Page 1 of Silver Fox's Christmas Scandal
1
TESSA
The elevator doors closed, followed by the soft ding, trapping me in a metal box with my own panic and a mountain of dusty Christmas decorations that smelled faintly of mothballs and forgotten holidays.
I pressed my back against the cold wall and tried to convince myself that tonight could still be salvaged. The armful of tangled garland and dented ornaments shifted precariously in my grip, threatening to scatter across the elevator floor at any moment.
Five days before Christmas, and I had officially become the architect of corporate disaster.
The storm raging outside had demolished every carefully laid plan I'd spent months coordinating.
Three inches of snow had turned into eight, then twelve, trapping half our staff in their homes and leaving the other half stranded in the Cross Capital offices with nothing but stale coffee and the growing certainty that this year's Christmas gala would be remembered for all the wrong reasons.
The caterer had called two hours ago to cancel, citing impassable roads and a kitchen fire that had taken out their main prep area.
The florist never showed.
The band was stuck somewhere on the interstate, and I'd watched helplessly as three separate strands of lights had flickered and died, plunging half the forty-second floor into shadows.
I shifted the decorations to my left arm and fumbled for my phone, checking the time for the umpteenth time. I felt like I was watching my career implode in real time.
Seven thirty.
The party had officially started thirty minutes ago, and what did we have to show for it?
A handful of employees huddled around the few working light fixtures, picking at the emergency cheese and crackers I'd scrounged from the break room, and the kind of awkward silence that settled over gatherings when everyone realized they were witnessing a spectacular failure.
My reflection stared back at me from the polished elevator doors, and I winced at what I saw. My carefully styled hair had come loose from its pins during my frantic trips to the storage area, and my burgundy dress—the one I'd splurged on specifically for tonight—now bore the telltale signs of my basement expedition.
Dust on the shoulders, a small tear near the hem where I'd caught it on a rusty metal shelf, and I looked like I'd spent the evening wrestling with holiday decorations from the Carter administration.
The elevator climbed slowly past the twentieth floor, and I tried to formulate some kind of plan that didn't involve throwing myself off the roof of the building.
Maybe I could string these ancient decorations around the conference room and create enough ambient lighting to hide the fact that we were essentially hosting a Christmas party in a partially darkened office.
Maybe I could convince people that the whole thing was charmingly rustic, a throwback to simpler times when corporate celebrations didn't require three different caterers and a light show that rivaled Times Square's NYE celebration.
Maybe I could update my resume tonight and start job hunting tomorrow.
The thought sent a cold spike of fear through my chest. I needed this job.
More than that, I needed the salary that came with it, every carefully budgeted dollar that was bringing me closer to the future I'd planned for myself.
The IVF fund tucked away in my savings account represented two years of careful scrimping, two years of choosing generic groceries and walking to work instead of taking the L, two years of building toward my goal of motherhood, making Mom happy.
Losing this position would mean starting over, and at twenty-six, I was already acutely aware of how quickly time moved when you were trying to build a life that didn't depend on anyone else.
The elevator slowed as it approached the fortieth floor, and I took a deep breath, trying to summon the professional composure that had carried me through countless other crises.
I was good at this job. I was excellent at this job, actually, even if no one seemed to notice the thousand small disasters I prevented every week or the way I managed to keep Cross Capital's most demanding executives functioning at peak performance.
Tonight was just one night, one party that would be forgotten by New Year's Eve.
I stepped back from the door when the elevator suddenly stopped, and the doors slid open with their familiar whisper.
Lucian Cross stepped inside.
My breath caught in my throat as six feet and three inches of impeccably dressed authority filled the small space.
