Page 2 of Sleighing You
“Did you not get the memo my office sent yesterday stating I would be coming?” he asked.
I nodded, utterly speechless for a moment while I combed the recesses of my memory for that email. “Y-yes. But you said—”
“And did you not see that we had specifically asked for any security codes and access that might be needed if we came after hours?”
“Yes, but—”
“Well, then. I guess I can rule out illiteracy as the reason for thismishap.”
My hands balled into fists. “I’mnotilliterate. Your email suggested you might come into the store alittleearlier or later than our operating hours. It didn’t sound as though you’d be sliding in before the sun was even up!”
Crap, now I was shouting. I was shouting at my boss immediately after assaulting him with oversized candy. I took a deep breath, forcing my voice to quiet down to a normal speaking volume. “And if you had properly read my response, you would have seen that I sent a reminder to your assistant that Jack is renting me the apartment upstairs for the next couple of months.”
His brow tightened at that, eyes flicking toward the top of the stairs. “My dad is leasing you that apartment?” he pointed, driving the question home.
“Yes.” I crossed my arms, suddenly aware how undressed I actually was wearing only my long sleeve sleep shirt, bare legs, and elf slippers. With each tap of my toe against the hardwood floor, the bells on the toes jingled. It sounded far too cheery to mirror the annoyance I felt toward him.
“Dammit,” he hissed and yanked a cell phone from his back pocket.
“Also, I thought your dad and mom were coming for the Christmas Festival.”
Jack Pohle and his sweet wife, Cecilia, always came to Maple Grove’s Christmas Festival every year. And every year, they dressed up as Mr. and Mrs. Claus. Chris, their son, never came out to the store. I had literally only met him once in my time managing their flagship store, and that was at their Christmas party last year. He waltzed into that party with some mammoth-tall supermodel on his arm, stole a bottle of champagne from the bar before whisking his date out to some private balcony on the top floor. When he came back, I only saw him talking to other suits and board members until he and that model had some very public breakup—right there at the party. His presence created a whole lot of drama for what was usually an uneventful company party.
Prior to that? He’d never made it to a single company function… at least none that they had invited me to. And I had kind of hoped he never would again. I liked the fact that the StoryBook Christmas parties were low drama… well, usually.
Chris was the polar opposite of his father. It was a wonder that they were even related.
But, he was still my boss.
“My dad,” he grunted, flicking his finger over the screen of his phone, “fell off the ladder while stringing Christmas lights on his house two days ago.”
I gasped, pressing my hand to my chest. “Oh my God, is he okay?”
Chris’s bright green eyes glanced quickly at me, lingering at the strip of skin on my chest that peeked through the button-down nightshirt. I grasped my shirt in my clenched fist, closing the gaping hole. “He broke his ankle,” he said. “But he’ll be fine. He’ll be coming later in the week for the board meeting. Unfortunately, it means no dressing up as Santa Claus for him this year. That’s all we need… a little rugrat slipping off his lap and rebreaking the set bone.”
I winced at the image, but panic quickly usurped my concern for Jack. What this would mean for the store? “Does that mean we don’t have a Santa for Christmas Fest?”
My mind raced, and I tried to think of anyone and everyone I knew who could possibly fill in and fit the Mr. and Mrs. Claus costumes I had here in storage.
“Oh, no,we do.”
My panic immediately subsided. I already had way too much on my plate with all the Christmas Fest events. “Oh, thank God. I was going to say, it’s probably too late to book a professional. How did you find someone?”
“Well, my dad is really big on tradition. And StoryBook tradition is that one of the Pohle family members acts as Santa at the flagship store. Soooo…” He held out his hands and gestured to himself. “You’re looking at Santa for this year.”
I blinked again, my eyes scanning his chiseled jawbone, tanned skin, dark beard, and washboard flat stomach. His nose wasn’t red like a cherry. His beard wasn’t white as snow. I couldn’t imagine anything jolly about this man in the least bit. “You must bejoking.”
“I wish I was,” he muttered, then directed his attention back to his phone with a sigh.
After a few moments of tapping away, I waved my hands in front of his face. “Um, hello?! You’re still essentially here in my house. At five in the morning.”
With a sigh, he looked up again at me. “Your house is upstairs. And it’s five forty-five.”
I glared back at him. “We need to establish some ground rules. I pay your father rent and I’m not okay with you coming in at all hours just because you have the code.”
He sighed. “Yes, I just checked with my assistant and she never relayed that part of your response to me. I’m sorry. I won’t be arriving this early again. It only happened today because I got in late last night from another business trip and I couldn’t sleep.”
He grabbed an expensive-looking leather briefcase off of the front counter.Who even uses a briefcase anymore?I thought they reserved those for stodgy old men and lawyers. “I’ll let you get back to sleep.”
