The Beauty Charmed Santa

by Shirley Jump

  Other Books by Shirley Jump

  The Sweet and Savory Novel Series:

  The Groom Wanted Seconds: A Novella (prequel)

  The Bride Wore Chocolate (Book One)

  The Devil Served Desire (Book Two)

  The Angel Tasted Temptation (Book Three)

  The Playboy Savored Seduction (Book Four)

  The Boss Courted Trouble (Book Five)

  The Beauty Charmed Santa: A Christmas Novella

  The Millionaire Tempted Fate: A Novella

  More From Shirley:

  The Sweetheart Bargain

  The Sweetheart Rules

  Really Something

  Around the Bend

  Return of the Last McKenna

  Simply the Best

  Visit Shirley Online:

  www.ShirleyJump.com

  www.Twitter.com/ShirleyJump

  www.Facebook.com/ShirleyJump.Author

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  Table of Contents

  THE BEAUTY CHARMED SANTA

  Other Books by Shirley Jump

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  More from Shirley Jump!

  Excerpt from The Bride Wore Chocolate

  Excerpt from The Devil Served Desire

  Excerpt from The Angel Tasted Temptation

  Copyright Information

  Author Bio

  Chapter One

  This was what his life had come down to. This was how far an Emmy-winning actor could fall. And for Cole Benson, this was what failure looked like.

  Exactly like…Santa Claus.

  Cole stood in front of a full-length mirror in a smelly locker room in the back of the Orchard Mall, dressed in a faux white beard, a red cap topped with a poufy pompom and a thick, heavy pillow stuffed under a velvet red suit that itched around the collar and weighed more than a small Labrador. Cole had been transformed into the big guy himself, ready to sit in this stuffy suit for hours on end while little kids peed on his thigh and whispered their dreams of a pony for Christmas.

  "Ho-ho-ho," he said to his reflection, with all the enthusiasm of a teenager going to a movie with Grandma. The image on the other side of the mirror didn’t look merry or bright or anything other than miserable. Probably because that damned pillow on his gut weighed about ten thousand pounds and looked like the back side of a slab of beef. Realism, the mall manager had called it. Torture, Cole replied.

  He cleared his throat. Practiced his voice exercises like he was on a set and about to deliver a powerful scene. He tried again. "Ho-ho-ho."

  Yeah, not much better. God, his life sucked. He’d pictured a triumphant return to Boston, one that involved screaming fans, girls begging for autographs and a mob scene everywhere he went. He was going to get his mob scene in a few minutes—but only because the kids were sucking up to Santa to secure an xBox under the tree.

  Cole’s cell phone rang, and he fished it out of the deep pockets in the oversized pants. "Remind me again why I am not going to kill you."

  On the other end, Jerry Rodale, Cole’s agent and the man who had booked this gig, just laughed. "Because you're getting paid and because you’re grateful to have a job at this, the merriest time of year."

  Cole looked down at the vinyl boots, the faux fur trim, the plastic belt with a fake metal clasp. Yes, he had a job, and given the bills he had waiting for him, he needed to remember that. Still, the whole thing sucked. At least the beard would keep him from getting recognized. That was the last thing he needed in the tabloids: Emmy Winner Drops to New Low: Mall Santa. He sighed. He should be grateful. This was a job and a means of atonement. "You’re right."

  "I’m always right." Jerry chuckled. "Listen, get through this, and by the time you get back to L.A., I’m going to have some fabulous opportunities for you. This Santa gig will get you mega brownie points with the exec at Holiday Pictures. Dexter knows he’s going to owe you big time, which means you’re on the way back, Cole."

  Cole was a last-minute fill-in for the regular Santa, who had come down with the flu yesterday. Todd Dexter, the exec at Holiday, owned a controlling interest in the mall, and had asked Jerry to find him a stand-in who wouldn’t suck, needed the money, and didn’t have a rap sheet that contained the words kiddie porn.

