by Amanda Rose
"You're not an elf!" the snotty child screeched. "You're too tall to be an elf!" To drive her point home, she then decided to stomp on my foot and run screaming through the hotel lobby.
Sadly, my felt and polyester elf slippers were no match for little kid ski boots and I felt my eyes well up as I clutched my foot in pain.
"In case you forgot," Santa drawled, standing up from his seat like it was a goddamn fucking throne and he was the king, "your job is to make kids happy, not send them screaming around the lobby like little terrorists."
"No, Gary, that's your job. I just keep the line in order." I mean seriously, I was Santa's Little Helper not the fucking Tooth Fairy.
"Yeah well, great job you’re doing of that," he snorted, as two more wild things burst free from their parents and started climbing all over Santa’s chair. "I’m going for a cigarette. Try to keep shit civilized, yeah?" He paused and took a long look down my cleavage. Stupid fucking too-tight elf costume. "The brat was right about one thing: you are too tall for an elf … Maybe you should spend more time on your knees?" He didn’t wait for my sarcastic response before slapping me on the ass and sauntering away.
"Pig," I muttered under my breath, while shooting daggers at his back. As disgusting as Gary was, I had no choice but to put up with him. He was Gary fucking Ridgemont, cousin to Graham and Louise Ridgemont who practically owned this entire ski village. One bad word from him and I’d be out of a job and out of a home, seeing as all resort employees stayed in staff housing. It was something I quite literally couldn’t afford.
Recently, I’d sunk the very last of my money into a brand-new Nikon DSLR with all the lenses I could possibly need to pursue my dream of becoming a professional photographer.
Now, my goal was simple: spend the winter dressed as Santa’s Little Helper, and hopefully snap a picture that would win me first place in the Candid Moments Photography Competition. If I could manage that then I’d be set. Sounded easy, right?
A piercing shriek cut through my musing and I cringed as an ankle-biter broke free from its keeper—I mean mother—and launched into a howling tantrum about Santa not being there.
Groaning to myself, I heaved another sigh then turned on my happy-elf-smile. Just three hours until the end of my shift, then if I skipped showering or changing, I’d be able to catch the last of the sunlight.
"Hi there, sweetie!" I sang in a voice sweet enough to rot teeth. "I’m Mila, the elf! Santa just had to step out and check his naughty or nice list, but why don’t you take a photo with his reindeer while he’s gone?"
Of course, the mention of the reindeer perked the wailing child right up; it always did. When I'd first found out that the Ridgemonts had gone all-out on their Christmas decorating, and rented actual reindeer, I'd scoffed at them. What a ridiculous waste of money, as if people gave a fuck about reindeer. But those damn deer were the best distraction in this place for stroppy, spoiled children who had never heard the word no in their lives. Hardly surprising given the price tag for a night at The Ridge.
The child took off screaming in the direction of the reindeer stable with her poor mother trailing behind, and I breathed a short sigh of relief. She was Sara, the reindeer elf’s issue now.
Just suck it up Mila, this job is nowhere even close to the worst thing you’ve ever done. Suck it up. Make some money. Take great photos.
But I couldn’t stop the bitterness and anger clawing at my throat. I should never have taken a job in a ski village, but after six long years my subconscious must have been missing the cold. Somehow I’d managed to sabotage every interview except this one, leaving me with no other options.
"Maybe try not to be so obvious when you slack off work, hey Sweet Thang?" Gary’s sleazy voice breathed into my ear as his hand grabbed my ass. The stench of stale cigarettes and whiskey on his breath made my stomach roll. "Let’s get these brats done so we can skip out early and go for a drink. What do you say?" His hand shifted so it was halfway under my too-short elf costume and his sweaty fingers were biting painfully into my ass cheek.
"I say no, Gary. Same as I've said everyday. You’re technically my boss, and it would be inappropriate." Not to mention fucking repulsive. Smoothly, I stepped out of his grip and returned to my position at the little picket gate to Santa’s grotto.
Gary muttered something as he passed me, which I didn’t need to hear. It was the same thing every damn day. I can fix that, Sweet Thang. A thinly veiled threat that he could fire me at any moment.
