Free Christmas Shopping for a Billionaire by Julia Kent Page A

vaguely remember Mom telling me one of the kids had something that generated more snot than a bunch of postmenopausal women watching Steel Magnolias .
    “Did you try Josh?” Josh is the company technogeek, and he almost never gets pulled into mystery shopping. Right now, though, I’ll throw him under the bus if it means staying here with Declan for the rest of the day, my eyes memorizing the tight little ripples of muscle between his lower ribs as he stretches up on tiptoes to hang an ornament. His sweater pulls up enough to make his torso look like it was finely carved from tanned alabaster. 
     
    On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me
    A humping in the bedroom so fine I forgot my name.
     
    (So what if it doesn’t rhyme. Just go with it).
    “We need a female,” Greg stresses. I look down at my overflowing bosom, tightly encased in a green wrap shirt that makes my cleavage pour out like a split muffin top. Damn. For once, having breasts qualifies me for a job. 
    “He looks really good in drag,” I tell Greg.
    Declan halts in mid-stretch and plants his feet firmly on the floor, turning to me. He points to himself and shakes his head slowly, eyes steely green.
    Not you , I mouth.
    “Good,” Declan says with his hands on his hips, one knee bent, like a man in pose to argue, the male equivalent of Talk to the Hand.
    “Josh does that stuff?” Greg asks, incredulous. 
    “No,” I confess. “I just don’t want to do whatever it is you want me to do.”
    “We need a sexy female elf.”
    “A sexy female elf ?” Did I hear him wrong? 
    Declan appears instantly at my side, suddenly very interested.
    “You would be a very good sexy female elf,” Greg and Declan simulcast in my ears in two completely different tones of voice. Both, though, carry the tiniest hint of desperation. 
    “Who’s there?’ Greg asks. His words are a bit muffled, as if floating through cotton.
    “Why are you talking so weird?” The cinnamon-scented Christmas candles on Declan’s sleek marble mantel send a glow high into his arched ceiling. The city is spread out before us on one side of the high-windowed penthouse, the ocean on the other side. Panoramic views are fine and all, but the best scenery is two inches away, his lips closing in on my neck. 
    “It’s the beard,” Greg says, jolting me out of my turning into a maid a-milking, my hand reaching for Declan in a place that makes him inhale sharply, then smile against my ear. 
    “Beard?” I ask.  
    I twist my way out of Declan’s arms and make a pouty face. He joins me, looking disturbingly like my cat, Chuckles. I didn’t know Declan had a Grumpy Cat face. You date a man for eight months and then one day you discover he looks like a cat doing a Paul Ryan imitation. Thank God that’s not his O face. 
    I shudder and Declan mistakes that for my being cold, wrapping his arms around me.
    “I’m Santa,” Greg explains. “We’re evaluating the customer service quality of the Children’s Christmas Village set-up at the mall. Our Santa no-showed and I had to jump in.”
    “You’ve got the body for it.” Greg doesn’t just have a bowl full of jelly—he’s the entire Smucker’s plant. 
    “Hey!” He sounds genuinely offended.
    “You can talk about how I can be a sex elf but I can’t mention your beer gut?”
    “It’s not a beer gut!”
    “Fine. Wine gut.”
    He lets out a long sigh of resignation. “ That’s better.” Because it’s true. 
    “You want me to come in and put on a sexy costume to play the female equivalent of Buddy the Elf at the mall two days before Christmas because no one else will do it?”
    “Right.”
    “Why?”  
    “Why what ?” Greg’s breath is coming in huffs of nervousness. 
    Grumpy Declan sees me wavering and finishes my hot toddy for me, returning to the tree to decorate.
    “Why should I do it?” I challenge. 
    “It pays $30 an hour and you get a free picture with Santa.”
    “I make more than that