The Billionaire's Lessons in Christmas

by Holly Rayner

  James looked at her brightly, responding to her playfulness. “It’s been years, to be honest.”

  “I knew it,” she grinned.

  They walked through the empty offices, chatting quietly, almost afraid they would be found. The air around them had grown excited. Mia felt as if they were children, trespassing.

  “Do you think anyone’s still around?” she whispered, her eyes tilting toward his.

  “I’m not sure,” he whispered back. “And I’m not sure why I feel I need to be so quiet in my own building.”

  “That’s right!” Mia said, snapping her fingers. “This is yours. We can do whatever we want.”

  “Well, I can,” he affirmed, smiling brightly. “You have to stay in line, miss.”

  “Whatever you say, boss,” Mia said, laughing beneath a scrunched hand. “Whatever you say.”

  She couldn’t understand how the mood between them had changed so swiftly, but there was a certain heat between them when they spoke, now; almost as if they were flirting, but not quite.

  They reached the main newsroom, where the programming had been switched to pre-recorded scheduling. Each chair sat empty in the half-darkness. It looked haunting.

  “They probably went home before the storm got too bad,” James said, his hands outstretched. “Which is maybe what you should do, Mia.” He glanced toward her, his expression one of concern. “Seriously. If we’re trapped here, there’s no way to know how long we’ll have to remain. You should head home. Get cozy. Do your Christmas cheer thing, or whatever you do when you’re by yourself.” He winked at her, and Mia rolled her eyes.

  Just then, his pocket began vibrating. He snuck a finger up, telling her he’d be just a moment, that it was Chicago, before grabbing his phone. “This is James,” he said, his voice serious. His entire aura changed before her. The near-goofy person she’d just been teasing was suddenly gone.

  Mia toyed with the idea of going home. She could feel the comfort of it calling to her. But something about the madness of the previous few hours tempted her to stay put, to see where the night took her. It was that journalistic curiosity that so often got her into scrapes. She listened attentively to James, who was explaining to the Chicago executives that his plane had been canceled, before she felt the surge of excitement fuel through her. She knew exactly what she wanted to do.

  Mia rushed from her post in the newsroom, out to the storage cupboards. She knew where the boxes were, shoved behind the ping pong paddles and basketballs the boys had hoped to use during the disappointing spring. She swept her arms toward the first cardboard box and hugged it deeply, like an old friend. She could already hear tiny bells jingling as she held it.

  As James paced around the newsroom, his voice rising and falling as he and the Chicago executives discussed a new meeting time, Mia raced into his office, which so often sat empty, awaiting his arrival from whichever news station across the country. Knowing she had mere minutes to enact her plan, she reached for a set of lights and hurriedly strung them across the ceiling, taping them into place.

  She slipped the prongs into the electrical socket, igniting the lights. Then, she hung red bows upon the lamps, stuck a plastic poinsettia on the desk, and began tossing tinsel around almost at random. Within moments, the place was bursting with Christmas spirit.

  Just the act of creating this space manifested such pleasure in Mia’s mind and heart. Her fingers were harried; her inhales were bursting. But, in the final moments, when she realized she was done, she plastered herself to the wall and waited, allowing the beginnings of Christmas cheer to flow through her. All around her, the office resembled a real Christmas grotto. She’d gone above and beyond.

  Her mind drifted back toward James. Would he appreciate the joke? Their conversation had been sizzling with charm just moments before, but perhaps she’d overstepped. But after listening to his rants about Christmas all day, she couldn’t resist pulling this prank. It was in her nature to tease, and if they were going to be friends, then he had to accept this side of her. She sensed that their gently teasing banter was leading them on a kind of path, as well. But she didn’t want to consider where it would take them.

  Mia stood in wait, noting that the time seemed to trickle slowly. How long would he be on the phone for? And would he even search for her after hanging up? Perhaps he would assume that she’d gone home without saying goodbye, and she’d stay in his gaudy holiday office until morning when someone discovered her, wide-eyed and ready to reveal her joke.

  “This is how people find themselves with labels like ‘loony,’” she whispered to herself. She shook her head, pulling the Santa hat tighter to her skull. Abstractly, she wondered if she looked cute in her thin-cut blazer and Santa cap. Surely she could be some kind of Christmas fantasy, in another world in which she wanted to seduce her boss. Ha. She needed to stop entertaining that thought.

  After all, while James Chance was incredibly, frustratingly attractive, there was a reason Mia resisted fantasizing about the billionaire CEO: he was gruff, arrogant, and sarcastic to his employees. She remembered how Theresa had complained about him, whipping that powder brush back and forth, emphasizing her point.

  And beyond that, there was the wider issue of what it meant to flirt with her boss. The journalism world was rough enough for a woman. She didn’t want to collapse her career, her reputation, for the likes of this man, no matter how attractive he was.

  Footfalls outside the door immediately thrust her from her dizzying thoughts. She righted herself and looked wildly toward the door. Mia felt like she’d leaped off a cliff, like she’d thrown all caution to the wind, and she wasn’t sure what she would get in return. She held her breath.

