Together for Christmas

by Lisa Plumley

  No matter what.

  “Wait a minute. I didn’t tell you Natasha was married.” With endearing old-school politeness, Jimmy swerved his gaze away from her telltale hickey. “I didn’t even give you her personnel file—not that you would have read it if I had.”

  “You didn’t have to tell me. I guessed.” Damon gave her a speculative look. “You’re a newlywed, right? Just back from your honeymoon? I’d say you went to . . . someplace sunny. Acapulco? No, wait.” He snapped his fingers. “Cancun, right along the coast.”

  This time, Natasha knew she was staring openmouthed. “I haven’t even unpacked yet. How did you . . . ?”

  “Your wedding ring. And your glow. You’re glowing.”

  At that, she beamed. She probably was glowing. Because of Paul, Natasha reminded herself. Because of her husband.

  “My husband is an artist. A painter,” she felt compelled to say. “He’s very talented. He was especially inspired by Mexico.”

  “Mmm.” Obviously, Damon was too busy practicing his Twenty Questions-style guessing game to give too much thought to trivialities like husbands. Or their unique artistic inspirations. “The pattern of your sunburn was a dead giveaway.” Damon nodded at the neckline of her suit. “If you weren’t so buttoned up, it would be even more obvious.”

  It was a good thing she was “buttoned up.” Otherwise, Damon’s apparent X-ray vision would have left her feeling even more exposed than she already did. As though the imprint of her teeny honeymoon bikini was imprinted on her skin—and technically it was, only in reverse—Natasha crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Besides, you didn’t have to give me Natasha’s personnel file, Dad,” Damon went on blithely . . . the same way he appeared to do everything. “Brittney in HR was dying to do me a favor.”

  Jimmy sniffed. “I’ll just bet she was.” He shook his finger at his son. “This is why I hired a new assistant for you!”

  “Right. And your insistence on doing that is why I went along with it.” Damon tossed his father a plaintive look—one the elder Torrance seemed to miss. “I want to make you proud, Dad.”

  “That’s easy. Don’t sleep with this one! Hear me?”

  “I hear you.” All the same, Damon appeared wounded. “Don’t I get any credit for doing my due diligence this time? I read the personnel file! It was boring!” He stared out the window, possibly hungering for a turn in the lineup of surfers. “That’s more than I did when the last four assistants came on board.”

  “Four?” Natasha blurted. “You slept with four of them?”

  Her new boss was a man slut. This job was going to be tricky. She was going to have her hands full of him. With him!

  Damon had the grace to appear embarrassed. “Except for one instance, it wasn’t my idea, I swear.” He gave her a humble look. “Was I supposed to say no? Feelings would have been hurt.”

  “Right.” She scoffed. “Women just leap into your arms.”

  Unfazed, Damon and Jimmy gazed at her. They both nodded.

  “Yeah. Pretty much,” Damon said, rubbing his stubbled jaw.

  “Since he was a teenager,” Jimmy agreed with a long-suffering sigh. “It’s the damnedest thing. But when you interviewed with me, Natasha, and said you were about to get married, I knew—”

  “You knew you’d found your son’s kryptonite. Me.”

  It was all right there in Damon Torrance’s philosophies for living: Pop-Tarts, kung fu, and not screwing around with married women. Simultaneously relieved and incredulous, Natasha frowned.

  “My qualifications for this job go way beyond being married,” she argued. “I’m smart, I’m capable, I’m passionate—”

  “I’m listening,” Damon said, perking up.

  “—and I’m not going to put up with any bullshit. Get it?”

  Both men widened their eyes. It was almost as though they’d never heard a blue-eyed, blond-haired, bubbly California girl talk frankly before. Jimmy rallied first. Soberly, he nodded.

  “Based on my research”—and Natasha had, indeed, done plenty of research, because while you could take the girl out of UCSD, you couldn’t take the UCSD out of the girl—“I think you’re headed for the top of your field, Damon. And I intend to go straight to the top with you. If that’s not what you want, tell me right now, because I don’t have time to waste. I’ve done a lot of work to get my foot in the door at a good company. Now that I’m here, I plan to take full advantage of it.”

  She might have downgraded her ambitions to the assistant level in order to help support her husband, Natasha knew, but she’d be damned if she’d tamp them down completely.

