Page 4 of Sleighing You
Chapter 2
Chris
Latte Da was already open even though it was a few minutes before their official hours of operation. A nice British man handed me my cup of black coffee with only a smile, a nod, and a very quick exchange of cash.
That’s why I loved the British. No inane small talk. No asking me how my morning was going—because, let’s be real—it wasn’t quite 6:00 a.m.; I was on my second day wearing the same wrinkled suit; and I was getting coffee in the smallest town in New England while I waited for my father’s most profitable store manager to get her cute little ass dressed after she assaulted me with a giant candy cane. Not really a morning I wanted to chat about.
I rubbed the heels of my hands into my eyes and sighed. Did my dad truly expectthis townto become my new home for the next few months? Sure, it was cute in that Hallmark movie of the week sort of way. It would be a nice place to visit or for a vacation with my sister and her kids for a week. Hell, it might even be a great place to own a summer lake house… but to live full-time?No, thanks.
I groaned out loud and took a sip of my coffee. I just had to tough it out for a few weeks while my dad and I looked at the expansion proposal for the store. If I could convince him that we could scale up and create more locations in bigger cities, then I could take the helm of those stores, and my sister could manage the smaller town locations remotely. Small stores like this shouldn’t require our close attention. They should be self-sufficient. Then we could shift the flagship store to be in Boston or New York or… hell, I’d even settle for Portland, Maine at this point.
Unfortunately, my father had really strong opinions about keeping his stores quaint. Quaint… a nicer word for less profitable. The real money was in the cities… hehadto know that.
I pulled open my phone and fired off a text to the owner of the house I was renting for the few months I was here. The house was nice, with an enormous fireplace and a view of the frozen lake. I’d even brought my cross-country skis hoping maybe I’d get some time to explore the lake a bit. I couldn’t imagine that this store would keep me that busy. In a town like this, things probably closed by, what… six? Seven at the latest?
I opened my phone to find a text message from my sister.
Just giving you the head’s up, Helena is coming to the board meeting with Tristan. I thought you should know ahead of time.
Helena, my ex-girlfriend. We had broken up just under a year ago at the company Christmas party after I’d walked in on Helena getting it on with my cousin, who was dressed—or at that point, half-dressed—as Santa, in the bathroom. Except Tristan wasn’t only my cousin. He was my colleague and a fellow board member of StoryBook Christmas. I groaned, dropping my head to my hands.
If only I had the power to kick people off the board… I would have booted Tristan so fast. But my dad had other thoughts.You can’t make business decisions based on personal feelings, son, he had said. And even though I knew he was right, it was still frustrating as hell.
Bells jingled somewhere near the door and I groaned. How many store owners put bells on their doors? Didn’t they know there were goddamn apps now that could text you when a customer walked in?
I didn’t bother looking up. If there was anything that I was sure of, it was that I wasn’t interested in making friends in a town where I didn’t plan on staying more than a few weeks.
The bells got louder somehow and didn’t stop when I felt the cold gust of wind disappear with the closed door.
“Morning Avery,” I heard the British guy say. And still, those damn bells jingled. “What can I get you?”
I glanced up to find my employee standing at the counter, drumming her red and green striped fingernails against the glass countertop. “Hmmm. Peppermint mocha, Lex. Thanks!”
She turned to face me, and that’s when I saw her sweater—a hideous bright red frock that had bells sewn onto a green knit Christmas tree. Her light brown hair was pulled into two braids and tucked together in a crazy pigtail sort of updo with a point at the center of her head.
I think I preferred her in the pajamas.
In fact, I knew I did. The way her muscled legs peeked out from the hem of the sleep shirt—it made me want to reach out and hook my finger beneath the silk material and drag it up her legs to see just how bare she wasbeneathit.
I pinched my eyes shut and forced the dirty thoughts out of my head. Sex with Avery would be like having sex with a character from Whoville. Her sweater and hair proved as much—literally. Not to mention my dad’s store looked like a Christmas Elf puked all over it. She even named her damn dog thematically.
Still, I had to hand it to her… her store’s sales numbers were the best of any location for five years running. Even if I believed we could do better in a larger city, whatever she was doing here, she was doing it right.
She must have sensed my thoughts somehow because she grinned and, lifting the paper latte cup in her hand, strolled over to take the seat across from me—jingling all the way. “Good morning.” The way she sang the greeting made me wonder if birds and mice helped her get dressed.
“You’re awfully… chipper.”
“Well, I was up before the sun. So, I figured I might as well embrace that. There was no reason to start the day off wearing grumpy pants.”
“You started the day off wearingnopants if I recall.”Shit.The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.
The corners of her mouth tightened, her smile growing brittle. “Well, like I said before, I won’t apologize for wearing pajamas inmyhome outside of business hours. So, think twice before barging in again at all hours of the night.”
Oh, I will. I didn’t think I’d be able to get that image of the silky, button-down shirt—and how it gaped just the tiniest bit over her cleavage—out of my head for a while.
“Nice sweater,” I said, trying to keep the sarcasm in my voice from dripping like molasses.
“It’s ugly sweater day,” she said proudly. “All business owners wear their ugliest Christmas sweater today and the mayor visits all participants to choose the winner.”
