The Billionaire's First Christmas - Contemporary Romance (19 page)

“If you ever go into business, promise
me something?” I asked her.

“Sure, what’s that?”

“Promise that you won’t start your
company in any market that will compete with mine.”

She laughed and said, “I promise, but
you better start saving me a country or two now, because I’m on my
way.”

I didn’t doubt that she
was.

ROBYN

Aaron and I had cheesecake and coffee
after our monopoly game. I didn’t want to embarrass him, so I
didn’t ask, but I got the feeling he’d never played. I was
beginning to discover that there were a lot of “normal” things he’d
never done. I looked outside and saw that the snow had
slowed.

“Okay, it’s snowman time!”

“Excuse me?” he said as if he was
surprised. I was sure I had mentioned it.

“Didn’t I say that earlier? It was on
the agenda.”

“I thought you were kidding,” he
said.

“I would never kid about making a
snowman,” I told him. “You brought gloves, right?”

“Oh no! I don’t think I did.” He was
fibbing.

“Yep! Here they are,” I told him. He’d
taken them off when he was petting Mr. Pibbs earlier and put them
on the table.

“Oh… goody,” he said,
sarcastically.

We bundled up and went outside. I led
him to a little courtyard on the side of my apartment complex. The
snow was barely falling now, but enough had fallen during the night
and morning that making a snowman was going to be easy. I started
packing the snow so that I could roll a big bottom when I noticed
that Aaron was making little piles of snow and then tamping them
down with his gloves.

“What are you doing?” I asked
him.

“Making a snowman.”

“That’s not how you do it.”

“You make your snowman and I’ll make
mine,” he said. I rolled my eyes and got back to work rolling my
snow bottom. I guess it would be his fault if his snowman wasn’t as
brilliant as mine, I’d offered to help.

I had my back to him, but what could
have only been ten minutes later he said, “Done!”

“You are not… Oh my goodness!” In ten
minutes, the man who hated cold weather and Christmas only two days
ago had built the most beautiful snowman I had ever seen. “He’s
beautiful!” I said. His face lit up like a child. He was so proud
of his work. “You’ve definitely done this before.”

“Thank you,” he said, “But no, this is
my first snowman. It’s all about mechanics though. I’m good at
building and designing things.” Looking over at my half-rolled snow
bottom with his lips quirking like he was trying to hold back a
smile he said, “Yours is…”

“Not finished,” I told him, turning my
back on him again, I got back to work. I was rarely outdone in the
snowman department and by a first timer to boot. Another five
minutes or so passed when I felt the whiz of a snowball next to my
head. I looked around and Aaron was still the only one out here
with me. He was trying hard to look innocent.

“Did you just throw a snowball at me?”
I asked him, incredulously.

“Of course not. I would never indulge
in such an immature…” I’d already been packing one in my hand.
While he talked, I threw it and hit him in the side of the face.
SMACK! “Oh that’s it!” he said, “It’s on now.” He was rubbing his
cheek with his wet glove and I was feeling a little bit bad
until…

SMACK! A tightly packed snowball hit
me, right in the forehead. I stood still staring at him in
disbelief as ice cold water dripped down over my eyes and slid down
my cheeks.

He suddenly looked worried. “I’m
sorry, Robyn! Are you okay?”

Not answering him still, I dropped to
my knees and began digging deep into the snow, losing the glove off
my left hand. He’d taken a step towards me, thinking I was hurt at
first, but then he realized what I was doing. He dropped down to do
the same but before he got his hole dug I had packed it together
into a ball and stood up and threw it at him. I heard the SMACK and
bent down to get my glove, smiling with satisfaction.

“Ha ha! You missed!” he said. He
sounded like an insolent twelve year old and even though I’d missed
him with my snowball that made me happy. He was having fun. I was
wondering how I could possibly have missed him. I turned around to
see and SMACK! He got me right upside the head with that
one.

I narrowed my eyes and pulled my
eyebrows together as I dropped down to make another. He was facing
away from me, I think doing the same thing I was. I threw my
snowball first and this time I watched it connect with the back of
his head.

He was laughing and still rubbing the
back of his head when I felt, SMACK to the back of my own head. How
the heck did he do that? I turned to see who was behind me and
SMACK! I got hit dead on in the face. It was my neighbor’s kids,
Sue and Conner. They were eight and ten years old and I’d tangled
with them before. They were vicious little snow ball making
machines.

“Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be?”
I said, “Aaron, I think you and I should…” SMACK! A snowball came
from Aaron’s direction and struck me. The kids were laughing hard
now. I turned to look at him and said, “Hey! I thought you’d be on
my side.”

“It’s a dog eat dog world,” he said.
“Every man, woman and child for themselves.” While we talked, the
little ones made more snowballs. Suddenly it was SMACK! SMACK!
SMACK! Aaron and I both had a barrage of snowballs raining down on
us. I couldn’t make my own ammunition fast enough and when I
finally had one made, I’d throw it recklessly, missing my targets.
Aaron hit them a few times, but they were still way ahead of him.
When he got too frustrated with them, he would turn back on me.
Traitor!

Snowballs were zooming across the
courtyard. They flew away from me and then they flew towards me. I
had no idea anymore if any of mine were hitting any of my targets.
I was scooping, packing and blindly throwing. There was snow and
ice in my face and in my eyes. I squealed occasionally, and I heard
Aaron do the same, only in a more manly way.

