Not Your Average Vixen: A Christmas Romance Page 4

  “More on the horizon?” he repeated. She did have him watching chick flicks.

  Soren undid the top button on his dress shirt, but it didn’t alleviate the tightness in his throat.

  “Scooter, I love Lori. It was love at first sight, and it’s only gotten stronger. I wish you could understand what it’s like when you lock eyes with someone, and you know that your life will never be the same.”

  “What the hell, man! Does she have you watching The Notebook on repeat?” he shot back, but Tom only chuckled.

  “It’s not a half-bad movie, Scooter.”

  Soren shook his head. His friend wasn’t ready. This was simply a passing fancy. He’d met Tom’s fiancée briefly at lunch before he’d rendezvoused with their waitress for a quick and dirty fuck in the restaurant’s alley. It wasn’t one of his classiest of moments. But when he saw the way Tom looked at Lori, he had to get out of there and blow off a little steam. The screw was mediocre and mindless. He’d wanted to get the image of Tom and Lori out of his head. But it didn’t work. Nor did it quell the unease inside of him.

  Lori was attractive and smart. Who wouldn’t like her?

  But to marry her—after only a few months of dating?

  Hell no!

  Tom was caught up in her. That’s all. They worked together. They saw each other every day. It’s no surprise he’d want to take her to bed.

  But marriage? Actual marriage?

  He knew his best friend. The man might have thought he was ready to pull the matrimonial trigger. But he wasn’t.

  A knock on his office door caught his attention as his assistant waved to him from the other side of the glass door.

  “Tom, I have to go. Janine needs something. I’ll see you in a few days.”

  “Thanks, man. Remember, I need you on best, best man behavior. No funny business and tell Janine that the Abbotts wish her a Merry Christmas.”

  Soren ended the call, not agreeing to anything, as he waved the woman in.

  “Were you talking to Tom Abbott?” she asked, eyeing him closely.

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but yes,” he answered, playing coy.

  A smug grin bloomed across the woman’s lips. “I know that face, Soren.”

  “What face?” he parroted back.

  “Your real happy face.”

  “I don’t have a real happy face. I have a face, Janine,” he answered, careful to keep his features neutral. But he should know better, especially with this one. At almost seventy, the woman only kept getting sharper.

  And she wasn’t only his assistant.

  Years ago, she’d worked as a nanny and happened to be the one person who, before he’d met the Abbotts, had bestowed genuine kindness upon him. She wasn’t with him long. His mother had hired her a few days before his tenth birthday, then, out of nowhere, fired the woman a week before his eleventh. There was never any rhyme or reason to his parents’ behavior, but he’d never forgotten Janine’s compassion. When he needed an assistant years later, he’d found her, offered her triple what she was making as a secretary in a dentist’s office in Queens, and that was that.

  “I took care of finding the exotic entertainers you requested. They were happy to let me know they can accommodate both dates,” she said with a disapproving glance at the iPad in her hand.

  The strippers!

  He’d forgotten that after his call with Tom this morning, he’d tasked Janine with acquiring strippers for some bachelor entertainment. When he agreed to be Tom’s best man, and despite Tom telling him he and Lori had decided against the traditional bachelor-bachelorette parties, he took on the important job of planning a surprise event. Which, of course, needed to include scantily clad women. And he knew for a fact that Tom’s Uncle Russ would be on board.

  He bit back a grin. “Look at that! Janine, you’re a gem. How many personal assistants out there could procure strippers in the middle of nowhere Colorado, on such short notice?”

  She watched him from over her bifocals. “Are you sure that’s what Tom would want?”

  He chewed the inside of his cheek. Tom didn’t know what he wanted, and it was his job to help his friend see exactly what was at stake.

  Janine ignored his silence and plowed on.

  “You’re scheduled to leave for Denver early in the morning on the twenty-fourth. I’ve notified the staff at Kringle Mountain House, and they’ve assured me that they’ll send a car for you. Then the wedding will take place that evening. And I have you flying out the next morning.”

