“Happy Thanksgiving to me,” I muttered, tossing the newspaper onto the desk in my office. “I should be stuffing my face and wearing my fat pants, but no, I’m here watching my career go up in flames.”
Parker Grant, my younger, much sassier assistant, pulled the lollipop from her mouth and shrugged a shoulder. “Instead of being with your family and enjoying this calorie-free holiday, you get to spend it with me.”
I gave her a look that said I was not amused. “What are we going to do? We can’t have Christmas without Santa.”
She chewed her lower lip before popping the sucker back in her mouth. “I don’t know,” she mumbled around the damn thing.
“Years,” I complained. “I’ve given this job, this career, years of my life, and it is all going to end because I can’t get a fat guy to dress up in a red suit. Hell, I don’t even need him to be fat or a guy. Who does this?”
She picked up the paper and scanned the article I finished reading. Once again, she pulled the sucker from her mouth. “You had to know this was coming, Harper.”
I scowled at her. “I didn’t expect it to come on Thanksgiving. Santa is supposed to be here in less than twenty-four hours! Do you know what tomorrow is?”
It was a rhetorical question. Of course, she knew. Everyone in retail knew what tomorrow was. It was Black Friday. That term was going to take on new meaning in my case. I was going to lose the job I busted my ass to get because there was a Santa strike. Striking Santas was a new one.
“What about one of your brothers? An ex-boyfriend?”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t have any brothers.”
“An ex or current boyfriend? Offer a little sexual incentive. We just need someone in the suit for tomorrow. We can figure out the rest later.”
“I don’t have a boyfriend. I don’t even have an ex-boyfriend.”
“I didn’t know you were a nun. You sure do cuss a lot for being a nun.”
She was trying to be funny. I wanted to shake her. That would only guarantee my firing. “I’m not a damn nun. I don’t have a current or an ex-boyfriend because I have given my life’s blood to this store. Banner Brothers Department Store basically owns me.”
“That’s a problem for another day,” she commented.
She was being way too lackadaisical for my tastes. I was freaking out and she was sucking on a lollipop and twirling her hair. I supposed that was the benefit to being the assistant and not the head of merchandising and marketing for one of the most prestigious stores in Boulder, Colorado.
The place had been in business over a hundred years and was an institution in its own right. I was about to blow up that institution by failing to produce Santa on the most important day of the year.
“Do you know anyone?” I asked her. “Boyfriend, brother, father, uncle?”
“Nope. Why don’t I put an ad on Craig’s List? We’ll offer to pay double for the day.”
“That would work if there wasn’t a cabal of Santas. I’m sure they’ve put out the word that anyone putting on a red suit for money will be forever banished.”
“Not everyone is a part of the Santa coalition or union or whatever they have going on. We just need some average Joe looking for a few extra easy bucks.”
“That could work,” I said. Then I thought about two years ago and shook my head. “We can’t do that. There’s not enough time to do a background check and you know what will happen if we get some seedy dude in here.”
“Oh yeah, we don’t want to do that again.”
“Seriously, if these rich assholes would have listened to me when I warned them this was coming, we wouldn’t be the ones holding the ball right now. I told them they had to pay these Santa guys more money. I warned them, and I warned them, and they ignored me. Now look what’s happened. Do you think they care? No. They don’t care because they expect me to fix it.”
Parker tossed her sucker in the trash and put on her serious face. “We’re going to start a new trend.”
“We are?”
“Yes. I’m going to figure out a new marketing strategy that does not involve Santa. We can come up with some signs or something that say Santa is enjoying Thanksgiving with his elves and will show up in December.”