Chapter 19: Santa’s Baby: Chapter 18

It’s been years since I’ve been excited to pull into my own driveway. I take the bouquet of roses and orchids from the passenger seat, smiling to myself as I grab the can of squirty cream. My heart is thumping as I put my key in the lock. I resist the urge to shout honey, I’m home! as I step inside, although that’s how I’m feeling.

This house feels like home again.

Or so I think until I find the gorgeous Tiffany sitting at the breakfast bar with a stare like thunder. Her eyes are red, and she swipes a fresh tear from her cheek as she glares at me.

“Why did you do it?! What’s going on?!” she shouts, and my heart sinks as I hear the crack in her voice.

I lay the flowers down on the counter and place the can of cream by their side.

“What do you mean, what’s going on? Has something happened?”

She holds up her phone, even though the screen is blank, and the pieces slot into place as she jabs a finger at it.

“Don’t play dumb. You cancelled my bookings! I had Orla on my case about it, asking why, and I had nothing to tell her, since I didn’t do it. YOU did, didn’t you?”

Shit. I hold up my hands.

“There is nothing to worry about, Tiff. Let me explain.”

“Nothing to worry about?!” She wipes away another tear. “I’ve been shitting myself, Reuben. Absolutely fucking shitting myself!”

I approach calmly, battling the urge to grab her and hold her tight.

“You can reinstate your bookings if you want to. Every single one of them. You won’t have lost any revenue, I assure you. There will be no comeuppance from Orla or the team.” I pause on the other side of the breakfast bar, swallowing as she tosses her phone on the counter and puts her hands over her face to hide her tears.

“Why did you do it? It could have pissed everyone off so bad, I’d lose my job.”

“Yes, it could, but it wouldn’t have. I’d have taken the fall myself, if I needed to.”

She stares at me in disbelief. “Why would you do that?! You’d be breaking worse rules than I would! It’s fucking insane!”

She has me on that. It is fucking insane.

“May I?” I ask and point to the breakfast stool at her side. She nods, but pulls hers away to create some distance between us. It hurts, because that’s the last thing I want. I take a breath.

Trying to get my words in order while my thoughts are scattered all over the place is quite a task, so I take my time. She lets me, her breaths hitching as her eyes burn mine.

“I apologise wholeheartedly for interfering with your calendar. I should have asked you first,” I say, and the red-haired goddess rolls her eyes.

“No shit, Sherlock. No wonder you’re the owner of an empire. Your IQ is off the scale.”

Even now, I love her dark humour. The cheekiness of her mouth, even in her pain. She folds her arms.

“So, why?” she asks. “Spit it out, Reuben. What’s going on?”

I offer the truth.

“I don’t know.”

She raises her eyebrows. “You don’t know? What do you mean you don’t know? You postponed every one of my bookings click after click, then blanked the notifications.”

“Yes, I did, and I shouldn’t have. Not without asking you first.”

“I was so fucking scared. I thought Orla was going to go ballistic, and call me out, or cancel my account. And then what? I’d just be Tiffany, a girl living in a tower with no fucking job.”

“As I said, that would never happen. I’d have admitted my actions and taken the fall myself.”

“But WHY? What the fuck?!”

She flails her hands in the air as though I’ve lost the plot, and the sight of her, frazzled and barely covered by my night robe only stokes my insanity. In a moment of madness I reach out and take her hands in mine.

“Because I HAD to. I couldn’t bear the thought of you being with anyone else. That night, at the club, when I heard you getting fucked like a slut behind those bins, I wanted to burst in and push him the fuck off you. Because I wanted you! ME! Not HIM! And ever since then, since our first proposal together, it’s all I can think about.” She’s wide eyed as I take a breath. “I didn’t get a wink of fucking sleep knowing you were at the glory wall, on your knees being taken by a load of clients who don’t mean a fucking thing. So I lost my mind, ok? I called up your calendar and put in a proposal of my own, and then I abused my authority. I used my founder login to postpone everything else I could, right the way up until Christmas. Because I wanted to. That’s why.”

“Wanted to or needed to?”

“You already know the answer to that, Tiffany. You said it yourself in the bathroom.”

“I want to hear you say it for yourself.”

