The One Night Stand Before Christmas - Jana Aston Page 0,4
all know the only thing you use body tape for is to ensure a low-cut top doesn’t stray where it shouldn’t.
“You’re going to tape that to my face?” Teddy asks, a look of disbelief crossing his face, eyebrows raised in question when I tear off a strip and attach it to the back of the beard wig.
“Don’t be a baby. It peels right off. Trust me, women go through far worse in the name of beauty.”
“All right, sure.” He waves his arms wide, as if in surrender, and perches against the edge of the desk. “Do with me what you like,” he says. But the way it comes out has my body responding in ways I’d prefer it not to. He says it like an invitation, which I suppose technically it was.
I step forward and attach the mustache portion above his lip, pressing it in place with my fingertips. My thumb inadvertently brushes his lower lip as I do so. I suck in a small breath at the contact, more affected than I have any reasonable right to be. Am I this hard up that I’m attracted to a Santa I met ten minutes ago?
Ugh.
He smells like he just ate a peppermint with an undertone of something else, like a simmering pot of cloves and cinnamon and lust.
And he thinks I’m sexy. I don’t think anyone’s ever referred to me that way before. Maybe it’s happened in bed, but never in the middle of a random day when I’m not even trying.
I scoot in between his spread legs, peeling another strip of tape to attach the bottom half of the beard to his face. There’s an elastic portion that secures it around his head as well—the tape is just a precaution in case any of the little ones get grabby. He looks truly ridiculous now, but damned if I’m not still drawn to him like a moth to a flame. Like snow to December. Like Santa to a chimney. Like a thirsty woman with an overactive imagination in the presences of one of those make-your-own-soda machines with the fancy touchscreen that allows you to make the soda combination of your dreams, like a peach-flavored Sprite or a raspberry Fanta.
Just like that.
“Why did you refer to me as sexy?” I find myself asking. I’ve still got the tape pressed between my fingers but I’m afraid to touch him again. Afraid I’m in some kind of sexy-Santa-induced trance.
“What? Santa isn’t allowed to find turtlenecks sexy?”
Yeah, that wakes me up. I’m the dowdy equipment manager to his sexy quarterback. Abort flirtation immediately before his cheerleader girlfriend shows up and laughs at me.
That might have triggered a bad high school memory. Shake it off, girl.
He’s teasing me. He’s a tease. A flirt. Jillian warned me. Out-of-my-league attractive is what he is. I slap the beard wig on his face with a little more force than necessary and step back, flushed.
“Uh, the kids are waiting,” I stammer as I turn and head for the door.
“Noel.” He says my name in a way that makes me stop and turn back, waiting for him to continue. “It was the way you glared at me the moment we met. Your bossy no-nonsense attitude. How you contradicted every idea I thought I had of you. Sexy as hell.”
I blink. And before I can process that he’s stood, placed the Santa hat on his head and moved to the office door where he pauses with one hand on the doorjamb, leaning in so close I think he might kiss me. He doesn’t. Instead he lowers his voice to a murmur. “Now let’s go ho-ho-ho it up, shall we?”
Chapter 3
Teddy’s an excellent Santa. First-string Santa material, actually. He engages with the kids, makes them laugh for the pictures and he’s so good with the criers they’re giving him hugs and smiling by the time they’ve collected their candy cane, waving bye-bye with chubby mittened hands as their mothers bundle them back into their winter coats. The mothers don’t seem to mind him either. He charms them too, but I notice he isn’t looking at any of them the way he looked at me in the office. He’s charming with everyone but respectful. The added flirtation seems reserved especially for me, a fact that warms me from my head to my toes and all the best bits in between.
“You should line up a few more Santa gigs this week. Everyone in town is looking for a good Santa,” I tell him on