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All by My Elf (Under the Mistletoe collection) Start Reading 20%
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All by My Elf (Under the Mistletoe collection)

All by My Elf (Under the Mistletoe collection)

By Olivia Dade
© lokepub

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When the SUV passenger in the left lane rolled down his window and waved to get her attention, Nina pushed the button to open hers too.

She forced a smile as she did, because that was part of her temporary job.

Also because it wasn’t some random guy’s fault that her hot-nerd colleague and crush of four months was currently huddled up close to her best friend in the last row of seats behind her as they whispered together about ...

something.

Something they clearly didn’t want her to hear. Something intimate, probably.

As her window descended, more frigid December air immediately poured inside.

She shivered and jacked up the heat another notch, determined not to look behind her again.

Instead, she focused on SUV Guy, whose red-and-green-striped beanie matched almost exactly the elf outfits she and her coworkers wore on non-travel days.

“What’s up with your hot dog?”

When SUV Guy called out the question—which, after almost three weeks of driving the Mincemobile, she’d heard many times before—his breath clouded in the chill. “Because it looks like a—”

“It’s a mincemeat-filled roll of phyllo dough,”

she interrupted hastily, because she knew all too well what the tubular fiberglass structure sitting atop her vehicle’s roof resembled.

“Drizzled with caramel.

One of our most popular products here at Mrs.

Claus’s Mincemeat Treats.

We sell them in packages of three, as”—this one pained her, every time—“‘Hark, the Phyllo Fingers Rock.’”

SUV Guy looked skeptical.

Understandable, since the Mincemobile—twenty-seven feet long, eleven feet tall, and eight feet wide—was clearly a hastily repurposed Weenie on Wheels.

And if you slapped a coat of pale-beige acrylic on an enormous freaking hot dog, it looked like a dick.

Even if you painted mincemeat peeking out of the ends and golden-brown swirls over the top.

Then it simply looked like a dick in urgent need of medical intervention.

Supposedly, decommissioned Weenies on Wheels were never resold. So it was entirely possible she was driving not only a gargantuan penis but a gray-market gargantuan penis.

The traffic light switched to green. Both the Mincemobile and the SUV were so far back, though, that neither actually moved much before it returned to red again.

William unexpectedly appeared at her side, crouching in the center aisle, dark-brown eyes earnest behind his horn-rimmed glasses.

One flick of his wrist turned the heat to max, and he held out a branded green fleece.

“Everything okay, Nina? I can take over driving, if you’d like.”

At thirty-seven years old, she’d obviously experienced a few hopeless crushes before.

He wasn’t the first.

Might not even be the last.

This sort of intense, involuntary attention to every detail of him—the agile grace in his broad, pale hands, the spread of his surprisingly muscular thighs in those dark, close-fitting jeans of his, the exact shape of his softly curved lips as he regarded her—would eventually pass.

It had to.

Otherwise, once all three of them returned to their normal adjunct-instructor work at Dogwood University, she’d have to move to a different spot in the library’s cubicle farm, one positioned much farther away from his.

For productivity purposes, if no other reason.

“I’m good.”

She accepted the fleece and spread it across her lap, surprised he’d even noticed her open-window conversation. He and Claudia had seemed utterly lost in their own world. “Thanks, though.”

As soon as William nodded, made his way back to his seat, and strapped himself in again, her twentysomething inquisitor in the neighboring SUV pointed to the corporate slogan painted along the side of the phyllo penis: Nutritious, Delicious, and So Very British.

“‘Nutritious’? Really?”

She kept her smile steady and sweet. “Santa always tells us elves to eat more produce. Each of Mrs. Claus’s Mincemeat Treats contains an entire serving of fruit, as well as the finest spices, artisanal brandy, and real creamery butter.”

SUV Guy raised an eyebrow. “Santa tell you to drink more brandy too?”

Her four-day Treater Training over Dogwood University’s Thanksgiving break hadn’t covered that particular question, but three weeks in the Mincemobile and a semester of teaching survey-level courses to fidgety college students had prepared her to expect the unexpected.

“I won’t ‘mince’ words,”

she told him. “Sometimes days in Santa’s workshop can get a little long. ‘Crust’ me on that.”

He groaned, and her grin turned genuine at the sound of his pain.

Treater Training had covered puns. Also mandated their liberal use.

Wow, the temperature was dropping fast as night fell. She shivered again, then checked the traffic light. Still red. And they might or might not make it through the next green either.

The Newport News roads were packed. Normal Christmas Eve travel to family homes and friends’ parties, but also imminent-snowstorm weirdness.

As she’d discovered upon moving to Virginia for college, people in this area of the country treated snowfall with a bizarre mixture of nonchalance and downright terror.

If they weren’t panic-purchasing twelve loaves of bread, eight gallons of milk, and every AA battery in existence, they were blithely rolling out for a leisurely drive in their bald-tired, no-wheel-drive compact cars without their headlights on.

Nina, Claudia, and William—the three “Treaters”

aboard the vehicle, traveling around the mid-Atlantic seaboard to launch Mrs.

Claus’s Mincemeat Treats into the seasonal-foods market with a splash—had called their supervisor the day before yesterday and asked permission to hunker down in Claudia’s parents’ home during the worst of the weather.

Ruth had denied the request.

“At least two Treaters on duty each day,”

she’d told Nina yesterday, disapproval heavy in her frosty tone.

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