by Ember Flint
CONTENTS
Bound for Christmas
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Epilogue
Epilogue 2
A Forever Safe Christmas
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Also by Ember Flint
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Bound for Christmas
By EMBER FLINT
30-year-old Tristan Silver was a very happy nerd until his dad got the crazy idea of merging their company with that of a former competitor turned friend, creating Silver & Gold Tech and saddling him with a very annoying, pint-sized Co-CEO that’s been bent on driving him crazy since the first time they met.
Natalie might be curvy and easy on the eyes, but she’s an opinionated ball-buster that only opens her mouth to pester him like a veritable malware jammed into his system.
He totally loathes her.
And now his dad wants to drag him to a week-long company retreat for Christmas so they can bond and set a good example for the others.
That’s not how he envisioned spending his holidays.
28-year-old Natalie Gold was a very happy nerd until her dad promoted her to CEO of their company with the proviso that she must work with the most arrogant, brooding, unsociable bossy jerk on the face of the earth.
The giant bastard certainly knows how to do a pair of dark-rimmed glasses justice and how to rock a five o’clock shadow, but for every inch of his hunky sexiness there’s a price to pay, because he seems to live to contradict her and as soon as he opens his mouth, he becomes the absolute bane of her existence.
She totally loathes him.
And now her dad wants to turn her Christmas celebration into a cheery eggnog-spiked trip to snowy hell by forcing her to share close quarters with her stuck-up Co-CEO and to play nice with him to promote good teamwork between their execs.
That’s not how she envisioned spending her holidays.
Silver and Gold should go together, particularly on Christmas, but Tristan and Natalie have other ideas on how to spend the Most Wonderful Time Of The Year; too bad they are bound together and surrounded by snow with nowhere to escape and nothing else to do but act like they are best buddies while they try not to throttle each other.
Then again, trying not to jump each other’s bones might prove to be more difficult.
Dear Reader:
This is a standalone, No-cheating and HEA-guaranteed naughty and nice holiday novella that features an OTT Alpha nerd that doesn’t know that there’s a fine line between love and hate, a sassy and curvy computer geek heroine that walks that thin line with him just as obliviously, and a bickering passion that turns into a fiery love that could melt snow and incinerate mistletoe just in time for Christmas.
Silver and Gold are definitely a must this year, trust me, they look amazing wrapped all over each other. *wink*
*Please note that Bound for Christmas is book 23 in the ’A Forever Safe Christmas’ multi-author collection, each one of the stories is set in its own universe so the books can be read in any order and also as standalones.
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 Ember Flint
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. To request permission, contact the author.
Note from the Author: this is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes.
The use of actors, artists, movies, TV shows and song titles/ lyrics throughout the book is intended for a storytelling purpose only and should in no way be seen as advertisement. Trademark names are used in an editorial fashion with no intention of infringement of the respective owner’s trademark.
Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental. Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all sexually-active characters in it are represented as 18 or over. Also, in real life, remember: always safety first.
Cover design by: Ember Flint – Pink Diamonds’ Waterfall Designs
Edited by: New Wave Romance
To tangled ropes of twinkling lights almost impossible to unravel, to kids stealing the popcorn from your bowl while you attempt to string together a garland for the tree, to glitter dust that sparkles on every single one of your possessions well into January, to toy boxes that nowadays come in every possible shape but square and drive you crazy while wrapping presents, to eating too much and then feeling guilty, to relatives remembering to bring up every single awkward thing that they know about you all through the holidays until you want to scream and, finally, to romance books old and new that make the entire process far more bearable, Christmas wouldn’t be the same without you.
This book is here to give you a well-deserved break and inject you with a good ole dose of Christmas cheer and is furthermore dedicated to all the authors in the Forever Safe Christmas Series and to my lovely readers as well.
Happy Holidays!
Chapter 1
TRISTAN
December 15
I straighten my glasses with a sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose trying to stymie the drumming start of my headache in the general chaos around me.
It’s been seven months of this already and I’m starting to really get fucking annoyed now.
I can see the cold glares zip up and down the room while the seven execs at my right relentlessly quarrel like a bunch of three-year-old kids with their counterparts seething at my left.
My jaw ticks away as I sit back on the leather chair at one end of the long rectangular conference table; opposite me, thankfully far enough that I can’t reach out to strangle her, sits my archenemy, Natalie Gold.
