Holiday Hell

by Liz Meldon

  Table of Contents

  Please Note

  Prompt

  Acknowledgments

  So It Begins

  Where the Mistletoe At?

  Elf Hawk Down

  A Tree Most Fair and Lovely

  The Customer is Always Right

  The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

  D-Day

  Christmas Wish Come True

  Eggnog Time

  Newsletter Connect

  Thanks for reading!

  About the Author

  Holiday Hell

  Erotic Short Shorts, #2

  Liz Meldon

  Copyright Liz Meldon 2017, Amazon Edition.

  License Notes

  Thank you for purchasing this ebook. It remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to purchase their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

  Contents

  Please Note

  Prompt

  Acknowledgments

  1. So It Begins

  2. Where the Mistletoe At?

  3. Elf Hawk Down

  4. A Tree Most Fair and Lovely

  5. The Customer is Always Right

  6. The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

  7. D-Day

  8. Christmas Wish Come True

  9. Eggnog Time

  Newsletter Connect

  Thanks for reading!

  About the Author

  Please Note

  This is an erotic short story and is a part of the Erotic Short Shorts series. Each short story in the series is inspired by a prompt, either a particular word or emotion. Holiday Hell is classified as contemporary erotic romance and is intended for mature readers only. There are no trigger warnings attached with this piece.

  Prompt

  Christmas Shopping

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you Amanda and Phoenix—my editorial dream team. As always, much love to my author besties group, my sun and stars, and my parents for being incredibly supportive of this journey. Major shout out to the #bookstagram community. Last, and certainly not least, a great many thanks to my readers. Without you, there’s nothing but me and my imagination.

  One

  So It Begins

  Deep in the bowels of the Fort Trent Bennington’s Department Store, Elise Babcock stopped dead in her tracks as the women’s locker room door swung shut behind her, smacking her hard on the ass.

  “What. The hell. Are you wearing?”

  There, standing before her in all its glory, was the dreaded December vest. Her coworkers had been talking about it since September, back when a few Christmas items had trickled onto the shelves of the big box store. Since this was Elise’s first Christmas season there—and hopefully her last—she had no clue what to expect.

  But this was awful. Like I’d-rather-scrub-public-toilets-all-day-than-wear-this awful.

  Grace, one of the few retail associates also in her late twenties and someone Elise considered a solid work friend, spun around from her place in front of the lone locker room mirror, its corner cracked slightly, and planted a hand on her cocked hip.

  “What?” She lifted her chin and fluttered her fake lashes—jet black, a stark contrast to her bright blonde hair. “They’re wearing it everywhere in Paris and Milan, darling.”

  Fuck me. Elise let her head thump back against the door and closed her eyes, but the image of that thing was burned into her retinas.

  “They aren’t serious with that, are they?”

  “You better believe it, bucko,” Grace said, sighing. “It’s is my second year in a row rocking this little number. Never mind that I have exams, an exhibit to set up, and a stage production wardrobe to organize. No. This is where I belong.”

  Swallowing a groan that would have sounded like a beluga whale, Elise shuffled in, staring at that vest monstrosity and hoping it might look better from a different angle. Nope. The Bennington’s holiday uniform was so ten thousand seasons ago; Grace, a fashion student with dreams of moving to New York when she finished her degree, must have been dying.

  Elise didn’t have the heart to ever tell her, however, that the job market was savage in the Big Apple, the very city she had fled almost a year earlier when her unpaid internship at a marketing agency, the one she had landed before final grades were even out, decided not to extend an offer of employment. Penniless, on the verge of bounced rent checks and no electricity after a year of unpaid work in one of the most expensive cities in the world, Elise had schlepped all her crap home to Fort Trent, a little town in a cluster of other cookie-cutter little towns near the New York–Vermont border.

  Fort Trent’s claim to fame was a very small liberal arts college—and Bennington’s Department Store. Most locals had worked there at one point in their lives. Everyone shopped there. Two weeks after moving back home, Elise had interviewed to become assistant manager, one of six, but discovered she had been offered sales associate when she signed her contract. Now, almost a year later, she donned her black dress pants and white tee six days, forty-eight hours a week, to rebuild her shattered bank account.

  Normally, the uniform included a shitty red vest with the company logo on the back so shoppers could scope out employees from a mile away—like a shark zeroing in on a speck of blood in the water.

  The green vest she’d be wearing for the next month looked like Christmas had shamelessly vomited all over it. Poofy white and red balls—that were supposed to look like tree ornaments?—paired with actual candy canes superglued to the fabric, wrapper and all. Every seam was lined with gold tinsel—a lot of tinsel. The hem had little brown reindeer silhouettes prancing from front to back.

  “What a fucking eyesore.”

  “You’re telling me,” Grace muttered as she applied concealer to her cheeks. Once sufficiently covered, makeup smooth, she snapped the compact closed and stepped back with one last smoldering look at her reflection. “Still. I’m pretty sure I can rock anything.”

