Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 66453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 332(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 332(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
“He’s not saying anything,” Con observed.
“Because there’s nothing to say.” Irritably, I signaled for the check. Selena might not get to my place for another hour, but I’d rather wait for her in an empty house than under my friends’ spotlight. I’d call on my way and see if she was hungry. I wasn’t, but I had pasta and some tomatoes that could be turned into a sauce if she was.
And if she wasn’t hungry, even better. We could go straight to bed. I was starved for the taste of her.
I made the pasta, but when Selena got over that night, she was dead tired. Half a glass of wine and three bites in, she was practically asleep at the table.
“Sorry,” she tried to widen her eyes, as if that would keep her awake. “I don’t know why I’m so tired tonight.”
“I do.” I dropped a kiss on the top of her head as I began clearing the table. “You work from sunup to sundown, and then you and I don’t exactly sleep when you come over.”
“That’s true.” She gave me a sleepy, sultry smile. “Should we go not sleep some more?” She reached up and snagged the tie I was still wearing.
I let her pull me back down into a long, slow kiss. I was getting tired of how little time we had together.
“I want to take you somewhere this weekend. Who do I have to go through?” I asked later, in bed. The length of her warm, naked body was spooned against mine, my chin was resting on the top of her head.
Selena laughed sleepily. “Mrs. Kloss. My sister. Albert, maybe.”
Albert would be easy enough. I’d tell him he could take his pick from the new associate hires for the extra hand he always said his team needed. I’d call Mrs. Kloss and hire someone to do whatever she was going to have Selena do. And as for Christi, I had a feeling if my nephew were in town, she wouldn’t mind if Selena wasn’t. “Done,” I said.
Selena twisted to look up at me. “Done?” she repeated, the laugh still in her voice.
“It’ll be done.” I wasn’t being overconfident. I’d made my fortune managing wealth, but that really meant managing people. I would manage Mrs. Kloss, Albert, and Christi. I just needed Selena to agree. She was the one person I couldn’t predict.
“Where would we go?” she asked, her voice light and amused like we were kids talking about running away.
“Anywhere you want, but we can only take off Friday so account for travel time.”
Selena was quiet for so long I didn’t know if she’d fallen asleep. I pushed myself up on my elbow to look down at her face and found her eyes were wide open. “I’m thinking,” she said.
“No, you’re not.” I recognized the decided look in her eyes. “You know where you want to go. Just tell me.”
She squirmed back into me. “No. You’ll think it’s stupid.”
“Maybe, but let’s hear it.” I tried to imagine where she wanted to go that I would think was stupid. Nothing came to mind until she said–
“Christmas World.”
I scoffed in surprise, sure she was joking. No way she wanted to go to that tacky town in upstate New York that looked like it was auditioning to be the set of a cheesy holiday Hallmark movie year-round. I’d never been, but Con had taken his daughter there when she was young. It looked like a magical sort of hell, chock full of synthetic cheer. “We can go anywhere,” I reminded her.
“Minus travel time,” she reminded me. “New York is only a six-hour plane ride.”
“Yeah, we’re also six hours from Hawaii.” I wrapped my arms around her more tightly as she tried to pull away. “Why Christmas World?” I asked, curiosity replacing disgust.
“Because I’ve never been, and it looks magical, and my parents never took us because they said Santa was the devil.” She said it so matter-of-factly I almost missed the last part.
“Santa was the – were they joking?”
“No.”
I paused for a long time, trying to figure out how to convince her to go to Hawaii for the long weekend. “Do you think maybe they were right?”
Selena broke my hold and pushed up. She crossed her arms over her breasts and looked down at me. “Dominic, I know it’s stupid, but if there’s anywhere in the world I want to go, it’s Christmas World. I want to stay in Santa’s Lodge and take the sleigh rides and wear a Santa hat, and go to Rudolph’s Rockin’ Christmas Party, and make s’mores over the bonfire at night.”
“You mean The Devil’s Damned Christmas Party.”
She swatted at my chest as I started to laugh again, but I caught her wrist and pulled her down onto me. Her face was set in a scowl, but it softened the longer we gazed into each other’s eyes. “I told you you’d think it was stupid,” she said quietly.