Chapter 3
LUCAS
“Do you know why we’re all sitting here right now?” August asked patiently.
“Cuz we’re in trouble…again,” Adelyn said.
Lucas shifted on August’s lap, earning a soft grunt from his husband, whose hands tightened on his hips, like he was trying to remind him not to wiggle so much.
They sat in the living room of their home, the only lights from the Christmas tree in the corner and the fireplace itself.
It cast ominous shadows on the faces of their three otherwise cherubic children who all sat across from them in a line.
Alastair had sandwiched himself between his sisters as he always did, mimicking their crossed arms and huffy expressions.
Lucas gave them what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “You’re not…in trouble, exactly. We just need to have a talk about boundaries.”
“What’s a boundaries?” Allister asked.
“Boundaries are lines of comfort that you don’t cross. And everyone’s boundaries are different,” Lucas explained.
“If they’re all different, how are we supposed to know what their boundaries are until we’ve crossed them?” Adelyn asked, staring at them with a bored look on her face.
“You ask,” August said sternly. “But even without asking, you should have known that your behavior was not okay.”
“Why?” Arabella asked. “It's not our fault he couldn’t withstand an interrogation.”
Lucas made an exasperated noise. “You had no reason to interrogate him in the first place! He’s Santa Claus!”
“Is he, though?” Arabella countered, her mouth set in a flat line and a brow arched, making her look so much like August it made Lucas’s heart kick behind his ribcage.
“Yes,” Lucas said, elbowing August in the ribs when he made a noise of dissent.
“I think you’ve fallen for the propaganda,” Adelyn said. “We had numerous reasons to interrogate him. His behavior was…sus.”
“Sus?” August echoed, amused. “Who taught you that word?”
“Jagger,” they said in unison.
Lucas looked around for a brick wall to beat his head against, but found none.
Damn his husband and his black on black aesthetic.
“There was nothing…sus…about Santa or his elves,” Lucas tried again, visibly shuddering as he remembered the events that had unfolded earlier in the evening.
“The man was just trying to do his job.”
One hour earlier
Mariah Carey was singing about what she wanted for Christmas from the speakers overhead.
Her tinny voice also floated from his husband’s AirPods, only this time she sang something about fantasies.
Lucas leaned his weight back on his husband, sighing when August’s hand rubbed over his belly absently.
It had been a long day of classes. It had been an even longer evening.
They’d spent the last ninety minutes wrestling the kids into a booth at the mall restaurant, trying to force feed them something healthy enough to counteract the candy they’d gotten at the Christmas party at school.
Now, they were spending their evening at the very end of the line, waiting to see Santa to get their annual holiday photo.
It had been so much easier when they could be strapped into strollers.
Lucas took a sip of his hot chocolate, smiling softly when his husband nuzzled at his neck.
Despite the chaos, this was Lucas’s favorite time of the year and one of his favorite places to spend it.
The mall encapsulated all of his favorite things about Christmas.
Over the top holiday decor, the overwhelming scent of cinnamon and peppermint coffees, cheesy Christmas carols, the quiet murmur of people laughing and talking as they shopped.
It was the one place he'd always wanted to go, but was never allowed to go, as a kid.
And at this time of night, there were only a few stragglers, nobody to accidentally bump into Lucas or Alastair and cause any accidental trauma.
They’d made sure they arrived at the line almost at closing so they would be the last ones to go.
They’d learned the hard way, last year, that it didn’t pay to have any Mulvaney child waiting in a line for too long.
Especially their children. They were impossible to contain on a regular day.
Standing bored in a line? Lunacy.
There were only two more families in front of them so he let himself relax, enjoying their brief moment of normalcy. He should have known that his children stayed ready, lying in wait for them to let their guards down. Like now. It was his own fault for getting cocky.
He absently reached down to pat each of his children on the head, just reassuring himself they were present and accounted for.
He groaned when he found only one head instead of three.
He quickly noted Alastair was where he belonged, then followed the boy's gaze to his daughters.
They no longer played games on their iPads, but were, instead, engaged in some kind of … elf interrogation.
The elf in question—a boy of no more than twenty judging by his floppy brown hair and smooth skin—had an almost terrified look on his face.
