Santa Series: Three Stories of Magical Holiday Romance Page 9

  If, by chance, he was some celebrity she didn’t recognize, then she would seem like Creepy Stalker Fan Girl, and that would make her horribly unprofessional. Right now, on this stupid mission from the North Pole, she felt unprofessional, so she didn’t need to do anything to reinforce that sense of herself.

  She waved at the receptionist when she reached the part of the floor dedicated to the show. “Can I go in?” Nissa asked, and then proceeded to walk to the back without waiting for an answer. The mark of a permanent guest; no one stopped her when she walked past reception.

  Behind the public areas, the halls were narrow, painted a dirty eggshell, and blocked by boxes and other things some intern needed to take care of three weeks ago. She let herself into a relatively large (by New York standards) office overlooking the plaza and its fountain. Tourists milled, hoping they could see celebrities or get into free show tapings, while New Yorkers picked their way past with expressions of great annoyance. She could empathize.

  The city always got crowded during the holiday season—particularly in this part, near the skating rink and the big Christmas tree and Radio City Music Hall, all those things Flyover Country had heard about since the Christmas movies of the 1940s.

  Caryn Longworth, the executive producer, sat behind her desk. She had a horsey, not-camera-ready face filled with intelligence so overpowering that one look in her eyes was terrifying. According to staff gossip, Caryn was related to at least two former US Presidents, several senators, and one famous hostess from the days when women didn’t serve in Congress. Caryn had the familial political brains, a rabid enthusiasm for government gossip, and a fine-tuned sense of news-as-entertainment.

  Nissa loved her. They often went out for coffee together to discuss the day’s TV highlights. They weren’t quite best friends—neither of them felt like they were in the position to have best friends—but they would have been if they’d had different jobs.

  “Please tell me this idiot professor has canceled,” Nissa said to Caryn.

  “Oh, Nissie hasn’t done her homework,” Caryn said with a twinkle that rivaled the Big Guy’s. “Our professor is not an idiot by a long stretch.”

  “I’ve done enough homework to know that,” Nissa said, although she hadn’t been able to download any of the shows he’d appeared on. She hadn’t had enough time.

  “But apparently you haven’t seen enough to realize that you better bring your A game,” Caryn said seriously.

  Nissa felt a half second of panic. Caryn had never said that to her. Caryn, in fact, said that Nissa’s B game was better than everyone else’s A game.

  Caryn was, in some ways, her biggest fan.

  “He’s here then,” Nissa said, pretending to misunderstand her friend.

  “Oh, he’s here, along with his brilliance, his beauty, and his stellar Q rating.”

  “What?” Nissa asked. “He has a Q Score?”

  The Q Score was a metric that TV people in particular used to keep track of someone’s appeal to a particular audience. Personalities with high Q Scores got more invitations to appear on television than people with no Q Scores.

  Santa had a Q Score as a brand and a cartoon figure, but not as a personality. Nissa had a Q Score as a personality and it was pretty good for someone with no actual video venue of her own.

  “Our professor does have a Q Score,” Caryn said. “He had one before he ever went on TV.”

  “How is that possible?” Nissa asked.

  “One of the most popular YouTube videos of all time,” Caryn said. “You really haven’t done your homework on this one.”

  Nissa felt her cheeks heat. “I just got assigned this yesterday,” she said. “And then I was away from any internet connection. I thought he was just some anti-Santa guy.”

  “That’s what makes him great,” Caryn said. “He sounds so pro-Santa while being against everything that Santa does. He sounds like Dr. Oz or somebody, totally concerned with your health while basically saying you’re stupid just for breathing.”

  “Great,” Nissa said under her breath. “Too bad Santa can’t rebut him.”

  Santa would destroy him. Charm, charisma, the ability to make someone believe that even the silliest things were possible—that was the true magic of an S-Elf. If only Nissa could get Santa here for one media appearance.

  Although, she knew, that would be completely impossible.

  “Yes, it is too bad that Santa can’t rebut him,” Caryn said. “But you’d need Edmund Gwenn for that, wouldn’t you? And he’s been dead since what? The 1950s?”