  The door handle turned and James appeared before her, tucking his cellphone back into his pocket. His eyes passed through the room before landing upon Mia herself. His jaw dropped and silence hung between them.

  For a moment, Mia felt that familiar sense of dread. She had done the wrong thing. Her smile began to teeter off.

  But then, James began to laugh. He bowed his head, placed his hands on his stomach, and emitted what might well have been the greatest, most human belly laugh Mia had ever heard.

  She found herself falling into laughter, as well. It was raucous and contagious. They sauntered toward each other, and James placed his quaking hand on her shoulder once more. She felt comfortable with it there, like he belonged beside her.

  Tears were streaming down James’ face before he could find the words. “Oh—oh my gosh, Mia. Oh my gosh.” He shook his head, sighing. “I’m sorry. I haven’t laughed that hard in years. You really got me. I can’t believe how good you got me.”

  Mia gave him a sheepish grin. She couldn’t believe it had worked so well. “I wanted to demonstrate Christmas cheer, once and for all. You can feel it, can’t you?”

  James let out another chuckle. “I think I can, Mia. I think I can.” Around them, the lights twinkled, reflecting off the tinsel. “And I don’t think I’ve seen anyone look quite so right in a Santa hat, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  “Compliment very happily accepted,” Mia grinned.

  James sighed, trying to regain his composure. “Wow. Well. This is quite a day for me, Mia. I just got off the phone with Chicago. Frankly, for the first time in what seems like years, I have the rest of the evening off. I mean. My sports car isn’t going to take me anywhere. The plane is canceled. And nobody’s even here for me to yell at. Except for you.” He winked at her.

  Mia giggled. “A night off, you say? How ever will you fill your time?”

  “The thought makes me nervous, if I’m being honest,” he stated. “I mean, I could sit at my tinseled desk and take notes for my meetings tomorrow, but I think that might be a waste of time.” He paused, tracing his thoughts. “I mean…what would you do if you had your first day off in years?”

  Mia bit her lip, feeling excitement fuel through her. The CEO’s reaction to her well-timed Christmas stunt had buoyed her, made
her much more sure of herself in his presence. She felt she could say or do anything without remorse.

  “If I was snowed in on my first day off in years,” she began, “Then I think I would pretend today was Christmas.” She shrugged her shoulders, her eyes bright.

  “You’d celebrate Christmas on April 10?” James asked, incredulous. “You really are a something else, aren’t you?”

  Mia raised a single finger into the air. “Don’t judge me before you see what I can cook up for you. This is my proposition: you allow me, Mia Daniels, to create for you a Christmas party, complete with all the holiday trimmings. I am prepared to promise that you will enjoy yourself.”

  “Is that that news anchor cockiness I hear?” James asked her, his tone teasing.

  “We all have it, don’t we?”

  “I suppose so,” he admitted, tossing his weight from one foot to the other. “All right, Mia Daniels. You want to prepare a Christmas party? That’s really, one hundred percent what you would do with your first day off?”

  Mia nodded with certainty. She spread her arms wide, her excitement trapping him. “You won’t regret this decision for a moment,” she affirmed. “If I know anything about Christmas, it’s that the joy of it can exist at any time of the year.”

  Impulsively, Mia wrapped her arms around James and gave him a brief, friendly hug, before darting from the office, toward the stairwell. The memory of the way his strong, agile body had felt in her arms stuck with her for just a moment too long, even as she tried to shake it off; her Christmas strategy was alive in her mind.

  FOUR

  Mia found herself in the cafeteria downstairs, her stomach grumbling. No good Christmas celebration had ever revved to a start without proper holiday cookies. She remembered back at the children’s home, where the staff had laid them out an hour or so before the Christmas celebration, the frosting gleaming beneath the lights. The children hadn’t been allowed to touch them as they decorated the dining hall, hanging lights and tinsel and the occasional mistletoe (which was, incidentally, never used, given their age and general repulsion toward romance).

  Mia opened the kitchen cabinets, searching. Most of the cameramen stored snacks for between takes, knowing they didn’t have to watch their waistlines the way the on-camera crew did. She reached high on the top shelf, her fingers closing around a box of Oreos. She breathed a sigh of relief and snuck one in her mouth, allowing her blood sugar to rise. Focus, Mia, she told herself. The Oreo crumbled in her mouth, emitting black crumbs which stuck to her carefully applied lip gloss. She scraped them off hurriedly, not wanting James to see.

  She continued rummaging through the cabinets, finding other snacks, and gathering them together on the countertop. She whistled Christmas songs as she searched: “Jingle Bell Rock,” “O Christmas Tree,” and other tunes that seemed to swell through her unintentionally.

  In the final cabinet, nearest to the refrigerator, she stopped abruptly, shocked. There, tucked away behind a stack of paper bags, were several bottles of red wine, left over from the staff Christmas party, four months ago.

