isPc
isPad
isPhone
Christmas Kisses 17. Christian 65%
Library Sign in

17. Christian

17

CHRISTIAN

A ngel sighs when my brows furrow while staring at my reflection for the umpteenth time this morning. I thought platinum blond made me look washed out. It has nothing on the brown goop covering my head now. It could be because my cheeks are inflamed, but I’m skeptical.

Personal space isn’t a given when you visit a barber. Angel popped the invisible bubble over an hour ago. I’m not complaining. I had no qualms about invading her space last night when her pained sob reached the living room. I just wish my cock would remember how horrifically she berated him. Then perhaps I wouldn’t look like a fool with no control over his dick.

I could cut him some slack. He did a remarkable job acting disinterested last night. He didn’t poke Angel’s ass until she awoke with a stretch a little after 8 a.m. He’s merely enduring the brunt of my annoyance since nothing could deflate his eagerness last night but a quick hand job.

Yes, I stroked my cock last night after sulking to the bathroom.

Yes, Angel’s beautiful face and tasty lips featured the entire time.

No, we’re not going to discuss how fucked in the head that makes me.

Another sigh parts Angel’s plump lips when our eyes collide in the mirror and she notices the concern in mine. “If you don’t want bright-pink hair, we have to go brown before turning it back to red. Every true redhead knows this.”

When I remain quiet, still skeptical, she spins around the swivel chair we loaned from under the kitchen island.

Once I am no longer facing the vanity mirror, she continues placing the last of the dye in my hair. She’s either worked as a hairdresser in a prior life or changes her hair coloring regularly, because she parts my hair in sections like Nina’s hairdresser did during her numerous weekly appointments.

Nina is my ex. During our six-month courtship, she visited the local salon as often as she did the primary suite of my best friend’s penthouse.

This is one of the many downfalls of taking the honesty route. You share too much, and within hours, you go from whining about your ex to stroking your cock in a once-stranger’s shower.

“Did I get it in your eye?” Angel asks, mistaking my sigh as painful.

I shake my head. My sigh was painful, just more in a mental sense than physical.

Although she is checking that I am okay, Angel continues badgering me. It seems to be her go-to coping mechanism when she’s snowed under with emotions—that and silence. “I won’t need to dye your brows if you’ll sit still for two seconds. You’re squirming like a fifth grader.”

I’m squirming because even on a stool, I tower over her, meaning the nipples I was seconds from tasting last night before she stomped on the brakes scratch my arm and chest with every stroke of the dye’s brush.

I’ve been hard for the past hour, and my dick isn’t as appreciative of the brutal bite of my zipper as my astute head was last night when I slipped between her sheets. It wants to use her perky tits and sweet-smelling pussy as inspiration again. Except this time, I’m going to imagine her riding me from above instead of the reverse cowgirl position my deviant head put her in last night.

“Here. Use my hips as an anchor.” The situation in my jeans worsens when Angel grabs my hands and places them on her hips before she straddles my thigh. Unlike my wicked thoughts in the shower last night, she’s wearing panties. I can still feel the heat of her pussy, though. “I’d offer to get you a dining room chair, but they’re also armless, so you’ll still flap around like a fish on a hook.”

I try to keep the wagon on the trail by using her analogy as a conversation opener. “You don’t seem like the type to fish.”

She half scoffs, half pffts , fanning my face with her coffee breath. We shared breakfast this morning like nothing happened last night—neither her brutal ego slaying nor her nightmare—and then we entered the bathroom for a joint operation to return my hair to its pre-peroxide days. “I wasn’t given much choice when I was a child. My father was obsessed with fishing. Anywhere he went, I went.”

With all the blood in my body still surging to my dick, my tact slips down a slippery slope. “Was?”

Angel stills for the quickest second before she sections off the last part of my hair while striving to act like her heart isn’t breaking. “Yeah. He passed away three years ago.”

Before I can summon a single sympathy, she dumps the empty dye bowl into the sink and squirms out of my hold. “Let it set for fifteen minutes, and then wash it out with cool water.”

“Angel,” I shout, endeavoring to lessen her brisk steps out of the bathroom, desperate for answers to the riddles she constantly bombards me with.

“Cold water, Christian. Hot will strip the coloring agents before they’ve set.”

