The air crackled with intense excitement as hundreds of voices joined in the countdown. When they reached one Nick raised the remote and pointed it up at a draped fixture on the building just above their heads. As if it had been touched with a magic wand, bursts of green glitter and confetti shot into the air as the red fabric fell to the ground.
Holly craned her neck to look up at the antique brass clock. Recessed into the granite building, it was at least four feet wide and as many feet tall. The roman numerals were slightly scrolled and the clock’s hands were both in the shape of a Christmas tree. What made it especially unique was that the number at the top was seventy-two instead of twelve. Without a doubt, it was the most enchanting piece of clockwork that Holly had ever seen.
Amidst the cheers, Nick held up his hand so he could be heard. “Three days and counting down to Christmas day starting right now…so does anyone have any work to do?”
Even more quickly than the elves had entered the square, they exited it. While it wasn’t quite a mad rush there was a new purpose and energy to their movements that did Holly’s heart good. She glanced back up at the clock and sighed.
Nick glanced at her and then up at the clock. “Disappointed? Don’t be.” He switched off his microphone and slipped it into his pocket. “Inside the command center there’s a high tech digital clock that counts down the nanoseconds until Christmas. I have no doubt its efficiency would make your heart go pitter-patter.”
Nick’s sarcasm stung but perhaps she deserved it. She’d harped on about efficiency and cost cutting measures from the moment she’d arrived at the North Pole even though Santa hadn’t expressed a great desire to trim the budget. In her initial interview Santa had simply said he wanted someone to help his son. Which she hadn’t really done yet, but she could change that.
After all it was Christmas. When better to extend an olive branch? She’d simply have to put aside her judgment of Nick’s lack of professionalism, as well as forget the whole debacle of his disappearance and lies. Maybe Nick had simply gone to a hockey game…no he’d come back wearing a tux…so maybe he’d gone for an evening out and was embarrassed to be caught socializing when they were down to the wire.
Holly made her decision. Bygone were bygones and it was time for a fresh start. For the next seventy-two hours she was going to be Nick’s right hand, his dream assistant. She’d be efficient and personable. She’d let the whole Nick Kane thing go. Feeling suddenly much more relaxed she bent down to retrieve the red cloth that had covered the clock and folded it. “What do we do now?”
Nick studied her for a long moment. “You’re asking me, not telling me?”
“I am.” Holly held out the folded cloth to him. “From now until Christmas I am at your disposal. You tell me what I need to do and I’ll do it.”
“No more games of twenty questions? No more doubting me?”
Holly shook her head. “Nope.”
A smile stretched across Nick’s face. “This should be fun.” He gestured for her to go ahead of him through the open doors. “I know just where we’ll start.”
“Lead on,” Holly said.
The mischievous twinkle in Nick’s eyes made her hope that she just hadn’t contributed to the downfall of Christmas.
Chapter Nine
Nick, with Holly at his side, hustled down the main corridor as quickly as he could, but that wasn’t to say he made good time. A small cadre of elves trailed after him with last minute questions, requisitions that needed signing, and other last minute concerns that suddenly seemed more pressing now that the countdown had started. But he kept moving, scribbling his signature on documents and calling out instructions as he made his way to the TTA room. He wanted Holly to see it, no, to experience it, before they were stuck behind the operations desk. This was likely their last chance before things got crazy.
He stopped in front of the TTA room and slipped his key into the lock. He nudged the door open and peeked inside. Just as he expected, it was empty. Perfect.
“Ready for a treat?” he asked Holly.
She opened her mouth to say something but apparently thought better of it and instead simply nodded. “As ready as I’ll ever be,” she said. “Oh, wait, we’re going into the infamous TTA?”
Nick pushed the door wide open and motioned for Holly to follow him in. He’d been anxious to see Holly’s face when she realized where they were, but nothing could have prepared him for the funny way his heart skipped a beat when Holly gasped with delight.
