Page 86 of His Christmas Wife

“BH?”

“Bosshole. Keep up. You told me you’re working this week. Honestly, Kaylee, I think you log more hours than most resident doctors.”

“Not even close.” Which Loree knew because she and Joshua would be starting their own residencies in a little over a year, and they’d heard horror stories the whole time they’d been in med school. “And actually, he decided to close the company until after the new year.”

“Shit. Hell froze over, didn’t it?”

Talking to her sister was the balm Kaylee’s soul needed.

“Okay, so the problem is Frost but not overwork?” Loree lowered the pitch of her voice. “Tell me what happened.”

“It’s complicated.”

“I’ll ask questions if I can’t keep up.”

Which was why she excelled in school. “It started with him playing Santa.”

Loree laughed. “I’m sorry. I want to be serious, but really? Evan Frost as Santa?”

Not long ago, she’d have found the idea equally as ludicrous. “If you remember, I was Santa’s elf at the Quarter.” She was grateful she could tell her sister anything and everything.

“Oh yes! And Master Denton was supposed to be Santa. Wait… Wait…”

Across the miles, it was obvious Loree was making the connections.

“Frost is a Dominant, and you werehiself? Oh my God. You didn’t run away screaming ‘hell no’?”

In retrospect, maybe she should have. “He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Time off with pay and a first-class airline ticket.”

“Tell me you didn’t agree to that?”

When she remained silent, Loree exhaled softly.

“Oh, sis. You sold your soul to that devil for me?”

“It’s actually worse than that.”

Loree took a moment to reply. “How is that even possible?”

As Kaylee unwound the story, she walked into the kitchen to refill her coffee for the fourth time.

While she was there, she saw his unopened present. Though she’d moved it from place to place, she hadn’t been able to look inside.

Just the sight of it made a lump form in her throat.

“Kaylee?”

Jolted back to the present, she continued, sharing the broad strokes, but not the secret, intimate details. She concluded with Ophelia gifting her a family keepsake.

“And you couldn’t accept?”

“It didn’t seem right.”

“You know that none of this is on you, right? Frost is the asshole who dreamed up this whole thing. The consequences are his. But what I don’t understand is why you’ve been crying over Ophelia.”

Trying to settle her emotions, she picked up her mug. But her hand trembled and her drink was in danger of spilling over the mug’s rim, so she placed it back on the counter.

“The situation would upset me as well. But the reason you’ve been emotional is deeper than that, isn’t it?”

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