by Elise Noble
“It’s muddy out there. I’d ruin my boots.”
“Exactly. And think how happy you’d make a bunch of strangers if you shared Christmas. Why not spread the joy?”
Bradley still didn’t look totally convinced. “Maybe we should have a vote?”
“Perfect. Let’s do that. Who wants to do Christmas in the community this year?”
Every single hand went up.
“But we have to have a tree here. Where will people put their gifts?”
“Fine, we’ll have a tree. One. And a single gift each. We don’t need any more than that.”
“I’d need to prepare a revised schedule. Assign new tasks to everyone.”
“And I’m sure you’ll do a fantastic job of it.”
“I guess it would be nice to help people. We could put the trees in early and ask people to hang wishing stars on the branches.” Now Bradley was smiling. “And we could adapt the toy factory into a wish fulfilment centre.”
“Trees plural?”
“A retirement home, a children’s home, and a community centre. That’s what Evie said.”
“I think it was an either/or situation.”
Bradley folded his arms and stared at me.
“Okay, okay, three trees.” As long as they weren’t in my house, I could deal with that. “And we’ll help with granting the wishes. Everyone at Blackwood who isn’t involved in a critical project can take a half-day off work to volunteer, how about that?”
I glanced at Black to check he wasn’t annoyed by the suggestion, but he just gave the tiniest shrug.
“Perhaps we should make it a global thing?” he suggested. “I’ll send an email out. Bradley, you can coordinate, can’t you?”
“Every office? That’s a lot of work, and I—”
“If you need to cancel the screening of It’s a Wonderful Life and the advent calendar treasure hunt to free up time, we’ll all understand.”
Well played, Black. Well played.
“But—”
Nate held up his mug of coffee in a mock toast. “Let’s hear it for our official Christmas Coordinator.”
What could Bradley do but take a bow and bask in the applause?
I let out a long sigh of relief, along with everyone else in the room. We’d earned a slight reprieve, and this year, I might even find a little Christmas spirit of the non-alcoholic variety within myself.
CHAPTER 3
A MONTH LATER, I opened the first door on my advent calendar. A friend had sent it to me from England, and each day came with a miniature bottle of posh gin. Hmm, should I have regular tonic or Mediterranean?
“No, no, no.” Bradley snatched the bottle out of my hand. “Not for breakfast. I need you in tip-top form for our Project Mistletoe brunch.”
“What’s this ‘our’ business? This is all on you.”
“Stop complaining and go to the conference room.”
Over the past four weeks, Bradley had managed to find three local organisations brave enough to let him mastermind their Christmas celebrations. Crossroads provided shelter for homeless women and kids, many of whom had escaped from domestic violence. Dan already spent time volunteering there, and I only hoped they’d forgive her for what Bradley was about to unleash. UCan was a youth group for children from low-income families. Think sports, music, life skills, and an annual camping trip. And now glitter plus, if Bradley got his way, a special matinee performance of The Nutcracker. The third lucky recipient of Bradley’s attention was Appletree Acres, an assisted living complex in a suburb of Richmond. Apparently, the residents were really getting into the Christmas spirit. Last week’s “best decorated wheelchair” contest had been a tie between an octogenarian fairy and a guy dressed as King Melchior.
Two weeks ago, Bradley had installed Christmas trees at each location and invited people to hang their wishes on the branches in tiny gift boxes. Yesterday, he and Tia had collected the notes, redecorated the trees, and vacuumed up several million pine needles. Oh, and he’d managed to get tree sap in his hair. Believe me, we all knew what an absolute catastrophe that was.
“I have a meeting.”
“What meeting? It’s not on your schedule.”
“A last-minute video-call.”
“With who?”
“The president. Something about national security.”
“What something?”
“Sorry, you don’t have the right clearance to hear the details.”
Bradley tried to stare me down, his blue eyes to my violet ones. What an amateur move. I never blinked first. And I also planned ahead. Today, Dan and Mack had agreed to take one for the team by attending the meeting, and in exchange, I’d promised to cover some of their shifts in the office over Christmas—we arranged a rota so at least one member of the senior management team was on duty at all times.
“Fine,” Bradley said. “Fine. I’ll email you your tasks later. Where’s Black? He’s late as well.”
“Sierra Leone.”
“What? But he knew we were having a meeting this morning.”
“Pretty sure eradicating child slavery is more important.”
Bradley just huffed because he knew I was right, but as he turned to stomp off, I caught sight of the back of his head.
“Uh, dude? What the hell happened to your hair?”
“It was the tree sap, okay?”
“Tree sap gives you bald patches?”
“No, I tried to freeze the tree sap out—you know, like you do with gum—and the hair broke off at the roots.”
“What the fuck did you use to freeze it? Liquid nitrogen?”
Bradley’s mouth flattened into a sulky little line. “I thought it would be faster. Hey, it’s not funny.”
Oh, but it was. I practically choked as I jogged along the hallway. Liquid bloody nitrogen? It was a wonder he hadn’t frozen his entire brain. Come to think of it, that wouldn’t necessarily have been a bad thing.
“Stop laughing,” he yelled at my retreating back.
