Chapter 8
BELLA
An hour later, we’re out of the storage closet and I’m following behind Hardy’s truck to his place.
Calm your tits—I know things were hot and heavy in the closet, but his kid is going to be there, plus mine is sitting shotgun grumbling the whole drive.
And after that interaction with Amber in the closet, my need to prove myself to her is overriding my libido. Barely. The man is hot.
As we approach his adorable cottage, surrounded by the most breathtaking view I’ve ever seen, I’m reminded of two things. One, I love living in Colorado. And two, I really need to talk to Summer —the house she sold me looks like a shack compared to this.
Hardy slams the door to his truck and runs around to help Avery out of her booster seat. He picks her up, and she squishes his cheeks in her hands. “Can we have pizza for dinner?” Her eyes widen as she sees me trailing up behind him. “And Miss Carlisle can stay for dinner!”
I look at Hardy for confirmation. “It’s fine with me,” I offer.
“I’m in as long as there’s pepperoni,” Isaac adds.
“Great, it’s a date.” He grimaces. “Not like that, like a dinner date.”
“Is Miss Carlisle your girlfriend?”
The look of panic on his face is comical.
“Yeah, Mom, is he your boyfriend?”
“Oh jeez, there’s two of them.” I roll my eyes attempting to deflect, hoping Hardy will hop in.
Isaac crosses his arms, and Avery looks at him and mimics the gesture, putting on her sternest pout. It’s actually adorable, and I fight the urge to laugh.
I look between the two kids. “Hardy and I are working on a project for school. And we are happy to stay for a pizza night, is what your dad meant.” Though I’d love an actual date with this man.
Avery’s eyes light up. “Can I help? I love projects!”
Hardy looks panicked, and my heart softens. The love he has for Avery is evident on his face, and his worries about ruining Christmas echo in my head. I can see how much this means to him.
Since I want to be able to plan parts of it without little ears present—in case we talk about Santa—I opt for honesty. “There’s part of this project you can help with, but there are other parts that are super boring with lots of math and paperwork. Which one do you want to help with?”
“Not the math.”
“Good thinking. How about you show Isaac around, and the two of you can hang out while your dad and I do the math part? Then we can eat and work on the fun stuff after.”
“Can we use glitter?”
“Maybe!” I don’t want to commit to glitter yet—that shit gets everywhere—but I know already from class how much Avery loves it.
She runs up the steps to the house, and Isaac gives me an annoyed look over his shoulder as he trails behind her.
“I feel like I just watched a magician at work. How the hell did you get her to go along with that?” Hardy asks once we’re alone.
“It helps if you give them a choice. I work with young kids every day. Now, teenagers are another story. Any advice on raising a teenage boy?”
“Make him do his own laundry.”
I give him a questioning look.
“Just trust me on that one.” He makes a motion with his hand like he’s jacking something off, and I erupt in laughter.
“Oh God. Oh God! Gross. Do you think he’s doing that already?”
“How old is he?”
“Thirteen.”
Hardy laughs. “Yeah, he’s doing it already.”
I cover my mouth with my hand. “I’m gonna be sick, but that would explain why we’re going through so much lotion and hot water.”
“Mom!”
I shoot Hardy a did-he-just-hear-us look and turn to my son. My sweet angel baby son who I will absolutely not picture doing unthinkable things to his body. Not that masturbation is wrong, but it’s just not what you ever want to think about in the context of your child.
My body shudders involuntarily.
“Hello! Did you not hear a word I said?”
Hardy jumps in before I can look at him.
“Sorry, she just got some disheartening news, she just needs a minute,” he says with a small chuckle he cannot contain.
“Whatever. Grown-ups are weird.”
I tamp down the nausea and let out a deep breath. “What is it?”
“They have an Alienware computer. Is it okay if I get on?”
It’s not clear if he’s asking me or Hardy, and we look at each other and shrug.
“You’re not playing those shooter games,” I warn.
“Actually, Avery and I are going to code a game from scratch. I thought it’d be cool and would keep her occupied if you two are going to…”
He starts to trail off, and I jump in, interrupting him. “Work on a project.”
“Is that what old people are calling it these days?”
I look at Hardy and offer him an apologetic smile, but he just stuffs his hands in his pockets, enjoying the show.
“I’m just messing with you, Mom. I was going to say I could keep her occupied if you two were going to talk about S-A-N-T-A stuff.”
“That makes more sense. Yup. That would be great. Thank you, Isaac.”
Once the kids are set up on the computer upstairs, Hardy clears a space at the kitchen table, and we get to work.
I pull out my newly organized binder and start flipping through pages.