“Oh, Nick,” she looked at him with an expression of innocence and vulnerability that touched his heart. “What is this?”
He moved to stand beside her. “Amazing, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “Absolutely, but I’m not sure I understand it.” She turned to look up at him. “Is it real? I mean, I know it can’t be.” She took a tentative step forward and reached out to touch a display but thought better of it and pulled her hand back.
“That depends on how you define real.” Nick motioned for her to follow him. “Just stay with me. I don’t want you getting sucked into another dimension.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Of course,” he grinned. “At least I think I am.” He held out his hand. “But why take a chance?”
She hesitated only a moment before slipping her hand into his. “Wow, I can’t even begin to fathom how this works. Tell me everything.”
“This is the Toy Testing Area, or it used to be in the old days when we physically tested toys by hand. It was amazing back then too.” He led her through the displays, giving Holly plenty of time to pause at any display she wanted to study. “Can you imagine this room full of actual toys? Carol and I used to come up here after we finished our school work and play for hours. Rough life I’ve led, isn’t it?”
Holly laughed. “Hardly. So why the change? And what exactly are these?” Again she reached out a hand toward the shimmering silver air but pulled it back.
“Holography.” He stopped in front of an image. “Go ahead, you can touch it. If you want, we can even go through it.”
But Holly shook her head. “It feels too intrusive. But it has to be the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”
It was Nick’s turn to laugh. Seeing Holly switch from super-efficient mode into a state of awe delighted him. He’d almost given up hope that she could surrender to the spirit of Christmas but her reaction was encouraging.“Follow me.” He led her through the maze of shimmery holographic scenes that hung from the ceiling. “As I was saying, we used to physically test the toys in this room. Each and every new toy went through research, design and production before it ended up here. We’d play the heck out of each toy and, as you can imagine, we were able to come up with some top notch reports. But obviously something critical was missing.”
“Which was?” Holly asked.
“We had no way to know how a child would actually react to receiving the gift.”
“Ah, that makes perfect sense,” Holly said. “So you created this virtual experience as a way to measure the end user’s response.”
“End user?” Nick dropped Holly’s hand and took a step back. “Is that the term you just used?”
Holly nodded. “Why? What do you call them?”
“Children.”
A strained silence stretched between them. Had she never been a child, Nick wondered. Hadn’t she celebrated Christmas? Rushed headlong down the stairs on Christmas morning to rip open the gift she’d desperately wanted? How could she be so utterly lovely, incredibly bright, astonishingly hardworking, and yet so clueless?
“I’ve changed my mind,” Holly said suddenly. “I want to go through one. As long as you’ll come with me, I don’t want to go alone.”
“Great.” A total surprise but great. Nick gestured to a room full of choices. “Pick a place and we’ll go.”
He waited while Holly walked around the suspended images. It didn’t surprise him that she was methodical in her selection. It did surprise him to no
end that she wanted to virtually experience Christmas morning but it pleased him too. He watched her pause first at a scene from a Tokyo apartment before moving on to a snow covered cabin in Montana. He waited patiently while she studied several others before her gaze became transfixed on a smaller holographic toward the back of the room.
“Nick, I found the one I want.”
He hurried to keep up with her as she wound her way to the back of the room. Once he saw which one she wanted he could immediately see why she’d chosen it. “Take my hand, Holly, and we’ll just spend a moment watching before we come back, okay?”
She looked up at him. “No other special instructions?”
He shook his head. “They won’t know we’re there because they’re not there either. It’s confusing so let’s never mind the science for now, just trust me.”
Holly nodded and slipped her hand into his.
Nick’s welcomed the warmth of her touch, of her trust, as they stepped through the holograph. Holly’s gasp as they entered a cozy living room with a crackling fire made him smile. A Bing Crosby Christmas album played in the background and a Black Labrador lay asleep on the braided rug. A six foot tall Christmas tree was decked out with decorations from the gold star at the top all the way down to the manger nestled under the bottom branches. A single wrapped gift, too large and unusual a shape to fit neatly under the tree, sat beside it.