  Mia clapped her hands, her eyes tracing back toward the window. The snow was still piling higher, and she had found the perfect anecdote to the winter blues: growing cozy together, assisted with wine and good conversation. Perhaps she could discover a few secrets about the closed-off James Chance along the way.

  She snapped a paper bag from the pile and began loading it with wine, cookies, salty snacks, and two red plastic cups. She raced back up the steps, tapping lightly down the hallway to the opened door.

  James’ office was like a portal to another world, causing her to break out into an immediate smile. The CEO had swept the drapes back from the large windows, revealing the stunning Portland winter wonderland.

  Mia dropped the paper bag on his desk, making eye contact with James for only a moment before moving toward the window and placing her fingers on the pane. “I crave this kind of feeling,” she whispered. “All year long I yearn for it.”

  James appeared beside her, holding a bottle of wine. It glinted with the light of the Christmas lights. “I see you found something.”

  “I did,” she breathed, snapping from her reverie. “Would you like a glass?”

  But James had already grabbed pocketknife from a drawer in his desk and begun to crank the corkscrew part of it into the stopper. He gave her a devilish smile. “I picked out this wine for the Christmas party, but I wasn’t even able to attend. I believe I was stuck in Orlando at the time.”

  “Orlando’s no place to be at Christmas,” Mia whispered. “All that heat. No sense of coziness. How did you manage?”

  “Oh, I was fine. Like I said, I give no weight to Christmas. But boy, did I miss out on this wine.” With a pop, he removed the cork and gave her a brief grin. “Big pour or little?”

  “I suppose a big one,” Mia replied, her voice sultry. “It is Christmas, after all.”

  “Finally, a reason to celebrate. After twelve long months,” he grinned wryly.

  James poured the glasses, then, and passed one to her. They tilted their glasses together, sloshing the wine around, and briefly found themselves looking just a little too intently into the other’s eyes.

  “So,” James began, after sipping the wine. “You said you had a party planned for us?”

  Mia put her wine on the desk and rubbed her hands together, turning her eyes to the floor. “Of course, of course. Well first, we need to get some music going. Perhaps we could have a playlist from your computer, good sir?”

  “Absolutely,” James said. “Cheesy Christmas music coming right up.”

  Mia rolled her eyes at his tone. He acted begrudgingly, tossing his weight around as he leaned over his computer. “We have several options to choose from, it seems: Christmas Classics, James Taylor Christmas, Christmas with the Muppets—which, I would immediately like to veto, if possible—and Vintage Christmas.” He glanced up at her, his voice inquisitive. “Do any of those suit you?”

  “I think we should try Vintage Christmas. Billie Holiday and the like. Don’t you?”

  “Don’t really mind, personally,” he said. “Like I said. As long as we avoid the Muppets.”

  “Let’s see if you’re chanting the same tune after that third glass of wine,” Mia laughed.

  James tapped at something on the screen and Mia’s heart wrenched in her chest as she heard the soaring melodies of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” She blinked rapidly, trying to work back tears. It wasn’t time yet. She had to create a party.

  “So,” Mia began, gesturing for James to join her in the center of the room, beside the desk. “Do you have any favorite party games?”

  James scratched his skull, looking at her incredulously. “Party games? You mean, times that don’t involve all your relatives sitting around and arguing about politics?”

  Mia snipped her lips close together. “No. That’s not what Christmas is all about.”

  “Then tell me, missy.”

  “It’s about coming together to enjoy each other’s sense of humor, to laugh together, to sing together.” She traced her thoughts, searching for the correct move. “I know what we could do. We could play charades.”

  “Charades?” James asked her, his eyebrows high. His voice was tentative, uncertain. “I haven’t played that since I was a kid at a Chicago summer camp.”

  “Come on. I promise, it’s fun.” Mia remembered cozy nights with her adopted family, each of them waving their arms and tossing their heads in faux-frustration, going through the movements of charades. “I can start, if you like.”

  “I think that’ll be necessary,” James said, tipping his head. “I’ll fill up our glasses.”

  “Great. Already, you’re participating in the party festivities, and you don’t even know it,” Mia laughed. She tapped her glass on the desk and watched it fill with deep red liquid. It made her ache with happiness. So often, her life was regimented, geared toward her professional life. She nee
ded to make more room for such celebration.

  Mia stood before James, then. She opened her palms and looked at them, imitating someone reading.

  “Ah. Okay. Okay. It’s coming back to me,” James said, his voice gruff. “It’s a book. You’re going to act out a book title, and then you want me to tell you what it is.”

  Mia snapped her fingers, her eyes bright. She had to keep her energy high, and she knew he would join her, eventually. James rolled his eyes slightly but leaned his head forward, attentive.

  Mia lifted one finger high.

  “First word,” James monotoned.

  She nodded and lifted two fingers. After some brief back and forth, James suddenly affirmed that the first word was “Two.”

  “All right. Next,” he said, his voice betraying just a hint of enthusiasm.

  Mia began with the second word, then, acting out a murder by knife—stabbing it into the air before her with a menacing expression. She watched James’ face as he struggled to pair the action with words.