Unwrapping Mr. Roth Read Free Page A

of contact. “I’m not reading that, whatever it is.”
    “Fine, don’t read it. Just sign. It basically says anything you see while under employment of S.I. should remain a secret.”
    “Like…pointy elf ears and freak snowstorms?”
    He tented his fingers and performed an elegant shrug.
    Even that was lovely.
    She made a guttural noise at the back of her throat, and tried—and failed—to rip her gaze away from him. He was too beautiful, and some broken thing in her mind said that looking away would be like squandering the opportunity to enjoy beautiful art.
    “You outsiders tend to see me as a fat man with a white beard and rosy cheeks,” he said. “You’re making me work hard for an illusion that’s barely working on you, Gillian. So, I’m just going to drop the façade.”
    “There’s a façade?”
    “Barely. You’ve seen the ears, so I’ll show you the rest.” His pupils seemed to spiral inward. His irises became two silvery-blue pools, and his skin seemed paler—almost iridescent.
    She clutched her purse tighter, wondering if there was anything in it that could be fashioned into a weapon. “What the hell are you?”
    “I thought that was obvious. I’m an elf.”
    “There are no…those don’t… No. Not real.”
    He smoothed his shirt. “The job pays twenty dollars an hour. Six p.m. to nine p.m. every night until Christmas. Double pay on the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth.”
    “I’m not… no . I can’t. I need to leave.”
    “You’re not going anywhere, Miss Wright. You may as well give up the pretense.”
    “You don’t know me.”
    “I know enough.” He opened a wardrobe at the side of the room and pulled out a hanger holding a familiar-seeming red-and-white garment. “This one will have to do for public events.”
    Gillian crinkled her nose at the hideous thing. It was the traditional Mrs. Claus outfit: a conservative red frock with white apron complete with a fluffy, ribbon-laced bonnet. “Are you kidding me?”
    “No. That’s the job, sweetheart. People expect to see Mrs. Claus when they see Santa. Since my last assistant quit, the job’s up for grabs. That’s why Agnes sent you to me. Well, that and—” He made an It’s not important hand flick, but it so was.
    “Mrs. Claus is your assistant ?”
    “The last gentleman with the job was married, so now people expect it.”
    “Oh. I see.” Gillian started to laugh hysterically and couldn’t help herself. She was sitting in front of a man who thought he was Santa, and it was such a Gillian situation: meet a guy hotter than hell only for him to turn out to be a complete whackadoo. Things just weren’t allowed to be normal in her life, apparently. No matter how hard she tried to escape her family’s chaotic legacy, shenanigans found her and made her their queen.
    “The delirium you’re feeling should pass in time, I imagine,” Nick said calmly. “It takes some time for mortals to adjust to the magic in this realm.”
    “Right. The magic.” When she was done laughing and could catch her breath, she put her hands palms-out in a wait gesture. “Okay, say I buy what you’re saying, and this is real and you are Santa—at least, the current one—what happened to the original guy?”
    “That was me.” Nick left the outfit in a pile next to her, returned to his chair, and started an examination of his cuticles.
    “So, you had a substitute?”
    “Yes. For quite a while. Some political shit went down amongst the elves. I had to help suppress it, so I had someone outside the magic world step in.”
    “The elves ?”
    “Yes. Elves . Like me, remember?”
    “And, Santa just said ‘shit’.”
    Nick shrugged. “I swear in several Germanic languages depending on mood. Pick the one you prefer. My Italian sounds much sexier, however, even if my naughty word vocabulary is limited. I really should brush up. Or perhaps instead I’ll work on my Hungarian. You know a bit of that, don’t you?”
    She gaped. “How do you