That Mistletoe Moment (18 page)

“Appreciated,” said Geoffrey. Father and son retrieved their outer coats, then took the elevator down to the lobby.

Daniel glanced down the hallway, which was now fully decorated. Christmas blossomed in wreaths, garlands, big silver bells. Snowflakes. Red and pink poinsettia plants lined the walls. Four straw reindeer guided the old-fashioned sleigh. They appeared ready to fly, to deliver Santa's presents.

“Looks good,” he told Riley.

“I'm glad you approve.”

He did. The decorating was done. It was now time for them to talk. He nodded toward his office. “Got a minute?”

“You're the boss.”

Roxanne was back at her desk. She glanced up as they passed. “Hold my calls,” Daniel requested. She nodded.

He held the door for Riley, and she preceded him inside. Her decorating had extended from the hallway to his suite. Strands of gold mercury pinecones adorned a desktop tree, along with blue, red, and burgundy glass balls. Off to the side, tall, striped candy canes filled a pair of ceramic Santa boots. In front of the bookshelves, a painted orange and gold blaze burned in a cardboard brick stand-up fireplace. His own personal stocking, embossed with his name, was hooked on the coatrack.

What caught his eye and held his interest as he took in the room was the plastic sprig of mistletoe tacked to the frame above his bedroom door. Had Riley anticipated that he would be dating over the holidays? The sprig would end an evening with a good-night kiss and possible lovemaking. But the only woman he wanted in his bed was her. He was about to tell her so.

He shrugged off his suit coat, loosened his tie. Unbuttoned his cuffs and shoved up his sleeves. They stood close, but not touching close. He'd never struggled with words before—until that moment. He spoke haltingly, the fear of losing her strong. “I like you.” Lame for a highly educated man, but a starter, nonetheless. It was all he had.

“I like you, too, Daniel.”

Her response relaxed him a little, until he forced out, “You love Andrew Reynolds.”

He made her uneasy. It was evident in the way she clasped her hands, squeezed her knuckles white. Blew out a breath.

“You can tell me, Riley. It's something I need to know.”

“Why?” The word was whisper-soft.

“Because I'm attracted to you. I sense you feel the same. But we can't act on our attraction if you're planning a future with your doctor. I don't believe in one-night stands or affairs. And I'd never go after another man's woman.”

She was staring at him with the same look of confusion that came across her face when he explained corporate finances. How much more could he simplify their discussion? Did she care for him or not? Had he misinterpreted—

Her iPhone rang. His gut tightened. It could be only one person: her doctor. The man was about to disrupt the most important conversation of Daniel's life. He couldn't let that happen.

He closed the distance between them. Took the hand that held her phone. “Don't answer it, Riley.” He kept his voice firm, even, despite the jumble of emotions that threatened to choke him. “Be with me. I never wanted you to fall in love with me, and I never planned to fall for you. But I have. Choose me.”

“Choose you . . .” She still looked dazed.

He drew her hand to his chest. The iPhone screen flashed over his heart. A short text caught his eye. No doubt private. He didn't care. He read it once, twice, before releasing her hand, unable to wrap his head around the message.

“Build-A-Boyfriend termination. Andrew Reynolds canceled,” he repeated. Confusion punched. Anger ground his teeth.
What the hell?
The app was familiar to him. The company's owners had done an interview on one of the morning shows months ago. He'd watched, shaken his head over some people's need to deceive. Had Riley misled him? “I'm listening.” He awaited her explanation.

It came with a finger poking his chest, and a whole lot of attitude. She stood up to him. “This is all your fault,” she declared in defense of her actions. “You and your stupid rules. I'd never have deceived you had there been another way. You required a personal shopper, but Georgia hinted it had to be someone in a relationship. I needed the job, so I downloaded an imaginary boyfriend.” She huffed, “Be mad if you will, Daniel, then get over yourself. Fast. I'm a free woman. I want you. I'll give you ten seconds to meet me under the mistletoe.”

He arrived in five. His heart was suddenly light. He fixed his gaze on her and never looked away. The emotion between them built silently as he gazed into her eyes. She lit up from the inside out. He saw love in her gaze, and conveyed his own for her. He kissed her. Stirring and satisfying. Stealing her breath and curling her toes. His teeth teased her lower lip. He nipped her chin.

He walked her backward, into the bedroom, straight to the bed, never breaking their kiss. There, they slowly broke apart. Only to rapidly undress. Naked, he bent down and lightly kissed her brow, the curve of her chin, then her breastbone. Gentle. Tender. He palmed her breast. Rolled her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Her pulse quickened.