  Nissa frowned at her, thinking for a moment before understanding the reference. Edmund Gwenn had played Kris Kringle in the original movie version of Miracle on 34th Street. There was quite a back story to the performance. The entire movie existed because of Oskar. Oskar put a bug in the ear of somebody at Twentieth Century Fox to do a movie about the possibility of Santa being real. The movie was having difficulties until, in a very Ghost of Christmas Present maneuver, Oskar took Gwenn to the North Pole to meet the real Santa, all the while letting Gwenn think he dreamed the whole thing.

  Santa nearly blew it all by showing up at the Oscars while on vacation. When Gwenn won for his performance, Santa had shaken his hand on the way up to the stage. Now I know there is a Santa Claus! Gwenn exclaimed when he won, and everyone thought he meant that he was referring to the award, when actually, he was referring to the Jolly Old Elf who had just shaken his hand.

  “Nissa?” Caryn asked.

  “Sorry,” Nissa said. “Wool-gathering.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t,” Caryn said. “You should use that fancy tablet of yours to watch what you’re up against. This guy is disarming, and he’s funny, and one of the sexiest guests we’ve had.”

  “It’s not hard to get that appellation on this show,” Nissa said, referring to the fact that most guests on Made-up Controversies Are Us were on the political side and therefore were not incredibly attractive by TV standards.

  “Still,” Caryn said. “You’ve got less than an hour to prepare.”

  “You just want good TV,” Nissa said.

  “Damn straight,” Caryn said, “and I’m afraid this guy’s going to eat you for lunch.”

  4

  RYAN HAD A system for getting through makeup.

  He slept. Or pretended to. That way, he wouldn’t think about eyeliner, foundation, lip gloss, and someone else clipping the stray hairs that had sprouted on his ears and nose since puberty. It was embarrassing and, he believed, just a bit below his dignity. Early on in this publicity ordeal, he developed the opinion that the reason TV people were so vapid was because they had inhaled makeup fumes each moment of every day.

  Then he realized that he was being unfair to all the behind-the-scenes folks who were generally nice and usually as smart as his B students. It was the talking heads that annoyed him.

  He got the secondary makeup room treatment, or maybe it was the tertiary makeup room treatment. He wasn’t quite up on the levels of makeup rooms. He only knew that the Talent—the regular on-air folk—usually got made-up elsewhere, and The Big Names often had a makeup room all to themselves as well.

  In the past four weeks, he’d shared makeup moments with aspiring models, people who’d just been kicked off their reality TV shows, up-and-coming politicians, and other professors who seemed to make a living expounding on one thing or another.

  He’d asked one professor from Fordham how he handled the interview thing, and the prof had smiled at him. If I didn’t live near the city, the prof said, I’d never do this. But it impresses the students.

  He didn’t say it sold more books. He did say it lead to more appearances, like never-ending circles of hell, although the hell part was just Ryan’s personal opinion.

  And Ryan didn’t need to impress more students. His best friend Jim, a constitutional law professor, said Ryan was already the campus’s Indiana Jones. Ryan had objected to that: he didn’t go to faraway places to steal antiquities, and he did
n’t look like a young Harrison Ford.

  Then, a week or so after the comparison, a female student had shown up in his class with I love you, Professor Palmer written in florid red ink on her considerable cleavage, and he had realized that Jim was right.

  Things would only get worse now.

  Even though Ryan was terribly exhausted, he couldn’t really sleep while someone brushed some kind of powder on his face to keep down the shine. It was all he could do to prevent himself from sneezing.

  “Stop moving your eyes, Dr. Palmer,” the makeup artist said. So she knew he was awake. “I’m done with them, but your beautiful lashes are getting in my way.”

  His girl-lashes, or so his brother used to call them. Ryan opened his eyes and saw himself in the mirror, wrapped in a protective green garment that reminded him of a hospital gown, his face half-made-up like a badly designed manufacturer’s dummy.

  Movement behind him caught his eye. Who should show up, but Gorgeous Elevator Woman. She looked even better in this light.

