Naughty Elf: Mistletoe (Santa’s Naughty Elf Mates)

Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

RYAN

The longer I sat on the couch watching Miz play with Ellie, the worse I felt. I couldn't kick one of Santa's elves out into the snow the day after Christmas any more than I could on Christmas Day. His pale face looked like he'd never seen a picture of the sun before, let alone felt the caress of a UV ray.

The longer he spent humoring Ellie while she told story after story of the unicorn princess, the more I wanted him to stay. Besides, he had no phone, no identification, no money. How was he supposed to get a job anywhere but here?

The timing couldn't have been better, though. I was already at my wits' end about Ellie's daycare provider. The older she got, the less interaction she had with her teachers, if you could call them that. They were more like after-school playground monitors who looked the other way when the biggest bully in Ellie's class, eight-year-old Athena, pulled her hair and called her names for making up stories about unicorns and dragons.

I'd planned to spend the following morning calling around to daycare providers, but I couldn't look this gift horse in the ass …

Oops. I'd been staring. Miz lay on the floor, spread out beneath the tree like Ellie. His tunic had slipped up to his waist, and his pert behind filled his tights like temptation. I shouldn't have looked, but now I couldn't look away.

He was handsome. A hint of straight brown hair peeked from beneath his pointy green hat. His pointed ears had drawn my attention first, but even with human-looking ears, his face was breathtakingly kissable. He had a perfect cupid's bow mouth and dimples in both cheeks when he smiled, which was often while he played with Ellie.

Not once had he given me creeper vibes. I'd pulled her from two daycares over the last seven years based on vibes alone. Miz was giving me vibes, all right … that zing of electricity when we shook hands still lingered.

I forced myself to turn my head and stare into the fire. I'd stoked it before I went upstairs, and a cheery flame blazed for my efforts. I didn't deserve its warmth and light. I needed a cold, dark place to reflect my guilt. I shouldn't have been thinking about Miz's ass, or any part of him, for that matter.

When Miz first set aside the tablet, I should have grabbed it and thumbed through the job prospects on my own. I enjoyed searching the career websites, especially when I was looking for a job for someone else.

I'd found a job for my sister while I was flipping through copywriting openings on a whim. Too bad for both of us, it was in Minneapolis, not Duluth. She'd moved away before John got sick. She'd visited a few times, but Ellie and I were alone when we lost him. Everyone thought he would have more time, but we were all wrong.

Two years wasn't enough time to mourn my dead husband. I shouldn't be staring at anyone's ass, especially not a guy who magically fell through my still-intact roof and brained me with an elf statue, as said statue.

Maybe I had a concussion! I didn't have a headache or blurred vision. I pulled up concussion symptoms on my phone, looking for any excuse for my lapse in judgment. Nothing.

I let Ellie stay up until ten, an hour later than her usual bedtime, and then I told her to wrap it up with the stories. She was excited to spend another day with Miz. He looked hopeful, but I'd seen his look of pure agony when he'd shared that Santa had kicked him out of the sleigh, and that he'd been fired. He needed a champion, and I wasn't ready.

Ellie needed a champion, too. She already had the first floor to play after school or on holidays while I worked. During the warmer months, she could play outside.

She didn't like playing downstairs by herself, though. She would rather read books in her room after lunch. Some days, she took a nap, but more often I heard her reading aloud to herself. I didn't want to discourage her reading habit, but I had a hard time concentrating, especially when she inserted little jabs like, "Athena would do something like that," or the one that threatened to slay me in my chair, "If Papa was still here, he would fight the monsters with me."

I didn't want to forget John, but I didn't want her to torture herself with might-have-beens, either. She was only seven.

Someone to lure her downstairs would help my production immensely. Maybe what she needed, what we both needed, was a distraction. A sexy distraction in a green cap and red scarf over a green tunic and dancer's tights.

"You want me to stay?" Miz asked when I directed him past my office to the guest bedroom.

"You mentioned wanting to help, and now that I've seen you with Ellie, I think maybe you can."

"You don't know me from anyone," he said. "I'm not the most trustworthy person. Even Santa kicked me out."

"Are you ready to tell me about that?" I asked. He hadn't been forthcoming before.

"Tomorrow?" he hedged.

"Over coffee before breakfast." Ellie hated the coffee smell. She most likely would stay in her room until the bacon and eggs were ready.

Miz nodded. "If you want to throw me out into a snowbank afterward, I'll understand."

I gave his clothes another once-over. How could I have thought he would be safe to leave the house? Despite being from the North Pole, he was balefully unprepared for Duluth winters. No coat, no mittens, and no warm pants. If his story rang true, I would use the block of time I'd set aside to find another daycare to shop online for clothes instead.

For now, he needed something to sleep in. "I'll be right back with some pajamas."

I went downstairs to the coldest part of the house. The main bedroom was off the kitchen. No matter how hard I tried, the back of the house lost heat in the winter, and my bedroom felt like a tomb every night when I finally climbed into bed. I didn't mind. My moose kept me warm. Tonight, it seemed even more dreary after the warmth Miz had brought to the evening.

It was ridiculous to think Miz had already made my life less miserable in the few hours since Ellie had found him in my office, but I couldn't deny the urge to rush back to him. I found a box at the back of my closet and removed the plastic lid.

I'd washed the clothes before I packed them away. The absence of John's scent brought tears to my eyes. I longed for it, but these were no longer John's clothes. They were packed in this box for a trip to a second-hand store sometime over my vacation.

