Free Naughty St. Nick by Calista Fox Page A

one in particular I suddenly had to stop into.”
    “Nick—”
    “I know, I’m all over the damned place right now, aren’t I?”
    His smile was sweet and charming, yet seductive at the same time. Only Naughty Nick could pull off that look.
    “What are you up to?” she quietly demanded. “Because I am going crazy. I’ve never had a night like last night and then you were gone this morning and I just—”
    “I love you, Vixen.”
    She sucked in a breath. Stared at him. No blinking. Just an endless stare.
    He said, “Madly. Deeply. Truly. However the song goes. You’ve always been the one for me, Vix. You always will be the one for me. Just you .”
    “Nick.” That one word fell from her lips on a rush of air. There was hardly a breath left in her body as she gazed up at him, shocked.
    “See, the thing is,” he told her, “we’ve been surrounded by magic our entire lives. And when we were younger we always believed—in everything. Every hope, every possibility, every Christmas tale. Then we got older. Thought we got wiser. And some of that belief fell by the wayside. Then some bad things happened to us, to our town, and we finally let all of that belief slip away.”
    With a nod, she said, “That’s true.”
    “But the thing is, there are certain epiphanies that can make us believe again. For me, it was the sleigh I had the chance to work on. It was the lights I was tasked to fix. All of that made me remember why I love this town so much—why I want my parents to come back, because they’ve always loved it, too. Sure, things are different now, but that doesn’t mean they’re worse. We still have everything in North Pole that we did before, it’s just...a different version, you know? That doesn’t make it a bad thing, because we’ll always remember what we had before. But time marches on, right? We either stay mired in the past, or we embrace those memories and accept the change at our doorstep.”
    Vixen’s gaze slid to Santa’s village, and though hot tears rolled down her cheeks, she said, “It’s all so perfect right now. It’s not the same for so many of us, and it never will be the same . But...it’s still perfect.”
    “Exactly.”
    She turned back to Nick. “Does that mean you have one more surprise for us?” She thought of the star he’d yet to place atop the tree.
    “A couple, actually,” he told her. His mischievous grin made another appearance. “Vix, I’ve always wanted to be with you. Long before I even knew what that meant. Long before I made that promise to your granddad. I was drawn to you from the beginning—I mean, the very beginning. But you had stuff going on, and you weren’t inclined to open up. I didn’t press. Maybe I should have, but I didn’t know back then what you were going through. I didn’t fully get it.”
    “Neither did I.”
    He scowled. “I should have pushed you to talk to me.”
    “I wouldn’t have,” she confessed. “Because, Nick, I couldn’t figure it all out myself. Just about everyone else in town had a traditional family. Sure, some kids’ parents were divorced. But at least they knew who their parents were. I have a dad out there, somewhere, who didn’t want to know anything about me, who didn’t want to know whether I was a boy or a girl or an elf.” She gave a half-hearted laugh in hopes of sounding a little less bitter. But one thing that always hurt Vixen was that her father had never cared about who she was—whether she lived or died.
    Nick brushed a few tears from her cheek and said, “Baby, that was his choice to make. Chances are very good he regrets his decision. But one thing you can’t regret is your life in North Pole. You can never deny that this town is as much a part of you as you’re a part of it. Whether your mom or your granddad are here or not. They contributed to the history. They loved it as much as you do. And they’d want you be happy here. The way they were.”
    Vixen drew in a long breath. Despite