She squared her shoulders, adjusted her cape, and headed for the front door.
4
NORMALLY, MARSHALL WAS a “my-body-is-my-temple” kinda guy. He watched what he ate, exercised regularly, and got enough sleep. After six hours of intensive labor in the frigid cold, he figured it wasn’t going to hurt him to eat poorly.
And he was planning to eat very poorly.
He pulled into Burger King like it was the holy of holies. He looked at that cheesy sign he usually drove past (with his head down so he didn’t have to contemplate all that burgery goodness) and reveled in the idea of a Whopper or a bacon-double cheeseburger or maybe both, along with fifteen sides of fries, and eighteen regular Cokes.
He’d spend his afternoon in the plastic seats, leaning against a faux marble table, and watching the neighborhood go by. His neighbors would shun him and treat him badly and he would have to hide behind the pieces of The New York Times someone had carelessly left lying about.
That thought—and not the fifteen orders of fries—nearly had him swerving for the drive-through.
But he hadn’t. He had forced himself to go inside.
He had never seen the Burger King so busy. People lined up five deep. Entire families huddled together, looking miserable. It wasn’t until he eavesdropped that he understood why.
Many houses in the neighborhood had no power. Burger King was the closest fast-food restaurant—any restaurant, really—with electricity. A woman behind the counter grinned tiredly at one customer, and said, “We’ve been like this all morning.”
Startled, Marshall looked at the clock. It was morning to most people. His day was half done. More than half done, really. And now that he had stopped moving, he was done in.
No wonder he’d been seeing pretty girl elves on rooftops. He was half asleep on his feet.
He ordered a Double Whopper with large fries and both Coke and coffee—the coffee for warmth.
Lucky him, he found an open table that fit two, so he didn’t feel like he was taking spots away from cold families. Everyone sounded miserable. Kids asking if they could trick or treat when the power was out; parents giving the time-honored “we’ll see” response that probably meant no. If power lines were still down, then no one was wandering neighborhoods in costume any time soon, and he doubted that anyone would have the time or the ability to set up a one-stop trick-or-treat place.
He’d never seen anything quite like it: this full blizzard so early in the season, wrecking so many plans.
“I’d blame you for this, except I, at least, know you’re not God,” said one of his neighbors, Hester Bain, as she walked by Marshall with her ten-year-old son, Nigel.
Nigel gave Marshall an apologetic glance. Marshall shrugged. Hester Bain (“That’s Mrs. Bain to you”) had been vicious to him from the moment she found out who he had been, at a neighborhood meeting from late 2008 that he still regretted—not that he went to the meeting, but that he had said, “I know a lot of those guys—I used to work in the industry—and believe me, most of them don’t have souls.”
Apparently “most of them” had applied to him too. He tried to shrug moments like this off—after all, the Bains had lost all of their life savings with one of the scam investment houses, and they had barely managed to hang onto their house—but the words still hurt.
He made himself look away from her. He didn’t want to meet anyone’s gaze. He didn’t want to provoke more comments.
Then a flash of red caught his eye. He turned toward the door, and his breath caught.
There she was: taller than he had initially thought, older too—maybe 30—with a face as stunning as her wheat-blond hair. High cheekbones, blue eyes, delicate lips—she looked like a Russian supermodel.
She also looked stunningly out of place. It wasn’t just her red cape with the fur trim and matching red pants tucked into those black leather boots. It was the happy expression on her face.
Everyone else was miserable, a bit frightened, worried about the weather and the future, and she smiled like she had entered the happiest place on Earth.
Plus it was the day before Halloween, and she looked like Santa’s Naughty Helper before the half-naked photo shoot started.
His cheeks warmed, and he forced himself to look away. He normally didn’t think of women like that, not even exceedingly pretty women. Not even exceedingly pretty women whom he found exceedingly attractive.
He could feel her nearby. He wondered if she was staring at him, then decided that he was just being silly. She hadn’t noticed him at all. In fact, if she was from the neighborhood, she probably knew what an awful person he was supposed to be and would most certainly avoid him.
At least she hadn’t been a figment of his imagination. Although that begged the question—what had she been doing on that rooftop?
Those rooftops, if he really wanted to be accurate.
He wanted to get up and ask her. He wondered how creepy that would be. Would she think he was spying on her or something?
“Pardon me,” a low female voice with an odd accent asked him.
He lifted his head, and there she was, large as life and much more fragrant. She smelled peppermint, which somehow didn’t surprise him one bit.
“Is this seat taken?” she asked softly. “It seems to be the only one available.”
“Um, sure,” he said. “I mean, no. I mean, please, sit down.”
When was the last time a woman had him tongue-tied? When was the last time he had spoken to an attractive woman? He broke up with his most recent girlfriend a year ago, he didn’t go to bars to meet women, and no one in town wanted anything to do with him. He would have had to take a train into New York City just to find a woman who didn’t mind his background.
The pretty woman smiled at him, and the entire room brightened. He was surprised that no one else seemed to notice.
