Dash laughed, vaguely remembering past foster moms who'd yelled about that same topic. "I guess not. Where is Rudy?"
"He got on the school bus about an hour ago," she explained. "He doesn't start winter break until the week of Christmas. Thankfully, my school is already on break."
"You're in school?" Dash asked, surprised to hear that. "Where?"
She shrugged, and he could see a blush darkening on her cheeks. "Oh, just the local community college. I’m trying to get a business degree. Nothing important."
"How is that not important?" he pushed back. "That's incredible. You're a mom, working, and in school? That's nothing short of a damn miracle. Hell, I don't think I could ever balance all of that."
"Sure you could," she teased. "Your mom is paying your rent, after all."
"And she lands another live-at-home joke," he said with a laugh. "That's going to be a sticking point for you, huh?"
"Wouldn't it be for any woman?" Chrissy held no punches, but he appreciated her honesty.
"Fair," he replied. "It's not a forever thing, though. It's just—"
"Temporary," she filled in for him. "Right. Like your job. Like everything?"
Dash thought about that for a second before responding, because the truth of the matter was that his life really was in a temporary phase right now. He was working hard on a project that could change everything for him, but there were no guarantees. Everything was up in the air, and he was grateful to have a safety net in his family while he went out on this limb.
"But you don't do temporary," he finished.
She shook her head. "Nope."
"It's a good thing we're not dating then," he supplied. "Gives you plenty of time to find Mr. Permanent, or Mr. Not-A-Mall-Santa."
"It has nothing to do with you being a mall Santa," she insisted. "Things are just different when you have a child."
He couldn't personally understand that, but he appreciated that being a mother was such an important part of her life. He certainly had wished his own mother had thought that way every once in a while.
"If it makes any difference," he said after a few quiet moments. "I am working toward permanent. I've been working on a project for a while, and I'm pretty close to execution. There's been some bumps along the way with funding, but I hope to have everything up and running next year. My parents have been great helping me until then, but I will absolutely be returning every kindness they've ever done me as soon as I can."
Chrissy smiled at him. "That's a sweet goal to have. What's the project?"
He hesitated for a moment, not because he didn't want to tell her, but because he hadn't told many people in his life at all. "It's…uh…well, it's an app I designed. I've been shopping it around with investors for a bit now, trying to get the right connections to get it funded and out there in the world. It's been a slow road, but I have a meeting with some bigwigs in Silicon Valley in January that I have really high hopes for."
"California?" She raised her brows. "Wow. That's exciting."
Dash nodded. "It's also nerve-wracking because I've spent the last five years creating this program. Every dime I've ever made my whole life has gone into this technology."
"What's the app about?" she pried a little further.
"You know those DNA companies that help you find family members you never even knew existed?"
She nodded. "Yeah."
"It's similar to that, except with foster children. It's an aggregate of foster placements that allow previous foster children to find and reacquaint themselves with other foster children that they might have shared a placement with at one time," Dash explained. "For some foster kids—like me—we have so many placements and meet so many other children that it's hard to keep track of contact information. But, those foster brothers and sisters mattered, and having a tool that allows us to reach out to one another again, if we choose, can be a really fulfilling connection.”
Chrissy didn't say anything for a moment, and when he glanced over at her, she was staring out the window.
"It's random," he added. "I know. I doubt it's going to go anywhere."
She turned to look at him and shook her head. "Don't say that."
"What?" He snuck a sideways look at her while he was driving and realized that her eyes were filled with tears.
"Don't invalidate your hard work like that," she continued. "That's an incredible mission. It's beautiful. I'm honestly at a loss for words."
"Oh." Dash cleared his throat, buying himself a few extra seconds to think of a response. "Uh, thank you. It's been a big undertaking, for sure. It took a long time to get the appropriate data, and then we did hit a wall with getting access to foster kid information. You'd be shocked how unorganized and incomplete those data systems are in some places. But, it's opt-in, of course, so no one has to be on the site unless they want to be. Some people don't want to revisit that time of their life, and that's okay."
Chrissy nodded. "That makes sense. I'm glad it gives a choice."
"Yeah," Dash continued. "But, we need a pretty big investor if it's going to take off nationally, so that meeting coming up is….make it or break it, really."
"I have no doubt that they will love the idea," Chrissy replied. "It's incredible that you're wanting to give connections, history, and a community to a population that statistically doesn't have that. Are you close with any of your previous foster siblings?"
"My sister, yes," Dash said with a smile as he thought of her. "Nell was placed with the Winters before I was. She's a few years older than me, and she's had a tough time adjusting."
"Did they adopt her as well?" Chrissy asked.
Dash shook his head. "No. They wanted to, and they asked her, but she said no. Their relationship is strained, for sure. Not because of anything anyone did, but just because Nell's been through a lot. It takes a lot for her to trust and open up, and I'm not sure she'll ever get there with people she considers authority figures."
"What about you? Are you two close?" Chrissy leaned forward and turned the heat on a bit higher in the car.