My fingers grazed something soft, and I pulled out an old t-shirt. It was one of mine that had shrunk in the dryer. I dug out a pair of John's pajama pants from the middle of the box. I thought about shoving it back into my closet but changed my mind. I snapped the lid back into place and grabbed the box by both handles, carting it upstairs to the spare room, now Miz's room.

"I was going to donate this box," I said, dropping it on the floor beside the closed closet doors. "Feel free to take anything you want."

Miz stared at the box, and then at me. "Thank you."

"We'll find you some winter clothes online tomorrow," I said.

"If you still want me to stay." He looked so dejected. I had the overwhelming desire to kiss his sadness away.

Instead, I grabbed his shoulders and grinned at him until he smirked. "I have the week off and a passport," I said. "If you can't stay, I'll drive you back to the North Pole myself."

"Please don't do that," he whispered. "Santa sent me here to find my fated mate."

My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. He couldn't be my fated mate. He was an elf. Elves didn't mate with moose, did they?

My beast had been decidedly quiet since Miz arrived. This was our favorite time of year, when snow blanketed the world. I felt at peace in a way I hadn't since John died. I couldn't explain it, but that didn't mean Miz was my fated mate.

"I'll help you find your mate. He must be around here somewhere." A fae couple lived further down the street, but they were snowbirds off to somewhere warm for the winter. I would ask them if they had any ideas about potential elf mates when they returned in the spring.

"In the meantime, you can stay here, even if I decide I can't trust you with my daughter." A horrible thought crossed my mind. "Unless you've hurt children."

He blanched. "No! Not on purpose!"

He couldn't stop at no, too eager to be honest. I liked him already.

"Good. That's good."

The next morning, my coffee went cold while Miz told his story in fits and starts. I secretly enjoyed his pretty blush, and I felt bad for making him uncomfortable. Still, I had to know why someone as benevolent and patient as Santa (according to legend, anyway) would kick Miz out of his home and leave him stranded in Duluth without a phone, wallet, or winter coat.

I liked Miz even more when he finished telling me about his troubles. He wanted the action figure to be perfect for the little girl, and he'd tried to be a good friend. He was easily distractible, though. As soon as Ellie graced us with her presence, she was the center of his attention as he served her breakfast and made us all hot chocolate far better than mine.

I was jealous of my daughter and the attention he paid her. I enjoyed his company. At the same time, I kept telling myself I shouldn't trust him. I barely knew him, but talking with him was so easy, like I'd known him my entire life.

When Miz grinned at me and said, "I'll tell you the rest later," I believed him. Not only that, but the silence while we ate was comfortable and domestic. John had hated silence, filling every moment with a new story. I'd loved his stories, but this was nice, too. Relaxing. Peaceful.

Finally, we sent Ellie off to play with her new dragons in the form of dinosaur figurines and unicorns in the form of model horses. Then, Miz continued his tale of woe on Christmas Eve, ending with his first and possibly last trip in Santa's sleigh.

"You must think I'm an idiot," he said. "I should have been focused on my work."

"You're too hard on yourself." I knew the signs of burnout. I was halfway there, myself. Wiping the board for my two-week vacation had felt cathartic in a way I hadn't expected. "Maybe this is the break you need."

"But I loved my job!"

I shook my head. "You almost convinced me, but I don't believe you. You spent too much time trying to avoid your job while you were there."

"I get distracted," he admitted. "That's not avoidance."

"You get distracted because you don't enjoy doing it."

His face scrunched up in a delightful frown.

"You love the finished product, but you don't enjoy the process." I shrugged. "My job doesn't have a finished product, at least, not for me. I'm the manager, but my team is my product, not the websites they design. There are some tasks I hate, but the overall process of planning something and then watching it come together …." I sighed, thinking about the mess I had waiting for me on January second. "The process is all I've got, so I have to love it, or I would hate my entire existence."

"Sounds like you're the one who's burned out," he said.

"You're not wrong."

"You're spot on, though. I hated the process. I don't like the smell of melting plastic, and I burned myself so many times." He shook his head and laughed. "The end result was beautiful. Especially when I imagined the child's joy when they held their very own action figure, not a cookie-cutter copy from the movies."

He grinned and took another sip of coffee, and we lapsed into another comfortable silence. I thought back to the job listing website I'd pulled up for him. "What do you want your next job to be?"

He shrugged. "My favorite job was when the kids tested our prototypes. We sat behind a mirrored wall and watched them play with the toys. I'd always wanted to interact with them." He grinned. "I had fun listening to Ellie's stories last night. She has an active imagination."

"She does. Last year, she made an entire nativity scene with her model animals and action figures." I'd been sad when she told me she was too old to pretend her toys were the holy family this year. The dinosaurs and model horses from her grandparents had rejuvenated her imagination.

"I can't send her back to her daycare," I admitted aloud for the first time. "Even if we find your fated mate, I'd be happy to hire you to watch her after school." I almost went so far as to suggest summer vacation, too, but that was thinking too far ahead. "I'll help you set up a bank account, and then I can direct deposit the funds into it."

Miz frowned. "You don't need to pay me. You're already giving me a place to stay."

"When we find your mate, I don't want him to think I've treated you like some sort of indentured servant." I shook my head. I couldn't imagine discovering my fated mate was working for room and board. I would be furious. I would probably go so far as to sue on their behalf.

What if he was my fated mate, though? It didn't seem possible, but I was willing to risk it. Miz deserved to earn a living wage for making my daughter's after-school experience better than it was. If he turned out to be my fated mate, we would talk about it before it got strange. I hoped. Entertaining the possibility he could be my fated mate was strange enough.