  "Jerry, I’m a mall Santa," Cole said. "I don’t have kids, I don’t know what to do with kids, and I don’t think I even like kids. It doesn’t get any worse than this." He glanced at his reflection again. Good Lord, he looked like Wilford Brimley after a week-long bender. "I have an Emmy, for God’s sake."

  "Yeah it does get worse," Jerry said. "Just ask Sam Jones."

  "Who?"

  "Exactly. If you don’t want to be a one-hit wonder, suck it up, buttercup, and get your jolly on." Jerry laughed his fool head off, then hung up the phone.

  There was a knock on the locker room door, and a girl wearing an elf costume poked her head in the room. She looked young enough to still be dreaming of yearbooks and prom dates. "Ready, Santa?"

  "As ready as I’ll ever be." Cole adjusted his belly, then headed for the door. Suck it up, buttercup.

  Well, he would if doing so wouldn’t give him a hernia.

  He emerged into the faux daylight mall, and in ten seconds was swarmed like a piece of sugar at an ant party. Kids came from all over, screaming "Santa! Santa!" and launching themselves at him, pleading their case for good behavior, and asking for bikes and ponies in the next breath. The elf—Tiffany, Terrie, he couldn’t remember what she’d said—paced beside Cole like a miniature bodyguard, waving off the kids and telling them to get in line so they could get an overpriced 5x8 commemorative photo.

  A gingerbread house had been erected in the center of the mall, between a Bath & Body Works and a Gymboree. Macy’s held the anchor position behind him, decorated with holiday swag like the rest of the mall. From the inside, the Orchard Mall looked like any other mall in America. Outside, the city of Boston sat a few miles away, a mecca to thousands of aspiring college students, always ready partiers, and harried office workers. For Cole, the city and the suburbs around it represented prison of high expectations and crushing disappointments. This place held a lot of dark memories—and one bright spot.

  One bright person, rather. The only person he had missed when he left the East Coast. And the one person he had hoped to see again someday—only he’d imagined a reunion where he was wearing more impressive clothes than this ho-ho-horrible costume.

  Cole paused, waiting while Tiffany/Terrie opened the gate of the foot-high white picket fence that surrounded Santa’s house and kept the building cordoned off from the rest of the mall. A red carpet led from the gated entrance of Santa’s Village to the big guy’s high-backed brown leather chair.

  Cole stepped onto the carpet. Pretty damned ironic that the first time he would walk a red carpet during his career would be here, in the middle of a mall playing tinny instrumental Christmas hits on the sound system with a paparazzi consisting of a bunch of moms trying to skip the exorbitant picture price tag and snap an Instagram instead.

  Two other female elves were already working in the village as Cole approached, one behind the camera, another fluffing the fake snow and straightening the blinking lights. Camera girl could have been Tiffany/Terrie’s clone, but that wasn’t what Cole noticed.

  It was the third elf, whose back was to him, that trigged a memory. Something about that hourglass shape, that sweet tight ass, that long dark brown hair—

  Then she turned. And Cole stopped walking. Tiffany/Terrie stumbled forward, then looked back at him. "Santa?"

  His breath caught. His heart
lodged in his throat. "Stephanie?"

  Like a country song gone wrong, the woman that Cole Benson had loved and left behind stood across from him now dressed head to toe in green felt with red trim and gold jingle buttons. She stared at him, her mouth agape, like she’d just seen a ghost. He knew the feeling. Last he’d heard, she’d been on her way to a career in law, clerking for a judge in Boston while she finished her law degree. But no, she was here, in Santa’s Village, wearing an elf costume and still looking as beautiful as the last time he’d seen her.

  Stephanie Taylor. Holy cow.

  "Cole?" she asked.

  "Santa," Tiffany/Terrie hissed at Stephanie and thumbed toward the kids lining up outside the plastic fence. "He’s Santa. Remember?"

  "Oh, I remember," Stephanie said, then turned away. "I remember everything."

  A cold, icy door shut in the space between them. Just like that, Stephanie froze him out. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. Maybe a part of him had thought she’d always look at him with that devilish smile on her lips, those dancing green eyes, that slight flush in her cheeks. Maybe a part of him had thought he’d come back here and it would be as if he’d never left. And maybe a part of him had never quite gotten over leaving her, no matter how many times he told himself he had.