As one they sank to the bed. Cool sheets at her back. Hot man atop her. Touching Daniel seemed right. Perfect. Riley wasn't tentative. She trusted him. She ran her hands through his hair, then drew her thumbs across his cheekbones. She traced the powerful set of his shoulders. Circling his neck with her arms, she pushed herself flush against him. She felt every inch of his maleness. Sculpted and symmetrical. She loved the texture of his skin, the underlying flex of his muscle. Strength and passion. His sex was stiff and substantial. A man in his prime.

He stroked his hand down her rib cage, at first with infinite care, then with male craving. His long fingers stretched and searched, his palm pressing hotly into her abdomen.

She feathered her fingers over his chest hair, scraped a nail across his abdomen. He inhaled sharply. She went on to give his erection the attention it deserved. She fondled, and his penis heated in her palms. His low groan pleased her.

Clutching her hips, he let his thumbs tease her belly. He plied her wetness, then inserted the tip of his finger. She lifted her hips, as intense pleasure reached deep down inside her.

Aroused and anxious, he raised himself slightly, and hunted for a condom in his bedside stand. Scored a packet. Stripped the foil and sheathed himself.

He parted her knees, and she rocked her hips, as ready for him as he was for her. He entered her then, with one slow stroke. Streamlining. Her body accepted him.

He pulsed inside her.

Her stomach quivered.

A shift of his hips, and he set their sexual rhythm.

Sensation filled her. Warmth, closeness, love.

In sync, they soared. She was close to coming and so was he.

Sharp pants of pleasure escaped her lips.

His breathing was ragged and rose from his gut.

She surrendered.

And his control broke.

The very air around them seemed to explode.

A hard, racking shudder convulsed her.

One last thrust and he gave himself up to his climax. He followed her to the end. And after.

Spent, he collapsed on his side, then rolled off the bed and disposed of his condom. Returning, he drew her to face him.

He stared down at her, gently brushing strands of damp hair off her face and neck. Cupping her chin, he caressed her cheek. She kissed his palm. He took her lips in a kiss that promised forever.

“All I want for Christmas is you,” he told her. “Marry me, Riley.”

“Marry me back, Daniel.”

Hearts joined, they sealed their lifetime pledge to each other.

He was the CEO of Global Financial.

She kept her position as his personal shopper, now that she could both dress and undress him. He looked as good naked as he did in a suit. The man had one fine body.

* * *

Christmas neared, and the first-place ribbon was awarded to the thirtieth floor for best holiday decorations. Security guard George was unbiased. He shook Daniel's hand, and Roxanne ordered their deli lunch. There was much celebration.

Riley ate both a thick pastrami sandwich and two dill pickles. Daniel appreciated the way she savored her food. Her low moans would always do it for him.

They exchanged their gifts a week later.

Riley gave Daniel a Lionel Santa Fe train set for the boy inside the man. Extended track and extra cars. He hadn't stopped smiling. The train would be handed down to their sons and daughters. She'd promised him a big family.

He gifted her with a magnificent diamond ring, which fit her finger perfectly. Followed by tickets to
The Nutcracker
. Balcony box seating. Lastly, a Magic 8 Ball, which she immediately shook. The first question she asked: Would they live happily ever after? The ball answered:
Yes, Definitely.

 

 

It's time for the annual Halloween costume party at the cottage on Pumpkin and Vine, the perfect place to celebrate the pleasures of the season. Guests return to the picturesque B&B year after year to snuggle up in its cozy rooms, explore the quiet, tree-lined streets, and enjoy all the spooky fun of the holiday. But local legend whispers that it's also a place where wishes have a strange way of coming true.

For three unsuspecting revelers, it's going to be an enchanted weekend of candy corn kisses and midnight black kittens, along with some
real
Halloween surprises—the kind that make your heart skip a beat—for many more celebrations to come....

H
ER
F
AVORITE
P
RESENT

ALLYSON CHARLES

CHAPTER 1

“W
e didn't meet our targets again this month.” Gabe Harrison looked each of his managers in the eye, trying to impart how seriously he took that fact. “Each of your departments has shown a slow decrease in output, and that's even including the fact that we have some new hires who should be bumping up productivity. I want to know what's going on.”

His business partner and cofounder of Build-A-Boyfriend, Ben Givens, raised a hand.

Gabe sighed. “Ben, we're not in school. You don't have to raise your hand. Just say what you want.”

Ben cleared his throat. “Our sales numbers are still going up. So is our profit.” He swiveled in his chair and shared a look with their employees, shrugging. “I'm not sure why you called this meeting.”

