Page 44 of Christmas with the Elkin Billionaires

CHRISTMAS WITH THE ELKIN BILLIONAIRES BOOK ONE

BLURB

Business and pleasure were never meant to mix…

Billionaire Gabe Elkins is known for making brilliant decisions. Asking Anna Waters to pretend to be his fiancée at his family’s Christmas celebration isn’t one of them. All he wanted was to make his dying grandmother happy, to show her that he could find the perfect woman. But Anna is a little too perfect. Too vibrant. Too…sexy. It was supposed to be a business deal. So why does he find himself wanting much, much more?

Anna only wants one thing: to open her own business. All she has to do is convince Gabe’s family that she’s in love with him. Turns out, she’s really good at this fake fiancée stuff. Maybe a little too good. She’s starting to like being a part of Gabe’s family—and starting to like Gabe a little too much too. The red-hot attraction between them feels far too real. Maybe because there’s nothing fake about it after all…

1

GABE

“Here’s to OTT and Marketiq!” Gabe Elkin clinked flutes with the beautiful woman sitting across from him and they both sipped their champagne.

“I still can’t believe you named your company OTT. I know, it’s On Trend Tech, but it reallyisover the top and you clearly didn’t have a PR person helping you out when you came up with that name. So, tell the truth. How drunk were you?” Anna Waters grinned at him, and the deep, rich color of her skin shone under the twinkling lights.

Gabe laughed, his cheeks feeling the pull after spending all day smiling and talking to people at this year’s Tech Expo. “Would you believe me if I said that my roommate was actually a marketing major?”

Anna snorted and set her flute down. “Tell me he didn’t go into marketing as a career. Please.”

Pulling his phone out, Gabe did a quick Google search as he said, “I hate to break the news to you, but here,” and he handed the phone over to her. She took it from him, looking nervous about what she was going to see, and he felt his grin getting wider. “Go on,” he encouraged her.

Looking down, she looked at the webpage he’d pulled up and blew out a breath. “This is him?”

“It is.”

“Oh, thank goodness he became a vet.” She returned his phone and smiled at the server who had stopped to refill their flutes. “Although I bet all his pets have terrible names.”

Gabe had just taken a sip and ended up snorting bubbles as he coughed and laughed at the same time. “Actually, he gives all his pets normal human names like: Steve, Bob, and Doris. He said he likes to confuse people about who or what he’s talking about.”

“Of course he does.”

Gabe’s phone buzzed with an incoming call. He glanced at the caller ID. It was his brother Jonas calling. Gabe had been ignoring his calls or claiming he didn’t have time to talk ever since he skipped joining the family for Thanksgiving in Colorado. Gabe would be the first to admit that he loved his family, but dealing with his grandmother’s and oldest brother’s expectations was frustrating on a good day. He swiped his thumb over ignore, and before he could set his phone down, Jonas texted him.

CALL ME! I NEED TO SPEAK WITH YOU!

Huh. He’d spoken to Chase just a few days ago, and he’d sensed something was off. Chase’s insistence that he come back to Colorado for Christmas had seemed out of character, but he’d put it down as Chase’s misery wanting company. But maybe he’d been wrong. He’d figure it out later.

“Earth to Gabe. Have you heard a word I’ve said?” Gabe snapped his head up to see Anna smirking at him. “Must be one helluva a message. What is it? Is Alphabet offering to buy your app before it’s full release?”

“I wish.” He had high expectations for his latest app, Marketiq, and judging from the response to their soft launch during the Expo, he couldn’t wait to see where it would go. “No, it’s my brother. I’ll call him later. Tonight is for celebrating.”

“Hear, hear.” Anna raised her glass in a toast and Gabe downed the champagne in one swallow. He’d barely set it down when an attentive server swooped in to refill his glass. “This place is fantastic.”

Gabe agreed. Located at the top of the STRAT, the Top of the World restaurant treated guests to a spectacular, rotating view of the Strip, all glittering lights and flashing signs under a night sky tinged orange on the horizon by the glow rising from Las Vegas. He loved coming here and it was a great way to wow potential clients and investors, but tonight, the view was eclipsed by his company—Anna Waters, the PR specialist who’d spent the last three months at his side helping him prepare Marketiq for its product launch at the Las Vegas Tech Expo.

“We couldn’t have done it without you,” he told Anna. “Thanks to your outreach and the creation of Marketiq’s brand ambassadors, everyone is talking about how they can use the app to structure their own marketing campaigns.”

She looked across at him and winked. “Just doing what you hired me for, Mr. Elkin. But I have to admit, creating superfans through those ambassadors was a stroke of genius, if I do say so myself.”

Gabe wrapped his hand around his champagne glass as he contemplated where the night might lead. Anna’s dark chocolate eyes still lingered on his. Her eyes were a perfect complement to her hair, which reminded him of silken waves. He loved the dimple that popped up when she smiled, one that far too many times he thought of kissing. And then there were thosecurves.He wasn’t supposed to be thinking about those, either. Then again, she technically no longer worked for him.

Gabe cleared his throat. “I wanted to thank you for everything you did.”

“You’re welcome.” Her smile got wider. “I take pleasure in a job well done.”

“It was a jobverywell done. I wish I could steal you away for my own company.”

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