  Cole had thought about Stephanie a hundred times over the years. He’d wondered what she was doing, who she was dating, if she’d settled down and had five kids in the suburbs. He’d wondered what might happen if he ran into her again. If they’d pick up where they left off, or she’d just be one bittersweet memory in the past he had done his best to forget.

  Except now he was back in the town he hated, wearing a suit that itched and smelled funny, and staring at a woman whose eyes, which had once filled with love that had turned to tears when he said goodbye, now reflected only disdain.

  He was wrong. He could fall further and fail more. He’d done it six years ago when he let her go without a fight and he’d done it again now.

  Not even the best Hollywood screenwriter would have come up with this reunion scenario. And that did not bode well for the next week. Not at all.

  The sight of Cole Benson, after all these years and all that had happened, stuttered Stephanie’s heart.

  For a second, she thought he could read the truth on her face, that he would discern the secret she had kept from him, as if she’d written it on her forehead. But then he smiled that smile she’d fallen for when she was twenty-two and should have known better, and she realized he was just as clueless as he had been six years ago.

  "Whoopsie! Seems we have a little camera malfunction," Kerrie said. She was one of two twin sisters working Santa’s Village this year. Both of them were young and exuberant, the kind of girls who talked in exclamation points and text shorthand. "We’ll get started in a few minutes, peeps. Oh, I know! Why don’t we sing Frosty the Snowman to pass the time?"

  The kids and parents in line gave Kerrie a blasé look that said what they thought about that idea. A baby cried, then another joined in, then a third. Not exactly the melody Kerrie had asked for.

  And then there was Cole.

  Stephanie refused to think about the day he broke her heart. Or the day she sent that long rambling messy letter, after way too many margaritas at karaoke night at the Down ‘n Dirty Bar with her best friends. That letter—

  Talk about humiliating. And then Cole hadn’t even replied, which made the whole experience even more of a cringe fest. Maybe he’d forgotten all about it. Maybe he’d forgotten all about their breakup.

  Cole took a step forward, his blue eyes roaming over her face, as if trying to make sure she was real. "Wow. I didn’t expect to see you. What are you doing here?"

  She sucked in her emotions, told herself she didn’t care that he didn’t fall at her feet and apologize for being such a jerk six years earlier. He had no idea what he had missed out on in that time, and she refused to tell him. Or let him see that being close to him, even after all this time, still made her pulse skip. "Same thing as you, spreading Christmas cheer to kids all over the Boston area for twelve dollars an hour."

  She turned toward the lights strung along the fake house behind them, pretending to be busy so she wouldn’t keep staring at his beard-covered face and wondering if he still looked as handsome as she remembered underneath the Santa suit.

  "You still living here? In town?"

  "Uh, yeah." No need to give him any details. He was making small talk, nothing more. She fiddled with the boxes wrapped as presents, straightening them, then doing the same thing over again.

  "I’m sorry," he said softly.

  That made her stop fiddling. She turned to face him, even as she told herself not to get sucked into those blue eyes again. She knew where dating Cole got her—alone. She didn’t need a dunce hat to teach her that lesson again. Besides, she had everything she wanted from him, a gift he couldn’t even begin to comprehend. "Sorry for what?"

  "Camera’s fixed!" Kerrie said. "Santa, let’s get ready for our little visitors!"

  Terrie gestured toward the Santa chair. "Right here, Santa Claus."

  Cole gave the twins a nod, then lowered himself into the high-backed chair. Terrie took up a station on the right, ready to shepherd kids on and off of Santa’s lap, while Stephanie moved onto the opposite side, tasked with candy cane dispensing duty. Kerrie sighted Cole in the camera, then started swiping credit cards for the first wave of kids. As she did, she opened the gate into Santa’s Village.

  Big mistake.

