Bagging Santa's Elf

by Kayleigh Sky

  Bagging Santa's Elf

  Kayleigh Sky

  Contents

  Also by Kayleigh Sky

  Bagging Santa’s Elf

  Kiss Drunk Books

  1. Santa’s Helper

  2. The Christmas Party

  3. Car Trouble

  4. Role Playing

  5. A Cab Ride

  6. Wooing Santa’s Elf

  7. A Heartfelt Reveal

  8. Home for Christmas

  Don’t go yet!

  About the Author

  Backbone

  Pretty Human

  Doll Baby

  Trinkets

  Angel Dork

  Jesus Kid

  No Luck

  A Vampire’s Heart

  A Vampire’s Promise

  Also by Kayleigh Sky

  Backbone

  Pretty Human

  Doll Baby

  Trinkets

  Angel Dork

  Jesus Kid

  No Luck

  A Vampire’s Heart (Ellowyn Found Book 1)

  A Vampire’s Promise (Ellowyn Found Book 2)

  A Christmas Novella

  BAGGING

  SANTA’S

  ELF

  Kiss Drunk Books

  Walnut Creek, California

  The sale of this book without its cover is unauthorized. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed.” Neither the author nor the publisher has received payment for the sale of this “stripped book.”

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Kayleigh Sky

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  Published 2018.

  For information, address Kiss Drunk Books in writing at 712 Bancroft Road, Ste 277, Walnut Creek, CA 94598.

  ISBN: 978-1-7329134-2-4 (ebook)

  Santa’s Helper

  An elf with big, pensive eyes and a skinny, waif-like face stared at Kyle from the mirror. Kyle leaned on the counter, palms on either side of the sink, and blinked. The elf blinked back.

  Oh, God.

  A minute ago, he’d been a blond, gray-eyed guy, and now—

  Now he was an elf. And not just any elf, but a girl elf.

  Goddam Vince. He had to have gotten the girl costume on purpose. Plotting a stupid joke to get Kyle back for rejecting his proposal. Was Kyle crazy for saying no? An icy wave of worry broke over his skin. What if Vince left him?

  Well, what if he didn’t? Wouldn’t marrying Vince be like embracing chaos? A crazy rollercoaster of a life when all Kyle wanted was to get off the fucking rollercoaster for once?

  And anyway…

  “He doesn’t care about me getting this promotion,” he muttered to the long-haired chick in the glass.

  Who didn’t look like she gave a good goddam about Kyle’s predicament. Or that he was an elf when he was supposed to be Bob Cratchit. How did the damn costume shop get this screwed up? There was zero connection between a poverty-stricken Victorian era clerk and Bambi the Friendly Christmas elf.

  He was screwed.

  “Isn’t going as Bob Cratchit a little passive-aggressive?” Vince had asked, sipping his morning coffee with sleepy-eyed contentment. One of the few mornings they’d done more than pass each other in the hallway.

  “How is it passive-aggressive? Bob Cratchit is a Christmas character. From Scrooge. The most Christmassy of all Christmas stories.”

  Vince had smiled over the rim of his cup before he swallowed and said, “Christmassy?”

  “It’s a word.”

  “If you say so. I still think it’s passive-aggressive to go to a party where the winner of the promotion will be announced as the penniless clerk of a heartless, anti-Christmas boss.”

  Well, no worries about that now, because Kyle wasn’t going to be the winner. Not in this costume. What the hell would his boss think? His conservative, probably homophobic boss, though Kyle didn’t know that for sure. But Ashwood Grove wasn’t exactly a bastion of gay pride. Kyle wasn’t in the closet really, but this? What if he lost the promotion? Was that Vince’s plan? Hot-blooded, artistic, humanity-loving Vince. The guy was so damn comfortable in his own skin he made Kyle want to crawl right out of his.

  Such a mismatch. What if Vince got tired of him? Stopped noticing him? And why wouldn’t he? Kyle was tired himself too. He’d been fine until that damn proposal had made him act like a complete asshole. Buy me a car first.

  Who said things like that?

  Your mother.

  Oh, yeah.

  “Hey, babe.”

  “You aren’t putting any makeup on me,” he growled through the bathroom door.

  Alissa’s laugh rang out. “Oh, come on. Be a good sport. It’s Christmas.”

  Kyle sighed, swiped his clammy palms off on his red velvet skirt, and yanked open the bathroom door. “This is the men’s room, you know.”

  Alissa cocked her head and flashed him a dimpled smile. “Well, you probably shouldn’t be in there then, should you?”

  “Very funny. I belong where I identify.”

  She grabbed his hand and dragged him down the hall to the office kitchen, which was luckily empty because everybody was downstairs in the main conference room.

  “Sit there.”

  She pointed him to a chair and opened a pink plastic toolbox crammed full of cosmetics and bottles of nail polish. “You see…” He leaned his elbow on the table and peered at her cache of paints and dusts and sparkles. “The boss is going on a month long cruise tomorrow, and his personal assistant is reduced to selling Avon to get by.”

