by Alina Jacobs
“You're going to catch tuberculosis,” Morticia said when she saw me.
“Drink for the road?” Fiona asked, handing me a martini glass with a red liquid in it.
“Don't mind if I do. Yum! This is good!”
“It’s a Christmas cosmo,” she said. “I figured since we're in a swanky Manhattan condo, we should channel our inner Sex and the City. It's a pomegranate-cranberry juice blend, garnished with lime twists.”
“Amazing! I won't be out that long. Save me some more!” I called out as I left.
Amber was still perched on the shelf when the elevator doors opened. Owen must have been safely hidden upstairs. Lord knew I would avoid Amber if I could.
There was a park near the tower. It was lushly landscaped, with petunias and other winter flowers in artful beds. The fountain in the center of the park was iced over and lightly dusted with snow. The lighting was like a spotlight.
“It's like the movie La La Land—except in New York in the middle of winter!” I said, happily striking a pose. Then I shivered. I was seriously regretting sacrificing warmth for a good picture.
18
Owen
I stayed late in the office, partially because I needed to do work and partially because I was scheming about how to steal more cookies. Unlike most people, when I decided I wanted something, I went after it. Of course, I didn't rush in blindly; I analyzed my goal rationally. If it was a worthy goal and achievable, I went for it, like a wolf after an elk.
That was how I had made billions on Bitcoin when other people were joking about it on TV. That same mentality was also how I had grown my company when everyone was wondering how data analytics and cybersecurity could possibly work together. And that mind-set was how I was going to get those cookies. They were seriously addicting.
My plan was simple: take Rudolph downstairs to the studio and poke around for the cookies. Surely the production company didn't throw away perfectly edible food. If anyone asked, I would shove the dog at them to distract them then make a hasty exit.
Except when I went into the studio, there wasn't a single crumb to be found.
“Owen, what are you doing?” Belle called out as I was prowling around the greenroom.
“Just looking for my cuff link.”
My older sister looked at me suspiciously. I kept my face a smooth, cold mask.
“You're such a weirdo,” Belle said.
I gestured to my puppy. “Isn't he cute?”
“What are you really here for?” my sister said.
“Sorry, he has to go out,” I said, picking up Rudolph and heading to the elevator. He was making that dancing motion that let me know his puppy-sized bladder was about to give up the Ghost of Christmas Past. I mentally cursed at the Christmas reference. It was infiltrating everything. There was no escape from the holiday.
As soon as I stepped off the elevator in the lobby, a giant elf launched herself at me.
“Owen! What a surprise!”
Rudolph barked.
“Sloane?”
“It's Amber,” the girl said, annoyed. “From the bake-off. Who is Sloane?” Her eyes, heavy with makeup, narrowed.
“No one.” I sighed and looked down at the dog, figuring she had startled him so badly that I might need to call the custodians.
“Funny we should bump into each other like this,” Amber said with a high-pitched laugh. She was wearing pointy elf ears, and her hair was shellacked into a cartoonish swoop away from her face.
“Uh—”
“We should totally grab a drink!” she suggested.
“I can't. I have to—” I held up the dog then made a hasty retreat to the park my company owned near my tower.
Even though Rudolph's mom was a Dalmatian, in the snow, the puppy was all husky. He bounded ahead of me, snapping at the snowflakes. I watched him and also tried to figure out how I was going to acquire more of those cookies. The simplest solution was to just ask Holly. I thought about how furious she had been earlier. No, that was not a solution.
Rudolph stopped in front of me, ear cocked. I was on the lookout for any other members on the laundry list of crazy women in my life. I stood still, trying not to breathe, then glided into the trees, glad it was snowing so my hair wouldn't stand out. Rudolph, completely oblivious to any of my silent hand signals, bounded forward. I moved slowly through the woods to the other side of the park, near the fountain. A girl was there taking pictures.