The fire in her eyes has dimmed to glowing embers. The tension in the air is so stifling I can barely speak.

“Needed to,” I tell her. “I needed to. And so fucking help me, if I was back in that moment, staring at your jam-packed calendar with my heart in my hands, I’d do it all over again.”

I feel like a defendant awaiting a verdict. Vulnerable in ways I haven’t felt since Jeanette left me, my heart on the floor, exposed, with the potential to get trampled to shit.

“You should have told me,” she says.

“I agree, yes, I should have. Or more specifically, I should have asked you. I can only offer an apology and assure you it won’t happen again.”

She looks up at the ceiling. “We’re both going mental.”

“No doubt about that, but as I said earlier, it feels like we’re two very different peas in the same pod. And so help me, I love it. I haven’t felt this way in years.”

I let my words sink in, her hands still in mine. She blinks and more tears fall. Her bottom lip trembles.

“This could fuck us both up so bad.”

“I know.”

“Why me?” she asks. “You must have been with hundreds of women. You’re a founder, and a businessman, with years under your belt to find someone perfect, so why me?”

“Because my idea of perfect doesn’t come along all that often, Tiffany. The only taste of what I thought was perfect was an ex-wife who didn’t want my perfect in return, and walked away.”

Her eyes slam into mine.

“She left you?”

“Yes, she left me. Differences, arguments, growing apart. Irreconcilable. That’s how the divorce papers term it.”

“Did you want her to leave?”

I hate talking about Jeanette. I usually avoid it at all costs.

“Yes, and no. No at the time. I was a wreck. Later, I felt it was for the best. Good riddance, I’d tell myself. Then slowly, the loneliness crept in. It’s easy to ignore it when you’re busy. Work and charity, the Agency. All good reasons to forget that you’re coming home to an empty house and bed every night. Christmas is always hard. I do the grotto to ease my own pain as well as give people joy. And then you walked in.”

She smiles. “Walked in and plonked my butt on your lap.”

“Indeed. It wasn’t your butt that turned me into a madman though, it was your face. Your smile, your eyes, the way you raise your eyebrows when you laugh.”

The goddess takes her hands from mine and points a finger at her watery eyes. “Looks great right now, yeah?”

“You will always look beautiful to me, Tiffany.”

“Yeah, well, like you said, we must be two very different peas in the same pod.”

I dare to smile. “Am I forgiven? I assure you, I won’t do it again.” I push her phone towards her. “Please, cancel the postponements, if that’s what you want.”

“And what if I don’t want to?”

“Then I will compensate you for all of them.”

“With proposals, or just cash?”

I lock my eyes with hers. “Whichever you want. Just forgive me, Tiffany. Please.”

She looks at her phone, but doesn’t take it. She sighs, and rubs her eyes on the cuffs of my robe.

“How about neither?”

“Neither?”

“Yeah, neither. I don’t need the cash, Reuben. You’ve stalked my account enough to know that. I’ve got plenty stashed away. I don’t need to be paid, and you don’t need to book me up with proposals. So let’s just…”

“Let’s just what?”

She shrugs. “Do what we need to. Hang out together because we want to, fuck because we want to. Be around each other like normal people.”

I have to laugh at that. “Normal people? That’s an interesting phrase.”

It’s a relief to hear her laugh along with mine. “Yeah, alright, maybe not normal people.” She takes my hand. “Be around each other like us. Just us. Reuben and Tiffany with no bullshit.”

I pull her into me, fuck the distance. I hold her like she’s a jewel, brushing her hair away so I can press my mouth to her ear.

“That’s exactly what I need, Tiffany.”

She relaxes in my arms. “Same. I’m getting used to being Tiffany, you know? I’m kinda liking it.”

“I’m getting used to being alive again. I didn’t know how dead I was until you lit up the grotto.” I smile against her cheek. “You could say I’m kinda liking it, too.”

The scarlet haired beauty pulls away again, tears drying. “So, what’s the deal? We’re gonna be Christmas sweethearts, are we? Have a happy holidays and go from there?”

“That sounds excellent to me. I can cook a really good turkey, you know. I just haven’t had the motivation for quite some time.”

“I can eat a really good turkey, you know. Can you do Yorkshire puddings with it? And mashed potato?”