Finally, as I sat, wet and thoroughly
exhausted in the snow I felt him sidle up next to me. “I think we
should finish this,” he said in a conspiratorial voice.

“I thought it was every man, woman and
child for themselves?”

“Okay, we can keep getting bombarded
then…”

“Okay, let’s do this together,” I
finally agreed. “What’s the plan?”

“You make ‘em faster than me. Start
making them, stay low behind me and keep me loaded with
ammo.”

If I’d stopped and thought right then
about the fact that this was the CEO of my company, I probably
would have died laughing. I didn’t though. To me, he was just Aaron
and I was having a great time.

I started making snowballs and he
started throwing them. I could hear the kids squealing and getting
further and further away. By the time I made about fifty snowballs
Aaron turned and held his hand out to help me up.

“They’re behind the building… let’s
go!” With that, we ran back inside, leaving the children out in the
snow looking for us. It was awesome. Aaron slammed the door behind
us and it took us a good ten minutes to stop laughing.

“Wow,” he said when he finally stopped
laughing. “That was great.”

“It was, and I can only imagine what I
look like. I’m going to go dry off. I’ll bring you a
towel.”

I started to walk away and felt his
hand on my arm. “Wait, look up,” he said.

I looked up and didn’t see anything.
“What am I looking at?” I asked.

Aaron was trying to get his hand out
of his pocket and he laughed and said, “I was hoping it would go
smoother. Now look up.” He had his arm stretched out above our
heads and dangling from his fingers was a piece of mistletoe with a
red ribbon tied around it. I looked back at him and his face looked
so focused and intense. He put his hands on the sides of my face
and wound his fingers in the hair that had fallen loose from my
hat. It was so sweet, the way he set the whole thing up, like he’d
been thinking about how he wanted to do it for a while. Something
about the way he touched me made my eyes close and as he leaned
down towards me, my lips parted. My breaths were coming so fast
that I was almost dizzy. I felt the edges of my body melt into him
and it felt like we’d become a part of each other as soon as his
lips brushed against mine. It was a sweet, tentative brush at
first, and then it got more urgent as he pulled me up and held me
into his chest and crushed his against mine, letting his tongue
slip in and explore the dark caverns of my mouth. His tongue tasted
sweet and his touch was firm and gentle at the same time. We kissed
like that for a long time and when he broke it and pulled back, I
think it took me several more minutes to open my eyes. I wanted to
savor it, it was perfect.

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN

~

ROBYN

“Wow! That was more worth waiting for
than anything I’ve ever waited for,” I told him. He grinned and ran
his fingers down the side of my face making me shudder.

“It definitely was,” he said. “Now, go
get changed before you catch your death of cold.”

I didn’t want to leave. I wasn’t cold
as long as he was holding me. As soon as he let go I began to
shiver. “I’ll throw you out a towel,” I told him in a shaky voice.
He was still looking at me with that deep, intense look.

“Okay,” he said.

I got the towel and brought it back
out to him. He was still standing in the same spot by the door. I
realized that he wasn’t just wet, he was soaked. “You poor thing.
You’re going to have to go home and change.”

He took the towel and dried his face
and hair and then he said, “I think I have a change in the car. You
go change before you get pneumonia.” The voice he’d said that in
sounded commanding and strong.

“Yes sir,” I said with a mock salute.
He grinned.

“Yeah, you better remember who you’re
talking to.”

I went in and changed. I couldn’t ever
remember being so happy. My face actually hurt from smiling so
much. I knew from the moment I heard his voice on the phone that
first day that he was something special. I put on a comfortable
velour jogging suit and dried my wet hair a little with the blow
dryer. When I came back out, he was standing there, clothes in
hand.

“I’m sorry I took so long,” I told
him. “It’s all yours.”

“Thank you,” he said. He started past
me and then he stopped. Pulling me into his chest once more, he
kissed me again. This time it was even deeper and more passionate.
When we finally had to pull apart in order to breathe he said, “Oh
my goodness, I got you wet again. I’m sorry.”

My face was flushed from the kiss. The
front of me was slightly damp from pressing up against him. I
smiled and said, “I don’t care. You could kiss me like that covered
with mud from head to toe, and I wouldn’t care.” He grinned and
went into the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

AARON

I laid my dry clothes down on Robyn’s
bed and looked around. Her room was decorated in soft earth tones
and everything looked so sweet and feminine. It had been a long
time since I’d been in a woman’s bedroom. All of the women I’d been
with over the years had either been at my apartment or a hotel. I
liked being in her room. It even smelled like her, fresh and sweet,
almost edible.

I stepped into the little bathroom to
take off my wet clothes. I didn’t want to drip all over her
bedroom. The bathroom was as neat as the rest of the place with her
lotions and body sprays and female things arranged neatly on a
shelf above the counter. I stripped down, taking the little box
that I’d gotten at the jewelry store the day before out of my
pocket and set it on the counter. Then, I laid my wet clothes in a
pile. Then I dried off and put on my dry ones. I used the blow
dryer she’d left out on my hair. I hadn’t realized until I turned
on that warm air just how cold I’d been.

When I finished, I slipped the box
into my dry pocket and went back out into the living room. Robyn
was waiting with a plastic bag for my clothes and two steaming cups
of hot chocolate. I put my wet clothes in the bag and set it by the
door. Then I went back and sat down next to her. I took a sip of
the chocolate she handed me. It tasted like she’d put cinnamon and
nutmeg in it. It was honestly the best cup of hot cocoa I’d ever
had.