Page 13 of The Dating Charade

Her nondate couldn’t have stepped out of his truck, holding a bouquet of flowers, at a worse moment.

Her mood had lifted with the sun the following morning, enough that she brought the bouquet to work to be a cheerful companion. And through eleven long days, the relentless, apparently immortal, bouquet had kept its bloom. Eleven long days remembering the conversation with Jett Bentley, his purposeful stride, his nervous smile. Eleven long days kicking herself for not giving him a shot.

She’d logged back onto her hijacked account and read his message, thoroughly this time, feeling that weasel of regret stir in her stomach the deeper into his message she got. He mentioned he’d gone to school with her, and sure enough, when she’d pulled out her old yearbook, there he was. The contrast between her senior picture and his freshman one was seismic in proportion. Her in pearls, cap, and gown, her confident seventeen-year-old smile ready to take on the world. Him a tall, skinny boy with a long, thin neck and bowl-cut hair, bearing small resemblance to the man he had grown into. He awkwardly held a basketball on his hip on the JV basketball page. And that’s when his face had flashed across her memory—a face in the stands out of the corner of her eye as she dribbled the ball down the court, a face as she squeezed through the halls on the way to class. To some degree, she really believed she could remember him. But then, at one point in her life she had also convinced herself she could fly.

Even so, his wobbly, freshman smile—just six pages from her own—soothed her and set him apart from the rest.

Still, she couldn’t bring herself to message him again. After what both she and Bree had put him through, she knew the last message he’d ever want to receive was from her.

Lesson learned. If she wrote a how-to manual for dating, this would be a bullet point: be prepared in season and out of season to get into cars with good-looking strangers so long as they provide flowers. And you have pepper spray.

It would be a bestseller.

“Keely says she’s out of toothbrushes.” Star spoke to Cassie from the hall, her arms loaded with yet another stack of boxes. “I’m going to start putting these by the bathroom.”

“No, don’t do that,” Cassie replied. She’d forever rue the day she told the team they didn’t need to come in to work for this. “Here, can you take these back to Finn and find the toothbrushes? I’m going to run a load over to the church.”

As Cassie handed Star a box of soap, she heard a sound mingling with, and soon overpowering, the voracious chatter, heavy wrapping, and Christmas jingles floating from the game room. The sirens grew louder, and Cassie starting striding down the hall. Star left her box and followed behind. Cassie picked up speed when red flashes blinked through the windows, the roaring of sirens hitting peak volume.

She pushed open the double doors.

What in the world?

“Ho-ho-ho!” Santa bellowed as he wiggled his large body out of the fire truck. Evidently Santa was a fireman as well, because peeking from under the large red coat and golden buttons were firefighter suspenders. He grabbed his helmet, evidently thought better of it, then reached for the Santa hat and stuffed it on his head before grabbing a large black trash bag from the back door. Classy.

With jolly confidence he walked down the sidewalk with a sort of half stride, half Irish jig, straight to Cassie as a group of girls grew behind her. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he drew out a crumpled piece of paper and stretched it out as though about to read an imperial speech. He began talking, but the sirens overpowered his words.

Cassie furrowed her brows. Several of the girls behind her covered their ears.

Santa stopped and flapped his hand at the truck. The sirens stopped.

“As I was saying,” he began again, “Meeeeeeerrrrrryyyy Christmas to the lovely ladies of Girls Haven! Ho-ho-ho!” The bell on the top of his head jingled as he used his free hand to grab his belly. When the bell fell over his face, he stopped and adjusted it. “A little elf told me about all of the work you have been doing for little girls and little boys around the world. And on a Saturday too! You work harder than we do!” He grabbed at his belly again. “Ho-ho-ho!”

A chuckle escaped from a couple of girls, and Cassie turned, halfway in disbelief, to see several of them smiling.

Normally, a guy like this wouldn’t last ten seconds with this crowd.

But then, normally, people didn’t roll in wearing Santa suits in fire trucks.

“And we,” Santa continued loudly, “at the North Pole decided to take a trip down to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, on our official fire engine. A few of my men here have volunteered to help you girls out with the delivery. That is if your fearless leader approves?”

Cassie looked closer at the dear, old Santa before them, trying to peer beyond the white beard and thick hat to the face underneath. That voice . . . Those eyes . . . She vaguely recalled that same voice in the aquarium, those same sunny, clueless brown eyes. Sunny. Number 24. Not the worst guy she’d been on a date with. Not the best of the bad lot, either.

If he recognized her, he didn’t show it. Which meant he didn’t remember her. Based on her aquarium experience, she didn’t think he had the intellectual capabilities not to show it.

Cassie saw the girls’ eyes drift to her. “Delivery. Sure. That’d be . . . great.”

“Excellent.” Sunny-turned-Santa clapped his oversized black gloves. “Liberty Church is what my little elf tells me?”

Cassie’s surprise grew even more as she nodded. Who had put the fire department up to this? She hadn’t e-mailed Jim at the paper, hadn’t requested crews come in to see how successful the Leadership Club had been. But the girls had gone into just about every organization in town over the past two months, and there was no denying about half of the people in this mega city of 4,097 had heard of what was going on. Still, to know about helping with delivery? To know about such details . . .

“We’ll get right to it, then.” He fumbled with the knot on the trash bag. After a minute of struggling and saying a few words under his breath, he finally threw his gloves on the ground. “But first,” he continued, ripping the bag open and standing ceremoniously again, “do you know what I do every Christmas season before even thinking about putting any toys into my sleigh? I give each of my hardworking elves a very special present. And I’d venture to say that you girls have been very elfish lately. So—” He went back to the crumbled paper. “—would Rayne please step forward?”

Rayne’s eyes widened as she heard her name and stepped timidly out from the cluster.

Cassie crossed her arms, cracking a grin as she watched the crazy, gleeful man hand out presents to each of the twenty-two girls. Twenty-two presents. Her cheeks began to burn, both from the frigid air and the continuous smile, as she watched the girls rip open their gifts.

Whoever had been in charge had nailed it. Each and every one of them received a coffeeshop gift card. Cheap but shimmering lip balm smelling of cotton candy. Fuzzy socks. As Cassie watched Star pull a silver frame out of her bag, Santa spoke up, and Cassie realized he had his phone uplifted.