“Just wait and watch,” Nick whispered in answer to Holly’s questioning glance.
Within seconds the dog raised his head and half rose as a little girl tore down the stairs. “Mommy, where are you? Did Santa come?”
As the girl raced past Holly a swoosh of cold air followed her. Nick held out his arm to steady Holly when she took a step back. He understand her reaction, he’d been stunned the first time he’d stepped through a holograph too. He kept his arm around Holly’s shoulders, partially to reassure her and partially to keep her from trying to move forward into the living room. They were just there to watch.
The little girl came to an abrupt stop when she saw the large present. She clapped her hands excitedly. “Mommy, where are you?”
A smiling woman dressed in a plaid robe entered the room. “I’m here, sweetheart.”
Nick glanced down at Holly. Her eyes were wide, her expression incredulous. “Don’t worry, she can’t see or hear us,” he whispered. Holly nodded but didn’t look away from the scene in front of them.
“Santa came, Mommy. Did you see? He left me a present!”
“I see that, and it’s a lovely one too. Go ahead and open it.”
The little girl needed no further encouragement. She knelt in front of her gift and ripped at the brightly colored paper. Once she had enough paper off to see what it was, she gasped. “Look, Mommy, look what Santa brought me!” Her face radiated joy. “It’s a dollhouse. Just like the one I wanted, only better!”
Her mother knelt down beside her. “It’s lovely, sweetheart.”
In complete agreement, the girl proceeded to give her mother the grand tour of her new house, complete with a hands-on examination of the furnishings and miniature treasures in it.
“She loves it.” Holly’s voice held a trace of surprise.
“Exactly,” Nick said. “Can you see how much easier it is to measure the success of a gift when we can actually experience it?”
“Utterly amazing,” Holly said. “The technology I mean, but it isn’t feasible to test each and every toy this way.”
“No, it’s not. But we are able to get representative sample and we can go from there. It’s not all about systems analysis, Holly, there’s more than a fair bit of holiday magic involved in all this.”
Her answer was to lift a delicately arched eyebrow.
“Just watch what happens next,” he said. They both turned back to the mother and daughter who were sitting side by side, heads bent together examining a miniature kitchen table set with teensy tiny plates of spaghetti and meatballs.
“Mommy, how did Santa know that I wanted a doll house?”
“You told him, honey. Remember when we went to the mall and he asked you what you’d like?”
Her daughter carefully placed the table back in the doll house. She turned to look up at her mother. “Yes, but how did he know that this was the perfect one? It’s exactly what I wanted.”
“Magic, I suppose.” She gently laid her hand on her daughter’s head. “It makes me so happy that you’re happy with it.”
A frown creased the girl’s face. “But Mommy, you didn’t get a gift.”
“Oh, I did, honey. When you were born and the nurses wrapped you in a pretty pink blanket and handed you to me, it was like being given the moon, the stars, and everything beautiful in this world all at once.”
Nick kept his gaze on Holly’s face as the little girl threw herself into her mother’s arms. Holly’s eyes brimmed with tears.
“I’m ready to go back,” Holly whispered.
Once they stepped through the shimmery silver veil and into the toy testing area, Nick kept a tight hold on Holly’s hand. “Are you okay, Holly?”
She brushed away a tear, nodded, but then shook her head. “Yes, no, I don’t know.”
Nick drew her into his arms and held her close. “I understand.”
Holly shook her head vehemently. “No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.” He gently placed a finger under her chin and lifted her face so she was forced to meet his eyes. “I know you would have loved it if your mother had said those words to you.”
Tears spilled down Holly’s cheeks as Nick held her. His heart ached for Holly the same way it did for each and every one of the children in the foster care programs that the Best Christmas Ever Foundation served. “Many adults just don’t understand that loving words can be the greatest gift of all,” he said.
