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“Okay, this is awkward.”
Good, Nora.Lean into him – oops no, lean intoit.Acknowledge that elephant in the room.
“Kind of like the time the Kiss Cam landed on me at a ball game…” He paused for effect. “…next to my sister’s wife.”
Okay, maybe the elephant in the room was the fact that she hadn’t kissed or been kissed since Q3 of last year. And this guy was making her laugh – whichwasher Kryptonite. Her weakness – and a huge turn-on.
“And what exactly does kissing on demand have to do with Christmas?” she added under her breath, more for Beck’s benefit.
“I don’t think we can question their customs...considering we dip our pinkies in wine to ward off plagues and open doors for invisible prophets,” he murmured, close to her ear. “Not to mention throw perfectly good bread into the river forTashlich.”
She loved that he had just referenced one of her favorite, more obscure parts of Rosh Hashanah, and had to admit…it felt good to be able to joke with someone at work who understood.
Yetworkwas the last place she wanted to let her guard down.
And this guy, dimple or not, was on the payroll with her.
ChapterTwo
Itchy palms meant you were coming into money…at least that’s what Alex’s grandmother always said. That plusItchy nose, Alexi…kiss a fool.All Alex knew was his hands had just been somewhere precious and now they weren’t. That bombshell dress could’ve been a potato sack of burlap compared to the silky underside of her arm where he’d caught her. Cool to the touch, yet his palms burned.
And had he been a total fool not to just embrace the holiday spirit and kiss her when he’d had the chance?
No, he was here on official work business – not to canoodle in the name of the infant baby Jesus. And Nora seemed to want to stay all business as well. Despite her conspiratorial good nature under that sprig of mistletoe…she’d stepped away just as quick.
Nora…Nora Ruben…Her name sounded familiar. He tried to place it from any of the company emails, spreadsheets and mountains of Britesmith paperwork he’d been buried in over the past week. When his uncle had tasked him with this mission, the New York 54 had been just that…a number. A number he had to reduce by half, by year’s end.
His grandfather had had big plans for the acquisition in New York; in fact, it had been the only thing lighting up his eyes for the past two years since losing his bride of sixty-eight happy ones. Myers and Sons, the family-owned food service and hospitality company, had chugged steadily along as a Midwest stalwart, making earnest livings for eight decades and three generations of Myers. “Not bad for a kid from the old neighborhood, selling his dad’s peanuts at the ballgames,” was his favorite way to end every story told to his grandson. Along with: “And someday, this can all be yours.”
Canand notwill– at least Grandpa My had left the door open for choice. His grandpa had been the last of “Sons” in the original Myers and Sons, and the one mainly responsible for diversifying the company’s interests, from ballpark concessions to movie theaters to hotels. And now, with his New York vision realized, they had officially added Broadway and other entertainment landmarks throughout the city to their roster.
Too bad he hadn’t lived long enough to see it.
“So. Beck…”
Her melodious voice brought him back to the here and now. He didn’t mind Nora using his nickname one bit.
“First Manhattan officeholidayparty?”
Melodious…yet wry, hinting and humorous. Her tone channeled what he could only imagine were years of calculated nonchalance about being called out as “the other.”
He was no stranger to that. Not at work, mind you. Myers and Sons probably employed half the Jewish population of Des Moines. But growing up in the Midwest, much less Iowa? He’d been “othered” more times than he cared to count.
“What gave me away? I’ll have you know I can ugly sweater with the best of them.”
The way her dark eyes keenly appraised him revved a motor he swore had left him in the dust at the side of some gravel road years ago. But it was her laugh that truly did him in. Starting as an uninhibited burst and dwindling down to a throaty chuckle; it was dead sexy like the rest of her.
Who was this creature? He certainly had not expected her among the New York 54. He wanted to keep making her do that, indefinitely.
“You didn’t get the memo about the mandatory red and green? It usually goes out the day after Thanksgiving.”
“My assistant must’ve been slacking that day. Yours?”
“Mine is…oh my God.”
Alex followed her gaze toward Santa, who had shed his red fur coat and the lap ladies in favor of dirty dancing in his tight A-shirt with a burly, bearded elf who was at least a head taller.
“Lumberjack Herbie or Six-Pack Santa?”
