Miss Claus and the Millionaire by Wendy Dalrymple

Author:Wendy Dalrymple
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wendy Dalrymple
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

“Hello, Tom? Can you get ahold of Luke for me? I have some amazing news.”

Nicole could barely wait to call her volunteer supervisor as she flew up her flight of stairs. She had been bursting at the seams the whole ride home, stunned and excited all at once. The stack of gift cards burned a hole in her pocket, and she wanted to make sure they got into the hands of her kids and their parents ASAP.

“Okay, great, I’ll bring them to you tomorrow. Bye.”

Nicole smiled as she hung up, still buzzing from the high of the sudden windfall. It would have taken her years to get that much money together to give to her families all at once, and Roman had made it materialize in one afternoon. Nicole took one last appreciative look at the stack of gift cards, then secured the small fortune in her fire safe box and sat on her bed in a daze.

Six. Thousand. Dollars.

So far Roman had already proved that he wasn’t like her idea of the average business partner. He wasn’t like her idea of a potential romantic partner, for that matter. But this particular gesture was undeniably the nicest, most selfless thing that anyone had ever done for her in her whole life. The entire philosophy behind Miss Claus & Co. was to empower single parents to help give their children a happy holiday. Now, with this unexpected donation, twelve of her favorite families could provide something special for their kids this year.

Nicole wandered to her living room workshop and sat down at her desk, trying to muster up the inspiration to paint. It had been almost a week since Nicole had picked up a paintbrush and her custom matryoshka backlog was a mile long. She held a blank wooden doll in her hand and tried to motivate herself, but her mind kept drifting back to a certain marketing executive. Roman in the park. Roman on the float. Roman at the café. Roman. Roman. Roman. She could hardly think of anything else.

She glanced at her laptop screen one last time and finally admitted to herself that no work would be getting done that night. She minimized the worksheet with her long list of unfulfilled orders and shut the screen. Nicole was used to pushing herself to the limit and putting everything she had into her suddenly booming side business. But tonight, whether it was from the worry in her head or the turbulence in her heart, she just didn’t have the energy to be creative or productive.

With Talisha and Raquel both at work, Nicole resigned herself to an anxious evening spent alone. She popped some popcorn, made herself a cup of hot chocolate, put on a Christmas movie, and cocooned herself on the couch. She had an early shift at the craft store in the morning and then, hopefully, a decision from Ryzhov later that day on whether or not Miss Claus & Co. would be picked up, and for how much.

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