Billionaire's Christmas Vixen Read online

  Brea sighed, turning so that she faced him, her auburn waves over one shoulder, the light of the fire casting deep shadows across her smooth face. Her back was to the arm of the chair, her legs stretched out across the couch towards him, her feet only inches away. It was a casual move, but incredibly sensual as well. If he only placed his hand on the couch beside his thigh, he would touch her. She was still wrapped tightly in the quilt, but she was still so close. He felt that tightening in his groin, again, and he quickly readjusted his body so that the flames wouldn’t cast a telling shadow across his stomach.

  “My family was furious. So furious, in fact, that no one spoke to me for an entire year. I missed Christmas with them last year.” She dropped her gaze in embarrassment. “It’s a four-hour drive from my apartment to my parent’s house. I called and called, but no one would answer or return my calls. So I figured that if I drove up, well, I just figured that if I was standing on their front steps, they couldn’t be so heartless as to turn me away.” He saw that her eyes were damp, glistening as the unsteady light caught the tears and then released them.

  “They turned you away, though, didn’t they?” he asked, not realizing that he was leaning forward to wipe the tears until the action had already been completed.

  She nodded sadly and then jolted with the touch of his fingertips to her cheek before continuing. “My own parents turned me back out into the cold because the man that they want me to marry had decided against being with me. I had thought my entire life that I would be the one to turn down the marriage, that I wouldn’t be able to go through with it. In the end, though, I was the one that wanted it, and he didn’t.”

  “But you’re on speaking terms with them now?”

  Brea chortled. “If you want to call it that. Brandy called a month ago to invite me to Christmas dinner. She had spent all those months with just getting them to acknowledge that I existed, much less allow me to a family function. She said Mom and Dad wanted me there, but I found that very hard to believe at the time.” She shook her head as she laughed softly. Her hair swung behind her, loosened from her shoulder, the dark waves catching the light and creating a halo. “It was my sister I spoke with earlier, and my parents didn’t even realize I wasn’t there. And she had some news about my mom inviting a mystery guest. The news? That she invited my ex fiancé.”

  He looked at her incredulously and was taken aback by how bright and innocent her eyes were as she lifted them to meet hers. “That’s just typical for my mother, though. If something doesn’t go the way she wants, and she can have any control over it, she takes it.”

  “So tell me what was so amazing about this Eric.”

  She hesitated, opened her mouth to answer, and just as quickly, she snapped it shut. “I’m sorry. I’m talking far too much. What about you? What are your plans for Christmas?”

  He narrowed his eyes for a moment before smiling warmly. “You’re avoiding my question, aren’t you?” He cocked his head to the side as he waited for her reply. “Are you afraid of offending me in some way?”

  She bit her lip in response, amusing George.

  “You weren’t terribly concerned with offending me earlier, so don’t hold back now. You compare me to your Eric, do you not? Isn’t that why you hesitate?” He didn’t know why, but he wanted to know what her ex had that he hadn’t and why their relationship hadn’t worked. Not that it matters, he reminded himself. He wouldn’t see her again after tonight, and tonight was only tonight.

  Chapter 8

  He had guessed her reason for not wanting to share details about Eric. After all, how fair was it to compare the two men when the one was obviously superior to the other? Eric was a saint, especially in comparison to George. True or not, she wasn’t going to rub all of his flaws in his face by telling him how wonderful her ex was.

  He studied her, waited for her to answer, but she held her ground, remaining silent and meeting his gaze. Finally, he relented and she released the breath that she had held for those long moments. “Would you like some coffee?”

  He pushed up from the couch and had already started towards the kitchen. Brea jumped after him and grabbed his arm, the shock of the touch sending chills through her fingers and up her arm. Goosebumps broke out everywhere as her cheeks flushed. She dropped her hand immediately, hoping that he didn’t notice her own reaction to the contact. “Let me,” she said sheepishly.

  She got the feeling that he was just as grateful for the subject change as she was. She took the liberty of taking over the kitchen. The owner of The Hideout, the small town coffee shop where Brea had worked for the last several years, had come to appreciate her abilities so much that Brea’s recipes had started showing up on the menu. Now she dug through George’s fridge and cabinets, stacking up everything she would need to impress him with her coffee making abilities.

  “Do you need any help?” His thick, tired voice startled her, nearly causing her to drop coffee beans all over the spotless floor.

  Her body tensed as he moved behind her, close enough that she could feel the heat from his chest burning into her back. He pulled two mugs from a cabinet and placed them beside her numerous ingredients.

  She grinned at him as she worked. “No, thank you. This is kind of my job.” She ground the beans and got the coffee brewing, but she could feel George making judgments on her based on that one statement. “Do you have chocolate syrup and any peppermint?” George raised an eyebrow at her, and Brea laughed.

  “I don’t drink coffee. It’s just not my thing. I prefer the chocolate.”

  “So you’re a connoisseur of coffee, but you won’t drink it?” Brea laughed, nodding. “And this is what you do with your life? Make coffee and serve others?”

