He’d also eaten her microwave burrito once—which, to be fair, had been unlabeled and in the freezer for months—and she’d threatened to take it out of his paycheck.
Like she had that power.
Anyway, they were all fairly harmless skirmishes. But thinking about them all together made Lauren squirm, because the fact was that they were unprofessional, and she never, never would’ve acted that way with anyone else.
Holy shit. Were they about to get fired?
Chapter
Two
Asa knew they weren’t about to be fired. But he could tell by Lauren’s intense eyes that her mind had immediately gone to the worst-case scenario. It was fun to watch. In the couple of minutes it took to finish the Secret Santa, she’d have worked herself up into a real lather.
He gestured her aside with a flick of the Santa hat. “Gotta keep the line moving,” he said.
She stepped away, still looking dazed, and he almost felt bad. He could’ve tried to say something reassuring, but the truth was that he didn’t know what Dolores could want, either, or why she’d singled them out.
He smiled at people as they came to select their names out of the hat, but his mind was already racing with possibilities. It could be something related to preparations for the holiday party—that would make sense for him, since he’d been there so long and had done things in the past like arranging the Secret Santa or booking his housemate John’s band to play the event. But Lauren was the biggest Scrooge he knew. Why would Dolores put her in charge of anything to do with holiday cheer?
Once everyone had chosen their gift recipients and cleared out, Asa thrust his hand in the hat, reaching into the narrow point of the very tip to retrieve the last slip of paper. Sonia. That would be a relatively easy one. She loved romance novels, and he bet he could find ones with particularly salacious titles and package them together in a fun way.
He wondered who Lauren had gotten. Whoever it was, they probably could look forward to a new calculator. She wouldn’t even buy it—just take one from her massive stockpile.
“Take a seat, my babies,” Dolores said now that it was just him and Lauren. And Daniel. Asa hadn’t noticed, but Dolores’ son had stayed back, too, and she wasn’t sending him away, so he must be part of whatever this announcement was. Daniel sat down right next to Lauren, and although he didn’t even look up to acknowledge her, Lauren straightened her posture and self-consciously tucked her hair behind her ear. It was no secret that she had a thing for their boss’ son—technically their boss, too, since he outranked both of them—but for some reason it felt particularly annoying to see her fawn over him now. If she seriously thought they might lose their jobs, shouldn’t she be more focused on that?
“Let me ask you all a question,” Dolores said, steepling her fingers in front of her. “When people think of Orlando destinations, what comes to mind?”
“Disney,” Lauren said immediately.
“Universal,” Daniel put in, flicking a glance at Lauren like he was almost impressed. Asa resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Low-hanging fruit.
“Sea World,” Lauren said, visibly blushing under Daniel’s attention.
“Ripley’s Believe It or Not!,” Asa said dryly.
Collectively, they all seemed to realize that they were only rubbing it in just how far down the list Cold World was, and they stopped naming more popular attractions. But instead of looking upset, Dolores seemed delighted by their answers.
“Exactly!” she said, pointing at them. “We never make those lists, what do you call them, Top Ten lists? We’re never included. I think because Cold World is getting stale.”
“It’s an institution,” Asa said defensively, although he could see her point. There had been maintenance and improvements since the nineties, obviously, but the main decor hadn’t changed much. The carpet around the ice rink was basically a nondescript-colored pad; most of the design on Wonderland Walk had the green, red, and cream palette of a TV Christmas special from the Clinton years; and the Snow Globe produced more icy slush than a powdery snow that children would actually want to play in. They had guests come in just for the novelty of it all, but they didn’t necessarily come back—and then they had locals who’d grown up coming to Cold World, who brought their kids now because it was part of a tradition they associated with the season. Working there as long as he had, Asa had seen plenty of those people . . . but not enough to sustain the business by themselves.
“Maybe it’s the name?” Lauren asked tentatively. “Sometimes on the phone people think I’m saying Cold War.”
Asa snorted, and she glared at him.
“It’s time we do something,” Dolores continued, as if she didn’t hear the question. “We need a new exhibit, new decor, new promotion, something to get people excited about coming here again. I know we can’t do much for this holiday season, but I’d like to have an idea by the new year so we can work on getting it implemented for next season. That’s where you come in.”
She looked at each of them in turn, like she was about to unveil the biggest, most exciting news. Asa loved his boss, but she had such a flair for the dramatic.
“I want you to come up with an idea—everything from the design to the budget to how you expect it to improve Cold World’s ticket sales—and present it to me at a meeting after Christmas. I’ve selected you because, Daniel, you’re leadership”—hilarious, because Daniel was rarely on-site to lead anybody—“Lauren, you know more than anyone here about the money side of things, and Asa, you’ve been here the longest of any employee and know this place backward and front.”
That was true, at least. Asa had thought about quitting Cold World several times, mostly when his yearly rent increase hit and he thought about how maybe it was time to level up, find a job that came with a competitive benefits package. Or when he was on a first date and felt a sinking dread at the inevitable So what do you do? question, knowing that whatever was expected of a twenty-eight-year-old man, it wasn’t . . . still working at a novelty winter attraction. The problem was that Cold World was so comfortable. He felt like it needed him. And weirder, he felt like he needed it.
“You can work together, or separately. It doesn’t matter to me. One really good idea is better than three half-baked ones, but there’s also something to be said for choice. Track any hours you spend on the project outside of work, and put it in for overtime.”
Asa could feel Daniel perk up next to him. Lauren must’ve felt it, too, because she got a little frown line between her eyes. “Aren’t you exempt?”
Asa had to hold his hand over his mouth, as if he were deep in thought, to hide his smirk. He couldn’t deny that—when it wasn’t aimed at him—Lauren’s processing chip of a brain could be pretty funny.