Just suck it up, Mila. Three more hours.
The second I flipped the cutesy little sign from Santa’s Here! to Santa’s Sleeping!, I was out of there like my tail was on fire. I’d made the mistake of taking my time once before and almost ended up alone with Gary. Just remembering it gave me chills. Some dudes were sleazy but harmless, and Gary wasn’t one of them.
Power walking out of Santa’s Grotto, I looped my bag strap over my neck and pulled out my camera. The last kid had sat on Santa’s lap for way too long, and the light was already fading. If I wanted any usable pictures, I needed to haul ass.
Guests were already off the mountain and hitting their après-ski pretty hard, so I was forced to weave my way through a packed beer garden on my way out of the hotel. My aim was to catch the sun setting over the ice rink, knowing there would be couples out skating.
My own history with skating made it a masochistic choice, but ever since arriving at The Ridge, it'd been like a scab I couldn’t stop picking. Every time I picked up my camera, the ice rink pulled me like a goddamn magnet.
The evening sun cast a red gold glow over the snow, urging me faster, and I fiddled with the settings on my camera as I raced around the hotel toward the ice rink. My flimsy elf slippers slid across the snow and the cold bit into my feet. I really should've put boots on, but I’d missed these shots all week and the competition deadline was fast approaching.
"Watch it!" A sharp yell came with just enough time to save me being plowed down by a way off-piste snowboarder. Unfortunately for me, elf slippers did not allow for decent grip on hard packed snow and my arms pinwheeled, trying to regain balance and not drop my camera.
"Whoa, I’ve got you," a man chuckled, popping out of fucking nowhere and grasping my waist to save me from falling. A startled scream squeaked out of me and then the whole world seemed to move in slow-motion. My beautiful, expensive, brand-new Nikon slipped from my cold fingers. Panicked, I tried to dive for it but the stranger was still holding my waist so I could do nothing but watch as it hit the ice, bounced, then skittered to a stop against the wall with a crunch.
"No!" I screamed as my camera hit the ground with a sickening crack and I finally broke from the stranger’s grip. "No, no, no, this isn’t happening! This can’t be happening!"
My knees hit the ice and I snatched my camera up and cradled it to my chest, frantically checking it over. Please, please be okay! Sadly though, the power of thought wasn’t going to mend the spiderweb of cracks across the lens, nor would it put the broken housing back together. Fuck. My. Life. Why wasn’t magic real? If I had magic, surely this could be mended with the wave of a hand and some gibberish, right?
"Hey, are you okay? You almost got killed," the husky voice asked hesitantly, and I looked up at the stranger with tears clouding my vision.
"Do I look okay?" I hissed. "You just scared the shit out of me and now my camera is broken! Do you have any idea how much this is going to cost to get fixed?"
"Whoa, babe, I just like … saved you from getting hit by an out of control dickhead. You can’t seriously blame me for this." The guy held his hands up defensively, and I swiped the tears from my eyes in order to better see him as I glared.
"Oh god, of course it’s you," I scoffed with disgust. That devilishly handsome face was unmistakable; it'd been all over billboards and the sides of buses for years and he—along with his three team members—had caused a media circus in The Ridge for the past week.
"I’m sorry, do we know each other?"
he, Ryder Bailey, laughed awkwardly then gave me a sultry smile, his dark blue eyes sparkling. "I mean, you look sort of familiar? Hot tub party on Thursday right? You were the one that did that thing with the redhead with the huge tits, right?"
"Gross. No. Ugh, you really are as bad as they say." I struggled to my feet but those damn elf slippers betrayed me again and I came crashing back to my ass in the snow. "Fuck!" I yelled, desperately clutching my broken camera to my chest in the hopes of protecting it from more damage.
"Hey, are you okay?" Another snowboarder came jogging over to us, carrying his board. "You just came out of nowhere! I could've killed you, you know!" He swept his goggles and beanie off his head and ran his fingers through his messy, honey-blonde hair.
"Oh great, another one," I groaned, and slowly pushed myself back to my feet, cautious to keep my balance this time.
