by Jana Aston
The Reindeer Falls Collection
Volume One
Jana Aston
Copyright © 2019 by Jana Aston
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Edited by RJ Locksley
Cover by Kari March Designs
Created with Vellum
Contents
The Boss Who Stole Christmas
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
If You Give a Jerk a Gingerbread
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
The One Night Stand Before Christmas
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Holiday Recipes
Have you met Dr Miller?
Also by Jana Aston
The Reindeer Falls Collection
About the Author
The Boss Who Stole Christmas
Chapter 1
My boss is the Grinch. A Scrooge. A Dursley amongst Harrys.
I'm sure of it, even if he doesn't live on a cliff overlooking Whoville or own a dog named Max. Even if he doesn't have an orphan named Harry living under his stairs. Even if he hasn't cancelled the company Christmas party.
I bet he considered it.
He's a misanthropic, mean-tempered jerk with a piece of coal where his heart should be. Confirmed Grinch. Mr Ebenezer Scrooge himself.
The worst.
The worst, hidden in a six-foot-tall package of male perfection. It'd be easier if he looked like an old Scrooge, wouldn't it? We're predisposed to liking things that are pretty, to giving them the benefit of the doubt, like feral kittens. No matter how much they hiss or scratch, they're just so darn adorable we still voluntarily pick them up and attempt to cuddle.
Nick Saint-Croix isn't adorable.
He's hot as—
"Miss Winter." My thoughts are interrupted by none other than the Grinch himself. His voice is just as disarming as his looks. Smooth and confident. Seductive, like a plate full of your favorite Christmas cookies. The kind that take too long to make but they melt in your mouth and remind you of your childhood. If there was any justice his voice would sound like he swallowed a frog, but no. He's got a warm baritone that tempts you to lean in, until the moment your brain catches up with your eardrums and reminds you that he's awful and you'd give anything to make him stop talking. With a cookie or a sock or that ball gag you looked up online specifically for your make-him-shut-up fantasies.
"Were you planning on attending the ten o'clock meeting?" he continues without waiting for me to acknowledge his presence. "Or will you require the rest of the morning to finish reading my email? It can't be more than a few hundred words and yet you can't seem to tear yourself away from staring at it."
For the record, it's nine fifty-six and the conference room is a ten-second walk from my desk. And Nick Saint-Croix moves like a cat. I'd have heard him coming if I hadn't been staring at his stupid email indulging in my fantasies about him developing a pot belly and turning green.
Please, Santa. It's all I want for Christmas.
I turn in my chair and drag my gaze up to his face. He has the kind of looks that make women stop in their tracks. I know, because I've seen it happen time and again in this very office. There isn't one particular feature that I can blame for his perfection, it's all of them. Broad shoulders, narrow hips. Thick dark hair and brilliant green eyes. His eyes are the worst—the most annoying, attractive, mesmerizing shade of green. They remind me of Christmas itself, of evergreen trees and brightly wrapped packages. Until they narrow in one of his trademark cold glances.
Tall. He has me by half a foot when I’m in heels. Without them I’m reduced to the approximate size of one of Santa's elves when standing next to Nick, not a feeling I enjoy, so I've taken to keeping heels in my desk drawer so I can change out of my practical boots and into heels the moment I got to work.
Designer suits, expensive watches. Arrogance he wears like a sexual call to arms. Whenever he makes direct eye contact with me I’m sure he’s capable of reading every last errant thought in my head. The ones I have about what he looks like under those designer suits blended together with the fantasies I have about him eating bad sushi for lunch.
A hot Grinch.
And with less than a month until Christmas he's become extra Scrooge-like. Hence the email. The one demanding the presentation for the Friendly Llama campaign today—a full three days before the deadline. As if schedules and deadlines are of no interest to him and I can simply produce presentations from thin air.
I can, because I've become used to dealing with him, and staying two steps ahead of Mr. Saint-Croix has become my primary life goal. Both personally and professionally.
Speaking of my career, there's one more thing you should know. I work at Flying Reindeer Toy Company. Which means my scrooge of a boss runs a toy company.
Actual toys, not sex toys.
Oh, the irony. A mean-tempered, childless man at the helm of the very toys that result in endless smiles and laughter and shrieks of joy amongst the tiny humans. He seems more suited for corporate finance. For the kind of takeovers that put mom-and-pops out of businesses and drain retirement accounts.
I'd never have taken this job if I'd met him beforehand. I worked for his uncle for three years. Lovely man. Not a clue how Nick turned out the way he did.
Brooding.
Irritable.