  “Nissa!” the makeup artist said. “Don’t tell me you’re on today?”

  “For my sins,” Gorgeous Elevator Woman said. She had a throaty alto voice with a touch of an accent. Scandinavian? German? He couldn’t quite tell.

  “Someone trying to ban Christmas?” the hairstylist in the corner asked.

  “Something like that,” Gorgeous Elevator Woman said as she grabbed one of the green garments. She was clearly comfortable here. Ryan wasn’t. And he suspected he was the Christmas-banner that she was referring to.

  Ryan sank deep in his chair. He didn’t want to see her at all. Beautiful, sure of herself, and another talking head. He thought he had seen intelligence in those eyes. He had been convinced of it. He wondered what her game was.

  She couldn’t be a regular or she wouldn’t be in this makeup room. He wanted to close his eyes again and pretend he was asleep, but the makeup artist decided at that moment to put mascara on his lashes. He hated that. His lashes were long enough, thank you very much. His sister envied his lashes. No one needed to accent them.

  His cheeks warmed as Gorgeous Elevator Woman sat in the chair next to him. It turned slightly away from him, so he couldn’t quite see her face.

  “Too hot, Doctor Palmer?” the makeup artist asked. “Because if you’re going to be this red under the lights, I need to tone down your makeup.”

  She needed to tone down his hormones. Just being this close to Gorgeous Elevator Woman was revving him up.

  “I’m—okay—um—you know,” he said, sounding as inarticulate as he felt. As if the day could get any worse. That’s what he needed. He needed to make a fool of himself on national television.

  “I’m going to reapply your base,” the makeup artist said. “We’ll tone you down just a bit. We want you to look pretty for the viewers.”

  Pretty. With his long girl-lashes and the craters underneath his eyes. Pretty with a hint of stubble. He felt the warmth in his cheeks turn to a full-fledge forest fire.

  If he’d ever had any hope of impressing Gorgeous Elevator Woman, it was gone now. She would see him as a red-faced, tongue-tied bumbler, the way that all women had seen him since he first noticed the opposite sex in the sixth grade.

  He tried not to sigh heavily. He tried to focus on something else. But all he could see in the mirror was his red face bobbing up from his green wrap, and Gorgeous Elevator Woman swiveling her chair to get a good look at him.

  5

  SHE RECOGNIZED THE Voice-voice a second after the name registered: Doctor Palmer, hater of Christmas, Santa’s arch enemy, at least this season, the professor with an agenda and a Q Score unrivaled in the ranks of professors since the beginning of television.

  Nissa swiveled her chair to get a good look at him, and froze when she saw the handsome man she’d met on the elevator. The man who made George Clooney look like a starvation victim. The man who made Ewan McGregor seem hobbit-sized. The man who made her heart go pitter-pat for fifteen minutes after she left him behind.

  Oh, dear. He had a high Q Score with her too. And Caryn was right: that meant trouble.

  But Nissa had to play this like the professional she was. Her job rested on it. If she were feeling dramatic, she could say that the future of Christmas rested on it.

  She extended her hand, thankful she’d at least gotten a manicure before she went to the Pole.

  “Doctor Palmer, I presume?” she asked with the right bit of wry amusement.

  He looked at her hand as if it were slathered with mud. Then he raised those miraculous blue eyes to hers—eyes that rivaled Paul Newman’s in his heyday—and closed them so fast that he got mascara dust on his high cheekbones.

  “Professor Palmer,” he said, then shook his head a little as if he were uncomfortable with that. “Ryan Palmer. Um. Just Ryan, really, because I’m not much with formality.”

  He still hadn’t taken her hand. She had never faced this situation before. Did she withdraw it? Did she wait?

  “Nissa Kealoha,” she said. “I’m with Claus & Company. I understand we’ll be arguing opposite sides this afternoon.”

  “I’m not really a side-taker,” he said. “I just—people are misunderstanding my book, that’s all, and they focus on what they understand, which is Santa, and then they use it for their own ends.”

  His Voice-voice was warmer in person, and the humble-man act made him even more enticing. She tried to be clinical about this: He had charisma, which was a form of magic, and that voice was enough to make her keenly aware of parts of her body that shouldn’t be speaking up right now.