"Do we know you?" Blondie asked with a lazy grin. "You look familiar. Oh wait, you’re that chick from Tuesday’s poker game! With the body shots?"
"I am not one of your groupie sluts," I growled, glaring at blondie—Drex Slater—and flipping my hair over my shoulder. "What the fuck were you thinking anyway? You’re way off-piste. What if I had been a little kid? You could've done some serious damage. Not that you lot would give a shit—you’d just throw some money at the problem and then have a fucking party."
"Whoa." Drex grinned. "Kitty’s got some claws!"
"Babe, you sound like you’re pissed off at something. Can we try and make it up to you?" Ryder raised his eyebrows at me, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out what he meant by that.
"I wouldn’t touch the Winter Wankers with a ten foot pole, thank you very fucking much," I snapped, pushing past the dark-haired snowboarding dick and marching carefully toward the staff housing. There was no point in trying to take pictures with a broken camera. I needed to get back to my room, work out just how bad the damage was, and figure out how to fix it.
"Ah, it’s Kings of Snow," Drex corrected and I rolled my eyes, not stopping to continue this pointless argument. "Also, you seem real bitter about something? Hey, Blitzen, wait up!"
"Blitzen was a reindeer, asshole, not an elf!" Why I couldn’t ignore him and let it go, I don’t know. Maybe it was the compounded stress of dealing with Gary day after day, or maybe it was finally confronting these fuckers who were the lynchpin in the worst day of my life … Whatever it was, I was fired up and ready for a fight.
"Reindeer, elf, same difference. Hey, where're you going?" Drex jogged to catch up then fell into step with me. A mischievous grin spread across his tanned face.
"Home." I growled, stalking as fast as my elf slippers would carry me. My long hair had slipped out of its loose ponytail and was flapping around me like a black and violet superhero cape.
"Can we come?" Ryder asked, falling into step on my other side, oddly enough with a kind and gentle smile plastered on his face. Is he mocking me? My teeth ground together hard in an effort to hold back the poisonous words I wanted to spit at these two man whores.
"You know, Blitzen, I kinda get the feeling you don’t like us much …" Drex commented and I pulled up short, whirling on him in anger.
"Like you?" I snarled. "I can’t imagine why I wouldn’t like you, given you just broke my ten thousand dollar camera, effectively ruining my chances of winning the one goddamn competition that might have set up my career, and dooming me to being a fucking Christmas Elf for the rest of my fucking life. So tell me, Drex fucking Slater, what gave you the impression that I don’t like you?"
For a moment, the two sinfully good looking snowboard dicks stared at me in shock, then Drex held up his hands defensively. To my utter chagrin, it simply drew my attention to his long, slim fingers encased in cut-off gloves.
"Whoa, babe, it wouldn’t be forever. Christmas is over in like two weeks." A teasing smile pulled at his lips and my hands clenched tight, cracking my camera housing even worse than it already was.
"He’s joking," Ryder muttered, punching his buddy in the arm then turning a charming—and seemingly genuine—smile toward me. "Look, we’re sorry, cutie. Send us the bill for your camera when you get it fixed, but right now, is there another way we could make it up to you?"
"Make it up to me?" I snorted. "How? By getting me loaded on tequila and fuck knows what drugs then generously letting me suck you off? Thanks, but no thanks." Shifting my broken camera into one hand, I used the other to flip them off before whirling on my soggy elf slipper once more and leaving them to bite my ass.
CHAPTER TWO
Fucked.
My Nikon was totally fucked. A quick Google search hinted at a very costly repair which was only confirmed when I ran it down to the local photo shop before my shift the next day to get a quote. They weren’t equipped to fix it there—all they did was print holiday snaps for tourists—but they said they could send it away to be fixed in six to ten weeks.
My entire shift passed in one long sulk. Not that I was usually Strawberry fucking Shortcake, but this was a whole other level. Even when Gary was his usual disgusting self, I didn’t have the energy to fight back. Despair was a bog pit slowly sucking me down, and there was no one around to pull me out.
"What the fuck am I going to do?" I sulked to Sara, the reindeer elf, as I helped her brush and feed the horny beasts. "That was my last idea, the last of my money. I literally have nothing left, and at the end of this season, I don’t even have a place to live."
