Sawyer grinned. “Well since you asked so nicely, you can have me for Christmas.”
Ford groaned when he realized what he’d said. “I mean, what I meant to say was, I would love to have you celebrate Christmas with us.” Sawyer grinned as he saw Ford nod as if he was happy with the new phrasing. He realized he would enjoy seeing how flustered he could make his assistant before the holidays were over.
Things were definitely looking up.
3
Ford
Holy Fuck! Holy Fuck!
His walking wet dream was about to spend Christmas in his house. Not to mention the fact that his boss and dream baby daddy was about to realize he still lived with his parents.
Not that the man even looked at him that way. Like, why would he? He looked like someone who should be on some huge billboard in Times Square. Ford knew he wasn’t bad to look at, but compared to the men that he’d seen on… Okay, this line of thought wouldn’t lead him anywhere.
“Okay. Okay. So, you can come home with me,” Ford said, trying not to panic. His parents would have a field day with this. They’d been on him since he graduated to find a nice boy and settle down. He hoped they didn’t roll out the boyfriend red carpet for Sawyer, because then he would need the first ticket to the North Pole, or somewhere even farther away. Ford stood up and started gathering his things, he considered calling his mom to tell her they would be having a guest, but he knew that wasn’t necessary.
Since his parents had retired, they were generally always home except for the days when they had their clubs, or whatever it was they did when they left the house.
At least he knew the man would be comfortable. As he was packing up his things Ford started babbling. “We have a spare room with an en-suite. There’s uhhhh high-speed internet and uhhh, food…” Ford said, feeling stupid for starting the sentence with no landing point.
“Don’t worry about me, I’ve lived with less,” Sawyer said, grinning. He was standing at the exit to the trailer with his suitcase, briefcase, and garment bag while waiting for Ford to finish clearing his desk.
Ford wondered what he’d meant by “lived with less.” He knew Sawyer had graduated from Columbia, then Harvard, and had made his first million before he was twenty-five. So, when had he ever had to live with less?
Also, he had to admit he was surprised at how well Sawyer was taking the change in his plans. He’d expected some cursing and swearing. Instead, the man was teasing and laughing as though he didn’t suddenly have to stay in some stranger’s house instead of whatever lux place he would have likely stayed in if he was back in New York.
As he made his way to the exit, for some reason Ford felt the need to start babbling again. Lord help him on the ride to his family’s house. “I’m sure my family will love having you,” Ford said with forced joviality.
It’s not like there was any other choice, he couldn’t very well leave the man in the trailer with a sleeping bag and go home knowing he was there. His parents had raised him better than that. He comforted himself with the thought that Sawyer would likely spend the whole time in his room.
If the past few months were anything to go by, the man was the definition of a workaholic. He sometimes beat even Ford to the office.
Hey God, uhh, please make these next few days not suck. I’d really like to have a job in the new year… Oh, and please Lord, let my parents not embarrass me in front of my boss. Thanks in advance.
He thought about sending the same prayer to Santa, but figured he was dialed into the whole God network with the naughty and nice shtick he had going, so he didn’t have to say it twice. Plus, he’d been really nice this year, so he deserved a little love from the big guy—both of them.
They walked out of the trailer together, Ford stopped for a second to make sure the trailer was locked up for the holidays before making his way to his car. He was so glad his dad had insisted on putting the snow tires on earlier in the week because it was really coming down.
Ford put his gloved hands in the pockets of his coat and bent his head walking quickly to his car.
“I’m so sorry for the wait,” he apologized to Sawyer for not thinking to give him the car keys and making him wait outside in the freezing cold weather instead.
“Okay, you need to stop apologizing,” Sawyer said when he opened the trunk of the car. “You don’t control the weather. And if you keep apologizing to me the whole time it’s going to make for a sucky few days.”
Ford nodded. “Sorry, I mean... not sorry…” He took a deep breath, met Sawyer’s eyes, and saw amusement lurking there.
“We’ll work on it,” Sawyer said. Ford refused to speak before he made even more of a fool of himself. He was about to lift Sawyer’s suitcase into the trunk, but Sawyer beat him to it. “My momma raised a gentleman. I couldn’t have you lifting my suitcase,” Sawyer said, before looking up and down Ford’s body. It was probably his imagination, but Ford would swear he heard, “We wouldn’t want you hurting that delectable body,” as his boss put the suitcase in the trunk and closed it, before making his way to the passenger side.
It had to be his fucking imagination Ford decided as he opened his door and got into the car. He immediately pressed the button to start his car and turned the heat on high.
The moment Sawyer got into the car, it felt like the car had shrunk. The space felt small with the man’s shoulders brushing against his. As he moved his ungloved hands to the heater to get himself warm. Ford didn’t miss how the scent of Sawyer’s aftershave suddenly filled the space.
