Page 18 of Claimed
“That’s Deb, the backup chef. You’ll enjoy her food as well.”
I nodded. “So where are you taking me?”
“My office,” he said, leading me in a different direction from the delicious scent.
We passed a bedroom and then another one. I saw a room with only a large porcelain tub in the middle. Jasper promised to give me a more in-depth tour of his home soon.
His office was magnificent. The width of his desk competed with the span of thelarge windows, and his big chair sat in the middle. Tall cabinets stood on each side of the wall. A wide-screen television, which folded out from a bracket attached to the ceiling, was in the center of the room. There was also a conference table on one side of the room with eight white leather rolling chairs around it.
Jasper walked over to open one of the cabinet drawers as I continuedbeing awed about the sheer size of the space, which was half the size of my apartment in Philadelphia. It cost a lot of money to live that large in New York City. I often forgot how much of it Jasper had. Personally, having a lot of it was never my goal. I’d always wanted to be happy while spending the rest of my life doing the things that I loved. Picturing myself as Mrs. Holly Christmas seemedas absurd as the nameHolly Christmas.
You’re trash,I heard a familiar voice say in my mind. The voice belonged to the many people who’d shouted those words at my parents.You people are filthy fucking trash, and your daughter’s going to be a crack whore.Those were someone’s words. No matter how many awards I had won or how sought out as a journalist I’d been, I could never outrun thosewords.
“Holly,” Jasper called.
I quickly turned to face him.
“Are you okay?”
I was hugging myself, feeling alone, as I had most of my life. I dropped my arms and stood upright and put on a smile. “I’m fine.”
Jasper’s eyes narrowed and then opened back up. He held up a tin box. “Here it is.”
I grunted, intrigued. “I pictured the box being bigger than that.”
“No, this is it.” Jasper nodded toward the conference table. “Let’s go over here.”
He walked over, but this time, he got there before me and pulled out a chair for me to sit in. Once I sat, he took the seat beside me. My nerves were on edge as he opened the tin box, which had red, pink, blue, and white paisleys on it.
“Whoa,” I said once the lid was off.
“Shit, you’reright.”
“When was the last time you opened it?”
He glanced at me then back at the contents of the box. “Five years ago—a few days after my mother died.”
I couldn’t believe he’d let all of this sit in a file drawer for so long. We had just struck the mother lode.
