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  Copyright © 2019 by Z. L. Arkadie

  All rights reserved.

  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.

  ISBN: 9781942857525

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Spencer 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

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Spencer Christmas

  Prologue

  Sweat trickles into both my eyes, and I squeeze them shut until the stinging subsides. I can’t stop now. I want to stop, but I can’t. The sound of metal banging against concrete crashes throughout the dank hallway. I can’t get her out of my mind—Jada Forte.

  Impulse is taking over. I could feel it energizing my hands, my brain telling me to drop my power tool and go see her right now. I take a deep breath, and after forcing the air out of my lungs, I obey. What I’m about to do flies in the face of reason. Remorse impedes my steps.

  Don’t go, Spencer.

  I have to.

  I must see her, watch her.

  I clutch my heavy heart as one entrance leads to the next, and then the next. Soon, I’m in Jada’s room, walking down the hallway. My steps are virtually silent. I could hear her breathing while sleeping. My conscience issues me a final warning, don’t do it. It’s too late. I’m now standing at her bedside, wondering, what’s so special about this one? Why am I having this kind of reaction to her?

  Chapter One

  I was spent, my skin was sticky, and I smelled like a landfill. I was on my third day without a shower, but fortunately, I was on the brink of reaching my final destination. My tired eyes stared out the window from the back seat of my new billionaire boss’s hired car as I tried to keep up with the alien environment we were passing through. My eyelids were becoming heavier by the second. Thank goodness my driver had already signaled that he didn’t want to engage in small talk by grunting incoherently when I asked him how far away the ranch was from the airport. Normally, I would have pushed for some sort of reassuring answer. But I was way too exhausted to do that.

  All I could see through my weary eyes were tall evergreens hugging the edges of both sides of the road, which every now and then gave way to sprawling fields of wild grass. A mountain range, purpling from the setting sun, stretched across the horizon under a sky filled with ominous clouds. I could tell it had been raining a lot in this part of the country lately, even though I was only a recent arrival. Everything was damp—the road, the blades of grass, the leaves, and even the air. One thing was for sure—I was no longer in Manhattan.

  I’d been scheduled to arrive in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Monday, and it was already Wednesday. Three days before, while I was on a layover in Salt Lake City, a fire had ignited in one of the terminals, and because of that, all flights going out had ground to a halt until an investigation could be completed. The ordeal put me in a perilous position. I was flying on standby and only had six dollars in my wallet and a hundred thirty-three dollars in my bank account, which I couldn’t touch because the minimum payment on one of my maxed-out credit cards was due, and I needed the funds to stay in my account to cover it.

  Whereas most other travelers were able to successfully reschedule their flights, I had to wait on standby for a seat to become available. By the last flight of the day, I still hadn’t gotten a seat, which forced me to sleep in uncomfortable airport chairs. After the first night, I was tempted to call my mother, Congresswoman Patricia Forte, and ask for help, but dealing with her was like making a deal with Rumpelstiltskin. She’d want not only my firstborn to control forever but my whole generation as well. I couldn’t ask my dad, either, because it seemed he had been under her thumb since the day they tied the knot. Everything I said to him always got back to her. I could wait it out another day and forgo sleep another night or call my new employer, a billionaire named Spencer Christmas, and ask for help. My third option was the one I almost succumbed to, and that was to say “Screw Wyoming,” head back to New York, and take my best friend, Hope, up on her offer to move in with her until I could find a job in the city.

  But the pay… oh, the pay…

  I hadn’t had a steady salary since a major media company absorbed Caldwell Jamison, the PR firm I used to work for, and my position was deemed redundant. I was let go in January and had been living off bountiful savings since then. Even though I hadn’t been wasteful, only spending money on bills, groceries, and other essentials a girl needed, I was now broke—like, scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel broke.

  I had come across a job listing from Spencer Christmas of the Christmas Family Industry Holdings months before. Even though it was for an assistant, the pay—five thousand dollars a week—was substantially more than my previous job. I was so surprised by the amount that I checked to make sure I hadn’t accidentally found my way to a phishing site. I hadn’t. The listing was on the official Headhunters Deluxe website, and it was one of those that was only shown to a handful of candidates who had special keywords in their résumés that enticed the employer.

  The Christmases’ name was in the same category as DuPont, Carnegie, and Rockefeller. If anyone could afford to pay an assistant that much money, it would be someone with the last name of Christmas. So I clicked the apply button. I never expected to hear back from anyone, but on Friday, I received a call.

  “Is this Jada Forte?” the man asked in a lifeless tone of voice.

  I felt my forehead wrinkle. “It is, and to whom am I speaking?” I asked, remembering to sound professional. A job interview could come at any moment, and I wanted to always sound capable to a prospective employer.

  “This is Spencer Christmas. I find your experience valuable. Could you start in three days?”

