Chapter 7
Once again, daylight punches me in the face. The blinds are open, the sun is high, and the glare on the snow is fierce.
It’s Christmas morning. I fell asleep in Pier’s arms after all those candlelit confessions. My abs and pussy are a bit sore from our amazing sexy times, but other than that, I feel amazing.
Fast asleep, Piers’s face looks kinder, more open. I forgive him for his past transgressions, I really do.
But I don’t know if we can be together.
What would that even look like?
I don’t need to decide right now. Outside the window, the world is sparkling like diamonds. The winter wonderland is calling me. I dress warmly in my HoudZou, thick leggings, and my red boots. And my Santa hat, of course.
Outside, the freezing air wakes me right up.
The air is clean and fresh but cold enough to turn my nose into an icicle.
I trudge through the thick drifts to the end of the deck and lean on the railing by the Christmas tree.
Without the lights on, it looks like a regular tree, but it’s still beautiful.
And Piers didn’t seem to hate it last night. We made a new memory.
I’ve cared for you. I’ve always cared for you, I just didn’t know it.
I wish I could call my mom, get her advice. She was always unlucky in love, but she did tell me to find someone who made me laugh, someone who would do anything for me. ‘Don’t settle,’ she said.
Piers does make me laugh, even when he’s roasting me. And he certainly went out of his way to trap me here.
The real thing I can’t wrap my head around is why he wants me. He’s brilliant, sexy, Hollywood handsome. What do I have to offer him?
You’re the only one who can take me.
But I’m just his assistant.
Don’t do that. Don’t put yourself down before anyone else can.
Maybe I need therapy.
I’m pondering this when the sound of jingling bells fills the air. I think I’m imagining it when I glimpse something brown and red moving through the fir trees.
What the…?
I walk down the stairs to get a closer look and end up knee deep in the snow right as four huge brown deer trot into view. They’re pulling a bright red sleigh, and the jingling sound is from the bells on their harnesses and antlers.
“Whoa, there,” a gruff voice calls, and the sleigh slides to a stop.
The sleigh driver is a big and brawny white man wearing a thick burgundy coat edged with white fur.
His head is covered by a huge brown fur hat, the sort an old-timey trapper would wear.
It matches his big, bristling beard, which is brown with a few white patches.
He pulls out a piece of paper and frowns at it, then looks up at the house while rubbing his beard with a gloved hand.
“Hello?” I call.
His face splits into a grin. “Hello there.” His voice booms out. “Merry Christmas. Are you Wellesley Creech?”
I nearly fall over. “Um, yes? That’s me.”
He stuffs the paper back in his pocket. “Just who I was looking for. I heard you need a ride to the airport. Whoa, Ruddy.” This last part he says to one of the big deer, who snorted at me and pawed the snow.
“Hang on,” Beard Man says. He jumps down and pulls a big burlap sack out of the back of his sleigh.
He reaches in and pulls out a fat carrot.
“Rudy’s a good sort, but she gets antsy if I don’t give her snacks. ”
Rudy? My mouth falls open, but I close it quickly before my tongue freezes. “Are these reindeer?”
“They sure are.” He tromps around in his big black boots, feeding each of them a carrot. “Snows a bit deep for a sleigh ride, but they wanted out of the barn.”
“So you came to pick me up?” I still can’t believe it. Piers mentioned something about figuring out a way to get me back to the city for Christmas, but I told him to just go to bed.
“Heard your boss had you up here, making you work through Christmas. Can’t have that.” He frowns.
“Um, no, it’s okay. He… meant well.” I kept imagining you alone, missing your mom, and I couldn’t bear it.
Rudy shakes her head, making the bells on her antlers jingle. She’s not convinced.
Beard Man puts a hand on Rudy’s neck to calm her. “So are you ready? If you grab your things, I can have you at the helipad by noon.”
This is what I wanted, right? A trip back to NYC. To my cold little apartment and moldy leftovers. No Piers. Just the ache of missing my mom.
Is that what I really want?
Or… do I want to stay in a mansion with a man who professes to be crazy about me?
What do I really want for Christmas? What would I choose if I allowed myself to go after what I want?
I’d choose Piers. But I have to believe I deserve to be with him. That would be a real Christmas miracle. But you know what? ’Tis the season.