If only I’d known that Bradley would in fact have the last laugh, perhaps I’d have shut my damn mouth.
CHAPTER 4
MY EMAIL PINGED as I was chatting with James—President Harrison to you. Okay, so I might have told a tiny fib about the national security part. James was taking some “executive time,” which was politician-speak for doing fuck all. Although to be fair, he did deserve the break today because he’d spent the past week touring Japan and the jet lag hadn’t been kind.
“The red tie or the blue one?” he asked.
At this moment, he was standing in his bedroom in a dress shirt and a pair of boxers, trying to decide on an outfit for the White House’s Christmas photo shoot. He’d propped his tablet on a table, and now that he’d stood up, my view was more crotch than face. Good thing Black had gone to Africa.
“I’m really not the best person to offer fashion advice. Have you tried asking Diana?”
Much as I hated to admit it, the First Lady had impeccable taste.
“She’s downstairs with a group of schoolkids.”
“Hmm. What colour are the tree decorations?”
“Uh…”
“You don’t know? They’re in your freaking house.”
“It’s the People’s House, and I came in the back way.”
Good grief.
“Okay, okay, hold on…” I consulted Professor Google. “Right, the bows and baubles are red and white. So, go with the blue tie. Red, white, and blue. And don’t forget trousers.”
While James knotted his tie and pulled on a pair of slacks, I idly clicked on Bradley’s message. Bloody hell—there was a whole colour-coded spreadsheet, and it was over a hundred lines long. Only Mack could have typed that quickly. Green, blue, red, and yellow lines covered the screen. The first request was from an eight-year-old girl. She wanted a pony.
Oh, no, no, no.
I groaned out loud as I pictured Bradley gleefully reinstating the order for miniature ponicorns. What had I done? Th
e boy on the next line had asked to ride in the Batmobile. The comments box noted that he wanted to “kick the Penguin’s ass.”
“What’s wrong?” James asked.
“I think I might have made a terrible, terrible mistake.”
He straightened his tie and came to sit in front of me again. “I’m sure it’s redeemable, Linny.”
Linny? Yeah. Did I mention that I’d had a bit of a thing with Mr. Harrison a few years ago? Before he became the president, of course. The first time we met was at a Cinco de Mayo celebration thrown by a mutual acquaintance of his and Black’s, and after he’d had one too many shots of Patrón, he kept forgetting my name. I went from Emerson to Emma to chica linda. But even drunk, he was hot, and when he asked for my number, I saved it in his phone as Linda, probably because I’d been matching him shot for shot. Then when I became his dirty little secret, that was how it stayed. Black swore James was still in love with me, but whether he was or he wasn’t, I didn’t feel the same way. I did, however, value his friendship. And his advice.
And I also noticed that James never used the nickname in front of Black.
“Really? You think? There’s a kid on this list who’s requested a yacht.”
“An actual yacht? Or just a toy?”
“I don’t freaking know!” He’d spelled it “yot,” but I still got the message. “Bradley’s going to bankrupt me. Dammit, I hate Christmas. I’m gonna take a vacation, somewhere hot and not at all festive. Do they do Christmas in Sierra Leone?”
“I believe so.”
“Shit.”
“Let’s start from the beginning. I take it Bradley sent through a list of requests from the meeting you skipped this morning?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“Let me see it. Look on the bright side—it can’t be as bad as Diana volunteering me to play Santa Claus last year.”
That had nearly been a disaster. I mean, everyone—except Diana, it seemed—knew the unwritten rule. Presidents did not put novelty items on their heads. Not helmets, not caps, and certainly not fake beards and jaunty red fur-trimmed hats. A panicked late-night brainstorm had led to a compromise, and James dressed in jeans along with a reindeer-themed sweater and a Rudolf belt buckle. The trip to hand out gifts at the local children’s hospital had spawned a thousand crotch-shot memes as well as inspiring a new knitwear craze.
“Hey, you can pull my sleigh any time.”
“If only that were true.”
I shared my screen, and James scrolled through the spreadsheet. Fuck my life, there was more than one tab?
“What do the colours mean?” he asked.
“How the hell should I know?”
The door opened behind me. “Green means a gift, blue is an experience, yellow is a wish that we’ll have to compromise on, and the reds are unknowns.” Dan passed me her bottle of Jack Daniels, and I took a swig. “Hey, James. How’s the vital meeting on national security going?”
“I remembered to zip my fly when I got dressed, so I think we’re good.”
“What belt buckle are you wearing for your hospital visit this year?”
“A very plain, very boring one.”
“Shame. I was looking forward to more column inches on the presidential dick print.”
“Dan, stop harassing the leader of the free world,” I said.
“What? You didn’t look?”
I didn’t have to, not when I’d experienced the real thing. And impressive though James’s equipment might have been, that was in my past.
“Can we focus on the job at hand?”
Namely, drinking the entire bottle of Jack and sending myself into peaceful oblivion.
James cleared his throat. “If you look at the far column, it appears that Bradley’s assigned each task to somebody.”
