Santa’s eyebrows were also white and droplets of water were already forming from the melting snow on his hat. Looking down to his body, Candice coul... see Santa’s slightly paunchy figure decked in a letterbox red suit; complete with a wide black leather belt and matching leather boots and gloves. In a soft but disbelieving tone, Candice hesitantly asked the elderly man, “You really are Santa Claus, aren’t you?” “Yes, I am the real Santa Claus. Your house is the last house I had to visit before. Hiram and I untied the bags and started stacking the gold bars next to the weighing table. I knew Hiram was in a hurry, so I remained quiet as he weighed out the gold.When he was done he added up the weights and said, “This is your biggest load yet, Paul. I come up with 166,000 ounces.” At my nod, he went on. “We’re paying $14 an ounce for your stuff now, so that comes to a total of $2,324,000. What do you want to do with it?”“Deposit it all in my private account, please, Hiram,” I said.He. Two days with torrents of strong feelings washing over me. My automaton nature, usually reserved for mornings, had crossed over to my afternoons and evenings. When I was not in class, I was at home crying. Instead of working on projects that were due in the next two weeks, I lost myself in fantasy watching romantic DVD’s. The TV showed me a romantic world, a world where I knew the outcome, the happy-ending I wanted. It was an old trick that I had learned at an early age. A trick I used because. ”“Don’t tell me what love is.”“Well somebody should!” I raised my voice a bit.“Mick, I have been searching for it a long time.”“If you think that I am it, you haven’t looked very hard.”“I saw it with my foster family. They loved each other, their kids and me.”“But it has only been two days!”“Not for me. I have been falling for you for over two years now.”“You must have seen it from the guys you dated and stuff.”“Mick, there have been guys and dates, but there hasn’t been any ‘stuff’. Ever!”“You.