Page 1 of Christmas with the Denton Billionaires

1

JOSH

Joshua Denton clicked his mouse, his finger tapping the left button like a nervous tick while tabbing through Google searches as a new idea occurs to him. He clicked a link, and music exploded out of his speakers. Jumping at the noise, he simultaneously reached to turn down his speakers and close the offending website, knocking his full coffee cup onto his keyboard.

“Shhhiiit.” Pushing everything aside, he grabbed his keyboard, turning it over and desperately shaking cold coffee from it. The music shifted suddenly to the sound of a woman moaning as though she’s having either the best orgasm of her life or the best bowel movement. He wasn’t entirely sure which, but it needed to stop, now. He reached for his mouse, but his hand came away wet.

He heard movement outside his office and his head snapped up. His long-time assistant, Amelia, sat right outside his office door. Hisopenoffice door. “Why did I think it was a good idea to have an open-door policy?” he grumbled to himself, sending up a silent prayer to anyone who might be listening that she was wearing her headphones.

The music started again and he frantically hit ctrl-alt-delete on his keyboard, but nothing happened. Out of desperation, he reached for the toggle switch on the power strip and turned everything off.

Sudden blissful silence as the music stopped, but then a loud beeping started. “What the—? No, no, no.” He jumped up, his chair flying back and slamming into the credenza behind him, and he was contemplating throwing everything out the nearest window when someone called his name.

“Uh, Mr. Denton?” His assistant stood in the open door, her headphones draped around her neck. She was rocking some sort of sexy librarian look that gave him all sorts of thoughts.

Dropping back down into his chair, Josh gave up any pretense that everything was under control and gestured at the mess he’d made.

“A little help?”

With a curious look on her face, she joined him at his desk. “Okay, well first…” She stretched out her leg, her skirt riding up her thigh, and tapped the switch on the power strip with the toe of her boot.

The incessant beeping continued and before he could say anything, she squatted in front of his desk and then crawled under.

“There we go,” she sang out.

“What? What are you doing?” His mouth had gone dry as her delectable ass was suddenly right in front of him.

Her voice wafted up from under his desk. “Looks like you plugged your backup power supply into your power strip instead of the outlet in the floor. Won’t help save what you’re working on if you don’t have everything plugged in properly. Now to hit reset.”

The beeping blissfully stopped and he breathed out a sigh. “Thank you.”

“Not finished yet, Mr. Denton,” she told him as she scooted back out only to end up kneeling in front of him. Her cheeks were tinged with pink, which he assumed was from her exertions, but seeing her like this gave him all sorts of ideas he shouldn’t be having about his assistant. Rising up, she adjusted her skirt and then turned to look at the mess on his desk. “All right, let’s see what the damage is.”

Grabbing his keyboard, she gave it a couple taps, and when nothing happened, she frowned. Flipping it over, she did something he couldn’t see before setting it back down. Tapping again, suddenly the keyboard lit back up and the speakers…noooo…the speakers kicked back on and the website he was on when this all started was still running. At least it was only music. For now.

“I’ve got it from here. I—”

“That’s okay. I got it,” she told him as she began clicking. She was standing directly in front of his computer and he had to slide to the right to see what she was doing. Glancing at his monitor, Josh could see at least a dozen tabs open on his computer and he worried that she’d see where his search had taken him.

Reaching out, he tapped her arm. “Amelia, thank you for your help, but I’m sure you’re busy. I can take it from here.” The music had gotten louder and he was practically shouting in his need to get her away from his computer.

“Nonsense, it’ll just take me a sec. Seriously, Mr. Denton, how on earth did you end up in this circle of spam?” As she clicked to close out the tabs, more would open. With a huff, she tapped ctrl-alt-delete and pulled up the task manager to force his browser to close. “There, that should do it. Now to make sure it worked and…oh. Oh. Oh my.”

She froze and Josh had the sudden desire to bite her on the ass, which was still directly in front of his face, or head out to his car and drive far away. He doubted either of those ideas would be any worse than what he anticipated he would see when she finally moved. Except she had yet to move.

Dammit! Could this get any worse?Josh had a doozy of a headache coming on. Blowing out a breath, he was surprised at how calm he sounded when he asked, “Amelia, would you please step away from my computer?”

She sidestepped to his left and he could see what she was looking at.

“Amelia, I can explain.”

2

AMELIA

“Wives for hire?”

Amelia stared at the website open on her boss’s computer, and she fought the urge to laugh. When she first heard the noises coming from his office, she’d decided to ignore it, but just in case, she had turned down the music she was listening to while she worked. When she heard sounds of distress, she decided to investigate, never once expecting to find this.

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