“Holly,” I breathed. She looked… well, she looked good. The strapless dress hugged her curves, and she posed in front of the camera, tossing her hair and making sexy faces. Then she made a few silly faces, laughing. I smiled in spite of myself.
Holly didn't see Rudolph, who had chosen that time to try out his hunting skills. The little puppy crept around the fountain. Holly was posing on the edge of it. In those high heels, she was going to fall if the puppy scared her.
My company owned this park, plus I was out here with Holly alone. I could just see the headlines—“Billionaire Kills Baker!” The Svenssons would have a fit. TechBiz would vote my company the worst ever.
I sprinted out of the woods toward the dog.
19
Holly
My snow pictures were going to be amazing. I had on my red stilettos with the metal heels, and I was feeling like a supermodel perched up on the edge of the fountain. I was about to do an over-the-shoulder wink when I saw a man barreling toward me.
I screamed, and since I wasn't all that coordinated unless I was making a seven-tiered cake, the shock immediately sent me off balance. My heels slipped on the icy stone.
The man skidded then grabbed me before I could fall.
“Police! Help! Stranger danger!” I swung at his face with my fists, though my gloved hands couldn’t do that much damage.
“I'm not a stranger,” a familiar deep voice said irritably.
“Oh, bedroom stalker, it's you!”
“I wasn't stalking you. It was my house and my bedroom,” he said, setting me down. “Apologies for scaring you. I was trying to save you from the big bad wolf.”
“Huh?” I looked down. Rudolph pounced on my furry hat, which had been knocked into the snow.
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, thank you, kind savior. Whatever would I have done without you to protect me?”
“He could have frightened you,” Owen insisted mulishly. “You could have had a concussion.”
“Instead, I had a huge man run at me. That is way less frightening than a cute puppy.”
Owen's mouth was a thin, hard line. “What are you even doing out here?”
“Taking pictures. Follow me on Instagram at Taste My Muffin!” I said, flashing a peace sign.
The frown on Owen's face deepened.
“If you wondering if it is some sort of blatant sexual innuendo,” I chattered on, still a little more shaken than I cared to admit, “yes, yes it is.”
“I’m surprised you didn't name it Tasting Her Christmas Cookies.”
“Look at you making a joke! And here I thought someone who hated Christmas and was the CEO of a data analytics firm was going to be stiff and überunimaginative.”
“It takes imagination to do computer programming,” he said, offended.
“I know it does! I'm teasing,” I said, stealing my hat back from Rudolph. “I follow Grant Holbrook on Instagram. His company does computer programming–type stuff.”
Owen snarled, “No they don't. It's all lightweight user interfaces.”
“Okay, Mr. Gatekeeper. Do I detect some snobbery?” I teased.
He scowled.
“Don't take it personally. A good-looking man and a corgi? You can't buy publicity better than that!” I said, collapsing my tripod.
Owen sighed. “I wish I could. I need to—well, never mind. It's not any of your concern.”
“You want to win the TechBiz competition?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“How did you know?”
“Instagram. The hashtag is in every pos
t on the Holbrooks’ feed,” I explained.
“I need to win that competition. The Holbrooks are insufferable,” he said.
“And to that end, I've spent all afternoon decorating your lobby. You're welcome. It looks awesome, by the way,” I told him. “I'll come take some pictures of you and Rudolph next to the holiday lights. Some nice casual pictures, just like, 'Oh, don't mind me, I'm just sitting here sexily under the tree with my Christmas package on full display with my supercute puppy. Vote for me! My company is awesome!' I'll make sure I fluff up your stocking first. You'll bring all the girls to your Christmas tree yard!”
20
Owen
Had Holly been flirting with me?
The question bounced around my head all night. It didn't help that Rudolph wanted to go out every two hours. I thought he would have been tired, but no. I hauled him downstairs. At night, the lobby did look magical, like a winter scene from The Nutcracker or one of those old holiday movies my sister used to watch.
Holly was fun. And clearly I needed to seem fun if my company was going to beat Holbrook Enterprises.
