Frosting Her Christmas Cookies - Alina Jacobs Page 0,122

took one of the boxes from her, and we walked through the snow to the subway. “And pretzels.”

“Tell us,” Emma asked as we stuffed ourselves, “what sculpture are you going to put in the Holbrooks’ lobby?”

I lay back on her twin bed, which doubled as the couch and the dining table. “I’m going to build a tree house so I have somewhere to live,” I said.

“Aw, you can stay here,” Emma assured me as she unwrapped a chili cheese dog.

“You should build a giant dildo,” Lilith suggested, swiping fries in cheese sauce.

“Holbrook Enterprises is a conservative company. The sculpture will probably end up being something boring and generic.”

“Hey, if they pay, they can have whatever they want!”

Emma opened a carton of sesame noodles. “So not a peep from Jonathan?”

“Nope.” I sighed. And then my phone went off.

“Speak of the ghost of Christmas sexy times,” Lilith said. She grabbed my phone and handed it to me.

The food was lead in my stomach as I read the message.

Jonathan: You’re such a fucking hypocrite

.

There on the screen was a picture of my art piece.

66

Jonathan

I was still sitting outside in the blowing snow after Morticia left. I had moved to a bench after almost getting run over by a production assistant who was backing a truck up for loading.

Now I was sitting on a bench. It was like when I was a kid and my mom was supposed to pick me up from a hockey game. She had promised she was coming, but I had sat outside long after the other kids had gone home, trying to make up excuses for why my mom had forgotten. Eventually, Belle had shown up and taken me home.

You deserve to be alone.

Morticia’s words bounced around my head. She was right—I did deserve to be alone. I had lied to her, ruined her career, and used her for my own financial gain. That wasn’t how you treated someone you loved. In fact, that was how my parents had treated me and my siblings.

They were shitty. I was shitty. The whole holiday season was shitty. I lay on the bench, and the snow pressed against my cheek, numbing it.

Someone shook my shoulder.

“You’re ruining your suit,” Belle said. “Come inside.”

“I should just freeze to death out here.”

“You owe Romance Creative money,” she quipped. “So you can’t die until you pay that off. Besides, you have more interviews to do. We have to sell the ‘happy couple’ narrative.”

I groaned as I followed my older sister dejectedly into the studio.

She sighed. “I heard.”

“I’m a terrible person.”

“No argument here,” Belle replied as she blotted my suit with a towel. “Seriously, this is a nice wool and you rolled around in the snow with it on,” she said, unbuttoning my jacket.

“I’m a grown man,” I complained. “I can clean myself.”

She ignored me and ran a comb through my hair. “You’re covered in leaves and snowflakes.”

“What am I going to do?”

“You screwed up, so you need to fix it,” she replied.

“I lost the development.” I moaned, “When the Svenssons find out, they’re going to ruin me.”

“You just leave Greg to me,” she replied tartly. “We’re family. No one gets away with hurting my little brother. Unless you deserve it, of course.” Belle rapped me lightly with the comb.

“How am I going to convince Morticia to forgive me?” I asked my sister.

“You can’t,” she said, “but you can at least make right what you did wrong.”

“How?”

“You’re a billionaire. I’m sure the Getty Museum will give her an internship if you make a sizeable enough donation. Money can be exchanged for goods and services,” Belle quipped.

However, money could not be used to bribe such a renowned institution as the Getty Museum, as Zarah informed me forcefully over the phone. “I will not have you make a mockery of this institution.”

“Surely,” I said smoothly, “there is a precedent for this. I just want to pay you to have an internship position. Everyone wins.”

“Except for our reputation. You may make a donation, but that will in no way influence an internship for Morticia. This year’s interns have been selected already. However, we will happily take your money.”

I blew out a breath when I hung up. “Now what? That didn’t work.”

“Now you have to pretend you can’t wait to start the rest of your life with Keeley,” my sister informed me.

I wanted to go home and stare at my Christmas tree and hope Morticia would appear and forgive me.

Instead, Belle led me over to two stools against a window that