her Tits like you did Tina?”
Caleb clenched his jaw. He was never going to live that down. “No. But I volunteered to be Santa at the Christmas Carnival at the school.”
Jack’s brow wrinkled. “What? You?”
“Yeah. Me.”
Jack stared at him, bewildered. After a moment, it finally sunk in, and he began to laugh. “Are you serious? You? You can’t even hold a conversation around that woman. What makes you think you can be Santa?”
He crossed his arms over his chest, feeling like an idiot. “I don’t know. She just . . . she said she was going to be Mrs. Claus and they needed a Santa, so I said I’d do it. I wasn’t thinking.” He didn’t tell Jack the part where he said he’d do Mrs. Claus. Jack didn’t need more ammunition for teasing Caleb. “What do I do?”
“What do you mean, what do you do?” Jack grinned hugely. “You practice your ‘ho, ho, ho.’ You wouldn’t want to disappoint the kids, would you?”
Damn it.
Maybe he could be a silent Santa.
Santa with bronchitis.
Santa that had taken a vow of silence.
A mime Santa.
Something.
He immediately wanted to cancel . . . but he didn’t have Amy’s phone number. He’d forgotten to get it, and now unless he went back up to that school and told her that he was out, he was going to be Santa. He was stuck.
CHAPTER TWO
When Amy got home that night, the ceiling in her bedroom had caved in.
It had been a long day already. The children were fine—the children were always fine—but she’d had two parent meetings after class and had discovered that Tim Howerton had left his inhaler in his cubby at school, so she’d driven out to the Howertons’ house to drop it off just in case. Then she’d gone back to school to clean up her classroom and to take down the fall decorations in preparation for the holiday decor.
Unfortunately, her holiday decor left a lot to be desired, so she’d spent some time shopping local teacher supply shops and clutching at her neckline at the prices. Lord, it was expensive to decorate a classroom. She was on an extremely limited budget, too, which meant she’d be cutting out paper snowflakes and making garlands with construction paper. Maybe some of the thrift places would have sales this weekend? Or she’d find another estate sale to hit up? She made a mental note to check the local paper and watch the local donation lists online, then packed up her laptop and headed home.
It was dark early, thanks to winter, and she slipped twice on the icy sidewalk. That’s what happened when you were from the South and didn’t know how to handle winter. She got inside all right, though, with only her backside and pride bruised, and discovered the problem with the ceiling.
Really, it was the perfect end to a perfectly awful day.
She put her laptop down on her table in the living room and stepped inside the bedroom gingerly. Water was dripping from upstairs, which was kind of odd, because she hadn’t realized she had an upstairs. She peered up at the soggy remnants of her ceiling, determined not to cry. Sure, her bed was soaked and it was ten degrees outside, and she had no ceiling, but she could handle this. She could.
She was strong. Independent.
She didn’t need to count on anyone to fix this.
Well, sort of. Amy immediately texted her landlord, Greg.
AMY: Hi there! It’s me on Madison Lane. The ceiling in the bedroom collapsed . . . ?
Impatiently, Amy watched her phone as the three dots flashed up, indicating someone was typing, and then disappeared again. No message came through right away, so she grabbed the two towels she had, made a mental note to buy more towels, and did her best to start mopping up the mess. Between the third and fourth wring-out of her towels in the bathroom, her phone buzzed with an incoming text. She raced over and picked it up.
GREG: Hey there! How’d that happen?
GREG: Been meaning to talk to you. I was thinking about Italian on Friday night and I know this great little place a few towns over. You interested?
She fought back a scream of frustration. Was he asking her out? While she was staring down a squishy mattress and a ceiling that gaped into the attic above? Amy took a deep breath (or three) and finally composed an answer that didn’t sound rude.
AMY: Hi! I’m busy Friday. My ceiling . .