I didn't bother trying to sleep after Rudolph did his business. Instead, I surfed the internet while the puppy snoozed at my feet. I was trying to find that sugar cookie recipe. I was now officially obsessed. It was like trying to figure out a line of code; I couldn’t rest until I solved it.
There were thousands of cookie recipes on the internet. I wrote a script to analyze all of them and find commonalities. I let it run while I lifted weights.
The code was done when I went back into the home office. The summary said that the main similarities for sugar cookies were butter, sugar, salt, vanilla, eggs, and flour. Not in that order. There were hundreds of various combinations of the ingredients. Baking was clearly much more complex than I'd originally thought. This was going to take awhile. I put in a grocery delivery order for enough of each ingredient to make five hundred cookies. Then I went to work.
Normally I loved my office. I had a huge corner office with floor-to-ceiling glass. White marble accents made the space feel like winter when the sun reflected on freshly fallen snow. There was a balcony with French doors that I kept open all winter to keep the room freezing cold. It overlooked the little park in which I had surprised Holly the previous night.
I was looking forward to sitting alone in my office, taking a couple of conference calls, and working on some computer code.
Except when I arrived, Rudolph in tow, my office was packed with Svenssons. Almost identical with broad builds, blond hair, and grey eyes, the Svensson brothers numbered around a hundred, a byproduct of a polygamist cult and an insane father. They ranged from toddler age to adults. The small Svensson brothers were endearing. The big ones? Insufferable.
“Get your feet off of my desk,” I growled to Archer. He ignored me.
“I demand a cookie tax. Walker said you were thick in The Great Christmas Bake-Off,” Archer declared. “I’m totally judging next year.”
“What do you know about baking?” Mace, his twin and CEO of Svensson PharmaTech, scoffed.
“I know that I like cookies!” Archer waggled his eyebrows at me. “I hear you've been tasting some Christmas cookies lately, if the pictures on Instagram are any indication.”
“What pictures?” I asked.
Archer whipped out his phone with a smirk. I swept his feet off my desk—it's marble; seriously, it stains—and peered at the phone.
The Instagram handle read @TasteMyMuffin. There was a picture of me, Holly wrapped in my arms, lifting her in front of the fountain in the park.
The caption read:
Just what I need on a cold night! Manhattan’s hottest CEO *wink* to rescue me from a big bad wolf. #QuantumCyber #TechBizBestCompanyList
“You were busy last night,” Archer said with a laugh. “And to think, Walker was afraid you would stay a bachelor forever!”
I ignored him and grabbed the phone, swiping. The next image was a video clip of Rudolph attacking Holly's hat.
“While I'm glad to see you are actually trying to win this competition,” Greg said acerbically, “maybe you should be courting actual business writers and not half-baked Instagram influencers.”
Icy anger trickled through me. I turned on Greg. “Don't insult her. She's trying to help me unasked and unpaid.”
Greg glared flatly at me.
“Don't mind him,” Mace said. “He's mad about Crawford.”
“Don't say his name,” Greg spat.
“I don't care what—or who—you do,” Hunter said coldly. “You need to have a better standing for recruitment by any means necessary. Walker has told me that one of the judges, Sloane, is making advances on you. Stop rebuffing her. You need every edge.”
Walker made a subtle “stand down” motion. I gritted my teeth. I did not have the patience to deal with the Svenssons today.
“See,” Garrett drawled, “this is why I don't come into Manhattan. You all spiral into pettiness. Who cares about some idiotic magazine contest?”
“You guys at PharmaTech don't actually have to compete for workers,” Walker complained. “Anyone who wants to work in the biotech sphere is beating down your door. Quantum Cyber has to compete with Google, Facebook, and the Holbrooks.”
“Whatever. I refuse to waste my time on this any longer,” Garrett sneered.
“Literally no one asked you to come here,” Walker said, grabbing a pitcher of water and herding his brothers into the adjacent conference room.