  Alissa barked out a laugh. “I don’t sell Avon, though…” She straightened and tapped her sooty little chin with a tube of lipstick. “That’s not a bad idea.”

  For somebody who adored makeup and shoes with heels that rivaled stilts, coming to the Christmas party as a chimney sweep was an odd choice.

  “What made you pick your costume?”

  She chewed her lip while she loaded a brush with cotton-candy-pink blush, then straddled his knees and smiled. “It was Scotty’s. His class put on Mary Poppins, and he played Dick Van Dyke’s part.”

  Her ten-year-old son, which explained why the costume fit her. She should have come to the party as Tinker Bell or somebody else as equally fluttery. How he’d become such good friends with her was as much a mystery to him as how he’d ended up with Vince. But Alissa was just as unflappably good-natured. All Kyle’s thoughts revolved around money. Not having any. Going without.

  “I’m screwed,” he muttered.

  “You are not.” She pulled back and examined his face with the focus of a diamond cutter. “You’re perfect to manage the team, and you’ve earned it. Look what you did with the Christmas party. Best turnout yet. And on Christmas Eve. A costume party was a fabulous idea.”

  “It kinda blew up in my face. I think Vince planned this.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake. Why would he do that? Personally, I think you should thank him. Coming as Bob Cratchit is what might have blown up in your face.”

  “Bob Cratchit is Christmas.”

  “Close your eyes.” She tipped his head back. “You need a little sparkle. Christmas elves are fun, Kyle, and taking a dig at your boss is a bad idea.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “That’s how Dave’ll see it. He pays us for shit.”

  Kyle’s eyes snapped
open.

  “Hey,” said Alissa.

  “You swore. You never swear.”

  She sighed and put her hand back on his forehead. “Let me finish. It’s almost the new year and maybe time for you to think about a change, even if you do get this promotion. You can open your eyes now.”

  “Why would I do that? I can advance.”

  Besides, Kyle’s thing was rock-solid security, not change.

  “Honey, this is a private company. Dave has a son. Trust me, he isn’t leaving this business to you. Do we make a living here? I don’t. Seriously, I’d be hard put to make ends meet, but I don’t need another job. I live five minutes away, which gives me time at home, and that’s important to me. We make money for somebody else. And I don’t like a lot of our clients. You can do so much better than this, and you’re so young.”

  “I’m thirty, and you’re only thirty-seven.”

  “I feel old.” She laughed and dug a peach-colored jar out of her toolbox. “Look at Vince. He’s happy driving a cab and painting on his days off. You don’t need money to make you happy.”

  Well, that was a lie told so many times to pacify the poor it had no life anymore. Kyle had been poor. He knew what it was like when the cereal box was empty because one of his drug-addled, so-called stepfathers had eaten it all and the only milk in the fridge was sour.

  The lack of food had gotten to the point of scaring him. Scaring him enough to filch it from the grocery store one time. The fear of cops rushing out of nowhere to haul him off to jail was worse though. That and the fear of going to Hell because he was forever a thief in his heart. Maybe that was why he was such a stickler for rules and precise things like numbers.

  He knew what it was like when the school lunch was the only meal he got. When Christmas was A Christmas Story or Scrooge on TV but sure as hell wasn’t presents or a Christmas tree. He knew how slippery the slope from something to stone-cold nothing was. And money mattered. It mattered because it put a roof over your head, and fixed your twenty-five-year-old car, and slammed the door on the bitter memories clamoring to get in, even though the only safe place in Kyle’s life was in Vince’s arms.

  “And anyway,” Alissa said, “you have Vince, and he adores you.”

  So safe.

  “I’m leaving him.”

  The words spilled out like lumps of coal falling out of a stocking on Christmas morning—and for fuck’s sake, he had no idea where they’d come from. The thought of living without Vince sent panic spinning through him.

  Alissa’s face turned snow white under the soot she’d painted on. “What?”

  He swallowed. Now that it was out…

  His heart jackhammered as though possessed by a deranged sprite. Did he mean it? Would he leave Vince?

  That’s what rejecting somebody means.

  But that was fixable.

  Wasn’t it?

  He makes no money. What if something bad happens?

  “We’re just… We aren’t compatible.”

  “What does that mean? How long have you been together?”

  “Three years. Almost,” he added.

  Their first date had been nothing like a regular hookup or a fancy night out, not with Vince so excited over his buy one, get one free coupon for Bello Bliss’s Pizza. There’d been hardly any money spent, and it had been… magical.

  As though reading his mind, Alissa drilled her stare into his eyes. “Is this about money?”

  “Of course not.” Liar. “He works all the time.”

  “So do you.”

  “We don’t want the same things. You said it yourself. It’s the new year. Out with the old.”

  “I don’t believe this for a minute,” Alissa said. “Close your mouth.” He snapped it shut. “Pout.” Glaring, he stuck his lips out, and she dabbed on sticky cinnamon-scented lip gloss.