She races out before I can get another word out, forcing the task onto Tahlia.

I previously said I didn’t want to read about Angel’s past in a report, but I am running out of time. When I purchased a tree from a lot forty miles from Ravenshoe, I had no clue that they’d send her family’s tree. It is on the verge of dying. If my intuition is right, that will hurt Angel more than my attempt to evict her from her home.

“Oh god…”

My eyes shoot to the partially open bathroom door before I reply to Tahlia’s faint whisper, “What?”

Her swallow to lube her throat is audible. “Do you remember that accident three Christmases ago that was broadcast across the globe because it claimed thirteen lives on Christmas Day?” She must hear my nod. “Angel’s parents were a part of the pileup, except no one knew of their involvement for two days because their car went over the ravine where the guardrail had been compromised in an earlier accident.”

“Jesus Christ.” I swallow, settling my stomach. “So she was?—”

“Alone over Christmas and unaware that they’d been involved in an accident.” A keyboard being clicked sounds down the line. “It gets worse. An online article printed days after the accident stated that Angel, Mr. and Mrs. McClymont’s only child, usually came home every Christmas, but since she had been cast as the lead in a Broadway Musical, she delayed her return until Christmas Day.” My stomach drops when she says, “Her parents didn’t know she had booked a red eye for Christmas Eve. They’d planned to surprise her in New York. That’s why they were on the freeway.” Her sigh rustles down the line. “The exact freeway Angel traveled down only hours later since she had missed her flight.”

“How did she miss her flight?”

I can think of a hundred ways. Not a single one matches Tahlia’s reply. “She was trapped in an elevator for over five hours.” I cuss when she says, “Like that wasn’t bad enough, the same song played on repeat the entire time. I’ll…”

“Be Home for Christmas,” we say at the same time.

I take a moment to sort through the facts. It is an extremely long thirty seconds that offers little solutions. “Now we know why Angel loathes Christmas and how this time of the year is difficult for her?—”

“Which you worsened by commencing your extraction operation only four days out from the big event.”

I grunt in agreement. “In my defense, at the time, I thought the benefits would outweigh the negatives.”

“Do you feel differently now?”

“Very much so,” I reply without thought. “I was an idiot.”

I feel even guiltier now than I did when my contact at the tenancy agency announced Angel’s parents had lived in this building almost a decade before they brought their only child home from the hospital.

This isn’t just a rental property to Angel.

It is her home.

“Is there anything in the search that could help with this case?”

I’m not asking for Mrs. Richler or myself. I am asking for Angel and the neighbors she’s been trying to help for as long as she’s been struggling to get a grip on her grief.

Mrs. Richler is sly and underhanded, but her reasoning behind wanting Angel removed from the tenancy ledger of this building is valid. She doesn’t have a lease, which means she doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

If the inquiries I made into this building didn’t see the sale of Angel’s apartment fall through, I would have kept her on as a tenant, but my deposit was returned to my account yesterday morning.

Furthermore, Angel isn’t solely fighting for her right to stay in the only place she has ever called home. The bill for her legal fight is in the tens of thousands, but only two thousand is billed under Angel’s name. The rest are for the elderly tenants who can’t afford to fight a billion-dollar corporation.

I went out on a limb to get answers, and the branch snapped in my face.

Now I’m left scrounging to make out I’m not the villain of this story.

Several clicks sound before Tahlia says, “No. They more focus on how Angel never returned to Broadway and the handful of at-home positions she’s held over the past three years to keep her head above water.”

“At-home positions because she’s afraid she will be evicted if she leaves.”

Tahlia hums as if I was asking a question. I wasn’t. “Her titles include an Airbnb host, an at-home daycare service provider, a nail technician, and…”—an unexpected amused huff sounds—“an adult toy distribution clerk.” This swallow is different from the one she did earlier. “Holy hell. Can women fit something of that size in their—” A cough ends her reply, and a mouse click restarts it. “Oh, poo. They’re sold out.” Her voice perks back up. “If she gets the Hulk back in stock before she’s homeless, let her know I’m interested. “

I sidestep the brutal jab her homeless comment hits my chest with by focusing my attention on the less painful part of her reply. “The Hulk?”