  I pursed my lips, thinking. I didn’t know much about the Christmases other than that the patriarch, who had been dead for some time, was a pervert. I also knew that the brothers were hot—like, JFK Jr. hot—and rich and probably too damn important to make hiring calls to potential assistants.

  “Is this Hope screwing with me?” I asked.

  He remained silent for a beat. “I am not Hope, and I am not screwing with you.”

  My muscles tensed, and a flare of adrenaline fired up my brain. “Are you really Spencer Christmas?” I asked, clutching my suddenly queasy stomach as I recalled how much the job paid.

  “Yes,” he said curtly.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s hard for me to believe you would make this sort of call yourself.”

  “I understand,” he whispered. “This job requires a sizeable amount of discretion. You will be working for me personally, not for my company. I’ve read your résumé and checked your background. As I said, I would like to hire you for this job.”

  I felt the tension in my body deflate. He had effectively put my mind at ease. Holy shit, I thought. I was on the phone with an actual billionaire. “Yes, I’m sorry, but is the salary really five K a week?”

  “Yes,” he said in the same monotone voice.

  I opened my mouth, silently screaming as a thrill raced through me, even though I knew my mom would not be pleased with me taking an assistant job no matter how much it paid.
I could hear her lecturing me. “Jada, why would you make the asinine decision of taking a professional position that’s so beneath you? An assistant? This will ruin your upward trajectory. Wrong.” I pictured her shaking her head at how pathetic my decision made me. “So very wrong.”

  But fuck pleasing my mom—in one month, I would be able to pay off all my overextended credit cards and save up again for another rainy day. I wouldn’t be under so much pressure to find just any job, and I could make the perfect career choice for me.

  “Yes, sure. I’ll take the job,” I said, masking my excitement.

  “Fine. Are you able to relocate?”

  My happiness fizzled into distress. “Relocate?”

  “To Jackson Hole, Wyoming,” he said as if he had no idea what sort of bombshell he had just dropped on me.

  I chewed on my bottom lip, trying to picture the distance between Manhattan and somewhere in Wyoming called Jackson Hole. Hole?

  His silence lingered for longer than I would have expected, as if he knew I needed time to process the news. Perhaps that was why the pay was so hefty. Who in their right mind would leave a city like Manhattan for a city with “Hole” in the name?

  My friends were in New York. Not only that, but I would miss the steam rising out of the street, the people driving as if their vehicles were gladiators battling in an arena, and skyscrapers of all shapes, sizes, and ages and used for a million purposes. We could take our pick—eat here, shop there, pawn our shit, bank, peruse, fuck, you name it—on any New York City boulevard. So when my first answer came to me, it was definite.

  “Sorry, sir, but…”

  “Ten thousand a week,” he said as if we were in the middle of a fierce negotiation.

  I nearly knocked my lukewarm coffee off my desk and had to close my mouth to swallow before speaking again. “I’m sorry, did you say ten thousand a week?” I coughed to clear my throat.

  “And I need a commitment of six months,” he added.

  My brain did the math. I would make nearly a quarter of a million dollars. “Wait, six months at ten thousand dollars a week?” I asked, needing to hear him answer in the affirmative with the two factors put in the same sentence.

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  There was no need for him to repeat it or to sweeten the deal. I had acquiesced.

  Initially, he was going to fly me to Wyoming, but he called me back an hour later to mumble that the account he’d been planning to use wouldn’t work. He asked if I could find my way to the ranch, saying he would reimburse me upon arrival. Again, there was no way I wanted to let a man as rich as Spencer Christmas know how broke I was and that I was taking the job he was offering out of desperation.

  “Sure, no problem,” I said like a person who already had two hundred forty thousand in her bank account.

  With my last two hundred bucks of disposable cash in the bank, I bought a standby ticket for $191. Hope drove me to the airport, so I didn’t have to pay to ride the subway. Luckily, I was able to get a fast flight out of New York and didn’t hit a snag until Salt Lake City.

  On night one of my delay, I came close to getting a flight, but the late party showed up at the last minute, and I was bumped from the only available seat on the small airplane. I ended up trying to sleep while lying across three very uncomfortable chairs. The next day, I was bumped from every flight that was heading to Jackson Hole. The ticket agents kept apologizing, promising that what was happening was unprecedented.

  By night two, everyone who worked behind the counter was pulling for me to hook a flight and not get bumped. After having to sleep on those uncomfortable seats again, I was forced to choose option number two and call Spencer Christmas to ask for help.

  I frantically relayed my experience of the last forty-eight hours. Once I finished gushing, I squeezed my eyes shut and took a breath. He remained as silent as a church mouse for way too long.

  “Hello?” I finally asked.

  “You’re in Salt Lake City,” he said in the same lackluster tone he’d used when he offered me the job.

  “Um, yes,” I replied, half hoping he would just fire me.

  “I’ll call you back.” He hung up.