  He grimaced. “It’s not what I want.”

  “Then why do it?”

  “It’s for the best.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Please. What I don’t get is why you’re so motivated to cut off the best thing that ever happened to you and so determined to keep your nose to Dave’s grindstone.”

  “Dave pays me.”

  “Please tell me this isn’t about money after all. I don’t want to put myself in the unenviable position of reminding you that money isn’t everything.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “It isn’t everything.”

  Kyle got to his feet, smoothed out his skirt, and crossed the room to the mirror on the wall. He hated this kitchen. It reeked of lasagna. The kind of food people made to stretch a budget.

  He stared at his reflection, his wig a riot of black curls. He had to admit the black hair was striking on him. Alissa had brushed on a smoky eye shadow and the lip gloss was a peachy-pink, a pretty color with the dark hair. There was no hiding the fact he was dressed up like a fucking girl though. It unnerved him, because he liked to blend in. He turned in work that was flawless but never flashy so he wouldn’t stick out. Let someone else be the star.

  Kyle wanted to be a workhorse his rider couldn’t do without. Instead, on the night of his promotion, he showed up as Santa’s December centerfold.

  “You notice Vince isn’t here,” Kyle said, turning back to Alissa.

  She closed her toolbox. “Did you ask him to be here?”

  “Of course. It wasn’t a secret.”

  Not with him complaining out loud after Dave had roped him into being the “social director” for this party. “It’ll look good on your resume,” Dave had said after Kyle had thrown Alissa under the bus by suggesting she take over arrangements for the party—which he was never going to admit to her he’d done—and Dave had screwed up his face and said, “I’m looking for something a bit more creative than a potluck. Come on. This is the night of the big announcement. The promotion.”

  Then he’d grinned the grin that worked wonders sealing deals with complete strangers, but had always made Kyle want to run and jump into the nearest shower. Especially after sweating to death wondering what the hell “It’ll look good on your resume” meant. Had that been Dave’s way of telling him he wasn’t getting the promotion? If it had, it had been as subtle as asking Kyle to dig his own grave.

  “Okay,” said Alissa, coming over and fluffing the curls under his Santa cap. “Can I take It wasn’t a secret to mean that you invited him with actual words?”

  He scowled at her as he wriggled up his stockings. “These things itch.”

  “I know, which is why I don’t wear them. And don’t deflect.”

  “We barely talk anymore,” he blurted.

  “Honey, shouldn’t you? Before you do something you can’t take back.”

  He couldn’t put his fear into words though. For the life of him, he didn’t know what he was afraid of. He wasn’t a little kid staring out his front window at all the other little kids playing with their new toys on Christmas morning anymore. He didn’t need Vince for money. He could buy his own damn toys. But…

  Well, he didn’t have time to think about it now. He straightened, smoothed his skirt, and said, “We have to get downstairs.”

  “All right. You don’t have to talk to me.”

  “I’m trying not to.”

  Alissa sighed. “It’s just that I’ve been there before.”

  “With Zach? Seriously?”

  “No, Kyle. With my first three husbands. Yes, with Zach. Do you think staying together is easy for anyone?”

  “I thought you guys were made for each other.”

  “We are. That’s what I’m saying.” She hooked her arm in his and steered him to the bank of elevators in the corridor. “It’s easy to get lost in your own drama and forget you’re supposed to be doing this together.”

  “Zach isn’t here.”

  “Zach is a paramedic, Kyle.”

  And Vince drove a cab. What happened if people couldn’t afford cabs anymore and took buses? Uber had already eaten a hole in his income, and Kyle didn’
t want to struggle. He didn’t want to wonder if he could afford fucking cereal. Or a doctor. Or a tune-up for his car, which was already overdue. “We don’t even have sex anymore.”

  His cheeks flamed. Not that he was embarrassed. Alissa never held back any of the details of her sex life, and in the early months of his relationship with Vince, Kyle had shared more than his fair share of sexual escapades.

  But just saying it brought up memories of those days.

  Sure, in public he might be a little stuffy, but in private… Kyle reveled in games, so why was he so freaked out about this costume? It was exactly the kind of thing he’d love to wear. The kind of thing he’d love Vince to rip off him. Santa and the naughty elf. The librarian and the wealthy donor. The sassy nurse and the bossy doctor. The bank teller and the bank robber.

  But now…

  Had they even had one kiss this month?

  Not after…

  “We had a fight,” he said, raising his gaze to the arrows over the elevator door.

  “About what?”

  Money. “I don’t even remember.” But he did. It had been over the hundred-dollar increase in their rent, which was why his car still didn’t have its tune-up. And marriage. Even now, his insides scrunched at the memory of pain on Vince’s face.

  “It’s not about money,” Vince had said. “I know you had lousy role models.”

  “I had no role models. And don’t make this about me. We can’t afford to make a family. Not to mention we’re on different wavelengths. We want different things.”

  “We’re different people, Kyle. That’s okay. We’ll work together.”