  He nodded when a flash of red grabbed his attention, and he caught a glimpse of a woman wrapped like a present in a slim-fitting ruby red pencil skirt.

  “Is that my Christmas gift?” he asked with a teasing grin, checking out the redhead standing outside his office.

  Janine balked. “It’s Mr. and Mrs. Angel. They’ve come with legal counsel. I told them they could have fifteen minutes with you.”

  He crossed his arms. “Who are the Angels? Is this a Christmas joke, Janine?”

  “They’re the people who own the Cupid Bakeries.”

  “So, they’re the ones who have been wasting my money,” he answered, eyeing an older couple standing next to the curvy redhead.

  The gentleman sported a white beard and was a dead ringer for Santa Claus, and his wife got in on the holiday action with a little red shawl. They looked like they’d just gotten off a shift at a holiday meet-and-greet at the mall.

  “They’ve been calling all week, pleading for a time to meet with you,” Janine continued.

  He cleared his throat. “I have people who deal with this sort of thing.”

  “They asked for you, Soren. And look at them. They flew out here, hoping to speak with you. They told me that they built Cupid Bakery from the ground up. And it’s the holidays. A little goodwill toward men would do you good.”

  A little goodwill with that redhead would do him good as well. The siren of an attorney looked up and caught his eye through the glass wall. Her gaze traveled lasciviously down his body.

  A quick meeting didn’t sound so bad now.

  “What do you say, Soren? Do you need me to brief you on the Cupid Bakery account?”

  He crossed his arms. “Give me the basics.”

  Janine tapped the screen. “Okay, Cupid Bakery was a mom and pop venture that made it big back in the late eighties. They’d expanded from selling cakes and cookies out of their kitchen in Vermont to opening shops all over New England. A few years after that, they had locations in every major city across the US. But they didn’t count on the big box retailers cutting into their profits. It seems that they hadn’t pivoted, hadn’t taken steps to brand themselves as a niche market.”

  He nodded, remembering this account. Sure, he could have done a deep dive into making them profitable again. But that wasn’t his job. Quick and dirty. In and out. He wasn’t a career counseling center. Rudolph Holdings provided funding to companies in crisis. But the reality of any company choosing to take his money was laid out right there in the contract in black and white. If the profits didn’t roll in, the company was his to do as he pleased.

  He sighed. “Fine, send them in.”

  Janine nodded, then headed out the door to speak with the couple and their smokin’ hot attorney. Moments later, Mr. and Mrs. Angel entered his office, grinning ear to ear.

  “Thank you for seeing us, Mr. Rudolph. I’m Ernie Angel, and this is my beautiful wife of sixty-two years, Agnes. And this young lady is Cindy Callahan. She’s a lawyer from Los Angeles,” the man said, shaking his hand.

  “My grandparents are friends with the Angels, and I agreed to assist them with this issue,” Cindy replied smoothly, offering him her hand.

  “Are you in town for long?” he asked.

  A devilish glint sparked in her eyes. “Just for the night.”

  Just for the night were four of his favorite words.

  He held her hand for an extra second, and the woman drew her tongue across her top lip.
>
  Yep, this one was a vixen for sure.

  “We’re here for the night, too. We’ll head back to Vermont tomorrow,” Agnes Angel said, ending his handshake with the attorney when she thrust a red box tied with a green bow toward him.

  “What is this, Mrs. Angel?” he asked, passing the item to Janine.

  “Chocolate peppermint cupcakes! They’re our top seller this time of year. We thought that if you tasted them and got to meet us, you’d see that you simply can’t close all of our bakeries,” the woman replied warmly with one hell of a Mrs. Claus vibe.

  He stole a glance at their vixen of a lawyer who gave him a resigned shrug. She had no skin in the game. Her family must have put her up to this. A good thing to know because this meeting wasn’t going to end well for her clients.