  She then deposited her makeup into her messy locker, stuffed her phone into her back pocket, and blew Elise a kiss.

  “See you out there! I think we’re doing inventory counts today.”

  Fuck me slowly. Elise groaned and smacked her head against her locker. When the locker room door closed behind Grace, she drew in a deep breath as a dull ache started right where she’d made impact with the slightly rusted metal. “Ow.”

  Nothing made Elise feel smaller than the five minutes she usually took to get ready for her shift. Sometimes there were others getting changed, most of the time she was just by herself—remembering that she’d been on the path to ad executive once. And now she was here. Back in Fort Trent. Working at Bennington’s.

  Just as the depression set in, she would remind herself that she was fortunate to even have a job in this economy. And that she had a mountain of student loans to settle and a nearly depleted bank account thanks to that internship jerking her around. So. This was better than nothing.

  But as she opened her empty locker and found it waiting for her on a hook, that Christmas nightmare she’d be forced to wear because, hooray, it was finally December 1st, she stood there staring vacantly and wondered: was this really better than nothing? Was there somewhere less humiliating she could work, where the senior citizen associates didn’t belittle her for not folding a T-shirt right and the management didn’t despise her because she’d booked Black Friday off for a family trip to the cottage in Connecticut?

  Her watch beeped and she shoved her purse inside, then shut her locker. The depression-guilt-frustration-disbelief cycle was over. No time to contemplate any of it now. Eight hours of reta
il beckoned.

  “Maya, sweetheart, what do you want Santa to bring you for Christmas this year?”

  Jack Lewis braced himself for the inevitable: what if she didn’t believe in Santa Clause anymore? Was six still young enough to go for that crap? He scooped some of her mac and cheese with little hotdog bits into a bowl, waiting. When there was no response, he risked a look over his shoulder—only to find his darling daughter totally mesmerized by her show. Huh. This was probably why her mom wouldn’t let her watch TV with dinner.

  Fuck it. Jack had always wanted to be the fun, supportive dad, even before the divorce. He didn’t let Maya get away with everything, but according to his ex, Gloria, it was pretty close. And she was right, honestly. But how was he supposed to say no to someone so tiny with a face so round and cute and riddled with baby fat? He just couldn’t. It was like denying a puppy. Only a monster would—

  No. He had to get his shit together at some point, or Maya would walk all over him.

  But he loved that tiny human with such ferocity that he almost didn’t care.

  “Maya,” he called, this time a little louder.

  “Daddy,” came her standard response. In Jack’s spacious three-bedroom apartment, the open concept kitchen and living room area let him keep an eye on her while he cooked, yet the granite-topped island separating them gave her the illusion that she was a big girl on her own.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “No.”

  Nabbing a spoon on the way, he sauntered over and plopped down on the leather couch beside her, then grabbed the remote and lowered the volume.

  “I asked what you want Santa to bring you for Christmas this year,” Jack repeated. He placed the bowl in her lap, but she recoiled with a squeal.

  “Hot,” she whined, and Jack hastily removed it. Right. Fucking…terrible ceramic bowls.

  “I’ll hold it,” he said, “and you do the spoon.”

  She seemed content with that, eyes flicking between her dinner and the TV screen, which was filled with some high-octane cartoon that would give Jack a migraine if he let her watch it for too long.

  “Well? If Santa doesn’t know, then Santa can’t—”

  “I sent him a letter at school,” she said absently. He gently chastised her for chewing with her mouth open, and she corrected herself right away. Once she swallowed, she added, “I told him I want a Miss Molly doll.”

  “A Miss Molly doll?” Fuck. He’d seen that thing advertised for months now. Some slim, wacky-haired doll with lots of accessories and pets and clothes—like Barbie on steroids, if that was possible.

  “A blue-haired one,” his little angel specified, eyes glued to the TV. She looked so much like her mom these days: huge, round brown eyes with lashes so long everyone swore they were fake. She had her mother’s darker complexion courtesy of her Latin heritage, but she had Jack’s nose. Poor thing. Jack’s nose was like a Roman emperor’s. He could already hear the teenage-era pleas for a nose job.

  He’d probably give it to her, too, because he had the money and was a total pushover.

  And because he wanted to make her happy. Divorce was never easy on anyone, kids especially, and even though he and Gloria were on great terms, the last two years had been rough on Maya. This was Jack’s first year having his daughter for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and if she wanted that Miss Molly doll that all the kids were going nuts over, he’d find it for her—and then some.

  But, just in case, he’d check with Gloria tonight to make sure she hadn’t already bought it. After all, school days were with Mom, weekends with Dad. Not because he didn’t want her in his life—Maya was his world—but Jack traveled a lot for work. He’d sorted things out with his boss to give him weekends off so he could spend guaranteed, consistent time with his daughter, and he wanted to make every second count.