I bet he doesn't even put up a Christmas tree.
We all expected Mr Saint-Croix would eventually retire, of course he would. But it was a bit like Santa himself retiring, it wasn’t like it'd happen in my lifetime, right? Santa stays the same age and works forever and ever. It's the law. The law of childhood and tradition and happiness. Except that Reindeer Falls isn't the North Pole and the senior Mr Saint-Croix isn't actually Santa Claus.
Five months ago Christopher Saint-Croix retired. The Saint-Croixes never had any children, but his brother did. Two of them. Mr Saint-Croix's niece had worked for her uncle since graduating from college six years prior. She’s sweet by the way. Friendly. Approachable. Kind. Nothing like her brother, Nick.
Christopher's other sibling, a sister, runs our Human Resources department. Sara reports to her and will be running that department as soon as Martha is ready to retire.
I can't say I spent much time worrying about who would someday tak
e over the Flying Reindeer Toy Company.
I should have.
Because that's how I inherited the Grinch of Reindeer Falls as a boss.
"I'm coming," I tell him. He slow-blinks at that response and suddenly I'm thinking sex thoughts, like oh-my-God-I'm-coming. "To the meeting," I amend. "I'll be there on time, I promise." I turn back to my desk without waiting for a reply and jab at my keyboard, willing him to go away so that I don't have to walk down the hallway with him.
He doesn't. Instead he picks up the Advent calendar on my desk. It's one I made myself over the four-day Thanksgiving weekend while drinking hot cocoa and watching Christmas movies. My Christmas decorations were up the weekend prior to Thanksgiving as per my tradition, so I had the time to work on a little arts and crafts project near and dear to my heart.
"Interesting," he murmurs, wiggling one of the little cardboard doors. There are only ten of them. Numbered two through six and sixteen through twenty. "Is this some kind of defective prototype?"
"That's personal." I whirl around in my chair and snatch it out of his hand. Does he have to ruin everything? I toss the calendar into my desk drawer and slam it shut. Nick grunts and heads for the conference room.
I wait until nine fifty-eight to get out of my chair. Then, with a long exhale, I grab my laptop and coffee cup and head to the morning meeting. Maybe later I'll go to the mall and sit on Santa's lap, ask him to bring Nick a normal-sized heart without a defective jerk-hole.
It could happen, after all. Anything is possible at Christmas.
Chapter 2
"Next item on the agenda, the Teddy Bear Café."
It's oddly satisfying listening to Nick utter the words Teddy Bear Café because they're so very ridiculous coming out of his mouth. Sometimes I wonder if he's always imagined himself taking over his uncle's toy business or if he had other plans. I know he grew up in Reindeer Falls, just like I did. But he was five years ahead of me in school so we never crossed paths until he returned to ruin my dream job.
His sister was three years ahead of me in school so I was vaguely familiar with her even before I began working for her uncle. Sara was the one who interviewed me when I applied—the only place I applied because I didn't have a backup plan for my dream job.
Sara stayed in Reindeer Falls. Married a nice guy she met in college, had a baby with another on the way.
Nick left.
Now he's back and I'm stuck with his curmudgeonly ass.
For now, anyway. I expect he'll eventually come to his senses and flee Reindeer Falls for the big city. Any big city. That's my long-term dream. My short-term dream is Nick getting run over by a sleigh.
Teddy Bear Café is my project. You understand why I put up with the Scrooge, right? Besides him, this job is a dream. I mean, hello. I get paid to work on projects involving cafés and teddy bears.
"Construction is a month ahead of schedule," I report. "We're on track to open a full month before the summer tourist season in Reindeer Falls." This may come as a surprise to some of you, but Reindeer Falls is quite the happening tourist destination.
In a small Midwestern city kind of way.
I bet Nick is bored out of his mind here. He spent the last four years living in Europe. Based in Germany, which I only knew because his sister mentioned him a time or three during lunch in the employee break room. Probably where he bought all his fancy suits too, because they surely didn't come from the Macy's in Saginaw.
I'm not sure Nick is Reindeer Falls material. Which is the worst thing I can say about a person. I imagine it's like a New Yorker side-eyeing transplants with disdain. Not NYC material, I imagine they think as they watch someone patiently wait on the crosswalk instead of darting into the street inches from a yellow cab like a local.
