Free Simon and the Christmas Spirit by Summer Devon

the hall. “I got them candied fruit and walnuts.” Those
came from the club where he’d met and bedded Simon. Was that only a
couple of days earlier? “Will left the stockings on the bottoms of
their beds.”
    “ That’s good.” Lilah’s
hair had come undone during the night, and it was loose and messy
around her shoulders.
    Sally got up again, this time not
stepping on Christopher, who’d rolled onto his back. She smiled
down at him, showing her dimples that would likely win her some
fine parts as an ingénue someday. “And I know we’ll have Christmas
pudding. What more could a body need?”
    “ That’s the spirit,” he
said. “Help your old brother stand, and we’ll go start
breakfast.”
    “ I ’spect that’s what all
the noise is about.” She paused. “I think? What time is
it?”
    Lilah went to the window and scraped
away some frost from the inside pane. She tilted sideways and
squinted to read the clock tower. “Almost eight,” she said,
amazed.
    “ And for our first
Christmas blessings, we are given sleep, and perhaps too much,”
Christopher told the girls, using his best pious, sonorous tones as
he rose to his feet and folded his blanket.
    The door burst open, and Uncle Dion
poked his head in. “I believe a friend of yours has arrived. You’d
best come quick.”
    Lilah groaned. “I told that horrible
theatrical agent I would find roles without—”
    “ Not a friend of yours,
for a change of pace. Come on, Christopher my boy, comb your hair.”
He paused and said, “Best to hurry, for we’ll need to wrest a
bottle of extremely excellent champagne from your father.” His grin
was wide and wicked. “The rest is good news, I believe.”
    As excited now as any child on
Christmas morning, Christopher quickly threw on some clothing.
Ignoring his rumpled hair, he rushed out to the “great room,” as
they all called the gathering area, though it was little larger
than the smallish card room at Simon’s club.
    Simon. The name was a sigh in his mind, a breath quickly released
and soon to be forgotten. And then Christopher beheld an apparition
in a red velvet robe and long white beard, staff in hand, which
dominated the great room. The eyes above the false beard and
moustache were a pale shade that could belong to none other
than…
    “ Simon?” Christopher asked
as he glanced at the parcels and boxes strewn around Father
Christmas’s feet. Little Molly sat on the floor and was already
burrowing into one.
    Christopher took a step closer to the
apparition and gazed into those eyes. He had an inclination to rub
his own to see if the vision went away. “Bugger me,” he
whispered.
    Father Christmas leaned close to
murmur a reply. “If that is your Christmas wish, it could be
arranged.”

Chapter Seven
    Simon felt a fool in his ridiculous
Father Christmas costume, but also rather like a completely
different person. The costume had been a last-minute impulse after
he’d rushed shop to shop on Christmas Eve, buying everything he
could before the stores all closed. Purchases overflowing his arms,
and others to be delivered to his house at the crack of dawn, Simon
had glimpsed the red robe and cap of the saint on a mannequin in a
toy shop window.
    “ How much?” he asked the
proprietor.
    The man, already agog at selling a
third of his inventory at the eleventh hour before he’d have to
mark down the prices, stammered, “For the… You mean you wish to
purchase the mannequin?”
    “ The costume,” Simon
corrected politely.
    That was how he came to enter the
Andrewses’ ramshackle home with a merry chuckle and a huge pile of
packages. Because his driver had the holiday off, the hackney
driver had to help carry them in.
    Simon had never done such shopping in
his life and at shops he’d never set foot in before. For a man
who’d never so much as bought a parsnip, he felt as if he’d
accomplished a real feat purchasing what was needed for a whole
meal. He’d had all the packages