Beard Man is waiting for an answer. Even the reindeer look curious. Except Rudy. She looks bored.
“Actually… I’m sorry you came all this way, but I don’t need to leave. I’m going to stay.”
He raises a bristly brow. “You want to spend Christmas with your boss?”
“He’s not my boss anymore, actually. I quit. And… I kind of like it here. With him.”
A grin splits the Beard man’s face. “All right then, Wellesley. If you change your mind, just call down to the town. Ask for Nick.” With a wink, he leaps back in his sleigh, jiggles the reins, and gets the reindeer moving again. Within a few seconds, they disappear down the hill.
My mouth is hanging open again.
Did that just happen? And is that a faint “On Dasher, on Dancer?” I hear with the faint sound of jingling bells?
Maybe I’m still drunk.
“Wellesley?” Piers shouts from the deck above. His voice sounds hoarse.
“I’m here. Down here.”
“Thank Christ.” He sticks his head over the deck. His hair is mussed, his face taut. He’s twisting something between his fingers. “I woke up and couldn’t find you. I thought… I thought you’d gone.”
“I thought about it.” I glance back the way Beard Man went with his reindeer. “I think I just met Santa.”
“Have you been drinking again?”
I laugh, a big, bright laugh that bounces off the mountains.
He comes to the top of the stairs, and I realize what he’s holding. It’s the second Santa hat. “Darling, it’s freezing. You’re not dressed for this weather.”
“I have my HoudZou,” I say, spreading my arms. My face is cold, but the rest of me is toasty warm. The hoodie-mumu is amazing; I should really buy stock in the company. “And you have a hat.”
“You need to come up here and get back inside.”
“You’re not the boss of me,” I sing-song.
“Wellesley,” his voice sharpens.
“Put on the hat, Piers.”
“What?”
“Please? For me?”
He shakes it out with a frown but puts it on. He looks good, in his own scary-sexy Dread Lord sort of way. “There. Are you happy?”
“Esctatic.”
“Is that all you want?” He glowers down at me from the top step.
“Not even close. Why did you buy the Thrusters?”
His face goes blank.
“My mother’s favorite football team, and you bought them, even though they haven’t won a championship in ten years.
You made sure I could watch every game if I wanted, and from the owner’s box.
From anyone else, it would be a generous gift, but you pretended it was an investment.
And then there was the unlimited clothing budget.
And all the meals—dining out or from your private chef. ”
I’ve cared for you. I’ve always cared for you, I just didn’t know it.
“You also offered me new housing. I didn’t take it—”
“You complained about your apartment all the time, but you didn’t want to let it go because that’s where you lived with your mom and leaving it would feel like losing her all over again.”
I marvel that he figured that out. I didn’t realize that about myself until now. “So you made me work late nights because you couldn’t bear the idea of me being home alone. Right?”
He swallows and nods. It’s one thing to confess all this in the moonlight but another to shout it from a mountainside.
“I think you were taking care of me this whole time. In your own emotionally closed-off way.” I wag my finger at him.
He has that lost expression on his face again. “It hasn’t all been noble.” His gaze falls to his brogues. “I also didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to be with you, Wellesley, and if that meant forcing you to stay by my side, dragging you to every godforsaken work event I could…”
“Trapping me in a mansion with you, making sure I couldn’t run…”
“I’m sorry—”
“It’s okay. I know why you did it.” This is the man who found out my mother always took me to Rockefeller Center and made sure to take me there for our work anniversary to make new memories. “By the way, I want my watch back.”
His head comes up, his golden eyes alight with hope. “Does that mean… are you—”
“Oh no, I still quit. I’m never ever working for you again. At least, not under you.”
His eyes narrow.
“Not in the business sort of way.” My face heats. “I would be willing to be under you again, in other ways. I’m ready to make a deal.”
“Are you now?”
“Yes. If the terms are good. I learned to negotiate from the best.” Attagirl, I can hear Marty say.
“Then tell me, Wellesley.” He starts slowly walking down the stairs. “What will it take for you to make that deal? Or at least stop this madness and come inside?” The way he’s looking at me promises retribution of the sexy kind. My butthole tingles.
“Hmmm,” I let my fingers dance against my lips, pondering my demands.