"I think she's closer to me than anyone else in her life, but even that isn't as close as most would think. I honestly have no idea what she does with her days. I’ve never even seen the inside of her apartment except on video calls.“ Dash shrugged, and a familiar weight of sadness pushed down on his chest as he thought of the horrible stories he'd heard whispered about Nell's past. "She's an amazing woman, though. I love her a lot and so I respect that she likes her space. I don't push."
"I don't have any siblings, but I always wanted one," she mused. "My parents and I aren't very close, but we're working on slowly reuniting. There was a period for a while when they refused to speak to me—pregnant high school drop-out wasn't exactly the trajectory they wanted for me."
"Family dynamics are hard," he commented, though he couldn't imagine ever turning away a child of his own because of any choice they made. He tried not to judge other family's situations though, because if there was one thing he'd learned over the years as a guest in so many different houses, it was that most people were just trying their best with the limited resources and knowledge they had.
"They are great grandparents now, though," Chrissy continued. "Rudy loves them and they shower him with attention and gifts. I think partially to make up for their own guilt at not being around the first few years of his life, and maybe not being the greatest parents to me once upon a time."
"Is that hard to watch?" Dash asked, pulling the car off the main road and into the mall parking lot as they closed in on their destination.
Chrissy shrugged. "Sometimes. I want Rudy to have everything—love, connections, a feeling of belonging. He deserves that and more. It takes a village to raise a child, and I never want him to feel like he and I are alone in the world. But, admittedly, it can be difficult to watch your parents give your child something that they couldn't, or wouldn't, give you."
A memory flashed in Dash's mind of his own biological mother mak
ing dinner one night. He had come home from school and was so excited to see her preparing a meal for them—it had never happened before. He'd lived on instant noodles and macaroni and cheese that he'd learned to cook for himself. But here she was cooking a pot roast. He'd gone in for a taste when she'd screamed at him to get away.
The meal wasn't for him.
It was for her new boyfriend. And he needed to make himself scarce because she didn't want her new guy to know she had a kid. Before that day, he'd genuinely thought his mom didn't know how to cook.
Apparently, she just didn't cook for him.
"I'm sorry," he offered, knowing there wasn't any more he could say than that. When someone's past is so full of pain, there is no resolution, no fix that can be offered. There's just a hand to hold or a shoulder to cry on while sitting and feeling the sadness together.
He was going to hold that moment with her.
"Why a mall Santa?" Chrissy asked as he pulled the car into a parking spot.
Dash put the car in park and looked at her. "What?"
"Why are you a mall Santa?" she asked again, unbuckling herself and grabbing her bag off the car floor. "Out of everything you could do for work, that seems an odd choice. If you're able to make your own app, you clearly have the skills to do a higher paying job if you wanted to.”
"That's kind of a two-fold answer," he replied, climbing out of the car and then looking at her over the roof as she got out as well. "First, I don't have anything else to do until this meeting and my mother said she'd lose her mind if I kept pacing around the house anxiously talking about the app."
Chrissy laughed. "That's fair."
"And, two," he continued, walking beside her as they headed toward the mall. "Lilian is a local councilwoman and she's running for another term. It's great publicity for her for me to be doing this. She's got a camera crew scheduled to come film her next campaign video here with me as Santa in the background."
She raised her brows as she looked up at him, and for a moment he forgot what they were talking about and just found himself staring in her deep green eyes. Chrissy was at least half a foot shorter than him and her hair was twisted into a long braid down her back with a red bow at the end. Her earrings were silver Christmas trees, and he realized he'd overlooked how festive she was dressed for her shift. It suit her. Bubbly and spirited, the way he'd known her to be each time they'd seen one another.
"Your mother sounds like a force to be reckoned with," Chrissy commented. "We need more women in politics."
Dash nodded. "She tells me that frequently."
He opened the door to the employee entrance of the mall for her and they entered the building.
"I'll see you later?" she asked, heading toward the pretzel shop. "Meet back here after our shift?"
"Yeah," Dash agreed. "I need to stop at the pet store, Pugs & Kisses, after work to pick up some goldfish."
She furrowed her brow. "What? Why?"
"Nell's snake." Dash grimaced, not really enjoying the task. "She asked if I could grab some on my way home."
Chrissy frowned. "Poor fishies. Okay, well I'll see you then."
With that, she gave him a small wave and headed toward the pretzel shop. Dash headed for the restroom to change into his Santa suit, but he wasn't dreading the sticky, sweaty costume as much today. Everything felt…lighter. Spending the weekend getting to know Chrissy—and Rudy, of course—and then really opening up to her this morning in the car had not been something he'd expected.
In fact, in his personal life, no one outside his family knew about his app, Fostering Friends. Sure, he was working on getting the name out to investors, but his own friends didn't have much information. It's not that he was hiding it, but rather, he just didn't trust many people. He didn't feel the need to share his life, and outside of the Winters and Nell, there wasn't anyone he cared to tell his dreams to.
Until Chrissy.
This morning in the car, the conversation had been seamless. He hadn't even thought of it, but rather, it had just spilled out of him organically. Something about Chrissy felt safe…felt genuine. He wasn't sure why, but all he knew was that he couldn't wait to drive her home later tonight.