She’s popping strawberry gum I can smell all the way from here, and she’s wearing a too tight hot pink T-shirt that’s anything but appropriate office attire and looks like it’s about to rip down the middle, stretched as it is over her ample tits.
There’s a rendition of Princess Leia on it and the words ‘I like big buns and I cannot lie’ are printed in glittery silver letters near her face inside a sparkly pink speech balloon.
That’s my Co-CEO in all her glory, ladies and gents.
I feel a stir in my pants, and I grimace in exasperation.
My cock that has minded his damn business for the last five years at least leaving me to the peace of my coding and my love of computers, apparently just had to pick her to get all fucking interested and stuff and no matter what I do it just won’t stop reacting to her.
This is so not what I need right now. Or ever.
Why?
Simple enough. I fucking loathe her. And it’s not that is so easy to get on my shit list, far from it: I’m a pretty laidback kind of guy, I’m calm and methodic and nothing —nothing— ever used to upset my balance before she stepped into my world and messed it up completely.
I’ve never felt in my thirty years of life what I feel when I’m around her, she’s like an entire army of stinging red ants crawling under my skin.
On
e year ago I was your average happy nerd, I had my work, my work and… my work and I was more than content, thank you very much. I suck at being social and the fact that I have a trust fund that could allow me to buy the state of California ten times over without making a dent, and that I even managed to add to it with my own investments over the years, has made me a target to many unsavory characters, gold-digging women in particular, so I’m pretty wary of strangers and I don’t trust easily.
I can count my friends on one hand and still have some fingers left to spare, but I never minded much.
I’ve always enjoyed being on my own, it was never a hardship. I had my softwares to run, my computers to take apart and put back together and my Jules Verne’s books to keep me busy in my days off, and then, of course, there was my work at Silver Tech, the company my dad founded in the late Sixty and turned into an international giant of technologies within five years.
I loved spending time in the lab and in my office and I couldn’t wait for the day in which I would get to be big boss around there when my dad retired.
I thought it would be many years in the future, but things went a little differently last year when my father got a little bit insane and had the crazy idea of merging our company with that of a former competitor turned friend.
That’s how Silver & Gold Tech was born.
Our net-worth doubled over night, our reach and influence went from international to worldwide and I got to be CEO way earlier than expected when my dad decided to step down from managing the day-to-day operations and only retain his role of president —or rather, Co-President.
At first it sounded like a pretty good deal even to me, considering the terms: both families would maintain their roles, shares would be divided equally, and no one would lose their job. My dad and Sean Gold would be Co-Presidents and Co-owners, each and every one of the execs from both sides would keep their capacities in a shared role and all the research and development teams would simply merge.
Easy fucking peasy, right?
Nope.
Because in theory it all sounded pretty reasonable, but in practice it has been hell on earth.
Fans of ‘Supernatural’ would understand the situation: we have the angels on one side, the demons on the other, and the present headquarters of Silver & Gold Tech are the apocalyptic world we fight in.
The team of execs that resulted from our merger can’t agree on even the simplest kind of shit, hence the current screaming match going on all around us.
Of course I got a shiny new counterpart too, namely Mr. Gold’s daughter.
One could say Natalie and I started off on the wrong foot. One would be right and also one would be making a hell of an understatement.
So yeah, I got to be the freaking CEO all right, but I had no damn clue what I was signing up for. No force on earth could have prepared me for what it would mean to be saddled with her pestering, annoying, foul-mouthed, bubblegum-popping, curvy little ass.
She might be pint-sized, but she’s opinionated as hell and loud too, my eardrums haven’t been the same since I met her. She’s been driving me insane, in more than one way from the very start.
It’s not just that we don’t like each other and don’t get along personally, I could live with that — I’ve worked just fine with people I didn’t like before— it’s that we suck at this partnership we’ve been forced into, we don’t see eye-to-eye. Ever.
We are like a literal personification of ‘Hello, Goodbye’ by The Beatles, we always want different things and get pretty vocal about it.
She says “Yes,” and I say “No.”
She says “Stop,” and I say “Go, go, go.”
Oh, fucking no!
She says “Goodbye,” and I say “Hello.”
And also there’s the small detail that I really really want to fuck her.
I mean, couldn’t Miss Ball-buster be at least plain, or I don’t know… totally not my type?
Nope. She had to be 5’2 feet of soft voluptuous curves, long light brown wavy hair and hazel eyes that always glare at me from behind a pair of dark-rimmed round ‘librarian’ glasses that for some reason never fail to turn me the fuck on.