“Carrot, peas, parsnips.”

“Roasters.”

“Cranberry sauce.”

“Gravy.”

“Christmas pudding for afters.”

“Twenty-seven boxes of festive biscuits.”

I chuckle. “At least.”

Her gaze turns serious. “Don’t you have anyone you usually spend Christmas with?”

I shrug. “Charities mainly.”

“What about family?”

“No. Unfortunately not. Jeanette took a lot of that with her. You stay in contact for a while, but it grows more distant.” I look her in the eyes. “How about you?”

“Nope. My stepdad is a douche, and Mum gets on my tits. I’m usually with Josh, but he’s with Ells now. His family are cool, but with them being together it’s different. I don’t want to be a third wheel.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t be.”

“No, they’d say not, and they’d mean it, but…” Her words trail off and I sense a wall there. A gate closing on the conversation. She looks over at the flowers on the counter instead. “They for me?”

“They are, yes. Didn’t quite get the grand entrance of romance I was intending. I’m sorry about that.”

She gets up from the barstool and walks over to them. The fabric of my robe is tight across her ass, highlighting her hourglass curves. She grins as she picks them up and sees the beauty of the flowers. The roses are bright red, like her hair.

“Thanks.”

“Take them as an apology bouquet rather than a romantic one.”

She laughs. “Nah, I prefer them as romance. Apology is already accepted anyway. I’ve chilled out a bit now I know I’m not about to be kicked out of the Agency.”

I sit and face her, soaking her in as she plays with some of the petals.

“Let me ask you something, Tiffany.”

Her stare shoots across at me, wary. Yes, there is definitely a closed gate in there somewhere.

“What?”

“If the roles had been reversed, and you’d been the one with my booked up calendar in front of you, would you have done the same thing I did?”

Her cheeks flush red. “I, uh. Would have been tempted, yeah.”

“Tempted, or overcome with insanity?”

She cracks a smile. “I was the one who stalked you to the grotto, remember? My strictly anonymous boss, dressed up playing Santa, and I stood and watched you like a soppy teenager. I’d say that’s a symptom of insanity, wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“Definitely.” She puts the flowers down. “Talking of which, there’s one proposal you left in there. The founders. Why?”

My gut churns at the thought.

“Because I don’t have the power to postpone it. I’m only one of a faction. My stake is five percent.”

She nods. “Ok, so what are we going to do about it? I’ll have to play really fucking dumb when I’m hooded. I’ll know exactly who you are.”

I don’t back down with the honesty.

“I don’t know,” I tell her. “If the other stakeholders find out, it’s going to cause havoc.”

“Yeah, I figured. For both of us.” She fluffs her hair up, giving a flash of Creamgirl. “I’ll manage it. I’ll play the game, don’t worry.”

Only that’s not what I’m worried about.

The thought of sharing her with Bry and the gang seems horrifying. I’ve been avoiding the group thread all day. But that’s not a concern for now, and it’s one for me to come to terms with, not her. She’s grinning as she picks up the squirty cream.

“This for me as well? Gonna make me a hot chocolate, are you?” She lets the robe drop open, displaying her gorgeous tits, and the mood changes. The power of need takes a different direction as she teases her nipples. “How about we have a sample first, Mr Sinclair?”

I’m already walking over to her as she shakes the can and sprays cream all over her tits, but it’s not her tits I’m interested in right now.

I take the can as I pin her to the counter.

“Open your mouth,” I say, and she does as she’s told, parting those gorgeous lips nice and wide. “Don’t swallow,” I tell her as I fill her mouth up with cream in a sugary explosion.

And then I kiss her.

I taste that sugary cream straight from her tongue, sucking it from her mouth before my tongue dances with hers. She moans along with me, grinding against me as I kiss her with desperate, wet need.

“Look at you,” she says when we stop for air, her face and tits a wonderful creamy mess.

My tie and shirt and suit jacket are smeared with the stuff, so is my beard.

She swipes a finger across my beard and licks it. “You look like the cat that got the cream.”

I’m grinning like the proverbial cat when she threads her fingers through my hair and pulls me in for another kiss. A slow, languorous kiss that has my cock swelling against her belly.

Just like I’ve been dreaming of all fucking day.