Frosting Her Christmas Cookies - Alina Jacobs Page 0,75

create new content for the Instagram marketing!”

I carefully disentangled Cindy Lou from my jacket then took it off and handed it to Morticia.

“Thanks,” she murmured. She set a bottle of whiskey next to the multicolored rug Dorothy was posing on. “Can you give us a very quick master class?”

“Can I ever!” Dorothy said then commenced a series of poses. “You need to watch these, Jonathan,” she declared.

“No, ma’am,” I replied, a hand firmly over my eyes.

Dorothy cackled. “You’re too prudish for your own good. But don’t worry. I’m sure Morticia will give you a personal display later.”

I grinned up at the sky. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“I think we have what we need,” Morticia said after a moment. “You can look now, Jonathan. Dorothy’s decent.”

The older woman was wrapped in a colorful gauzy fabric. She sipped her drink then said, “Another good-looking guy was over here the other day. Can’t remember his name.”

“Harrington,” I said through gritted teeth. Fuck, they were going to steal my development!

“That’s right!” she said, snapping her fingers. “He was tall, dark, and handsome but didn’t bring alcohol, and I know he wouldn’t have spread the word on the cleansing powers of cold yoga.” Dorothy slapped Morticia on the lower back. “Also, his girlfriend looked like he bought her at the girlfriend factory. Not like yours.”

I wrapped my arms around Morticia. “I like them weird!”

41

Morticia

Crap, that had been close!

I couldn’t believe Jonathan had just shown up like that. I tried to think back to when exactly he had appeared. Dorothy had been espousing ideas about what I should put on the collage for the scholarship application. Had Jonathan heard any of what I’d discussed with Dorothy?

“So meeting up with Dorothy was the big, important thing you had to do this morning?” he asked, mouth quirked.

My mind raced. Jonathan could not find out about the piece. Sure, a lot of guys liked to say they wanted the unique, quirky girl, but really, they wanted the manic pixie dream girl who dyed her hair pink on a whim and cried at swans and loved to dance at festivals. They didn’t actually want someone who was weird and different.

Taking photos of someone in intimate positions without their knowledge is probably out of the weird-and-different territory and into the illegal stalker, go-directly-to-jail territory.

And that was why I should not have a boyfriend and instead needed to retire to the mountains and live in a hut with a feral cat colony.

“Why were you over there?” Jonathan prompted, “I can’t believe you wanted to do cold yoga.”

“I—” God, why couldn’t he just drop it? “I thought about what you said,” I lied. “About wanting the Hamilton Yards property. I think it sounds like a great idea.”

“You do?” He paused suddenly. “You told Dorothy about it?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“What did she say?”

He was so excited and happy. I felt like a complete bitch for lying to him.

“Oh, she said she would think about it,” I said, “but it sounds promising, right? I mean, she didn’t like those other guys, the Harringtons.”

He impulsively swept me up in his arms and kissed me. “You’re the best,” he told me. “Hamilton Yards is going to be amazing. Just keep bringing it up to her, okay? Make it seem like a no-brainer.”

“Of course,” I said weakly.

Just make it through Christmas, and then you can ghost everyone.

Jonathan wrapped one arm casually around my waist as if he was my boyfriend. I didn’t know how to feel about that. I didn’t do boyfriends; I barely did relationships generally. The last guy who might have counted as a boyfriend—though he had been more of a casual hookup—had flooded the apartment when he passed out drunk in the bathtub in my college dorm.

Jonathan tugged me into the building then up to his office. “I want to show you something,” he said in excitement, pulling up a chart on his screen. “These are our sales numbers.”

I read the chart. “Impressive,” I said. The chart was a bunch of lines going upward, so I supposed that was the thing to say.

“No.” He pointed to a spot where the chart turned dramatically upward. “This is you and your amazing marketing. You saved me.”

“I just took some pictures,” I demurred. “You’re paying me; you don’t have to thank me.”

“Maybe I want to,” he whispered.

My eyes darted around his office, flicking to the glass dividing wall that was the only thing between us and his staff as I realized just what his devious mind was up to. He