Nicholas sighed. “Not to me.”
She frowned and walked away from him, going to stand in front of a giant Christmas tree. She had her arms folded and tapped her toe. Suddenly she turned back to face him, her eyes bright with a new light.
“Let me compete. With your investors,” she requested. “Whoever you have looking at the store.”
“Compete?” he repeated, confused as to what she could possibly offer.
“Yes. Compete,” she said, her voice growing steadier. “If you’re going to let them show you all the reasons why you should sell the store, give me a chance to show you all the reasons why you shouldn’t.”
“Why?” Nicholas was bewildered by her insistence on the issue. “You’d really spend your Christmas trying to talk me out of making money?”
“No, I’d really spend my Christmas trying to talk you into Christmas magic,” she said. She beamed at Nicholas, her tone now earnest and quiet. “Please, Nicholas. Just give me a chance? At least let me try to show you that Christmas isn’t all that bad, and that Christmas Wishes isn’t all that bad, either.”
Nicholas sighed, bringing his hand to his temple. This was proving to be more difficult than he'd expected. He just wanted to see how the store was doing financially.
“Okay, we have to do something about the store’s name. It's too generic, and it can’t be good for our SEO,” he mumbled to himself. She took a deep breath. “But fine, Ms. Molly. In the spirit of Christmas, I’ll give you the same chance I’m giving the investors. Why not? Maybe you’ll actually be able to convince me.”
She crossed her arms and grinned at him.
“You don’t believe that for a second, do you?” she asked.
“No. I do not,” he said, grinning right back at her before heading toward the back of the shop. “Now, where do we keep the books? I’d like to get the numbers to my assistant by midnight. He mentioned a deal with a big store in Tokyo possibly being on the table.”
Just then, the front door to Christmas Wishes flew open, followed by the sound of hurried footsteps. “Ms. Carmichael! Ms. Carmichael!”
He groaned as a kid ran through the store. She'd forgotten to lock the door and now there was a kid in the store. For a moment, Nicholas wondered if there were insurance ramifications for having an underage person inside the shop after hours.
“Liam! What are you doing back here? I thought you already went home,” Molly said, looking concerned as she hurried over to the child. “Do your parents know where you are?”
“Yeah! They’re the ones who sent me back,” Liam explained. “They said that you were supposed to take me to the Tree Lighting.”
“The Tree Lighting?” Molly scrunched up her expression. “Is that today? I thought they'd delayed it.”
“Yeah, they did, but they said it would happen today instead. Remember?” He took a step closer to her. “They had to change everything because of the emergency?”
“Oh, right.”She nodded seriously. “The emergency. I forgot.”
“There was a Tree Lighting emergency?” Nicholas chimed into the conversation, as he glanced between Liam and Molly. “Is everyone okay?”
“Everyone’s perfectly fine,” Molly said. “The emergency was that we couldn’t get all the lights to light up the first time we plugged it in, so everyone freaked out about us not having a Christmas tree this year. The tree's kind of a big deal around here.”
Nicholas tried not to roll his eyes. It seemed everything related to the holiday was a big deal around here.
“It’s supposed to work today, Mom said,” Liam explained. He grabbed for Molly’s hand. “But we have to go right now so we’re not late!”
“Uh, Ms. Molly, the books?” Nicholas nodded towards the back of the store. “Maybe we should take care of business first before—”
“Sorry, Mr. Kerstman. Duty calls,” Molly said before she headed for the door. “You’re welcome to join us, if you’d like.”
“You should come. It’s super fun,” Liam said. He beckoned for Nicholas to come stand beside him. The boy grinned up at him with such innocence that Nicholas felt guilt wash over him for wanting to say no.
But, it was Molly's smile that made him say, “yes,” without realizing that he'd actually said it. Her grin lit up the whole room.
Nicholas had to steady himself with a breath as he moved to stand beside Liam.
There just wasn’t any escaping Christmas, was there?
But maybe the Tree Lighting wouldn’t be so awful.