  That stung. She happened to love her job, happened to love the people who came into their small coffee shop, happened to love the stories that she heard from those customers. It wasn’t her career choice, but it was what she had chosen to do right now, while she figured out who she was and what she wanted. George sensed her discomfort, though she said nothing, and moved on from the question. “So you just follow the recipes?”

  “I used to, but after so long at it, you start to know what will work and what won’t.” She blushed as she said her next words. “So I started throwing things together and, well, I guess I’m pretty good at it.”

  “But you still won’t drink it?” He asked again, incredulously. “How do you know it’s any good if you won’t even try it?”

  “Well the customers have yet to complain, so I suppose that’s saying something, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose.” As she worked over her coffee creation, she heard him whipping up a hot chocolate behind her. “Whipped cream?” he asked.

  She turned and narrowed her eyes. “Are you kidding me? Whipped cream? What’s hot chocolate without whipped cream?”

  He smiled along with her, piling on the whipped cream and sprinkling chocolate shavings over top. “You have your masterpiece and I have mine! Granted, mine came from a package, and yours,” he nodded towards the concoction on her side of the kitchen and the numerous ingredients she had lain out, “is a fair bit more complicated. Still, I’m proud.”

  Brea giggled and she suddenly realized that she wasn’t having as miserable a time as she had thought she would. “As you should be! It’s beautiful.”

  The fire was roaring as they made themselves comfortable on the couch once again, hot chocolates in one hand, Brea’s special brew in the other. “Would you believe that I’ve not shared this house with anyone since I was a teenager? It was my childhood home, passed down from my grandfather.”

  “Why not?”

  “No-one has…caught my attention.”

  Brea waited, but he said nothing else. She knew there must be more to the story, but for some reason, George was choosing to not share with her. She wouldn’t prod him about it, either. She didn’t want to push him into a corner. “So,” she paused, “is there anything that catches your attention, other than being
in the tabloids?”

  Chapter 9

  “You realize that I am a busy man otherwise? My life isn’t just tabloids and women.” George was very dedicated when it came to his business, acting as a middle man for many companies, benefiting each party in different ways. He had spent years developing the company and now that it was in full swing, he had little time for much else and his time in the limelight encompassed pretty much all of it. So through those few spare moments, he chose to live them at the fullest and to be unconcerned for anything other than his joy at the moment.

  “Yes, but other than work, what is there? What about hobbies, interests, passions? What about friends or family?”

  “I’ve no family and no time for hobbies.” He did have hobbies, but they were the types that nearly killed him every time. He hadn’t lied, not entirely; he didn’t have time for hobbies, not really, but on the few occasions that he did, he took full advantage and went after activities that were going to keep his blood pumping and hold his interest. There just weren’t a lot of things in his life that did that for him.

  But as he sat there beside this woman, this strange woman who would be out of his life in a matter of hours, he realized just how flat his life truly was. Today was the first time he had felt like himself (though he thought that he might be forgetting who he even was) in a very long time.

  When the whir of the bullet had brushed past him, close enough to disturb the fine hairs on the side of his face, he had finally felt alive. When Jim had thrown him on the ground, practically leaping on top to keep him from harm’s way, he had felt exhilarated, nearly euphoric. While John searched the crowds for the assailant, Jim had yanked George from the concrete and tossed him into the back of the limo. George had thought that finally, this was what he had been waiting for. The feeling of sustenance and meaning, as if he finally had a place in the world—urgency, importance.

  Even when he was waterfall kayaking, the pounding of his heart drowned out by the angry water that thrashed around him, he had felt rather empty. He knew thrills were supposed to make him feel alive, and couldn’t understand why they never worked. Somehow he knew that if he told Brea of his adventures, she would see into him and know why he did it.

  But she only watched him. He knew that she wanted more from him, but wasn’t sure what she wanted or why. He took a sip of his coffee, and had to admit that it was the best damned coffee he had ever had. Perhaps he had been a bit harsh when it came to her career choice, because she was certainly great at what she did.

  He noticed her discomfort. “What’s on your mind?”

  She looked down into her hot chocolate before speaking. “I should be at home with my family right now, and you should be at home with yours.” She swirled the nearly melted whipped cream around in her cup. “It’s Christmas Eve, and here we are. Snowed in, drinking coffee and hot chocolate with a complete stranger.”

  “Is it your family you’re wanting to get home to, or is it Eric?”

  She shook her head. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen him.” She gave him a look of doubt. “I just don’t know. For me, not much has changed. I’m still in the same place, I’m still the same person, I still have the same goals and dreams, but what about Eric? Has anything changed for him?” She sighed. “It’s only been a little over a year, so I can’t imagine that much has changed. And seeing me is supposed to do what? Revive feelings he once had? No. I’m sure that he hasn’t had a change of heart.”

  George took another sip of his coffee before setting the mug onto the table. “But you won’t know until you go home, will you? So what makes him so wonderful?” he asked again. Instead of avoiding the question, though, Brea gulped at her chocolate—her liquid courage, it seemed—and began.