  She eased her hand back, as she slowly realized she didn’t want to touch him. Touching him right now might make her combust.

  She had never reacted to a man like this, never in all her years. She wanted to ask him what kind of magic he had, then decided against it. She’d learned in all her years in the Greater World that there were a lot of people here who had magic and didn’t know it. She suspected he was one of them.

  “I see,” she said, keeping her tone as neutral as possible, “so you don’t really believe that Santa has an unhealthy lifestyle.”

  He glanced at Susie, the makeup artist. She was watching him with bemusement. “Um,” he said, that Voice-voice shaking. “I don’t believe that Santa has a lifestyle at all. He is a fictional character.”

  “Not to millions of children,” Nissa said as coldly as she could manage. “They see him as a friend, a father-figure, a magical hero. They really don’t need to hear that he has troubles at home or he overeats or he’s an alcoholic. I think we’re spending too much time destroying the icons of childhood at the expense of childhood, don’t you?”

  Ryan Palmer blinked at her. The mascara Susie had put on him had flaked all over his face. “I—um—that’s your argument? Don’t you think our role models should be, well, role models?”

  She frowned at him. He seemed to be as off-balance as she was. If she could keep him that way, she could destroy this threat in a single interview.

  “And that’s your argument, Professor? Really? Because it seems critical of children. Maybe you think Tony the Tiger should stop yelling or The Cat in the Hat should be a bit less disruptive. Maybe Sesame Street should stop showing beloved puppets living in garbage cans.”

  “Save it for the show,” Susie said. “I’ve got a face to clean up and not enough time to do it.”

  She bent over Professor Palmer with determination.

  “You’re harder to make up than you look,” she said to him.

  Cedric, Nissa’s makeup artist, powdered her face. “At least you know what you’re doing, doll,” he said to Nissa. “I love working on a beautiful woman who knows her makeup. We’ll have you out of here in a jiff.”

  “Thanks, Ced,” she said, and turned her chair away from Palmer. Handsome, distracting, and fake-humble. He was going to be a problem. Plus, he ruined her research time. She had planned to watch her tablet while she got made-up. Now she’d simply be sho
wing this guy how unfamiliar she was with his shtick.

  She’d have to wait until she got to the green room, and hope that Susie would take a lot of time with Palmer, so that he wouldn’t join her until the show was about to begin.

  By then, maybe she’d have better arguments than Tony the Tiger and The Cat in the Hat. Tony the Tiger, after all, was brand-specific, and the Cat in the Hat came from dimly remembered children’s books. She needed something more current, something stronger.

  And she wasn’t quite sure how to do it.

  6

  GORGEOUS ELEVATOR WOMAN, whom he now knew as Nissa, was long gone before the makeup artist finished with Ryan. She had to redo his palette (her words) three times before she got it right. By then, he had ten minutes to put on the silk suit Wendy darling had provided for him, and skate into the green room.

  His stomach was rumbling. He was so hungry he was woozy—or maybe that was just the lack of sleep.

  Or the effects of the woman of his dreams.

  Damn, he wished he could think of her in a different way. But Nissa had put him off balance from the start.

  He arrived in the green room as the three hosts of this show started into a discussion of icons, role models, and traditions. A table near the door was laden with holiday cookies, fresh fruit, chips and dip, and little finger sandwiches. His stomach growled in appreciation—rather like Tony the Tiger—but he remembered Wendy’s admonition: he didn’t want any of this stuff in his teeth, not while he was facing the most beautiful woman in the world.

  He hoped he made it through his fifteen-minute segment. Then he’d be able to grab an apple, run to the limo, and hide in his hotel room.

  Unless Wendy darling had other surprises for him.

  Nissa the Beautiful wasn’t in the green room. Or she wasn’t in this green room. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Several of the shows he’d guested on separated their guests until show time. That way the arguments were fresh.

  He wished he had thought to use his phone to look up Claus & Company. He’d never heard of it before, although he felt like he should have. Something seemed a little off about it.