A Very Bossy Christmas - Kayley Loring Page 0,22
body temperature and flood of hormones and emotions and bodily fluids triggered by seeing Declan Cannavale standing there in the arrivals concourse. He’s holding up a hand-written airport pickup sign that says WELCOME TO C-TOWN, COOPER. GET YOUR ASS IN THE CAR—NOW!
His lopsided grin is infuriating, his day-old scruff is mouthwatering, his suit and coat are elegant, and the slow journey his eyes are making from my bunhead down to the toes of my shiny high-heeled boots is agonizing. My ass is saying “Yes sir!” and I don’t trust my mouth to say anything appropriate, so I keep it shut and just let him finish his extravagant visual sweep of my impossibly tight sweater dress.
I feel naked right now and he knows it, and it makes me want to slap him. And it makes me want to strip him naked and oil us both up so I can slide all over him or something. But I also don’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right about me being attracted to him.
It’s complicated.
“Took you long enough to disembark” is what he grumbles when he’s finally done eye-banging me.
“I had to help a little old lady find her connecting flight,” I tell him.
“Well, you didn’t have to.” There’s a glint in his tea brown eyes—an evil sexy Christmas elf glint—as he reaches for my overnight bag. I allow him to take it from me, and the touch of his fingers on my shoulder sends tingles all the way down to my south pole. “Come on. Driver’s waiting for us. Thanks for ordering a stretch limo, by the way. Baller move.”
“Well, I just want to travel in the manner to which I have grown accustomed.”
“Uh-huh.”
Okay, so I haven’t been in a stretch limo since prom, and I wanted to make my boss pay for one. I regret nothing. In particular, I do not regret ordering the white stretch limo with neon pink interior strip lighting and complimentary bottle of mediocre champagne because I knew how much he’d hate it. And he does! But it’s not stopping him from knocking back the bubbly.
I’m sitting as far away from him as possible, in a seat that faces the bar and the small monitor. The TV screen currently features A Christmas Story. It’s one of my favorite holiday movies, and it offers a very timely reminder of why I should never lick a frozen pole. Especially when it’s attached to my boss.
He hasn’t said a word to me since we climbed inside this monstrosity fifteen long minutes ago. He’s just been typing on his laptop and occasionally glancing up at me to make sure that I’m as uncomfortable as he clearly wants me to be. But I’m not uncomfortable. I’m having a ring-a-ling-a-ding-dong-ding blast of a limo ride, and I’m not going to let him ruin it for me just because he’s being a boring naughty-list-sack-of-coal.
“Aren’t you even a little bit happy to be home?” I ask while staring at the TV monitor.
“I am a little bit happy to be home. Can’t you tell?”
I turn to look at him and find him exactly as stone-faced as he was before.
“I wonder if your family is excited to see you. Do they all hate you too?”
“The word ‘too’ would imply that someone else hates me, Cooper. No one hates me. I mean, that old lady who was crossing the street that time hated me, but that was a misunderstanding. And that guy who threw his coffee at my car hated me, but he was just being a dick.”
“Who? What are you talking about?”
“Irrelevant. In general, and in all ways that matter, I’m a nonstop fucking delight.”
I purse my lips and turn my attention back to Ralphie and his family.
“You don’t hate me, Coop. You hate how much you like me. Big difference.”
“Not really.”
“You’ll see.”
I shake my head, looking out the window in front of me, because I can’t even with him right now. “So tell me about them.”
“Who?”
“Your family. The people I will be meeting and lying to tomorrow.”
“Right. We need to get our backstory straight.” I can hear him grinning. “The most believable lies are always the ones that are mostly true. Which is why I think we should just say it was love at first sight. As soon as you met me.”
Eye roll.
“I was professional. I resisted you for a solid week. But you pursued me in subtle yet irresistible ways, and I succumbed. I discussed and cleared the relationship with Shapiro and HR.