And he didn't want this to be temporary.
Chapter Six
Chrissy
With only a week left until Christmas, anxiety was starting to set in for Chrissy. She still had not gotten a gift for Rudy, though she'd been saving up for a while for it. He'd specifically requested a Lego set that was based on the White House in Washington, D.C. The kid was obsessed with building, houses…anything architecture related.
The problem was, Legos are absolutely not cheap.
She had gone to grab it at the toy store a few weeks ago thinking it might be twenty or thirty bucks, but had been shocked to see a hundred-dollar price tag instead. It had taken a bit of scraping but she had enough for it now and planned to get it during her lunch break if they weren't sold out.
"What temperature is the oven supposed to be?" her co-worker, Holly, asked her, despite the fact that she'd worked here long enough to know simple information like that by now.
She turned the dial on the oven to the correct temperature for her. "There you go. I'm going to take my lunch break."
"Now?" Holly's expression looked panicked. "But, what about the customers?"
Chrissy frowned and looked at her watch. "It's almost three o'clock. The lunch rush is over, and I'm starving. You can handle it for thirty minutes."
"Okay, but can you hurry back?" Holly replied, her fingers fidgeting with the hem of her apron. "I need to leave early today."
"What? Why?" Chrissy asked.
Holly looked away. "There's this party tonight, and I have to get ready."
Christ. She took a deep breath and decided it was better to just not respond at all. Instead, she pulled off her apron, washed her hands, and grabbed her wallet to head over to the toy store which was on the exact opposite side of the mall.
As she made her way through the crowds of holiday shoppers, she paused momentarily to watch the line winding around Santa's Village. If she pushed up on her tiptoes, she could see the front of the line where an irritable-looking elf was pushing a child toward Dash. The kid hopped up on his lap and she could see Dash smiling and laughing as they chatted for a few and then posed for a picture.
It had been over two weeks now that Dash had been driving her to and from work—most of the time, just them. On weekends when Rudy wasn't in school, he joined them. Admittedly, she'd really begun to enjoy their time together. They talked about everything from the weather to their most personal memories and dreams. It was the first time in a while that she felt she truly had not only a friend, but…the potential for something more.
Not that she could cross that line.
As much as she liked Dash and as much as her skin heated anytime he was near, he wasn't a permanent part of her life. He only had one more week as a mall Santa, and then he was off to California for several weeks to work on his app. After that, he didn't know what his plans would entail since it all hinged on the success of the investor meetings.
That wasn't something she could commit to when she had a child to think about, classes to take, and bills to pay.
Still, it was a nice thought. She kept walking, passing the village and heading toward the toy store. Thankfully, it wasn't as packed as it had been last time and she was able to navigate her way to the Lego section without much difficulty. She scanned the shelves, looking at the different sets and kits and trying to spot the White House one.
But, it wasn't there.
Chrissy swallowed hard, feelings of anxiety swelling in her gut. She quickly made her way to the front counter and flagged down a sales associate. "Excuse me? Can I ask for your help?"
The pimply-faced teenage boy sighed and walked over, looking at his smart watch as if he couldn't wait for his shift to be done. "What's up?"
She smiled as politely as she could muster. "I'm looking for the Wh
ite House Lego kit. I don't see any on the shelf."
"If we have it, it's on the shelf." The kid shrugged and then pulled out his cell phone and began texting. “If we don’t, it’s not.”
"Right," she continued, trying to keep her tone light even though she felt tension beginning to build inside her. "But, maybe there's an extra set in the back that hasn't made its way out here yet? Do you think you could check? It would mean so much to me."
"You want me to check in the back?" He didn't even look up from his phone. "I'm about to go on break."
Chrissy exhaled loudly, crossing her arms over her chest. "Look, sir. I've been pretty understanding, but I'm currently on my break and I have a short amount of time to get this done. My son wants that specific set. Please, go check if it's there. The closest other toy store is an hour on the bus, and I'd really rather avoid that if I can."
The guy yawned. "I mean, you could order it online."
"Shipping is fourteen dollars," she replied, not about to pay that when it had already been hard enough to scrape the hundred dollars together for the gift itself. "Please just go look."
He sighed and shoved his phone in his pocket. "Fine. I'll be back in a few minutes."
"Thank you," she replied, not fully trusting he was actually going to do what he said. Though, she didn't have much of a choice but to wait and hope for the best anyway.
She felt a vibrating in her pocket and reached in, pulling out her cell phone. The caller ID said that Yule Elementary School was trying to reach her.
Chrissy quickly connected the call. "Hello?"
"Hi, is this Mrs. Eve? Rudy Eve's mother?" a voice said through the other end of the phone. "This is Principal Peppers from Yule Elementary School."
"This is she," Chrissy replied. "Is everything okay?"
"Yes, yes," the principal assured her. "We've had a slight mishap and wanted to keep you informed of the situation."
Tension pulled at her as she stood up straighter. "Is Rudy okay?"
Mall I Want for Christmas is You: A Mall Santa Holiday Standalone Romance Page 4