Page 32 of Naughty Santa

“Anyway, we’ll get out of your way.” Joe seemed a little grumpy now and wouldn’t meet her eyes.

She wanted to be flirtatious and say something cute and sexy, just so she could get a smile from him. But nothing came to mind. Suddenly she was thinking about calling her lawyer and getting him to add a clause to the sales agreement that would guarantee Sandy a job and Jaden a place to come after school.

Dammit.

She cared.

She cared about Sandy and Jaden and Joe. That was going to make all of this more complicated. If she could just say “sure, do whatever you want with the store” to the new buyers, it would be easy. But now she wanted to add stipulations. That was not how this was supposed to go.

“Okay,” Paris said reluctantly.

Joe and Jaden were already halfway to the door.

“I’ll text you later!” she called after him.

Joe just lifted his hand in a little wave without looking back.

Yeah, he wasn’t happy about her selling. But he’d still been helping her.

Why? What was going through that gorgeous head of his?

“Bye, Paris!” Jaden yelled back to her as Joe nudged him out the door. “See you later! Love you!”

Paris’s breath caught in her chest, and she literally couldn’t make a sound in response to that.

The door bumped shut behind them, and she pressed a hand over her heart. “That was like a bullet to the heart,” she murmured.

She was in so much trouble.

“I’m sorry,but I thought you understood we have no intention of maintaining the Christmas side of the store,” Mr. Corporate said to her as he stared disdainfully at the display she’d busted her ass setting up.

She had six trees, each themed to represent various aspects of Indiana. After online research, she’d been ordering ornaments like nobody’s business to make her vision come to life. There was the cardinal tree, the state bird, in a festive red and green with faux snow on the branches. She had a peony tree for the state flower, and it was a wondrous explosion of the pink blooms, even prettier than she’d envisioned in her head. The Colts tree was blue and silver and loaded with little Colts helmets, footballs, and horseshoes. She’d done a hunting and fishing tree, heavily featuring deer and trout. Bob had taken to teasing her about that one—saying they each deserved their own tree because water and land didn’t mix. There was an Indy 500 racing tree. Then last but not least, one that was meant to represent North Pole. It was candy canes and Santas, wreaths, and small-town buildings and houses.

Her trees were lit, and she meant that both literally and figuratively. The Christmas display rocked, and she was damnproud of it. Nancy Dunbar, the high school principal, had already bought the Colts one, fully decorated, as a Christmas gift for her husband, to be delivered on Christmas Eve.

“I was not aware of that,” Paris said carefully, trying to school her features so he wouldn’t see that she thought he was a pretentious prick. Mr. Corporate appeared to be in his forties, but he seemed much older than that. She hated the way he talked down to her. God. Everything about the way he held himself screamed arrogant asshole.

The older man with him was quiet, letting the younger man do all the talking. He was harder to read, though she didn’t think he seemed much more impressed by the store than his son and business partner. Her temper spiked when the younger man, Todd, studied their poor injured Alan Jackson reindeer, before turning to his father with a look that told her poor Alan was going to be the first casualty of the sale.

“The ROI isn’t worth it for ANC Supply to even consider it. Not to mention the tacky factor.”

Tacky? Oh, he had not just called the Holly Jolly half of the Holly Jolly Feed and Seed tacky.

It didn’t matter a bit that she’d thought the same thing when she’d first seen it.

This asshole did not get to disparage this store. Or the town where this store had been in business for years. Or the people who loved this store. Or her damned magnificent, holy-shit-she-didn’t-even-know-she-could-decorate-a-tree-like-that Christmas trees.

Okay, she was bitter. That peony tree was the very definition of fucking class. “Nostalgia sells. It’s part of the Holly Jolly Seed and Feed brand. Have you looked at the profit and loss statements?” The ones she had painstakingly inputted into software for this meeting, straight off Lydia’s paper records. It had taken two entire days.

“Of course.” Todd didn’t elaborate.

“The people of the town love this store,” Paris tried again. “I’m sure you understand that when new ownership takes over a business that’s an integral part of a community, immediate, sweeping changes don’t exactly endear the new owners to the customers they’ll depend on.”

Hint, fucking hint, asshole. You need these people. You have to make them like you.

Not that she’d exactly embraced that idea at first. But the people of North Pole were impossible not to like, and somehow, they’d come to like her too.

Everyone had commented on how great her trees were.

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