“Thank you,” she said and slipped into the hard plastic chair, setting her tray down as she did. “I have wanted to come here for a long time.”
To Connecticut? To Burger King? To this Burger King? He knew she hadn’t meant the table or the spot near the window.
“I take it you’re not local,” he said, and silently cursed himself for being idiotic.
“Sadly, no,” she said. “I am only in your fair city for a few days for work. Then I move south.”
“Move south?” he asked.
She shrugged one shoulder. “My work requires that I go from place to place.”
“And your work is on…rooftops?” he asked.
She looked at him, surprised. “How do you know that?”
“I saw you today,” he said. “It’s hard to miss you in that red cape.”
She looked down at herself as if she just realized what she was wearing. “Is it inappropriate?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It is the day before Halloween. But usually people reserve their elf costumes for Christmas.”
“Elf costume?” she said in a decidedly frigid tone.
“Well, you know,” Marshall said, his cheeks getting even warmer. “The red cape, the fur, the boots…”
God, he almost blurted that she looked like Santa’s Naughty Helper, but he somehow managed to censor that statement. Still, she looked offended.
“I am not an elf,” she said.
“I-I-I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you. It’s a very fetching costume.”
He sounded so lame, like some needy geek around a pretty girl. Which he was. Before he had gotten into Harvard, hell, before he had become an investment banker, long before he had money, he had been the math geek in the corner of the high school cafeteria, lost in his numbers, unable to talk to any girl he found attractive—even if (especially if) she had asked him about her math homework.
“It’s not a costume,” she said in that same frosty tone. “It’s my work outfit.”
His face probably matched her suit. He didn’t even know how to apologize without making things worse.
“Ah,” he said. “It’s just unusual to see people in red uniforms standing on rooftops in the lull of a snowstorm.”
“Oh,” she said, “the storm is over—at least here. It’s moving north and east.”
She sounded so sure of herself.
“That’s not what the weather people say.” Marshall had checked his phone twice to see the weather, wondering if his labors this morning had even been worthwhile. The weather experts seemed to believe the blizzard would continue—in one form or another—until November.
“Well, we have much more sophisticated equipment,” she said.
“We?” he asked.
She shrugged. “The people I work with. We have fantastic equipment, especially about the weather. We have to.”
Because they spent their days on rooftops? He felt confused. “I suppose I can’t ask who you work with.”
She shook her head. Her sandwich was almost gone, and he hadn’t even noticed her eating it. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
He flashed on that face he had seen on one of the rooftops—the first one?—the face that looked like a disembodied head. Was that one of her partners? Or was that a trick of the light?
He was about to ask her, when a strident female voice cut into their conversation. “I don’t know who you are, young lady, but you look nice.”
Marshall and the pretty non-elf woman looked toward the sound. It came from Mrs. Bain, two tables away, her lunch crumpled in front of her, her tray pushed to one side. Nigel had his head down, trying to finish his Whopper Jr.
Mrs. Bain leaned toward them as if she was going to speak confidentially, but she didn’t lower her voice at all.
“But,” Mrs. Bain continued, “that man is one of those bankers who steals from people. He’s not the sort of person you should idly converse with. He’s despicable.”
“What?” The pretty non-elf woman frowned at Mrs. Bain, then looked at Marshall. “Do you mean him?”
He almost closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see the disappointment on her face.
But she didn’t look disappointed. Just confused.
“I don’t understand all the customs here,” she was saying, “but why would a banker have snow removal equipment on the back of a big truck?”
Marshall’s breath caught. She had seen that? She had been watching him too?
“He probably repossessed it,” Mrs. Bain said with great certainty. “It would be just his style to repossess the equipment when people need it most.”
“Mom.” Nigel touched his mother’s arm. “He’s been digging people out all day. That’s how we got out of our driveway.”
Mrs. Bain gave Nigel an alarmed look. “You let him on our property? You were supposed to shovel.”
Nigel bowed his head and grabbed some French fries as if they would save him. His face was as red as Marshall’s had been.
“To be fair, Mrs. Bain,” Marshall said, “there was too much snow for anyone to handle with a shovel.”
“Fair?” she snapped. “Don’t you talk to me about fair. Don’t you talk to any of us about fair.”
Marshall sighed. He knew better. He shouldn’t have engaged. He never should have said anything. And now the pretty non-elf woman probably thought he was some kind of monster on top of being a clueless tongue-tied idiot.
“Mom,” Nigel said softly, without looking up. His fries were arranged in a neat row on his tray. “You’re not being nice.”
Mrs. Bain stood, then grabbed her empty tray, and Nigel’s half-full one. “Someday, Nigel, you’ll learn that there are people in this world who don’t deserve nice.”
Marshall would have had to agree with that, but only because he was angry, and he didn’t dare say anything. Why had she butted into his life? Why did she want to ruin it?
Oh, yeah, because people like him had ruined hers—and his was the face of the disaster, at least to her. He had to keep reminding himself of that.