Ford had a thing for scents. He loved the way a man smelled. Whether it was the hint of sweat and musk clinging to his skin after a run, or the clean scent a man had after a shower, smelling like soap and natural fragrance. He also loved colognes and Sawyer was wearing one of his favorites, Chanel Bleu. It made Ford want to put his nose to one of Sawyer’s pulse points, perhaps his neck, and breathe in deeply.
Maybe from there, he could kiss his way down Sawyer’s neck. Now he was wondering if the man’s neck was sensitive. Ford imagined licking, nibbling Sawyer’s Adam's apple and making his way down, to what he imagined were washboard perfect abs.
He must have been lost in his fantasy until Sawyer nudged him, “Shall we?” he asked. “Or are we waiting for something?”
“No. No. We’re not… Let’s go home,” Ford said.
4
Sawyer
Home. Why did that word make him sad?
He knew Ford probably thought nothing of it, but his saying “let’s go home” had made Sawyer’s chest constrict a little bit.
He hadn’t had a home in a long time. Sure he had houses, his apartment in New York and the one in London too, but none of them could really be called home. They were just the places he went to crash in between meetings and his crazy hectic travel schedule.
He didn’t want to think about that because if he was being honest with himself, there was a little part of him that had breathed a sigh of relief when he realized he couldn’t leave Amber Falls. Sure, he’d wanted to spend Christmas with his godchildren, but a part of him felt like an interloper in Mark and Theresa’s perfect Christmas portrait. Not that they made him feel that way.
Nope, in fact, they made him feel like family, and not the kind of family that had you counting down to the day you would be leaving.
But still, he felt untethered. Not that he hadn’t been for almost half his life now. His mom had been a single mother after the guy who’d knocked her up bailed on her, and her parents had kicked her out for not getting rid of him before then.
His mom had been the best mom ever. She’d worked two jobs most of the time to keep their heads above water, but she’d always been there to help with homework and tuck him into bed before she left for her night job at the twenty-four-hour diner after spending the day as a receptionist.
She had always told him he could be whatever he wanted to be and that he should never limit himself, but that he needed to work smart and hard if he e
ver wanted to be somebody. She’d always had dreams of him becoming a doctor or a lawyer, but she’d never forced her dreams on him. Instead, she’d told him to pursue his passion.
And Sawyer had listened. The day he’d gotten an acceptance letter from Columbia, they’d celebrated together. His mom would have carried a framed copy of his acceptance letter in her purse if he’d allowed her.
It had completely devastated him when in his first year, a couple of days before he went home for Christmas, his mom died suddenly of an undiagnosed aneurysm.
In one second the most important person in his life was just gone. She never got to see him amount to anything. She never saw him graduate or get his MBA.
She never saw him buy his first apartment block, even though it wouldn’t have been possible without the money from her life insurance policy, which had been a sum he couldn’t even believe when he’d been told.
Apparently, his mom had given up a lot, sometimes they had been barely scraping by on rent, but she had never missed a payment for her life insurance. The lawyer, one he didn’t even know she had, told him she’d wanted to make sure he was okay if anything was to happen to her.
He’d used the money from her insurance policy to get a loan to buy some rundown apartments in an up-and-coming neighborhood not far from where he’d grown up in New York. He’d moved in and slowly started doing the renovations himself when he wasn’t in class. He’d brought people in to do the major stuff, like electricity and plumbing, but all the other stuff he’d done himself. Sometimes he’d hired undocumented, cheap labor he’d found outside the Home Depot—much to his shame—but he hadn’t been able to afford to do otherwise back in those days.
That was how he’d flipped the building when gentrification had swept the neighborhood for a song. He’d used the same model in a few more places, and before he’d even graduated, he’d made his first couple million.
He shook himself out of the memory and decided to focus on the here and now. He looked over to the driver’s side and took in his assistant’s beautiful profile. Where Sawyer was broad and muscular, Ford was lithe and with lean muscles—all graceful lines and delicate features. The man was his opposite in every way. Where Sawyer was dark, Ford was light with his blond hair and paler skin tone. Sawyer had dark hair and a year-round tan he probably gotten from the other contributor to his DNA because his mom had been all blonde hair and huge doe eyes. His eyes, on the other hand, were pearl gray, or so he’d been told. He just thought they were gray. Ford’s eyes were the clearest blue he’d ever seen in his life. They were the same shade as the water at one of his favorite holiday and work destinations, the Maldives. Maybe he could take Ford there and he could compare the color to see how close they really were.
He couldn’t help but snort inwardly. When did he start waxing poetic about stuff like that?
He so didn’t have to go that far if all he wanted to do was get into Ford’s pants. Whisking him away to some exotic location probably wasn’t required. But you want to, his traitorous mind insisted. Instead of looking too closely at the thought, Sawyer decided to get to know his assistant outside of work since they would be spending time together. “So, do you have any siblings?” Sawyer asked.