  “Well,” he said, watching her shovel a too-big bite of hotdog into her mouth, not breathing until she swallowed successfully, “I’m sure Santa is working on your very own Miss Molly doll as we speak.”

  “Blue-haired Miss Molly,” Maya specified, shooting him an almost too-pointed look before returning to the show.

  “Sure.” Jack leaned back against the couch with a sigh. “A blue-haired Miss Molly.”

  Should be no big deal. He made his company millions every year through client acquisition alone. He could find a blue-haired doll before Christmas.

  Right?

  Two

  Where the Mistletoe At?

  “Yup, yup, that makes total sense,” Elise muttered, knowing that if anyone spared a glance down the action figure aisle she would look like the resident lunatic. “Let’s just pick things up and not put them back where they belong when you realize you don’t want them.”

  It was pretty standard practice in stores like Bennington’s, honestly, and she was happy she didn’t have to deal with it in the grocery department. Nothing like finding some warm, extra-condensation-covered chicken thigh packages in the chocolate section because someone decided on sweet over savory. Still, was it so difficult to take products back to their shelves? Did customers have to shove them behind or on top of things as though an associate wouldn’t notice? This time, it was two stuffed bears sitting in front of the army action figure kits, which were supposed to be hot items for boys this season. Nothing like the chaos swirling around those Miss Molly dolls, but for being in such obnoxiously large boxes, the army kits were selling well.

  “Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t abandon you here.” The bears stared back at her with hollow, soulless eyes, better suited for a horror movie on an empty, slightly swaying rocking chair than the Bennington’s toy department. She grabbed them both and stalked to the end of the aisle. However, just as she rounded the endcap, Elise spotted her next disaster.

  Two little girls dressed in identical purple leggings, pink boots, and blue winter jackets covered in huge white snowflakes had decided on that exact moment to knock everything within reach onto the floor. Down went Barbie’s car, the boxes landing with a shuddering crash that sent white-hot rage surging through Elise as the girls giggled. They moved on to the boxed dolls next, taking down the classic blonde bimbo and her new Miss Molly competitor. No discrimination here. No doll was safe.

  “Ladies,” she barked, fighting the tremor in her voice as her fingers bit into the bear in each hand. The twins emitted two ear-piercing shrieks and took off, leaving Elise in an aisle that looked exactly how she pictured a war zone would after a bombing. She slowly loosened her hold on the bears and set them on the shelf. If her manager caught her walking away from this, even to put the bears back in the next aisle over, there was no way she’d escape a write-up. And Penelope was just itching to add more strikes to her employee file; she and Elise had never clicked, though not for lack of trying on Elise’s part.

  She ran a hand through her raven locks, more tired than anything after spending six hours in Bennington’s that afternoon already. Noon to eight thirty. The perfect shift to spoil an entire day. At least she didn’t have to close.

  As the anger ebbed, all she wanted to do was hide away in the back, organizing an already meticulously ordered stock warehouse, and run out the clock. Instead, she had to get all these narrow rectangular doll boxes back on the shelves, in the right order, in the right place, lined up to match the PLU on the price stickers. And while they all looked the same, any doll fanatic would tell you they absolutely, resolutely, utterly were not.

  “Hooray,” Elise muttered. Not like she’d spent most of her shift setting up the Miss Molly section of this aisle already. Now she had to redo it. Like her brain wasn’t wasting away enough in this place. Grumbling a string of profanities under her breath, she started gathering the fallen comrades, each doll staring up at her with that plastic fake grin and wide, dead eyes.

  Well, save for the “sassy” Miss Molly dolls. A few of them were winking or smirking almost seductively. Elise frowned at the green-haired one in hand, then shook her head when she
caught her reflection in the plastic front of the box.

  “Excuse me?”

  She looked up sharply, panicked that someone had walked in on her having a staring contest with a Miss Molly, then felt her mouth go dry. Standing before her—towering over, more like—was the epitome of tall, dark, and handsome. What the hell was a stunning creature like him doing in the doll aisle?

  “Uh…” was the most eloquent response Elise could manage in the heat of the moment. Her cheeks flushed as she took in his few days of rugged dark facial hair, contrasted perfectly with warm hazel eyes, more green than brown, and wickedly handsome lips. To make everything ten times worse, he was in a suit. A fitted, crisp suit that clung snugly to a muscular frame and broad—but not too broad—shoulders. Was this guy a model? Was she being filmed right now for some prank show? Men like him absolutely did not waltz into the Fort Trent Bennington’s Department Store; she was more accustomed to the beer gut, stained T-shirt and cargo shorts variety.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, brow furrowing slightly.

  Shit. She’d totally just been gawking at him like she had never seen a human male before. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she scrambled to her feet, tugging up her dress pants along the way. Her blush worsened when she caught him staring at her hideous Christmas vest.

  “Sorry, hi, yes,” Elise rambled. “What’s up?” Oh, customer service faux pas. “Can I help you with something today?”