  Chapter 10

  She couldn’t pinpoint her reason for not wanting to tell him about Eric, but something just didn’t feel right about it. Or could it be that she didn’t truly know the answer to the question? Perhaps she was having a difficult time with tell him because she honestly didn’t know what was so amazing about Eric. They had dated for two years, but had known one another since they had been toddlers. They had been pushed together from day one. Because of it, Brea had dated no one else since him. It felt wrong, dirty. Even if they weren’t technically together, even if he’d told her that he didn’t really love her, she could think of no one else.

  But what made him special? She couldn’t say. “I don’t know,” she replied quietly, her eyes focusing on the swirls of white and brown as they melded with one another. She didn’t want to think about this, about Eric. She’d spent so long focusing on him, on being his wife, on finally pleasing her family. To do anything but that just seemed wrong.

  “How can you not know? Do you love him or do you not? Do you want to marry him or do you not? Are you going to go home and fight for him, or are you going to just let him walk back out of the door once Christmas is over?”

  She was surprised to hear these words coming from him. It almost sounded like support. “Your mother may have overstepped her boundaries with inviting him, but if he’s the man that you want to spend your life with, then you should take advantage of it.” He smiled, sipping down the last of his coffee, which was probably cool by now. “So what do you want, Ms. Nelson? Do you want to marry the man that didn’t want to marry you, or do you want to chase him down and show him what he’s missing by not marrying you?”

  Brea only watched him, taking in his words, knowing that they were true, but not wanting to listen. She did love Eric, even if at this point, it was only out of habit. He was quite possibly the only way she was going to ever build a relationship with her family.

  She had been blamed for the breakup. She had been reprimanded for not being good enough, for not being who Eric wanted and needed, and in part, Brea thought that they might be right. She wasn’t good enough. She wasn’t strong enough for him, she didn’t have a good enough job to impress his circle of friends; she wasn’t beautiful enough, not classy enough. Her idea of dressing up was a pair of jeans without holes in them. She cried over everything and had no idea how to be strong in the face of pressure. She was nearly 30 and still had no idea what she wanted to do with her life. She was a mess, and because of it, Eric had left her.

  “I’m not entirely sure if that’s even what I want,” she admitted out loud. She wasn’t sure if she believed the words until she’d actually spoken them. She wasn’t sure, and she thought that she hadn’t been in quite some time. Even as Eric was calling things off with her and she spent the next weeks broken with devastation, that she might have even known then. Her tears had soaked her pillow, her sister spent a week with her to help her recover, and she had even called in sick at work for a handful of days because she just couldn’t face the world. But now, now she thought that some of those tears were tears of relief. Even if her family had been disappointed and blamed her for what had happened, she had felt relief that she could finally make her own choice. And Eric would not have been it.

  “If he isn’t who or what you want, then why spend so much energy on him?”

  She sighed. “My parents. I’ve tried impressing them, I’ve tried making them proud for my entire life, and always come up short. But Eric was my shot at that. Eric was my shot at finally getting into their good graces, so I took it and ran and tried hanging on, but I couldn’t. I think that, in a way, I may have once loved him.” George’s head was cocked to the side questioningly. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great man. Truly. But he isn’t the man that I want to be with. Nor am I the woman he wants.”

  She bowed her head into her hands, humiliated.

  “I loved him as a brother more than anything, I suppose. I loved him in the way you love a childhood friend that you share everything with. I love him in the way that you love your protector, your confidant. But I never loved him as a boyfriend, much less a husband. I wanted to, but I never did.” She paused. “He knew it too.” She was talking to herself more than to George at this point. She let ou
t a low, disbelieving laugh. “He knew, and that’s what it was all about.”

  “He knew? That you didn’t truly love him, or that he didn’t truly love you?”

  “Both, I think. He realized well before I did that we weren’t right for one another.” She replayed their final conversation in her head. The conversation where he walked out of her apartment and never looked back. The conversation that left her curled in a heap on her living room floor because it was the end of the world. “He tried telling me. Many times. He tried but I didn’t want to listen. I only thought he had cold feet, that he was nervous.” She shook her head, still talking to herself. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.”

  For a moment, she envied George. Not for his many conquests, but for the fact that he could remain so detached from relationships. She wished that she had been able to do the same, both with her parents and Eric. Even her sister had seen, to some extent, that Eric wasn’t right for her. It was odd that, of all people, George was the one to help her to finally open her eyes.

  “You clung to him because he was all you knew. It’s difficult to do something new when you’ve always done the same thing. You get comfortable, you get into a routine, and when that routine is disrupted, when everything you know changes, chaos ensues. But only if you let it. Embrace the change and move forward. Don’t live in your past, Brea.”

  She started at her name on his lips. She liked it. “You’re right. I was scared. Scared that everything I had known was wrong, everything I had tried for was a failure. I don’t need another one of those notches on my belt.”

  There was silence as they both watched the rumbling fire. George rose to add another log and to encourage the flames to continue. He returned to the couch, but only after draping a blanket over Brea, who had begun to shiver. Grabbing a blanket for himself, he sat back down, a bit closer to Brea. “My parents live in Livingston.”