“Because even though sales have increased, our profit margin isn't increasing at the same pace as it used to.” Leaning forward, he rested his palms on the maple boardroom table. Like almost all the furniture in Build-A-Boyfriend's offices, it was bought secondhand, and didn't match the darker wood of the chairs around it. Both Ben and Gabe had agreed that since customers didn't come into their office, they were better off saving money with used supplies.

“Do you know how many overtime hours we paid out last month? Too many.” Settling into his chair, Gabe crossed his arms over his chest. “And even with the increased man-hours, the number of texts and phone calls we placed to our clients went down. Someone explain that to me.”

He glared at his four managers. He didn't set targets on a whim. A lot of market analysis and good old-fashioned number crunching went into his quarterly projections, and he expected his goals to be taken seriously. And met.

Gabe and Ben had started the Build-A-Boyfriend app in Gabe's mother's garage their senior year in college. It hadn't taken long for Gabe to realize that his idea to rid himself of a persistent ex-girlfriend by pretending he had a new one had moneymaking potential.

He and Ben had worked long days and even longer nights growing the business until their offices now took up the top floor of the MacArthur high-rise in downtown St. Louis. His dream of taking his business public was within sight, and he wasn't going to let an avoidable slowdown take him off track.

Harry, a software developer who'd been with them almost since the beginning, frowned. “Our people aren't working slower. The amount of time needed to process the requests of each client has gone up. Where we used to spend about ten minutes total work time per day on each client, that number has now increased to about twenty-five minutes per client.” He scratched his round stomach, a faded and wrinkled Mario Brothers T-shirt stretched tightly across it. “Dude, we're lucky our overtime was as low as it was.”

Gabe stared at a stain on his employee's graphic tee. Grape juice? Marinara? With these guys, who the hell knew? As the only man to wear a suit to the office, he sometimes felt like the one adult in the room. “Are these premium service members? Even with the added time of ordering flowers once a month—”

“It's not the flowers,” Harry said. “It's the people. They're not happy with just getting a text every once in a while. Now they respond. They want a little back-and-forth. It takes time.”

“It's the same with the voice mails,” Ben chimed in. “When our clients first subscribe, they're given the number of their fake boyfriend, and told if they want to get a voice mail, not to answer calls from that number.” He shrugged. “A lot of them are answering. They want a conversation in front of witnesses.”

Gabe stared at his oldest friend. “How do you know this? You're the behind-the-scenes computer guy. You don't work the phones.”

While Build-A-Boyfriend had originally been Gabe's idea, it never would have found life if not for Ben. A brilliant computer programmer, he'd designed the app and developed a program to automatically generate text messages tailored to their clients. Both men had made several million dollars from their idea, but whereas Gabe was always striving to make Build-A-Boyfriend bigger and better, Ben seemed content to enjoy the status quo.

His friend flushed a bright red. “I've been manning some of the phones when it gets busy. And until I figure out how to automate texts that respond appropriately to our clients' incoming ones, I help John's group reply to the overflow of text messages.”

Gabe cocked his head. “I don't get it. Why would you want to talk to our loser clients? You have your own job to do.”

“They're not losers!” Ben's pink cheeks flushed even darker. He scratched at a mark on the table. “A lot of them are just . . . lonely.”

Gabe frowned. “Of course they're lonely. They're too pathetic to get real dates, so they use our service. But we're just supposed to give them the appearance of having a boyfriend or girlfriend, something tangible they can wave in front of their parents' or friends' faces to prove the lie that they're in a relationship. If our employees are now having conversations with them on the phone, that goes a step beyond what our service provides.”

Ignoring the glower on Ben's face, Gabe steepled his fingers. “Of course, we could make that part of a new premium package. An upgrade to pay for.” He mulled that over. He'd have to talk with marketing. Run some projections. But until then... “Right now, that's not part of our service. We're wasting too many hours interacting with our clients. If they need their hands held, they should call their priests. Or a 900 number. We need to get back to basics.”

“So, what?” Harry asked. “We just ignore their texts? Hang up on our clients if they answer our calls?”

“Yes.”

Harry whistled, and everyone else shook their heads.

Ben shifted to the edge of his seat. “I wouldn't do that to . . . I mean, our employees have gotten to know some of our clients. Like them. They're not going to hang up on them.” Tilting his head to one side, Ben narrowed his eyes. “Besides, that kind of customer service could give a company a bad reputation. Think about what that could do to our chances for a successful IPO.”

As someone who prided himself on his skills of manipulation, Gabe recognized that little salvo for the strategy it was. He eyed Ben with new respect. He hadn't thought his mild-mannered friend had it in him.