“We need to talk about the new gene therapy center. Your algorithm is key,” Mace began, opening up his laptop. “Since I know you're frosting deep in the bake-off, we figured it would be easier to come to you.”
“Walker said it was fine,” Archer added. “And we had to drop off the surprise for the next bake-off episode. Also, Garrett wanted to come spy on Penny.”
“I don't need to be physically present to spy on someone,” Garrett replied.
“Yes, but why are you here?” I said to Archer. “You own hotels. You have nothing to do with this.”
“One word,” he said. “Cookies!”
21
Holly
I stood, yawning, in the lobby early the next morning. We had to film a shopping segment for the bake-off. Dana was tapping her Louboutin as she waited for all the contestants to show up.
“Where is Amber?” she asked.
There was a shriek, and Amber stormed into the lobby from the elevators.
“You!”
“Here we go,” I muttered to Fiona.
“I guess she saw your Instagram post,” Fiona said.
“You're trying to steal him from me,” Amber shouted, her voice echoing around the huge lobby. “You're trying to steal my boyfriend again!”
“Owen isn't your boyfriend!” I yelled back as I ducked a swipe of Amber's nails.
“Girls!” Dana barked.
Zane, camera on his shoulder, tried to avoid Amber as she lunged at me again.
“If I had wanted to be a middle school teacher, I would have,” Dana said in annoyance. “Today you are all going shopping for ingredients. With the magic of TV, viewers will see you go shopping after Anastasia announces the contest theme. Do make sure you're wearing what you're going to wear tomorrow.”
I looked down. I had put on a semisexy outfit because I was planning on taking more pictures after the shopping trip.
“Guess I'm going to be baking in this tomorrow,” I said, hoisting up the top. It was an Austrian-inspired gingerbread-girl dress. The bodice was laced up and low-cut. Hopefully we weren't going to be doing a “love your grandma” challenge.
“Tomorrow’s theme is kids’ Christmas,” Belle said. “We’d like to see fun, whimsical desserts.”
Ooof. I was definitely not dressed appropriately. I raised my hand.
“Unless you need me to call 911 for some godforsaken reason, you better put your hand down,” Dana warned. “You are all going shopping now. Be on good behavior. The l
ast thing we need is to have your nonsense splashed all over the tabloids.”
We followed Anastasia to a nearby specialty foods store.
“What are you making?” Fiona asked me as we browsed the aisles.
I loved food shopping. Really, I loved any kind of shopping, but with food, there were so many possibilities! What fancy dessert was I going to bake?
“Since it's for kids, it needs to be fun, but it also needs to be easy to actually make. I was thinking of baking an icebox cake, but I don't want to do a no-bake cake. This is The Great Christmas Bake-Off, after all.”
I decided to make a multilayered sponge cake with custard cheesecake, fruit, chocolate, and mousse. When they announced it was a kids' challenge, I knew Dana and Penny were too smart to pass up an opportunity to have a pack of adorable, photogenic children in the studio. This type of cake would be good for multiple kids because each one could make a layer.
While browsing through the store, I selected various fruits and chocolates. The specialty store had very nice oranges. In the olden times, oranges and other citrus fruits had only been in season in the winter. It had been fashionable to give citrus fruits as gifts. They were definitely going in my dessert.
After I had finished collecting my ingredients and checked out, I went outside to snap photos for my Instagram story. I was framing the perfect shot of the window display when an elf approached me.
“Amber?” I asked, confused. She couldn’t have had time to change. I peered at the elf. She had a cold expression, ice-blue eyes, and long brown hair. She was also very tall. I'd worn heels, and I still had to crane my neck. “Do I know you?”
“I'm Dr. Diane Frost, Owen's mother,” the tall woman said. She gazed at me. “So you're the one my son has been after. I'll have you know I take pride in the quality of my children's choice of life partner.”
“That's nice,” I said, starting to back away. I'd lived with crazy for years when I’d had to occupy the same house as Amber. I knew better than to poke crazy. I wanted to leave crazy way the hell alone.