“Where I work,” the pretty non-elf woman said, “we believe all can be redeemed, if they realize they’ve been naughty.”
It took Marshall a moment to understand what she had said. First, he had heard the word “naughty,” and that had conjured the wrong image for him. He didn’t need to hear her say the word “naughty,” not after he had thought it—twice.
But he got past that (he hoped) and realized that the pretty non-elf woman was defending him. It was such an unusual experience that he didn’t know what to say.
“Lie to yourself all you like, honey,” Mrs. Bain said. “A man like that will disillusion you fast enough. Come along, Nigel.”
Nigel shot Marshall another apologetic look. Marshall nodded as imperceptively as he could, and watched as the two of them stalked off. Well, as Mrs. Bain stalked. Nigel trailed like a lost puppy.
“What did you do to them?” the pretty non-elf woman asked.
So much for defense. Guilty until proven innocent. Actually, guilt by association. Years of association, actually.
He had no idea how to explain any of it, especially to a woman who clearly wasn’t from around here. She had been kind. She didn’t need to hear about his strange existence.
“It’s a long story,” he said.
“Well,” she said. “I’ve got some time. I’m ahead of schedule, and now that I’m done with this Whopper thing, I’m going to try something else.”
Then she grinned, got up, and headed back to the counter.
He watched her in surprise. He had no idea where she was going to put another entire meal—and he shouldn’t be watching her, not like this, not with the word “naughty” still floating around in his brain.
He should do the honorable thing: He should get up and leave. Right now. That way he wouldn’t embarrass himself any more and he wouldn’t upset the neighbors.
But this was the nicest anyone had been to him in a long time—at least, anyone local.
Only she wasn’t local.
And somehow, the job she did had something to do with being nice.
So maybe “nice” was just a reflex for her. Still, it made him feel better. He hadn’t realized how down he had been until the pretty non-elf woman stood up for him.
He sipped his now-cold coffee. Then he realized that the Burger King was quiet. Most of the patrons were staring at him. Most of them recognized him, either from the neighborhood or those ill-advised neighborhood meetings.
If the pretty non-elf woman stayed here for a few days, she would want a good experience. And people wouldn’t be nice to her if they thought she was a friend of his.
He put the lid on his coffee so that he wouldn’t spill it, and stood up. He needed to leave. Not for him so much, but for her. She didn’t need to get sucked into his world, not even for an hour, not in a fast-food restaurant where half the neighborhood had gone for lunch. She had looked so joyful when she had come in here.
He didn’t want—even inadvertently—to trample on that joy.
5
HE WAS CUTE. No, he was better than cute. He was nice. And really handsome with that dark hair (which needed just a bit of a trim), a little stubble from his long day, and the redness in his cheeks. She hadn’t seen a man with such redness in his cheeks this far from home, and she found that she liked it.
Julka stood at the end of the line, bouncing a little on her feet. She liked him, even if other people didn’t seem to. He seemed kind. She had no idea what he had done to that horrible lady. (Then Julka sighed at herself: she wasn’t supposed to think of anyone as horrible, just unreformed.) And even though he had supposedly treated that lady poorly, he had shoveled her walk, saving her little boy from doing work that might have hurt him.
Because the handsome man was right: anyone with snow experience knew that too much snow had fallen in a short period of time to get rid of it with a simple shovel. It would take mechanical equipment (for the non-magical humans) or some real magical muscle to get rid of the snow in a timely fashion.
And as she had learned
throughout her long years at the North Pole, some snow simply refused to be gotten rid of.
She made herself look at the menu. So many choices. If she had known that there were this many choices in all of the various restaurants in the Greater World, she would have stopped eating Delbert’s cooking long ago. She had Greater World money, with more of it appearing as she completed each day’s task.
Julka turned toward the table only to see the handsome man get up. His shoulders were hunched forward and he was holding his tray in his left hand. He looked defeated.
Something in that interaction with the horrible woman (to heck with it: that appellation was staying) had really bothered him.
“Don’t go,” she said, slipping out of her place in line. “I’ll buy you a fresh coffee.”
He gave her that sad smile of his and shook his head. He came toward her, and said softly, “Look, I’m not the most popular person here, and talking to me might ruin your time in this town. So it’s best if we don’t—”
“Nonsense,” she said. “They already saw us talking. Whatever damage there was is done. Besides, I have some things to ask you.”
His sad smile got sadder.
“No,” he said. “It’s best if we just part ways now. But thank you for your kindness. It means a lot to me.”
Then he bowed his head, and walked out of the Burger King.
She almost hurried after him—she hated seeing anyone that upset—but he had been clear. He didn’t think it was good for her to be talking to him.
Which just showed his kindness again.
After he disappeared from view, she rejoined the line. Everyone was staring at her—except for the people who were studiously avoiding her gaze. No one was talking.
Santa Series: Three Stories of Magical Holiday Romance Page 2