Too bad it didn't solve his problem.

“Well, we won't go public wasting time talking to our clients, either. They know what they get when they sign up. One hundred texts a month, ten voice mails, and a handwritten note. That's it. If they want more, they need to find themselves some real boyfriends.” He snorted. “What am I saying? They use us because they can't.”

Harry propped his right foot up on his left knee. “When's the last time you worked the phones, or sent any texts? I know when you started the business, you got your hands dirty. But I think you've forgotten that our clients are real people.”

Ben spoke before Gabe could tear his employee a new one. “He's right. We provide a service to our clients, take their money, but you seem to think they're lower than dirt. It's not right.”

Gabe looked at the men around the table. Each one eyed him with varying degrees of pity and disgust. The turkey sandwich he'd had from lunch, leftovers from Thanksgiving with his mom and Ben, turned to stone in his stomach. When did it become a crime to want to make money?

“We started a business for people to lie about significant others.” Gabe tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. “I don't know how else you're supposed to think about our clients.”

“If you'd get to know any of them,” Harry said, “I think you'd see that most of them are really nice.”

“And funny,” Ben chimed in. Not meeting Gabe's eyes, he slid lower in his chair. “I'm just saying you should get to know our clients before you judge them.”

Gabe cleared his throat. Time to get this meeting back on track. They could all think he was a dick if they wanted, as long as they got their productivity numbers back up.

Ben's spine popped straight. “Hey, that's a good idea.”

“What is?” Gabe tried to keep the growl out of his voice. He didn't know where his friend was going, but he knew he wasn't going to like the destination.

“You. Getting to know a client.” Ben held up a finger before Gabe could protest. “Just one client. You should handle one of our accounts. Get to know the woman behind the credit card number that you so happily charge. Maybe we could even arrange for you to meet her in real life.”

Harry hooted. “This will be awesome. Gabe, Mr. One-Night Stand, as one of our boyfriends. Get ready to kiss that IPO good-bye.”

Even though he had no intention of taking his friend up on his challenge, he couldn't let that one go. “Hey, as you pointed out, I used to do some of the grunt work around here. I do know how to text a woman and leave her a nice voice mail.”

“Sure,” Ben said. “Back when it was still anonymous. When texts and voice mails just went into a void. But now that you have to interact with the client more, it's a little different.”

“I can
interact
with women just fine.” He didn't bother keeping the bark out of his voice this time.

“So you'll do it?” Ben asked. He raised his eyebrows. “You'll take over the account of one of the clients me and the boys pick out for you? See for yourself that our customers are decent people who just might need a little cover until they find the right person for them?”

Gabe examined his choices. Saying no was the obvious one. Hell no, more like it. But at the varying looks of excitement and hope on his employees' faces, and Ben's, the businessman in Gabe took over. A happy workforce was a productive workforce. Besides, he could use this to his advantage.

“All right. I'll do it.” Crossing one leg over the other, Gabe watched as his managers shot excited looks at Ben. “I'll even throw in a little Christmas present. If you're right, that our clients are normal women, not pathetic losers who can't get their own dates, then I'll take what was supposed to have been my own Christmas bonus and divide it up among you four managers.”

Jaws dropped. The four men leaned forward and started thanking him profusely.

Ben knew him better. “What's the catch?”

“No catch.” Gabe grinned. “Just the flip side of the deal. If, after playing the part of this woman's fake boyfriend, my assessment of our clients hasn't changed, then I get something from each of you.”

Harry flicked a glance at Ben, shifted in his seat. “What?”

“I get productivity levels back up.” Gabe pointed at his managers. “If I win the bet, each of you has to put in ten more hours a week, for three months.” Gabe's grin widened. “At no cost to Build-A-Boyfriend.”

It was so silent in the boardroom that Gabe could hear the faint whir of a printer coming to life in the front office.

“It's a deal,” Ben said. The managers started to protest, but Ben held up a hand. “I'll work the extra hours with you if it comes to that. But it won't.” He turned back to Gabe. “Because we're going to find the perfect woman for Gabe, one whom even he'll have to admit is a catch.”

Gabe met five determined sets of eyes. He wasn't worried. Even if these men picked the most impressive woman out there, they were fishing in a shallow pond. Anyone who needed to use their service was already destined to be a pathetic waste of space.

He laced his fingers together and flexed his palms out, cracking his knuckles.

This was going to be the easiest boost to productivity he'd ever managed. The best Christmas present he could get.

Everything he wanted was just one bet away.