“Yeah, he did,” Dan confirmed. “He tried to give all the green tasks to himself, but Mack kept changing the allocations when he wasn’t looking. You have no idea how devastated Bradley was when he realised so many people had requested things that don’t involve shopping. Like, he genuinely doesn’t understand why eighty-seven-year-old Margaret wants to sit outside and enjoy the sunrise instead of unwrapping a designer scarf.”
“Do we owe Mack a drink? How bad did it end up?”
“Bradley has to give haircuts to all the residents at Crossroads. We figured that would keep him out of trouble for a day or two.”
“Good plan.”
“And we tried to match up the requests—I got Gertrude, who wants someone to talk to, and Emily, who wants to learn to knit. According to the staff at Appletree Acres, Gertrude’s an avid knitter, so I’m planning to order yarn online and then introduce the two of them.”
“Aw, that’s actually kind of sweet. What did I get?”
James was already filtering the spreadsheet tabs. There seemed to be one for each location, and he began with UCan. A blue line had been assigned to “Emmy/Black.”
“This doesn’t look so bad… Kiara Campbell wants to go flying. I’d take her myself if it wouldn’t involve a military operation.”
I scrolled across to the notes. Eleven-year-old Kiara wanted to become a pilot as soon as she was old enough, but she’d never actually been in a plane. Yes, I could fix that, and I might even enjoy myself in the process. It was a shame James couldn’t help out—before he got into politics, he’d been a military pilot, and although helicopters were more his thing, he wasn’t bad in airplanes either. More than once, he’d told me the adrenaline rush of flying was the thing he missed most about his old life, and he wasn’t meant to drive now either. On his rare days off, he snuck over to Riverley to take advantage of Black’s toys—his sports cars, his guns, and his collection of Scotch, although not at the same time—just to remember the old days, and the Secret Service grumbled and frowned because sometimes they forgot that James was a human being and not a machine.
Okay, I had to admit that Mack had done good with the first task. But on the next tab, for Appletree Acres, both of the boxes with my name were red.
“I can manage the flying part. But Gwendolyn Ingold wants to share Christmas with her sister.”
“A transportation issue?” James suggested. “Maybe her sister doesn’t live nearby?”
The comments box really wasn’t much help.
I guess it can’t hurt to wish, even if that wish is impossible. I’d love to spend Christmas Day with my sister. It would mean so much to be able to share dinner with family.
“That’s…vague,” I muttered. “Dan, did Bradley say anything more about this one?”
“Not really. I think he saw the ‘impossible’ part and decided to get revenge for you not showing up.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. I’m with James—it sounds as if they’re in different states or something.”
Maybe. But I had a bad, bad feeling about this.
“What else is there?”
Another red task. Brilliant. José Montero, a nurse at Appletree Acres, wanted to hug his father on Christmas Day. Another transportation problem? If all I had to do was fly around the US picking people up, then hallelujah. I could even take Kiara with me and give her two trips for the price of one.
But something told me this wasn’t going to be quite so straightforward. My life was never, ever simple, especially where Bradley was involved.
“What if he’s dead?” Dan asked.
“Huh?”
“The father. The guy hasn’t written anything in the comments box, and it sounds to me like one of those ‘wish upon a star’ things. Like, you know it’s not gonna come true, but you say it anyway because you really miss the person.”
“I’m not holding a bloody seance.”
“You could take a leaf out of Bradley’s book. He’d get a T-shirt printed with the father’s picture on it.”
James’s turn to groan out loud. “No, don’t do that.”
“Perhaps I’ll pass that one to Black.”
“I
s that a good idea?” Dan asked.
“I’m not sure he understands grief, but he can feign sympathy when the need arises.”
“He does grieve,” James said quietly. “He tries to hide it, but I saw the pain in his eyes at his parents’ funeral.” A sigh. “Right before we knifed two of his Aunt Miriam’s tyres so she’d be late for the wake.”
“I did not just hear that.” Fuck. How the hell did we get from the presidential package to death to criminal confessions? No, forget it. I didn’t want to know, even if Miriam had deserved the flat tyres. “What’s the next task?”
“A request from a resident at Crossroads. That’s the women’s shelter? ‘I wish I could wake up in the mornings and feel safe,’” James read. “Signed ‘V.’ I think we can all guess the issue there, which means I may have to put my fingers in my ears.”
Annnnnnd…we were back to criming.
“V? Do you know who that might be?” I asked Dan.
She shook her head. “I can’t think of anyone there whose name begins with a V. Maybe she’s a new arrival?”
“Well, someone must know her. Perhaps I could pay the ex a visit? You know, have a quiet word. We’ve got over three weeks until Christmas—I’m sure I can fit it in.”
“I’ll give you an alibi,” Dan offered.
“Wow, thanks.”
“Any time.”
James closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I didn’t hear any of that. But here’s an idea: why don’t you send Black to mince the ex into hamburger while you put your feet up and drink eggnog?”
“Quite apart from the fact that eggnog’s disgusting, do you not trust me to get the job done?”
It was an automatic reaction—telling me I couldn’t do something only made me want to do it more. Black questioned me on purpose because he was a manipulative bastard, whereas James just tended to get a little overprotective. And while I had to concede that he had his reasons, I also didn’t like being sidelined.