requested. They were happy to let me know they can accommodate both dates,” she said with a disapproving glance at the iPad in her hand.
The strippers!
He’d forgotten that after his call with Tom this morning, he’d tasked Janine with acquiring strippers for some bachelor entertainment. When he agreed to be Tom’s best man, and despite Tom telling him he and Lori had decided against the traditional bachelor-bachelorette parties, he took on the important job of planning a surprise event. Which, of course, needed to include scantily clad women. And he knew for a fact that Tom’s Uncle Russ would be on board.
He bit back a grin. “Look at that! Janine, you’re a gem. How many personal assistants out there could procure strippers in the middle of nowhere Colorado, on such short notice?”
She watched him from over her bifocals. “Are you sure that’s what Tom would want?”
He chewed the inside of his cheek. Tom didn’t know what he wanted, and it was his job to help his friend see exactly what was at stake.
Janine ignored his silence and plowed on.
“You’re scheduled to leave for Denver early in the morning on the twenty-fourth. I’ve notified the staff at Kringle Mountain House, and they’ve assured me that they’ll send a car for you. Then the wedding will take place that evening. And I have you flying out the next morning.”
He nodded when a flash of red grabbed his attention, and he caught a glimpse of a woman wrapped like a present in a slim-fitting ruby red pencil skirt.
“Is that my Christmas gift?” he asked with a teasing grin, checking out the redhead standing outside his office.
Janine balked. “It’s Mr. and Mrs. Angel. They’ve come with legal counsel. I told them they could have fifteen minutes with you.”
He crossed his arms. “Who are the Angels? Is this a Christmas joke, Janine?”
“They’re the people who own the Cupid Bakeries.”
“So, they’re the ones who have been wasting my money,” he answered, eyeing an older couple standing next to the curvy redhead.
The gentleman sported a white beard and was a dead ringer for Santa Claus, and his wife got in on the holiday action with a little red shawl. They looked like they’d just gotten off a shift at a holiday meet-and-greet at the mall.
“They’ve been calling all week, pleading for a time to meet with you,” Janine continued.
He cleared his throat. “I have people who deal with this sort of thing.”
“They asked for you, Soren. And look at them. They flew out here, hoping to speak with you. They told me that they built Cupid Bakery from the ground up. And it’s the holidays. A little goodwill toward men would do you good.”
A little goodwill with that redhead would do him good as well. The siren of an attorney looked up and caught his eye through the glass wall. Her gaze traveled lasciviously down his body.
A quick meeting didn’t sound so bad now.
“What do you say, Soren? Do you need me to brief you on the Cupid Bakery account?”
He crossed his arms. “Give me the basics.”
Janine tapped the screen. “Okay, Cupid Bakery was a mom and pop venture that made it big back in the late eighties. They’d expanded from selling cakes and cookies out of their kitchen in Vermont to opening shops all over New England. A few years after that, they had locations in every major city across the US. But they didn’t count on the big box retailers cutting into their profits. It seems that they hadn’t pivoted, hadn’t taken steps to brand themselves as a niche market.”
He nodded, remembering this account. Sure, he could have done a deep dive into making them profitable again. But that wasn’t his job. Quick and dirty. In and out. He wasn’t a career counseling center. Rudolph Holdings provided funding to companies in crisis. But the reality of any company choosing to take his money was laid out right there in the contract in black and white. If the profits didn’t roll in, the company was his to do as he pleased.
He sighed. “Fine, send them in.”
Janine nodded, then headed out the door to speak with the couple and their smokin’ hot attorney. Moments later, Mr. and Mrs. Angel entered his office, grinning ear to ear.
“Thank you for seeing us, Mr. Rudolph. I’m Ernie Angel, and this is my beautiful wife of sixty-two years, Agnes. And this young lady is Cindy Callahan. She’s a lawyer from Los Angeles,” the man said, shaking his hand.