“I’ll sell my company,” he says before I can think of anything. “Everything. All of Lords. You don’t have to quit. I’ll make you CEO.”
“What?”
“I’ll sell it to you right now for a dollar.”
“You’d give away all your money for me?”
“Not all my money. I’d still have the trust. The family holdings in London and Mumbai. The ancestral pile,” he shudders.
“But everything you’ve built, you’d give to me?” He worked so hard to make his own pile. To prove himself to his father.
“You’re worth it.”
Oh, Piers. “I don’t want your company.”
“Then what do you want?”
You. I could say it. I could shout it. But I don’t want to make it too easy for him.
“Come down here,” I say. “There’s something I want to show you.”
I start to back up into the fir trees.
“Wellesley,” his voice sharpens. “Get back here.”
I turn and run into the woods as fast as the deep snow and my boots will allow.
It doesn’t take long for Piers to follow me. “This is ridiculous. If you think you’re going to—”
I sock him with a snowball. It hits his perfect cheek and fills his open mouth. He sputters and recovers quickly, but I have plenty of ammunition at hand. I hit him again and again, laughing like a maniac. Finally, he gives up trying to dodge the snowballs and rushes me, and I run shrieking.
He chases me around the forty-foot fir tree.
I’m laughing too hard to move fast, but I zigzag and avoid him until my boots betray me.
He tackles me, and we both go down. Somehow, he cushions my fall, so I end up on top of him.
Snow crusts his brows and wool coat, and his Santa hat is askew. He’s never looked more amazing.
I’m about to tell him that when he reaches up and grabs a fir tree branch, showering us with snow.
“You asshole,” I sputter. My face is already numb, but I know the snow is cold.
“I am an asshole,” he says. “One might even say an ogre. But you can take it.”
“You’re my ogre,” I agree, and let him draw my head down to his for a kiss. By the time we’re done, his dick is poking into me through all my layers, and I’m warm enough to pull off my HoudZou and roll in the snow.
“Do you forgive me, darling?”
“I do. For everything. Because… I love you.”
He looks stunned.
“You don’t have to say it back,” I say quickly. “I figure you’ll need some more remedial lessons from Sandra before you figure out all your feelings.”
“I do, but not for this. I love you, Wellesley. I didn’t know it. I just knew I didn’t deserve you. I still don’t deserve you, but I can’t stand the idea of you being with anyone else.”
“I don’t want to be with anyone else.” I lick my lips, feeling happy but scared, a rush of giddy fear like I get when I stand in a top-floor penthouse looking down over Manhattan. “It’s you, Piers. It’s always been you.”
“It’s a goddamn Christmas miracle.” He kisses the shit out of me until I’m shivering but not from the cold.
“You want me,” I say happily.
“I do. I want you for Christmas. But not just for Christmas. I want you every night and every morning. I want you grouchy, and I want you sweet. I want you in the hot tub and the shower. And in bed. And in front of the fireplace.”
“Let’s do it. Right now.” I roll off him, and he helps me up, tutting at my fashion boots in the snow.
“I’m going to train your replacement,” I tell him. “Although it might take more than one person to replace me. Two. Or three.”
“You’re irreplaceable.”
“Yes, I know, that’s why I’ll still be on your arm for every party and gala. You need me. You need my eyes and ears.”
“I need everyone to know you’re mine. Be my date to the New Year’s party?”
“I will,” I laugh. “But I don’t know if I’ll be ready to leave this house by then.”
“Then let’s stay. We’ll make new memories.”
“You have a deal.” I seal it with a kiss.
“Now, darling,” he says, hoisting me into his arms. “We’re going inside. I am going to rip this ridiculous hoodie-mumu off your body and do wicked things to you.”
“No, not the Hoodzou,” I cry.
His eyes twinkle. “What if I promise to replace it?”
“It’s irreplaceable.”
“They’re made in a factory outside of Shenzhen. I’ve already bought it.”
I gasp. “I was just thinking of investing in them!”
“Let’s do it together, then. We’ll form a partnership.”
“I could model them on my travel blog. Just not in Addis Ababa. Speaking of which, what if you take some time off work and travel with me?”
“How much time?”
I grin at him, and he sighs. “You drive a hard bargain, my love. But very well.”
“We have a deal?”
“Shut up and kiss me.”
“You’re not the boss of me.” But I do.