Frosting Her Christmas Cookies - Alina Jacobs Page 0,98

wolf whistled as she inspected it. “Zarah is going to cream her pants when she sees this!” Dorothy said, gazing at the collage.

I had tried to abstract it as much as possible, but you could still tell the body parts and see that what they were doing was not engaging in wholesome holiday activities.

“Actually,” she said, snapping her fingers, “this gives me a great idea for another retreat. Sex story painting with you and your partners. People would get a kick out of that. You think that would go viral?”

“Are you planning your quest for internet domination?” asked a male voice from the doorway.

“Jonathan!” I freaked out, scrambling to try and hide the painting.

He could not see it. I would be ruined!

54

Jonathan

Though I wanted to stay in bed with Morticia all day, work was waiting for me.

Not that I had that much to do. After the big push a few months ago, now we were coasting. Lately, I’d been spending my morning worrying about securing the Hamilton Yards development and not about the alcohol sales. Every time I looked at the sales chart, it had shot up another order of magnitude. We were completely sold out of a number of our products and had long wait lists for many items. The Great Christmas Bake-Off had been a huge marketing win on my part.

The betting on who was going to win the bake-off and, subsequently, me was at a fever pitch online.

Each girl had a vicious camp of fans. Sarah, the dark horse, was being chewed out by everyone. Someone had dug up all her history, and social media was flooded with memes and polls calling for her to be removed from the contest. There also were exposés on Trevor, her husband. Many of them read as if someone’s edgelord little brother had written them, and I wouldn’t have put it past the Svenssons to have farmed the character assasination out to their Fortnite-obsessed tween brothers.

Dana Holbrook, of course, pretended she had had no idea that Sarah was married, and there were interviews in which she acted very shocked while promoting the show. Then there were TikTok video memes of people pouring flaming shots to flame out that cheater.

It was ugly and very profitable.

“I’m dreaming of a black Christmas!” I sang. “Got to make twenty billion more dollars.” I wrote my goal on the whiteboard in my office.

“Then you better do more than sit around.”

“Hey! My brothers! Did you all come here to visit me?”

“I’m trying to convince them to start a legitimate company and not a hedge fund,” my oldest brother growled as he herded Matt and Oliver into my office.

“See?” Owen told them. “This is what happens when you don’t run a technology-based company.”

“Yeah,” Matt said excitedly, “but Jonathan has a wet bar in his office.”

“Also, Jonathan isn’t making the TechBiz list this year,” Jack drawled as he headed over to the bar.

“Yes, but I can drink at ten a.m., and I will make the list next year after I secure Hamilton Yards. You want to see the property?” I asked, pulling the plans out of my desk.

“Is that what you’re putting there?” Jack asked. He frowned as he looked over the plans while we headed downstairs. “It seems very corporate.”

“It’s what Greg Svensson wants,” I said with a slight grimace.

“Jonathan is a cautionary tale,” Owen told Matt and Oliver. “If you putter around and waste time on hedge funds and don’t found a tech start-up, then you have to let the Svenssons foist their bad ideas all over you.”

“Don’t be lazy like Jonathan. Got it,” Oliver said.

“That’s rich coming from you all,” I said as we headed across the street. “I’m here working hard, while you all are clearly not at work.”

“It’s almost Christmas,” Jack countered. “Most of my employees have traveled home.”

“Same,” Owen said. “I provide a very good work-life balance for my staff.”

“I have free alcohol,” I said mulishly. “My workers are still in the office and will be until the bitter end. There are sales bonuses attached to how much product we can move.”

“That’s very Ebenezer Scrooge of you,” Jack teased. “I thought you were Mr. Pro-Christmas.”

“I’m pro my net worth first,” I retorted.

“Yeah,” Matt huffed. “I heard from one of the Svensson brothers that you have some sort of scheme going to convince the old bat to sell.”

Oliver laughed. “You have that crazy goth artist girl wrapped around your little finger.”

I grabbed both of them by the collar. “Shut up,” I hissed at them,