I mean, freaking glasses for fuck’s sake.
I’ve seen them every morning in the mirror for 25 years without giving a damn and now they too get me hard.
I don’t have lots of experience with the other sex since I’m um… well Natalie calls me a ‘big fucking curmudgeon’ and I guess on this little thing she might be right since I’m not exactly a people person and my last relationship, if you can really defined it as one, brief as it was, dates back to my college years.
I’ve gone without for quite a long time with no problem, and I’ve never cared that much about it honestly, I’ve been too focus on my career and the company to even worry about it, and it’s not like I’m forty-five or something, I’ve got time and I was raised well by my folks: I don’t believe in one-night stands and shit.
I’ve always wanted the real thing and if I can’t have it, both because I haven’t been that lucky and I haven’t tried that hard, I much rather be alone.
And when I finally do feel something I can’t shake off no matter what I want and how hard I try, it happens to be for a woman I utterly loathe, the fucking bane of my existence?
Seriously?
And does my wish to shut her up but good by bending her over my desk when she goes off on one of her rants and starts berating me makes me hate her less?
As if.
I’m not that lucky.
But even if I was, what would it help?
I might even hate her less, because I want to see her naked more than I want my next breath, but it wouldn’t change the fact that she too hates my ass since this antipathy I feel is certainly not one-sided.
Fuck my life.
I growl low in my throat and drop my closed fist on the table loud enough to make it shake. “Enough! The meeting is adjourned. Get out, before I fire you all!”
The shouting stops and twenty-nine pairs of eyes turn my way. One, of course, is shooting daggers at me.
I simply glower back, first at that spitfire of my Co-CEO and then at the others, slowly moving from exec to exec.
They all start to file out of the room and even in doing it they are disorderly: each of them trying to pass through the double-doors before the other.
It’s a pathetic sight and short of really making good on my threats and fire them all, I don’t know what to do anymore. We have already tried suspensions with these ones and actually sacked four of the executives already. Nothing seems to work.
Besides, it’s the 15 of December: I’m a strict boss, but I’m not as big as an asshole as Miss T-shirt-’n-Jeans thinks, I would never fire someone this close to the holidays.
They just can’t get past the fact that when before they could take the decisions they thought best in autonomy and only have to respond to me —on the Silver’s side— and to Natalie —on the Gold’s side— now they have to sit down and agree on those very choices with their counterparts first. I really understood our dads’ wish not to pick and choose when it came to the Vice-presidents and the execs and keep them all, after all this wasn’t an acquisition but a merger, yet however good their intentions were, this is not working, and nothing is going to fucking change any time soon.
My Co-CEO stands up and stalks toward me, still glaring, probably meaning to be intimidating or something. She’s too fucking cute when she forgets I’m over a foot taller than her.
“What?” I ask, when she reaches me.
Natalie throws her arms over her chest, the movement pushing her big breasts even higher. God help me!
“Who told you you could call off the meeting?”
I try to ignore my disobedient dick as much as possible and stare her down. “Last time I checked, I was the CEO around here… and besides, can you really define that, whatever that was, a meeting?”
Both of my eyebrows shoot up. “You call that dialogue?”
She huffs. “They were loud, but they were talking at least.”
I shake my head. “Like we are?”
Her eyes narrow. “It’s not my fault if we don’t get along.”
I throw my hands in the air. “You’re telling me it’s my fault now? You’re the one who’s always disagreeing with me.”
She scoffs. “And you’re the one who thinks the entire decision-making process in his freakishly large hands. Do you really think I should simply nod and smile along when you talk and agree with anything you spew?”
I point at her and nod. “That could be a start.”
“Dream. The. Fuck. On. Big Bastard! This is my company!”
“Mine too, in case you forgot.”
She smiles almost bitterly. “Like I could ever forget! You make working here impossible! Can’t you find yourself a hobby and get going?”
“Can you?”
She sighs. “We gotta move past this, Silver.”
“Gladly.” I move around her and get to the door, smirking to myself when I hear her groan.
I don’t make it out of the conference room though, because just as I’m opening the door, both of our fathers are walking in and they don’t look amused in the slightest.
“Could you please stop antagonizing each other for at least five seconds?” my dad scolds.
Sean sighs. “We could hear you all the way from down the hall.”
Here we go, she got me in trouble again.
“He started it, Daddy,” says Natalie playing the little girl/only daughter card, her full lower lip sticking out and all. She loves to play dirty.