Adelyn was holding her tablet in one hand and a stylus in the other, like something out of a detective novel.
Arabella had her arms folded, her glasses perched on her nose as she glowered at the kid.
She leaned in, narrowing her jade-green eyes at the boy whose gaze darted about nervously. Lucas tuned in just in time to hear her ask, “Are you sure Santa isn’t hiding something? Because I saw a very suspicious exchange between him and Mrs. Claus right before he came back from break.”
The elf looked from Santa in his oversized throne to Mrs. Claus who sat at a small table with a monitor and printer. Lucas assumed her job was to print and sell people photos of their children with Santa.
“Exchange? There was no exchange,” he stammered, visibly sweating, either from the large can lights overhead or from being strong-armed by two elementary school kids. “I-I promise, Santa’s... good. He knows what he’s doing. He always checks the list twice! You’re definitely on it!”
Lucas sighed. “Girls, don’t interrogate Santa’s people. It’s...rude.” He glanced back at his husband. “Are you going to intervene?”
August gripped his waist tighter, using his free hand to slip his AirPods out and slide them into his pocket. “They’re learning skills. Effective questioning is vital for fieldwork,” he murmured.
Alastair tugged on Lucas's sweater, dragging his attention from his sisters. “Daddy, why do that elves' ears come off?” he whispered, his voice quivering.
Lucas crouched down. “How do you know his ears come off?”
“I sawed it,” he whimpered, eyes darting to the elf frantically.
Lucas took his hands, grimacing when he felt how tacky his skin was. “How did you see it? Did you take the candy cane he offered after I told you not to?”
“No,” Alastair insisted, eyes wide. His sticky hands told a different story.
He was getting almost as good at lying as his sisters. That wasn’t a good sign.
“This is why we need to be careful what we touch, baby. His ears come off because he has to be able to blend in when he’s not working with Santa.
Imagine how much people would bother him if they knew he was friends with the Santa Claus?
” Lucas said, giving him a reassuring smile, brushing his sandy blonde hair from his face.
“Like how people try to be friends with us cause we’re Mulvaneys?” he asked.
“Exactly. You know how much your uncles dislike that.” He gave a solemn nod. “So next time, if you want candy, you ask me or daddy. You don’t take it from a stranger.”
“Okay,” he said softly.
Finally, the line began to move and it was their turn.
When they attempted to accompany the girls to Santa, the elf stopped them.
“We prefer parents to stay behind the line. Kids tend to…act out more when they’re parents are too near.
You’ll still be able to hear everything from over there by Mrs. Clause. ”
“Oh, sure,” Lucas said, giving a tight smile. As the elf led the girls to Santa, Lucas muttered, “I don’t feel great about this.”
“It’s best to get them out of the way first, just in case I need to offer Santa money to keep his mouth shut about the little one's abilities,” August said.
Mrs. Claus smiled at them when they appeared before her and she turned the monitor to where they could see and listen in on their children’s exchange with Santa.
“It’s so you can hear if they ask for any specific toys.
And so we can make sure that Santa isn’t doing anything pervy to the kids like last year. ”
August’s head shot up. “Santa from last year was a perv? Do you happen to remember his name?”
When Mrs. Claus gave August a baffled look, Lucas elbowed him, then said to her, “Ignore him. I used to work in…law enforcement. It’s hard to turn it off.”
Both he and Mrs. Claus both knew his explanation was flimsy at best and made no sense.
“You used to be a profiler, right?” she asked.
Lucas’s gaze jerked to hers. “What?”
“You’re Lucas Mulvaney, right?” When Lucas’s eyes went wide, she giggled. “You guys are, like, famous. Besides, I want to get into forensic psychology so I research all of that stuff.”
“Ah.”
He turned his attention back to the monitor as Arabella sat on one of Santa’s knees.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” Adelyn said, as she also made her way into Santa’s lap. “If we don’t get the Super Soakers we asked for, we’re going to demand a full investigation into your operation. We have to beat our cousins in the water fight this year.”
“My…operation?” Santa queried, glancing at Lucas and August.
Arabella nodded solemnly, drawing the man’s attention back to them. “With interrogations and polygraphs. Our grandpa is rich and we're spoiled so he'll get us a polygraph if we want one. You don’t want that, right?”