  Gratifyingly, this time Damon was the one staring at her.

  Solemnly, he took her hand in his. “You’re not kryptonite. You’re incredible. You’re like . . .” Seeming at a loss for words, he swore. “You’re like a badass cheerleader who makes straight A’s. Like a fast-talking Goody Two-shoes who just shot her first Playboy centerfold. Like the world’s sexiest, strictest, most nurturing CPA-turned-supermodel.” Seeming on the verge of coming up with several more unlikely alter egos for her, Damon stopped. He smiled. “You’re unique, is what I’m trying so say. I do want what you want. In fact, I think I just fell in love with you.”

  For a heartbeat, Natasha was almost sucked in by that. His deep brown eyes lured her. His happy-go-lucky grin beckoned her. Even his body, all tall and strong and masculine as he stood there before her, seemed somehow magnetized to pull her nearer.

  She wondered, incredibly and nonsensically, what it would be like to be truly loved by a man like Damon Torrance. Then she gave herself a mental pinch and came to her senses for good.

  “Don’t tell me that again.” Natasha pulled away. Doing so required far more effort than she would have liked or intended ever to admit. This . . . attraction she felt toward Damon would have to be squashed, plain and simple. It was wrong and foolhardy and just . . . wrong. She loved Paul! She truly did. “Don’t tell me you love me. Don’t flirt. Don’t inform me of your sexual conquests or expect me to bail you out of them. I’m your assistant, not your nanny. If you remember that, we’ll get along fine.”

  “You’re my assistant, not my nanny,” Damon repeated.

  Even as he dutifully said those words, though, he just kept on grinning at her. It was as though she were a ray of sunshine warming him, an adorable puppy cheering him, a plate of Pop-Tarts . . . well, she didn’t know what the Pop-Tarts were for, only that he seemed to have an ideology constructed around them.

  Someday, she’d have to ask him about that.

  “Right. And if you don’t remember that—if you try to take advantage of me—I won’t hesitate to take my talents elsewhere. Got it?” Natasha held out her hand. “Do we have a deal?”

  Curiously, Damon considered her. “Do you always set up so many boundaries before doing things?”

  “Usually they’re necessary.”

  To her relief, Damon didn’t ask why they were necessary.

  Instead, he made a rueful face. “Why do I feel, all of a sudden, that you’re the one who’s hiring me?”

  At the other desk, Jimmy laughed. “You’d better agree, son. If you try to stall, she’ll talk you into a ten percent raise.”

  “Good idea.” Natasha nodded. “But now that I’ve sized up the job, I’d say fifteen percent sounds more appropriate.”

  “Done.” Jimmy agreed. “It’ll be worth every penny just to see how this turns out—for however long it lasts, at least.”

  Natasha couldn’t let his skepticism affect her. Now that she knew they needed her as much as she needed them, she had a little bit of leverage. It felt unfamiliar—but kind of good, too. Despite its newness, she couldn’t help liking it.

  And Paul had said she wouldn’t be good at business....

  Damon gave her a forthright look. “Do you mean it?” he asked soberly. “Do you really think you can handle me?”

  At that moment, Natasha could think of several scintillating ways
to handle him. But since she was trying to focus on staying true to her wedding vows—and since Damon actually seemed concerned and hopeful and boyishly earnest—she turned her thoughts in a less bawdy direction. She nodded.

  “Together, I think we can take on the world and win.”

  With that, Damon clasped her hand. Natasha felt another inner tremor rock her from her heels on up. As she and her new boss sealed their reckless deal, she hoped with all her might that the words she’d just said would be prophetic.

  Together, I think we can take on the world and win.

  She didn’t know what that would look like or how it would feel. But now that she’d met Damon Torrance in person, Natasha had the sudden, unmistakable sensation that for the first time in her life, winning big was possible. She would have been a fool to let that go . . . no matter how stupidly giddy she felt when Damon smiled at her. She could handle that. Easy-peasy.

  All she had to do was get started.

  Oh, and stay married.

  That way, she’d qualify as Damon’s kryptonite for the long haul. After all, that’s what seemed to have nabbed her the job over all the competition in the first place.

  But since Natasha intended to do both those things anyway—get started and stay married—there was no problem here.

  No problem at all . . .

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  Copyright © 2012 by Lisa Plumley

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  ISBN: 978-1-4201-2852-9