  The children swarmed like bees on a newly opened rose. Their excited chatter rose above the Christmas Muzak on the sound system and they powered forward, anxious to be the first to get to Santa. Terrie tried stemming the tide, by putting up her hands and waving. "Wait, wait!"

  A set of triplet toddlers wriggled out of their exhausted mother’s grasp, and beelined for Santa, rushing by Terrie, knocking her back and into the pile of presents. She went down, elf feet going up, jingle bell hat going down.

  "Elf down! Elf down!" Kerrie shrieked, running for her sister. "Terrie! Terrie! Talk to me!"

  In that instant, chaos descended on Santa’s Village, with the horde rushing toward one intended victim—Santa himself. Cole’s eyes widened, he put up a hand, but he might as well have been trying to hold back the water in the Hoover Dam.

  For a second, Stephanie debated leaving Cole at the bottom of the preschooler pig pile, then decided she wasn’t that mean. It was Christmas, after all, and even the man who broke her heart deserved more than a bah humbug.

  2 pounds white chocolate

  1 package candy canes, crushed (about 1 cup)

  Quick, the kids are hyped up and you need a good distraction. Put the candy canes in a Ziploc bag and slam them with a hammer or a rolling pin to crush them. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler (translation: put chocolate in a glass bowl over a pot of simmering water, making sure the water level is below the bowl, and stir until melted).

  Mix in candy chunks. Spread on a wax paper lined cookie sheet and refrigerate for one hour. Break up the pieces in random sizes, and dispense as necessary to keep the kids from tackling Santa. Then sit back and have a few pieces, telling yourself that you are so over him.

  Chapter Two

  Oh, hell. This was not going to be pretty.

  Pandemonium descended on Cole, en masse. Kids screamed "Santa!" and rushed forward, like a middle school cheerleading squad that had just spotted Justin Bieber outside Gap. Cole leaned back in his chair and put up a gloved hand. "Whoa, whoa! Hey, kids, wait—"

  But the children didn’t listen. The triplets all tried to climb into Cole’s lap at the same time, shoving off a couple kindergarteners who tried to beat them there. A knee went into Cole’s groin, and what felt like a steel toed boot hit him in the shin. He winced, bit off a curse half-way through, and tried to push the kids off, but they held on tight. A three-year-old ran into a present, plopped on his butt and started wailing. Kerrie and Terrie huddled
on the sidelines, eyes wide.

  "Hey, kids," Kerrie said, her high-pitched voice lost in the uproar, "wait, stop, don’t—"

  Stephanie stepped in front of Cole. "I got this."

  "Good—" he wrestled one of the triplets to the side, just as the other two scrambled back onto his lap, "—luck."

  Stephanie planted herself between the onslaught of kids and Cole’s chair. She propped her fists on her hips and looked down at a dozen little faces. A hush fell over the group, and they stared up at her with that who-me look most kids perfect before their first birthday.

  "Santa only talks to good little girls and boys," Stephanie said. "And good means waiting your turn in line."

  The oldest in the pack started to protest. Stephanie put up a finger to cut off his words, then bent down and looked the ringleader in the eye. "No waiting, no seeing Santa. And that would be such a shame because I know Santa really wants to hear your Christmas list." She turned toward Cole. "Don’t you, Santa?"

  He lowered his chin, reached for a voice deep in his gut. "Ho, ho, ho. I certainly do. And if you listen to Elf Stephanie here," he almost laughed at that, "then everyone gets a turn."

  "And a candy cane. Don’t forget that." Stephanie flashed Cole a smile.

  For a second, he forgot who he was. Where he was. He saw that smile, a smile he had once known as well as he knew his own name, and he was rocked back six years, to a steamy summer that he’d thought would never end. Stephanie’s sweet, perfect body underneath his, calling his name as an orgasm rushed through her, making her arch, and making him—

  Cole cleared his throat, shifted in his chair, and pushed those thoughts away. For one, he was here playing Santa, and fantasizing about one of the elves wasn’t a good idea. At all. For another, he and Stephanie had been over for a long time, and given the distance she was maintaining with him, it was still over on her end. He should be glad.