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little voice in the back of her mind said. If he’d winked at her like that, she’d have melted on the spot.
    Her path clear now, she scurried up to the table and hid her gift among the others. Like the rest, the tag on her gift was blank. Secret Santa at the agency worked differently to other workplaces. Each person put a gift on a spelled table, and at midnight, the enchantment sorted them and put names on all the tags.
    She bit her lip as she looked at her offering. Who would get her teddy bear, created with all the love and magic a Christmas elf could summon? A deep laugh caught her attention and she looked over her shoulder to see Cole chuckling at something his brother had said. When she’d made her teddy bear, she’d imagined it was Cole’s name she’d pulled from the hat…like in the secret Santa’s she’d had other workplaces. The regular ones, the mortal ones…the not enchanted ones.
    Checking her gift again, she reached down to straighten its bow, then turned in search of another drink, and perhaps some nibbles.
     
    *
     
    “You know she’s a Christmas elf, don’t you?”
    Cole turned at the sound of his brother, Rhod’s, voice and followed his gaze to the petite woman stood at the buffet table. Instantly, every cell in his body perked up to pay attention.
    Mia.
    “She is?” He asked in confusion, without taking his eyes off the tiny woman.
    She’d joined the agency in the summer, and he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind. Tiny and curvy, with masses of dark hair that reminded him of roast chestnuts and caramel eyes that sparkled with mystery, she was temptation personified. A temptation he’d have been quick to snap up, except for the fact that she went bright red and ran off every time he tried to talk to her.
    Shy was not the word.
    “Well,” he said with a shrug. “That explains some things.”
    Like the little tug just under his breastbone every time he saw her, and the need to make her smile…to see those sad eyes sparkle with laughter. A Christmas elf without Christmas, without the Pole, was a sad creature. Unlike the Claus elves, who carried Christmas within them, Christmas elves didn’t. They needed regular infusions of the Christmas spirit to make them the happy-go-lucky creatures that nature had intended them to be. The Christmas in him felt her sadness, sensed the void within her, and needed to fill it.
    But it didn’t explain other things. Like the need to wrap his arms around her, or the need to find out if those plump, bee-stung lips tasted as good as they looked. It certainly didn’t explain the red mist that wanted to descend every time she smiled at another man. Those were down to good old primal instinct, and the fact he thought she was as sexy as hell.
    He tracked her with his eyes as she moved around the room. Small groups of people parted to welcome her, and Cole had to grit his teeth as Darrick, one of the pixie operatives, casually looped an arm around her shoulders. He could tell from the set of her body she wasn’t comfortable with the casual touching.
    “If you want her,” Rhod bumped Cole’s shoulder with his own. “You better make a move before Darrick does.”
    Cole growled at him, but Rhod just laughed and walked off in search of his wife, Candy. It was still a running joke at the Pole, that only a Claus elf, that only Rhod, could find and marry a woman called Candy Kane. Now she was Candy Claus, which didn’t have quite the same ring, but made no difference, over half his brothers still fancied themselves madly in love with her.
    Cole grinned into his drink, tipping his head back and finishing it in one gulp. There was one thing that those brothers forgot though. Rhod and Cole might be Santa’s for one night, and damn good Santa’s at that, but for the rest of the year they were protection operatives. Fucking good ones too boot, with all the skills and abilities required to guard VIPs, celebrities and sometimes, even royalty. Not just that,