Reindeer Falls is the most charming city I've ever seen and there's no place else I'd rather be. Population five thousand thirty-four, which is misleading because there's a city of fifty thousand just twenty minutes away. And Detroit is ninety minutes away, so it's not as though we're a tiny isolated town where everyone knows everyone’s business. We're Midwest adorable. Our official town slogan is "Little Bavaria," because the town was founded by German immigrants and built to resemble a village in Germany. To this day a full fifty percent of the residents are of German descent and a strict building code remains in place requiring new builds mimic the European charm of our origin.
And sure, maybe I'm biased because I was born here. And because my name is Holly Winter. And I might as well just tell you now… I have two sisters named Ginger and Noel.
Yes, my family loves Christmas.
My mom denies that she married my dad for his last name, but between you and me, I'm pretty sure she pursued him so she could have a gaggle of Christmas-themed babies.
But back to the Teddy Bear Café. It's my passion project. Bavarian Bear is one of the product lines I'm responsible for. They've been made in Nuremberg, Germany for over a hundred years and the Flying Reindeer Toy Company has been the exclusive North American distributor of Bavarian Bears for the last forty years. A special Bavarian Reindeer was even developed as the company's flagship toy.
When a storefront on Main Street opened up earlier this year I proposed that we rent the space and open a Teddy Bear Café, where children could bring their Bavarian Bears (or their Bavarian Reindeers) for tea. It will be a destination for tourists and a place where local children can have their birthday parties. We'll sell the complete line of Bavarian Bears at that location along with the accessories. You know, tiny pairs of shoes for your bear. Outfits so you can dress your bear as a doctor or an astronaut or a gymnast. Child-sized pajamas sold with a matching set for your bear. We're going to have a bear clinic for any bears that need repairs and a bear spa for any bears that need a bit of a wash.
I know, I know. This all sounds too delicious to be true. But this is life in Reindeer Falls and the reason I don't want to quit and get a boring job somewhere else. Having a part in the Flying Reindeer Toy Company feels a bit like being a Christmas elf and who doesn't want to have an in with Santa?
Listen, I know Santa isn't real. But he's real in my Christmas-loving heart and that's good enough for me.
This project is something I've wanted to do since I started with the company. The Bavarian Bear makers have a smaller version of the café in Nuremberg. When I saw it on their website I was enchanted—and determined that we could do something similar here in Reindeer Falls. We have a steady flow of tourism here. We're a Midwest holiday destination for starters. Tree lightings and gingerbread baking contests and horse-drawn sleigh rides on a specially designed track though the Reindeer Falls forest. Fine, we don't really have a forest per se. It's a few hundred acres of woods on the edge of town owned by the Hartfield family. They cleared a path through the woods, bought a few sleighs and Santa's Sleigh Ride was born. And let me tell you, they do a nice business each winter.
We also have Oktoberfest season each fall. Main Street is lined with quirky shops and we have the town’s main claim to fame: Otto's Christmas Mart, the largest Christmas retail store in the nation, bringing in visitors year round from near and far. And we have not one but two hotels with water parks catering to the summer crowd. Like I said, we're a pretty happening place for a town that crowns an annual Candy Cane Princess.
I don't want to brag but I was Miss Candy Cane Princess seven years ago. I know it might be a little vain, but I still have the tiara. I use it as my tree topper because being Miss Candy Cane Princess was my childhood dream. That and working for the Flying Reindeer Toy Company when I grew up.
I tap on my laptop to move the notes I've prepared to the display screen on the conference room wall so everyone can see the updates. I've got photos of the construction process and images of the tea room furniture already on order. I've got a custom line of china under development which we'll use in the tea room and sell as a new product line.
I might be gushing a little bit but this café is my passion project and besides, how c
ould anyone not be excited about this?
"Has the advertising been adjusted to accommodate the early opening?" Nick asks, his gaze on mine, slowly rolling a pen between his fingers while he silently judges me.
"No. The official opening will remain the first of June. The soft opening is currently projected for the tenth of May. We'll push the soft opening to locals and use the time to fine-tune operations before the summer season. The payroll budget has been adjusted to accommodate an early opening," I hastily add when Nick continues to stare at me.
I clear my throat and click to the next slide, the financials. "We're already twenty percent booked for next summer based on our pre-launch advertising and reservations made via an online reservation system. I expect that will increase drastically once we release interior photos and really begin the adverting push. On the modest end of my forecast, I've estimated profits based on a seventy-percent booking during the summer and winter seasons and a thirty-percent booking during the off-season." A graphic with the projected revenues based on these numbers appears on the screen. "But these are very modest. I expect we'll be a hundred percent booked by midsummer once people get a look at the finished space. And I think our off-season numbers will be much higher than thirty percent once we become a birthday party destination for local children, but I wanted to be conservative on my—"