
“Zoey told me to bring my A game,” Lana added.
Rick wasn’t sure this woman had any other default setting than A game.
“How do you bring your A game to catch a moose?”
“I’d tell you, but it would be breaking the super secret code of moose catching between women. Sorry, Rick. You aren’t allowed in our tree house.” As she headed for the door, Lana winked at him. “See you later, Santa.”
* * *
Everything was perfect. The resort’s massive river rock fireplace had been turned into a winter wonderland.
Hannah stood in the middle of the room, pursing her lips as she oversaw the final details. She checked her watch, then glanced over at Lana.
“Well, everything’s ready on our end. This is a lot of food.”
“And I promise to pay for every crumb,” Lana told the other woman. “I know you don’t think anyone’s going to show up, but I refuse to invite a town full of people to a Christmas party and not have a town’s worth of refreshments for them.”
Lana was proud of the decorating table. It was loaded with cookies ready to be iced and covered with all kinds of sprinkles. But the best part was the gingerbread town. If anything was going to win her points with Moose Springs, it would be the miniature gingerbread town.
A soft, uncomfortable cough pulled her attention to the man standing in the doorway of the room. Rick always looked good, but he was bringing it today. His long-sleeve shirt hung on his broad shoulders just right, and he’d put on a pair of jeans so new, Lana could see the faint outline of where he’d peeled the sizing sticker off the leg.
Too bad she was about to ruin him with a Santa suit.
Rick was staring at her from across the room, jaw slightly slack.
“Oh dear,” Lana sighed. “I was hoping no one but Hannah would see me with my elf hair.”
Her teasing seemed lost on him, then Lana realized that her hair wasn’t why he wasn’t speaking.
“I had to improvise,” she told him. “The costumes came a bit snug.”
“Thank goodness for that,” he replied.
Sharing a look of mutual amusement with Hannah, Lana crossed the distance between them. She slipped her arm through Rick’s companionably.
“Now, don’t be nervous. This is your workshop. What you say goes. You are Santa, after all.”
He didn’t look convinced. “Are you sure you don’t need a cookie decorator? Or a present passer outer?”
“Nope. Santa it is. Come with me. I left your outfit in my room.”
Lana had chosen a pair of festive green pumps to complete her outfit, and the height of her heels had her at eye level with him. Rick kept glancing at her then quickly glancing away, as if guilty for having looked in the first place. It was more than a little adorable, especially considering he’d had his hands all over her that morning.
Rick followed her to her suite, then stepped inside, the door partially closing behind him but not latching shut.
“Don’t worry. You won’t accidentally see anything embarrassing. No frilly underthings to send you running screaming.”
Shoulders loosening at her joke, Rick leaned back against the door, arms folded over his chest. “I was enjoying the frilly underthings last night,” he said, voice husky with remembrance.
The door snapped shut on him, making him fall back that critical inch between cool and adorably awkward.
For the second time since he’d arrived, Lana had to bite her lip to cover her mirth. She waved him into the suite’s bedroom, taking down a garment bag from where it hung waiting on the closet door. “As much as I’d love a repeat, the guests are due to arrive in ten minutes.”
He cringed as she pressed the outfit into his arms.
Lana waited outside the bathroom door while Rick changed, using the moment to double-check her makeup and hair.
“I’m not sure this will fit,” he said, sounding dubious.
“You’re approximately the same build as my last human Santa sacrifice.”
“Ha ha.”
Unable to resist teasing him a little more, Lana added, “I’d recommend wearing your underthings, frilly or otherwise. They promise they dry-clean these in between uses, but you never really know what’s happening in a Santa suit.”
“You’re trying to make this worse, aren’t you?”
“Of course not. Now, let me see.”
“I don’t want to.”
“It can’t be too bad. Santa is iconic. If you’re dressed in velvet with a fluffy beard, you’re fine.”
“That could be any number of things.” Grumbling audibly, Rick stepped out of the bathroom. Face turning nearly as red as his outfit, he stood in front of Lana for her inspection.