“I’ll be fine,” she said, then raised her eyebrows at him when the chirp of the alarm sounded from the office area where they’d spent the night. “That’s my cue. I’ll see you later?”
She said it like a question, but of course they would see each other. At work, if nowhere else. He thought again of how much he wanted to see her somewhere else, how decadent it would feel just to sit across from her in a coffee shop.
She started to rise, but he pulled her back down, pressing a quick, hard kiss to her mouth. She blinked at him, a little dazed, and he hoped the expression on his face was the wolfish grin he was going for.
“What happens at Cold World, right?”
She gave him a shaky smile. “Right.”
He stood, his hands in his pockets, to watch her as she sprinted through the doors and out to the parking lot, her red skirt swinging. There was probably no need for her to worry about getting out of there that fast—the security guard was still somewhere back in the offices. Asa’s lips twitched as Lauren started her ignition and peeled out like she was driving the getaway car in a bank heist. He would definitely tease her about that later.
If he was allowed to. He didn’t quite know the rules.
“Sir?” The security guard’s voice came from behind him, firm and authoritative but a little confused. Asa supposed it was one benefit to his distinctive blue hair—the chances were good that the security guard would at least vaguely recognize him as an employee. “You’re not supposed to be in here.”
Asa turned around, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “I can explain,” he said.
* * *
? ? ?
“Okay, okay,” Kiki said later, when he’d finished describing the chew-out he’d gotten from Dolores for the third time. Their boss had been understandably upset that he’d stayed late without permission, that he’d exposed the building to possible security risks, and that he’d bought out their inventory of Cold World blankets. At least he’d also stayed to put the Snow Globe back to rights, feeling sheepish when Dolores mentioned that the problem with the faux snow machine probably had to do with the fact that he’d plugged it into a nonworking outlet, and the next time he did a sanctioned test of the equipment, he should use the outlet below.
Asa had thought about staying long enough to meet up with Lauren in the break room when she got in. He would’ve let her make her plain, boring coffee first, before he tainted the machine with his. He might even have been tempted to tell her she’d been right about the outlet.
But he could tell Dolores wasn’t too upset with him, because she’d summarily kicked him out and told him to get some rest. She’d also switched his first duty to working the gift shop with Kiki, which was a much less strenuous gig than supervising the ice skating rink like he’d been originally assigned.
He’d filled Kiki in on his overnighter in the building, followed by his lectures from both the security guard and Dolores once she’d come in. He’d conveniently excised Lauren from all of it, which made the story about half as long and nowhere near as interesting.
“So what did you do all night?” Kiki asked, leaning against the counter.
Images flashed through his brain. Lauren, laughing at his goofy school picture face. Lauren, with tinsel in her hair. The flushed, wild-eyed look on Lauren’s face when she’d grabbed him by the wrist and urged him to keep going.
He took a deep breath, trying to focus on what he’d been doing. Pens. The novelty pens by the cash register had been rifled through and placed back in all the wrong places, and he’d been going to sort them back into their neat cubbies.
“Just hung around,” he said.
“Don’t quote Home Alone at me, you little shit,” Kiki said. “Why didn’t you tell me you were stuck at Cold World when we talked last night?”
He shrugged. “There was nothing you could’ve done about it. And like I said, I didn’t want to disrupt Dolores’ dinner. It all worked—”
He broke off as Lauren came into the gift shop. He’d seen her a couple of times out in the lobby, heading back and forth from her office to the break room, only a flash of her navy cardigan, the bounce of her dark hair. But now here she was, walking right into the gift shop, heading straight toward him . . .
. . . with Daniel right behind her. What the fuck was he doing there?
Daniel rested his forearms against the counter, giving Kiki a practiced smile while completely ignoring Asa next to him. “We’re on complimentary gift-wrap duty this afternoon,” he said. “I’ve never wrapped a present in my life, so you’ll have to show me the ropes.”
Asa’s gaze slid to Lauren’s, and she gave a defensive shake of her head. “Part of the initiative for us to work in other departments,” she said. “Learn more about Cold World.”
Ah. So what she was really saying was that, in a roundabout way, Asa had no one but himself to blame for the teeth-gritting presence of Daniel Alvarez in the shop. It had been his original idea, after all, when he’d wanted to get Lauren to have to work the Snow Globe.
“We’re not busy right now,” Asa said. They weren’t busy at all. It was only three thirty, a relatively dead hour before the after-work crowd started trickling in. He hadn’t seen a customer in at least twenty minutes. “We could get by with one person on wrapping duty. Lauren, if you have more experience, maybe you’d . . .”
Daniel cut him off. “My mother was very specific. She wanted both of us to work together. Just show us where to set up and we’ll be good to go.”
What was Dolores up to? It hadn’t made much sense to Asa to have him work the gift shop with Kiki in the first place, although he’d been grateful for the change. But it really didn’t make any sense to have two people on gift-wrap duty, especially two people who presumably had much higher-level tasks to work on.
He glanced at Lauren, hoping for a clue, but she was fiddling with the pen display. Trust her to find the one powder blue pen he’d accidentally left behind with the silver ones.
Kiki reached under the counter, pulling out two rolls of metallic wrapping paper, two rolls of tape, and some scissors. “You’ll have to share,” she said. “We only have the one pair of scissors. Asa, you’re the expert—want to show them how to do it?”
“It’s wrapping a present,” he said. “Not brain surgery.”
But he grabbed an empty box meant for one of their display snow globes, flipping it facedown onto an unfurled sheet of candy-cane-striped paper. He grabbed a Sharpie from under the counter but didn’t bother to uncap it. “On a real present, you’ll black out or remove any price first,” he said. “Put the best side of the box on the flat of the paper so the uglier taped underside ends up on the bottom of the gift. Cut the paper—” He sliced the scissors through the metallic wrapping, a sensation that always gave him a shoot of satisfaction whenever they slid right through. “Fold it under at the edges to create a clean seam, leave enough paper at the ends to fold into neat triangles but not so much that it gets crumpled, and if you’ve done it right you should only need three pieces of tape, one here—” He pressed a long piece down the center seam before adding two shorter pieces to each of the triangles folded into the sides. “And one each here. Voilà, the present is wrapped.”
Lauren was staring at him like he’d just demonstrated advanced necromancy.
“Why do you black out the price?” Daniel asked.
Asa shifted his attention to him with some difficulty. “Because it’s the class move, Daniel.”
“And why do we wrap at all? Gift bags would be easier and more efficient.”