  He gestured toward the conference table. When everyone was settled in their chair, he steepled his fingers and glanced between Ernie and Agnes—still thrown by the Santa factor. But it didn’t matter if Ernie resembled Kris Kringle, Elvis, or Peter Pan, their bakery business was over.

  “Unfortunately, your company is failing,” he said as plainly as he could.

  He wasn’t one to sugarcoat anything—not even for a pair of pleasant old people.

  “It was heart-wrenching, but we closed a few of our bakeries across Colorado and Wyoming. We chose you specifically to help us,” Agnes said, smiling sweetly.

  He assessed the woman. It was no wonder the company was in shit shape. She and her husband didn’t get it.

  “We did help you, Mrs. Angel. Rudolph Holdings invested in your company. We gave you a generous injection of cash. You, in turn, promised to increase your profits by forty percent. You didn’t. You lost money.”

  “But Cupid Bakery was started with love,” Agnes offered.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Is that right?”

  The damn origin story.

  Why the hell did people think good intentions meant anything when it came to business?

  “Oh, yes! When I saw Agnes for the first time, it was like Cupid’s arrow hit me straight in the heart,” Ernie Angel replied.

  “And Cupid’s a reindeer, just like Rudolph!” Agnes exclaimed.

  He released the bridge of his nose. The last thing he wanted was to be compared to a fucking reindeer. What the hell kind of Frosty the Snowman, chestnuts-roasting-on-an-open-fire bullshit logic was that?

  “None of those things change your fiscal outlook,” he said, starting to get a little freaked out by how they continued to smile at him.

  Their business was over. There was no saving this company.

  “Mr. Rudolph, Cupid Bakery is the cornerstone of every city where we have a location. We routinely give back to the community. With our bakeries across the country, we’re a lifeline to food pantries. We believe in charity,” Mr. Angel continued.

  Soren leaned forward and held the man’s gaze. “And I believe in profits. Guess what wins in the real world?”

  The couple shared a knowing glance, but the smiles never left their faces.

  “That’s a very naughty list type of attitude. You should taste one of my cupcakes, Mr. Rudolph. That would bring some joy into your heart,” Mrs. Angel replied.

  Naughty list attitude? No wonder they’d lost a boatload of money. These two were nuts.

  “Mr. Rudolph,” Ernie Angel began, “would you consider an extension? There has to be something we can do to turn this around.”

  Soren glanced over at Janine, who replied with the hint of a nod. This woman had been trying to thaw his frosty demeanor for years. Why she thought for even a second that he was going to turn over a new leaf left him speechless.

  He was who he was—a Rudolph who was the furthest thing from a benevolent red-nosed reindeer.

  “It’s just the two of you running the business, correct?” he asked the couple.

  “Yes, Agnes and I do everything. Our children worked in the bakery when they were younger, but none of them expressed any interest in continuing on with the family business.”

  “So, there’s no succession plan?” he asked, catching the attorney’s eye.

  “No, the Angels still operate the company as they did back in the eighties,” she replied, then glanced at her polished nails.

  No shit. And their profits showed this.

  He turned back to the Angels. “You will receive a portion of the liquidation profits. Aren’t you done working? What do you care about what happens with the business?”

  Agnes gasped and pressed her hand to her chest as Ernie’s rosy cheeks bloomed crimson.

  “Mr. Rudolph, we might not have the cash flow to show it. But there are things more important than money,” Ernie answered.

  The vixen attorney crossed her legs and leaned forward just enough to reveal the hint of a lacy black bra beneath her satin blouse. His fingers ached to tear it off—to hear the pop of each creamy button scattering across the marble floor inside his office. He could have her buck naked and bent over his desk in a matter of seconds.

  “Perhaps, Mr. Rudolph can be enticed to allow Cupid Bakery to continue business as usual until after Christmas. We could call it a holiday act of generosity,” the woman purred.

  His wolfish gaze traveled from her cleavage to her red lips—lips that would look good wrapped around his cock.

  He sat back in his chair. “I can be generous when the mood strikes.”

  “I imagine you can,” she replied, her eyes raking over his torso.