“What made you come up with The Santa Rules?” Hardy asks, breaking the silence.
“My ex was never good at communication, and we weren’t on the same page about a lot of things—still aren’t. It kinda started as a way to cover for his lies about Santa. He could never keep things straight. And I wanted Isaac to believe. So I would explain it away as a new Santa Rule.”
“And he bought it?”
“For a while. He was ten when he asked if I was Santa.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That Santa isn’t your parents. It isn’t any one person.
It’s an idea, a belief in something more.
It’s joy and hope. And love. It’s karma and believing in the greater good.
It’s doing things for others because you want to and not out of obligation.
And I think that’s important for kids to learn.
Once they find out the truth about Santa, they get to become a Santa, and then they’re part of keeping the magic alive for other kids. ”
We’re fifteen minutes from our pizza delivery when an idea hits me.
“What if we ask for donations of used toys and home goods? That way we don’t have to spend any money on inventory since Amber’s budget is laughable. We could always say it’s part of Santa’s giveback toy refurbishment program.”
“The Santa Rules,” he says knowingly.
“Exactly! Then people can double donate, so even those that don’t have money can donate items. And instead of keeping the leftovers, we can have a designated time for the kids whose parents didn’t send in money to shop.
Then everyone can participate. People can clear out their closets and their wallets! ”
“That’s actually a really good idea.”
“And if any of the kids ask where the toys came from, we use The Santa Rules and tell them that they were donated by kids like them and Santa’s elves fixed them up and brought them to us so we could help others. Then it encourages those kids to donate this year for next year.”
“It could be self-sustaining that way,” he says.
“Precisely!”
“I could put a box at the fire station to collect donations,” Hardy offers, his eyes dancing with excitement.
“That would work better. One at the school might make kids suspicious. I can reach out to some local businesses too.”
“Okay, this is a good start. I’m feeling better about everything. Now we just need to plan the layout of the room,” Hardy says.
I scribble down some reminders in my notebook just as Avery bursts into the room.
“Is the pizza here?”
“Almost,” Hardy assures her, holding up the app to show her the tracker.
“Can I help with your project now?” Avery asks as she hops on a chair and leans onto the kitchen table as Isaac takes a seat across from her looking only mildly uninterested.
“Sure!” I say as I collect the papers, worried about sticky kid fingers making a mess on them that Amber will give me a hard time about later.
“Your dad and I are helping put together a Christmas shop for the school. It’s like a little pop-up store where students can buy gifts for their family and friends and we wrap them so they can take them home and put them under the tree.
But we call it Santa’s Workshop, even though it isn’t the real workshop. ”
“Because that one is at the North Pole,” she says.
I nod. “That’s right.”
Avery picks up a rough sketch I made of the workshop, holding it up to examine it closely. “What’s this?”
I grab the paper and shove it in my pile. “Oh, that’s just a really bad drawing of what I thought it could look like, but we don’t have time to decorate it like that.”
“We have to decorate it. It has to look like Santa’s real workshop,” Avery says. “Daddy can build it. He’s good at that stuff. Can’t you, Daddy?”
Hardy sticks a hand out, motioning for me to hand over the paper, and I reluctantly do. “I’m not an artist or anything, it was just a draft of a sketch.”
“Are these zigzags trees?” he asks with the hint of a smile.
“They’re supposed to be.”
“Do you already have a Santa chair, or would that need to be built?”
“Wait, do you think we could actually build something like this?” I ask as I look at him in astonishment. What can’t this man do?
“Oh, I know I could. It doesn’t look too complicated. I could build some theatre flats or paint over existing ones if the school has some already. And I could cut some simple pine trees out of plywood.”
“And we could wrap empty boxes to look like presents!” Avery squeals.
“Maybe the Chestnut Mountain Market would let us borrow their Santa chair? They usually have a Santa helper come out every year to take pictures with the kids since the nearest mall is over an hour away,” I say.
“Then this should be easy. I could probably knock it out in a weekend,” Hardy says.
“And we’ll save a ton of money in the budget if we do what we talked about earlier, so we might be able to spend some money on supplies,” I mumble to myself as I look through my notes to see if there’s anything I’m overlooking that I might have committed to a budget.
“Please, Daddy!” Avery begs as she tugs on his sleeve bouncing excitedly in her chair.
Hardy turns to me and comically bats his eyes. “Please, Bella?”
If I thought telling his daughter no was hard, this is damn near impossible especially when he licks his lips and sticks the lower one out a little further making me want to bite it.
There’s no way I’m going to say no, not to either of those faces. And not when I know how important this is to both of them.
“Okay! We’re going to build Santa’s Workshop!”