"I don’t get it, Mila. What the fuck are you running from so hard that you have no one to call for help? Pretty girl like you …" Sara hip-checked me, almost sending me flying into a bucket of reindeer food. "Abusive ex? Crime? What was it, huh?"
God, if only she knew. It'd been six years since I’d left my old life behind, moving to the other side of the world, forcing myself to drop my distinctive Australian accent and generally fading into obscurity in the hopes that the tabloids would lose interest.
I’d worked my butt off on this new identity, and rarely thought of my old life anymore.
Until now.
They just had to show up here and yank my skeletons out of the closet. Them. The Winter Wankers. The Kings of Snow. Ryder, Drex, Blaze, and Slade. The four notorious bad boys of the winter sports circuit and the most elite snowboarders in the world. Between them, they had dominated every snowboarding event imaginable for the past seven years—including the Olympics.
I hated them.
Hated them.
They were the cause of my own career nosedive and the reason I was in the shitty, shitty situation I was currently in. Them breaking my camera was just the last straw.
"It’s nothing," I muttered, "just a series of bad decisions."
"Whatever you say," she laughed, chucking her deer-fur brush into a bucket of other tools and wiping her hands on her elf dress. Much like mine, it was way too small, but given Sara’s voluptuous curves it was a whole lot more stripper-esque on her than on my slim build. Six years off the ice had only added the tiniest layer of padding to my athletic frame, but thankfully what padding I had gained had gone mostly to my chest and hips.
"So, are we hitting up Scruffy’s for Tequila Tuesday? Maybe those sexy ass Kings will be there?" Sara waggled her eyebrows at me and I suppressed the burning anger rising up in me. There were several thousand things I’d rather do than be in the same bar with those four rich, entitled wankers.
Actually … come to think if it …
"That is not a terrible idea, Sar." I grinned. Time to slap those dickheads with a bill for damages.
"Really?" she squealed. "Oh my god, yay! Quick, let’s get these fuckers back in their barn and go get ready!"
She slapped me on the ass when I rolled my eyes and I couldn’t help but laugh. I’d only known her a couple of weeks but damn, her energy was infectious. My new plan had me feeling a tiny bit more positive too, now that I thought about it. All I needed was to quickly type up an official looking invoice to hit those assholes with.
Don’t judge: those boys were pure sin on the slopes and fuck if I didn’t want to flaunt it a little around them.
Fate was working for me for once. As soon as we strutted into Scruffy’s, my eyes were drawn to the velvet roped-off VIP area where a gaggle of gorgeous women waited. There was only one reason in the village this season for such mass hysteria.
The Kings of Snow were coming.
"Come on, girl! Let's get some shots and then hit the dance floor!" Sara dragged me through the crowded room toward the little bar in the back. It was our favorite because the bartender who worked it on Tequila Tuesdays had a thing for staring down Sara’s shirt and forgot to charge us half the time.
"Well hello, gorgeous," the bartender, Alex, yelled as we approached. He threw Sara a saucy wink and she tossed her blonde hair, giggling.
"Oh my gawd," I snickered under my breath and she pinched my wrist to shut me up. She knew perfectly well what she was doing, but neither of us were exactly flush with cash so we’d take the free tequila when we could.
Sara propped her elbows on the bar and leaned forward to say something, giving Alex an unobstructed view of her ample cleavage. She’d worn a tight, off the shoulder bandage dress that emphasized her curves like she was Marilyn Monroe. Next to her I always felt like I faded into the background … which was exactly what I wanted.
"Here," she said, passing me two shot glasses then clinking them both with hers. "Cheers, you mysterious bitch."
This wasn’t my first rodeo. I tossed my shots back, one after another, then placed the empty glasses back on the bar.
"Alright, let's go find those wankers and slap them with this invoice so we can get out of here." I spun on my deadly stiletto heel and took two steps towards the VIP lounge before Sara grabbed hold of my waistband and yanked me to a halt.
"Hold the hell up, miss thing. You do not just march up there like a bear with a sore head." Sara scowled at me and I raised an eyebrow in question.