  “Then you’ll do it? You won’t shut us down quite yet?” Agnes asked.

  He blew out a tight breath.

  A few more days wouldn’t make much difference.

  “My team will assess your financial standing on December twenty-sixth. I can’t make any promises beyond that.”

  Mrs. Angel clapped her hands. “How wonderful! And perhaps, a Christmas miracle could make Cupid Bakery profitable again.”

  “That would certainly be a fascinating development, but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you,” he answered.

  The last thing he needed was little old ladies pegging their hopes on Christmas miracles, but it wasn’t his fault they hadn’t done the work to turn a profit.

  “I think this meeting has been a success. We appreciate your time,” the attorney said, coming to her feet.

  “Thank you, Mr. Rudolph!” Agnes gushed as Ernie took her hand and led her toward the door with the vixen lawyer a step behind them.

  “See, I’m not always naughty,” he said, sharing a glance with Janine, who was not amused.

  “Oh no!” she replied, bending down to retrieve a hotel key card.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Angel, did you drop your hotel room key?” she called.

  Ernie Angel reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a key card. “Nope, it’s not ours,” he said, then headed down the hall with his wife.

  “Miss Callahan, this must be yours. You must have forgotten it,” Janine said, holding out the card.

  The redhead didn’t give Janine a second glance. “I didn’t forget it. Room nine twenty-two at the Four Seasons.”

  “I’ll take that, Janine,” he said, plucking the card from his assistant’s grip.

  It looked like he would be riding that vixen tonight.

  The attorney glanced back at him, then continued down the hall.

  “I don’t know why you bother with that, Soren. You should take a lesson from your friend, Tom, and find a nice girl,” Janine said, tidying up a stack of files on the corner of his desk that didn’t require tidying up.

  “You know I’m not looking for an angel, Janine.”

  But he wasn’t about to get into this with his assistant.

  “Is there anything else we need to go over?” he asked, staring at the black key card.

  “A few things,” Janine answered, picking up her iPad.

  He leaned against his desk, turning the room key in his hand. First, he’d take that vixen hard and fast against the wall. Then, a long, slow fuck in the
steam shower. And finally, she’d get down on her knees and wrap those red lips around his rock-hard cock.

  “Your parents,” Janine said, knocking the sex scenario right out of his head.

  “What about them?” he bit out.

  “I reached out to them. Well, their assistants.”

  He gave a bark of a laugh. Neither of his parents had a job. They were the epitome of trust fund trash.

  “And?”

  “Your mother will be in St. Tropez with her husband for the holidays.”

  “Fourth husband,” he corrected.

  Janine nodded. “And your father will be on a yacht, cruising the Mediterranean until the middle of January with his—”

  “Fifth wife,” he supplied as a muscle ticked in his jaw.

  How little they’d changed over the years. At least, he knew to expect nothing from them. He made his own money. He had his own life.

  “And what would you like to get Tom for a wedding gift? Goodness, things are going to be different,” Janine said with a chuckle.

  But he wasn’t laughing.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Janine opened the box of cupcakes. “Don’t these look delightful? Would you like one, dear?”

  “Do you think I look like this because I binge on boxes of sugar?” He frowned. “What did you mean when you said things were going to be different? I assume that you meant with Tom.”

  Janine closed the lid, then pinned him with her hazel gaze. “Tom is getting married, Soren. There’s a chance his holiday plans will change. He’ll have his wife and her family to consider. And then, who knows if they’ll decide to have children soon. This might be your last time celebrating Christmas with him and the Abbotts.”

  He would have fallen on his ass had he not been leaning against his desk.

  The last Christmas with the Abbotts?

  He’d considered Tom’s fiancée a mere nuisance—an obstacle, something to placate. But the thought of his connection with the Abbotts becoming severed never entered his mind until Janine mentioned it.

  Was she right?

  He couldn’t take the chance of finding out.

  He glanced at the card key, then tossed it into the trash. There was no time for mindless escapades with a vixen now.