He felt Holly’s arms tighten around his waist. He closed his eyes, just wanting to savor the feel of her so close to him and the quiet moment of togetherness.
“For the love of Christmas, Saint Nick, there you are!” Rapz ran through the maze of holograms, skidding to a halt just two feet short of crashing into them. His face was red and he was out of breath. “We’ve got a situation.”
Nick narrowed his eyes at his elf friend as Holly moved out of his arms. Interrupting a tender moment with a beautiful woman was not a recommended move in the best-friend handbook. “It can wait, Rapz.”
“Oh, no, no Sir, it cannot.” Rapz shook his head and held out a folded note. “You’ve got to get on top of this one right now.” Almost as an afterthought he turned to Holly. “Hello, Miss Jamison.”
Holly wiped away her tears. “Hello, Rapz.”
Rapz looked between them, confusion plain on his elfin features. “Say, wait a minute and hold the reindeer, did I just interrupt something?”
Nick’s emphatic ‘yes’ was drowned out by Holly’s equally emphatic ‘no’.
“So,” Rapz looked between them both, “which is it?”
Holly gestured to the note in his hand. “Go ahead, Nick, read it. We might need to deal with whatever it is before we do anything else.”
Nick flipped opened the folded note and quickly scanned the page. His heart dropped when he read the words written by his Best Christmas Foundation co-executive director. Massive fire wiped out the entire Chicago toy warehouse. We’ve lost everything. Arson suspected. Called the B.C.E. Riders and they’re coming to the rescue. Need you here for the rally.
Nick crushed the note in his hand. A flurry of mixed emotions coursed through him. Frustration that an entire warehouse of toys was gone, anger at a person so malicious they could destroy what didn’t belong to them, and a deep disappointment that he had to leave Holly.
He looked down into her upturned and inquisitive face. “I have to go.”
She didn’t miss a beat. “Where are we going?”
He shook his head. “Not we, me.” He turned to the elf. “Send a message that I’m on my way. And, Rapz, thanks for bringing
me the note. You did the right thing.” He waited until Rapz was gone before turning back to Holly. He cringed at the hurt expression on her face.
“Nick, I’m not just up here for the Arctic air,” she protested. “Let me go and help you with whatever it is.”
“No, absolutely not, I need to handle this alone.” Before she could argue a case for accompanying him, Nick started to walk backward toward the exit. “I’ll call Jolly and ask her to find you. She’ll need help with checking weather reports.” The look on her face with killing him, he wanted nothing more than to pull her back into his arms. But he had to go. He didn’t have a choice. “I’m sorry.”
Chapter Ten
Holly stared at the door for several minutes after Nick left. What on earth had happened to make him just take off? And what had the note said? She’d never know because he stuffed it in his pocket as he said his lame goodbye. Just before Rapz had interrupted them, Holly felt a real connection to Nick, as if a silent understanding and acceptance had passed between them. He knew, he really understood, the impact that watching the little girl with her mother had had on her.
And then he’d bolted. Holly cursed her own foolishness. She never should have opened up to Nick. Or even thought about it.
“Holly?” Jolly stuck her head in the TTA room. “There you are. Rapz mentioned that you had a free moment. Can you please come help me with putting together some preliminary weather forecast reports?”
Holly carefully wove her way through the shimmery holographs. “Of course, I’d be happy to.” As she stepped out into the hallway and pulled the door shut behind her she didn’t look back. If she never saw another holograph again it would be too soon.
“You okay?” the elf asked.
Holly nodded, although in truth she felt like she’d been run through an emotional meat grinder. “Do you know where Nick went?” she asked, trying her best to sound casual. “Was there some kind of emergency?”
Jolly shrugged. “I doubt it. I saw him dash out wearing his riding gear so whatever it is can’t be that big of a deal.” She shifted the files she was carrying to her other arm as they began to walk down the corridor.
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