Page 16 of The Bossy Billionaire's Last Valentine

It’s a precaution I’m glad I took when Violet, my assistant, does a double take as I step through the office door and asks, “Holy moly, what happened to you? Were you mugged?”

Pushing my damp, frizzy curls from my face I huff, “This is Jingle Bell Junction, Vi, not the mean streets of New York. I’m more likely to get mauled by a moose than mugged.”

Her jaw drops and her dark eyes go wide. “Oh my God, were you mauled by a moose? Should I call 911? I don’t know first aid! I keep meaning to learn, but there was never enough time when I lived in Boston and now, I live in the middle of nowhere and have to drive forty-five minutes to work and audiobooks aren’t good at teaching first aid. I’ve failed you. I’m a failure.”

With a smile twitching at my lips, I assure her, “You’re not a failure. You’re a stress case. But that’s why I love you. I trust you to stress as much about our guests’ happiness as I do.” I sigh, my smile fading. “And I wasn’t mauled by a moose, I was banged and betrayed by a billionaire.”

Violet’s jaw drops another inch. “No way. Really? Are you living the Hallmark movie heroine life I thought would be mine when I moved to Vermont?” Her gaze goes starry, the way I’m sure mine did when I was twenty-four and certain romance awaited in the mountains. “Are you going to be rescued from the bad billionaire by a sexy lumberjack who will carry you away to his cabin and heal the wounds inflicted upon your soul by capitalism, hustle culture, and fifty-seven thousand dollars and twenty-nine cents in student loans?”

I plop down into my desk chair and kick off my flats, grateful I’m the kind of prepared innkeeper who always has a spare pair of cozy slippers in her bottom drawer. My soggy knees and ass are unpleasant, but I can survive until I get upstairs to my private room on the third floor to change as long as my toes aren’t freezing. “Have you ever met a lumberjack in real life?”

“No,” she says, sighing dreamily. “But I really want to.”

Deciding not to shatter her romantic daydreams by sharing that most of the lumberjacks I know are more into racing snowmobiles and beer-belching contests than romance, I tell her about the amazing night with Bran, the problem with the property, and my conflict with Mr. One-Night Stand turned Bad Billionaire, who I’m still having dinner with tonight for some deranged reason.

She listens intently, smoothing a hand over her already impeccably tidy bob. When I’m finished, she says, “And you didn’t find anything in the Shinglepuss cabin to support your claim that he sold it to you first?”

I shake my head. “No, the only thing I found was myself face down in the snow trying to get out of that hellhole. It was chaos—trash everywhere, including rotting food, a collection of kerosene cans that made me nervous, and half an old SUV sticking out of the fireplace. I think he also has a rabid mink living in the woodstove.” I shudder. “I was lucky to escape with my life.”

Violet wrinkles her nose. “Ew.”

“Agree,” I say, pushing on. “And if Bran was telling the truth at the meeting, that means I’m going to lose the property. Shinglepuss verbally agreed to sell to me last summer, but he didn’t sign the statement of intent until New Year’s Eve Day, right before the big annual party. Bran said he signed withhimthe day after Christmas.” Propping my now cozy feet atop my desk, I cross my arms and growl, “Ugh! I hate this. It’s going to come down to one or two days, Vi! I’m going to lose because Bran the Beastly signed a smidge before I did.”

“Not necessarily,” Violet says. “He clearly wants the property, but he wants you, too. If he didn’t, you wouldn’t still be having dinner tonight.”

I slump lower in my chair, hating the wave of warmth that rises inside me at the thought of chatting with Bran over a candlelit meal. “I should cancel. This is stupid. You don’t break bread with the enemy.”

“You do if you want the enemy to fall even more desperately in love with you,” Violet says, excitement simmering in her words as she adds, “I can see it now, the big bad billionaire tamed by the love of a feisty redhead who teaches him the meaning of Valentine’s Day. He’ll give you the mountain and his heart. Mark my words.”

I roll my eyes. “He doesn’t love me, Vi, we just met. He just wants more sex.”

Violet shrugs. “Well, that’s a good place to start. My mom always said the way to a man’s heart was through his Johnson.”

My brows lift. “I thought your mother was super Catholic.”

“She is, but she’s also a realist.”

“Huh.” I sit up, propping my elbows on my desk as I ponder her proposal. “There’s only one problem,” I say, after a minute.

“You’re going to fall in love with him, too, and want to givehimthe mountain andyourheart?” Violet supplies, proving she’s been watching way too many sappy romance movies at that isolated cabin of hers.

“No,” I say, even as a traitorous voice in my head warns that falling for Bran is a very real, very dangerous possibility. “Time. Barring some unexpected discovery or delay, we probably only have two or three days before Chase sorts out the situation and gives Bran the property.”

“A lot can happen in two or three days,” Violet says, twirling her pencil between two fingers. “Especially if you’re snowed in together at your cabin with nothing but champagne, caviar, and each other.”

“Except that there’s no chance of snow until next week and caviar makes me sick.”

Violet taps the pencil’s eraser sharply on her desk. “Then make some more snow and find a romantic food you can get behind, woman, because we need that mountain. Reservations for next Christmas spiked twenty percent after the announcement that we’re adding a ski-in, ski-out downhill experience and it’s already on the new brochures.”

I drop my head into my hands with a moan. “Argh! Why did I do that? Why make the announcement before the paperwork was signed? Why, why, why?”

“Because you’re a good person who never imagined Shinglepuss was a greedy jerk who would try to sell his property twice, of course. You did nothing wrong.”

She’s right. I suspected Shinglepuss of making moonshine and leaving pieces of junk cars in my woods to protest the ‘cross-country yuppies’ invading Vermont, but I never thought he’d try something like this.

Mostly because it’s impossible in this day and age. You just can’t get away with selling something twice. In a perfect world, he wouldn’t have even gotten close and this whole mess could have been avoided.

But it wasn’t avoided and now I have to act—fast—or I’m going to lose money and, more importantly, my flawless industry reputation.

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