  The chilling remnants of his voice haunted me. There was something certainly wrong with a man who had no variation in his tone. I was a sensitive person, and I could feel his unhappiness seeping into my mind and infecting my soul. I twisted my neck to ease the soreness, which came from lying on the seats, and kept shifting as I sat, trying to get comfortable. I’d already felt a little jittery about taking the job, but after that conversation, I was having serious doubts.

  Just come back home where you belong, I heard my mother’s voice say.

  But where is that? New York or California? I asked the Patricia who resided in my mind.

  With me, she snapped, and I quickly stiffened.

  Thank goodness my phone rang again. It was Mr. Christmas, and he said a car would be waiting for me at Arrivals within an hour. He ended the call in the same abrupt manner he’d used earlier.

  “Wow, what a…” I whispered, looking at my phone. I didn’t want to say it. If he turned out to be an asshole, that would be the worse-case scenario—no one wanted to pack up, talk her landlord into allowing her to vacate her apartment without notice, accept her friend’s offer to pick up her things and put them in storage, and travel to some place she’d never heard of, all to work for an abominable asshole.

  It took nearly an hour to get my luggage from the standby area. I was sweaty with every step, feeling as if my feet were made of cement, by the time a car took me to another airport in the vicinity. This time, I boarded a small private airplane and left Salt Lake City for Jackson Hole. The flight was bumpy with no frills or thrills. I prayed the whole way and prepared to die, especially after the aircraft took a sharp dip. At twenty-nine years old, I was probably too young for a heart attack, but for a little while, I thought I was having one. Then the pilot’s voice came over the loudspeaker, apologizing for the drop and telling me not to worry and that the turbulence was worse than usual. I took my inability to get a flight out of SLC for almost three days, the stress of getting my luggage, and the latest encounter with deathly turbulence as signs that greed had probably made me make the wrong decision. I should have stayed in New York.

  My prayers had been heard. We landed safely, and a fancy car was waiting near where the aircraft parked to take me to my destination. Each step I took made me dizzy, and I just wanted to pass out and sleep for at least a week. But now I was sitting in the back seat of a comfortable car, struggling to keep my eyes open as the vehicle approached a massive iron security gate that looked more like it belonged to a prison than to a rich family’s ranch. The barrier rolled open before the driver had a chance to stop and wait.

  All of a sudden, I hugged myself to keep from shaking. This was all new, and even though I could hear my mother’s critical voice repeating that Fortes were strong, not whimpering and weak, I wanted to get out of the car and run in the opposite direction.

  As we drove past more fields of wild grass, I faintly wondered why no animals were grazing in the distance. I thought that was the purpose of a ranch—to raise livestock. There had to be a barnyard full of horses somewhere at least. I wanted to ask the driver about it, but he’d been silent the whole ride, and I was too exhausted to talk.

  Goodness gracious, I really didn’t want to be here. I visualized Mr. Christmas telling me that our arrangement wasn’t going to work. It had been difficult to get a solid grasp on what he looked like in person. In photos, he was tall, was in great shape, and had a fluffy but perfectly combed head of hair and the sort of mysterious, uninhibited gaze that belonged to men who had more money than God. Hope had said she’d seen him in passing once and that I was in for the surprise of my life.

  “Then he’s cute?” I asked.

  We’d had this conversation on the previous Friday. I met her at a bar in the East Village to tell her all about the job and ask for
help in getting my affairs in order.

  That wicked, amused look came into her narrowed eyes. “Here, I think we should look together.” She whipped out her cellphone and placed it faceup in the middle of our table as she called up photo after photo of my new boss. The clips made it abundantly clear that he was a playboy with a cocky grin and a slouchy devil-may-care posture, carrying himself as though he was the rich douchebag crown prince of the universe. And in just about every photo, his arm was around a beautiful lovestruck woman. However, I also noticed that all the pics were from over five years ago.

  “You see him?” Hope asked before clicking off her display screen. “Your new boss loves the ladies.”

  My smile wavered as I thought about how much his tone hadn’t matched the man depicted in the Internet images. “Well, let’s read some of the articles,” I said, tapping her phone.

  “Nope. Don’t read anything about him. Go into your new situation with no judgment.” She cocked her head in a curious manner. “I take it you haven’t read the book, have you?”

  “What book?”

  “Forget about it. The less about him you know, the happier you’ll be in Montana.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Wyoming.” The fact that I had to correct her irritated me. I couldn’t say why—it just did.

  “Right,” she replied glibly and raised a finger in caution. “As I said, don’t read the book. And don’t worry about him either. If he wants to fuck—and I’m sure he’s going to want that from someone who has your face and body… I mean your boobs…” Hope put her hands together in prayer. “If only I had been so blessed.” She was now warning me with her finger again. “But for forty thousand a month, just say no—or yes, depending on how you feel. I mean, that’s if…”