Page 43 of His Christmas Wife

Jennings frowned. “If you’re sure, sir?”

“He wants you to enjoy your afternoon with pay,” Kaylee added helpfully.

With a helpless sigh, Frost shrugged. “With pay.”

“Thank you very much.” Jennings tipped his hat. “Enjoy your afternoon, sir.” He grinned at Kaylee. “Ma’am.”

“Kaylee,” she corrected again.

“Miss Kaylee.”

At the elevator, Frost pressed his finger to a keypad, and a green light danced from a square, glass-looking panel.

“Facial recognition.”

“Fancy.”

“And secure.”

Once they were sealed inside, he pushed a button labeled PH.

“Does that mean penthouse?” she asked.

“One of three in the building.”

The compartment whisked them to the top floor. She’d read about people who lived like this, but she’d never actually experienced it until now.

The doors opened directly into his home. His security measures made a lot more sense now.

“This is amazing.” His home was enormous, and her entire apartment could easily fit inside the part that she could see. Off to the right was a living area featuring a large couch and four chairs grouped around a fireplace that had a television mounted on the wall above it. In sharp contrast to her home, Frost’s didn’t have a single photograph anywhere.

She glanced to the left at the dining room and the kitchen that lay beyond. Finally he had a bar with a mirrored back and lots of shelves that were fully stocked. Glasses of various shapes—for wine, champagne, martinis, even margaritas—hung from wooden slats attached to the ceiling.

But a bank of windows on the far end of the unit beckoned her. Drawn to them, she took a couple of steps into his condo before stopping. After all, he hadn’t invited her to make herself at home. “May I?”

“Please.”

As he carried her bag from the restaurant into the kitchen to put it in the fridge, Kaylee walked across the hardwood floor, and with each step, the view became more magnificent as the Mississippi filled her vision.

She’d never been so high this close to the river, and she was able to take in an entire swath of the mighty flow. “I had no idea it looked like this, and it seems to go on forever.”

He joined her. “Bonds suggested I look at this condo. One of his friends was the developer. Of course, I refused because I didn’t have the funds at the time.”

Another peek at the man she worked for.

“No one gets away with telling Bonds no. He insisted I at least take a tour while it was still under construction. At the point the real estate agent brought me up here, the place was really rough, not much more than studs and beams. There’s something about wearing a hardhat that makes it difficult to envision the finished project, even with blueprints and artist’s renderings. But when I saw this panorama…”

“You had to have it,” she guessed.

“Yeah. Wasn’t an option.”

Intrigued, hungry for more information even though she was being nosy, she looked at him. “So how did you manage it?”

“The ridiculous number of millions of dollars, you mean?”

“I don’t mean to be so crass. But…” She was already this far in. “Yes.”

“Bonds was an investor in the building. And selling the penthouses for record-setting prices was a surefire way to garner interest in the property.”

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