“It’s ah… Umm… A huge flesh-like member?—”

I cut her off before my cock gets permanently scarred. “Oh, the Hulk.” I shake my head to rid it of the thoughts I never wish for it to have again. “Got it.”

Tahlia giggles. I’m glad she’s amused. I am far from it. With the sale falling through, Mrs. Richler slipped a notice to vacate letter into the breakfast order I had delivered to Angel’s apartment this morning.

She is still clueless that I was the intended purchaser of the apartment she is selling. She thinks I work for Jimmy because I wanted her to believe that. I didn’t want her to jib Jimmy on the five-figure invoice a job like this warrants. He is weeks away from being a family man. He needs all the coin he can get.

I tune back into my call with Tahlia in the nick of time. “I’ll keep looking and update you on anything I find.”

When I notice a shadow approaching the open bathroom door, I say, “I’ve got it.”

“Are you sure?” Tahlia asks, shocked.

“Yep. It’s two days until Christmas. Go enjoy it with your fiancé.”

“Fiancé? I don’t have a fiancé.”

I disconnect our call before Angel can hear her reply. She isn’t lingering outside the bathroom door because she believes offering her guests privacy will see them coming back time and time again. She’s riled with jealousy. How do I know this? I experienced the same thing while reading the host reviews on her Airbnb advert.

Every glowing review was from a male in the twenty-five- to thirty-six-year bracket, and all of them voiced how they couldn’t wait for a second serving of “Angel’s accommodating hostess skills.”

I would have sworn I’d stumbled on to her Tinder account if she hadn’t replied to numerous reviews saying she had recently moved into a one-bedroom apartment but that she couldn’t work out how to remove the listing from the site. I could only book after spinning the year field of my date of birth like a contestant on The Price is Right .

I twist on the faucet when Angel remains outside the bathroom and direct it to hot.

Within seconds, the bathroom fills with fog, my ploy full steam ahead.

“I said to rinse with cool water,” shouts a voice from the hallway.

I let my smile free before suffocating it. “I can’t do cold. Bright-pink hair and shrinkage…” I huff . “My ego will never recover.”

“I’m highly doubtful of that.” Angel mentally fights herself for ten seconds before she blurts out, “Even storing the hair dye in the freezer for an hour while we ate breakfast didn’t calm the beast. I thought I was going to have to take pole vaulting lessons to dye your cowlick.” As quickly as my peacock feathers rise, the entirety of my statement smacks into her. “Your hair turned pink?”

She bursts into the bathroom before I can answer her.

The fret on her face clears away for annoyance when she spots my perfectly smooth light-brown locks.

“You’re an asshole.”

I smirk as if I’m suddenly obsessed with the degradation kink. If the pulse between my legs is anything to go by, I am.

“I could have sworn you said something about a scalp massage being a part of the terms we negotiated this morning?”

She steps closer, her hips swinging, her smile flirty. “I said it would have been a part of the package if you had gone to the salon three blocks over.” She thrusts me back onto the stool, returning my line of sight to her fantastic tits. “You were too cheap for that.”

I let it slide that I have enough money to put in an offer to buy her apartment with cash, when she guides me back until my nape butts with the edge of the sink. None of the apartments in her building are for sale, so money isn’t the solution for her dilemma.

It isn’t all bad. I get to take in every detail of her beautiful face from this angle, and regretfully, the sadness in her eyes.

She’s not quite ready to let go of her grief yet, so I steer her focus to another emotion she handles just as poorly—her empathy bone.

“Did Mrs. Roach say if a Santa suit will be supplied for the part I was volunteered for?” When Angel peers down at me with a crinkle between her blonde brows, I say, “An armored suit will never make it through customs in time, and I’m too cheap to buy a suit that will need dry cleaning after only one wear.”

A hint of a smile graces her lips. “She may have mentioned something about a suit. However, you may need to pack a pillow or two. Mr. Roach didn’t just fit the suit the last twelve years. He stretched it as well.”

I don’t need to ask why Mr. Roach isn’t filling the role this year. The grief in Angel’s eyes tells me everything I need to know.

“So underwear isn’t optional. Got it.”

Now I get the smile I’m seeking.

Chapter List
Display Options
Background
Size
A-