Ford took his eyes off the road for a second and glanced at him. “Nope, only me. I was a late-in-life surprise for my parents after they’d given up trying,” Ford replied.
“I should have mentioned this before,” Ford said, glancing at him quickly, before focusing back on the road. “I sorta live with my parents. Temporarily, of course,” Ford shared, then bit into his lip and started a tapping motion on the steering wheel, giving away his anxiety as if he expected Sawyer to judge him for it.
“You’re what, twenty-five? It makes sense you’d be living at home still, especially if you just finished college.”
“Twenty-three actually,” Ford said.
Holy fuck. Ford was young. Fucking young. Shit. He was younger than anyone he’d dated in a while. He generally went for people closer to his own age. People who knew he wasn’t in it for a relationship.
“That is young enough to still live at home,” Sawyer said. “I just hope your parents won’t mind having me stay over the holidays.”
“Trust me, they won’t mind,” Ford replied, and muttered something under his breath Sawyer didn’t quite catch.
“I’ll be the perfect house guest,” Sawyer promised. “I will admit though, this is my first go at meet the parents. Hope it works out better for me than it did for Ben Stiller,” he joked to break the tension.
But for some reason that only seemed to make Ford strangle the steering wheel even more. The guy was acting more high-strung than he’d seen since they’d started working together. He decided to be quiet for the rest of the ride before Ford had a panic attack. He got that he was the boss, but still…
Well, if worse came to worst and he felt like he was an intruder, he could always bury himself in work. He had multiple projects he could sink his teeth into, not to mention the one that had him in Amber Falls.
Being alone and burying himself in work would be nothing new to him, it was how he spent most of his time anyway. Alone and working. He’d gotten used to it at this point. Even though a part of him had imagined a small-town Christmas with Ford and his family, it wouldn’t be anything new for him to be around people and still feel like an outsider.
5
Ford
Sawyer had no idea how much Ford’s parents really wouldn’t mind having him. They would probably embarrass Ford with how much they would dote on Sawyer. The man hadn’t met anyone like the Ericksons.
For some reason, the more Sawyer spoke, the more stressed Ford became. Ford knew Sawyer was trying for lightness with the whole Meet the Parents movie reference – one of Ford’s favorite older movies, in fact, but all Ford could see was his mom and dad bombarding the poor guy with questions.
They probably wouldn’t believe him when he told them that he was just being nice by letting his boss stay – his boss who had nowhere to go – but his parents really wouldn’t see it like that. They would see it as him bringing someone home.
“We’re almost there,” Ford said, as he made the right turn onto his family’s farm. It wasn’t really a working farm anymore. His father’s family had been wheat farmers, until the farm ended up with his dad who was more into books than being outdoorsy.
His dad was a retired lawyer and his mom was a former teacher, although she’d quit once she’d found out she could carry him to term. His mom had suffered several miscarriages and they had stopped trying for children. But when his mom was forty-one she’d found out she was pregnant, and according to her, hadn’t told his dad until she was almost four months along.
Ford loved his parents and he knew they loved him right back, but being a late in life child after several miscarriages meant his parents were very protective and enthusiastic about everything he did. He wasn’t spoiled because they both believed in the value of hard work, having been raised on farms themselves, but the truth was they were very involved. So, he could imagine their meeting with Sawyer vividly, and his skin was threatening to break out in hives at the picture.
He really hoped his boss was prepared for caroling, gingerbread houses, and every Christmas activity Hallmark movies loved to show. He would bet there would be some kind of sing-a-long breaking out within the next twenty-four hours.
He glanced over at the other man’s profile and all he could think was that the man so didn’t belong here. His family was in no way poor or even middle class, but there was comfortable––which they were––and then there was rich, and after that was wealthy. Sawyer was straddling the line between extremely rich and obscenely wealthy. He kept worrying about how disappointed the man would be with an Erickson Christmas.
Bullshit! His brain replied or was it his cock? Because his body was chanting, Sawyer was sexy, so friggin’ sexy. He had to do his best to fight the major crush he had on the guy, and he imagined a week or so
of family time would only turn his crush into… he wasn’t even sure he had a word for it currently… deep like? Hmm. No, that was too high school. It would definitely be deep something though. Mmm. Deep. Nope. Don’t go there!
But from the start, from the first moment – his interview – Ford had been so careful to put aside or bury any feelings of attraction. Sawyer was his boss. Any other ideas he might have had were buried and only brought out in the shower, or in the privacy of his dreams.
Not that there was any personal interest from his boss and Ford wouldn’t admit his heart was sad about that fact, but there was no way to see if there was personal interest like spending time with one’s family, although the man might spend the next week closed up in his guest room. Only time would tell.
He hoped like hell his boundaries didn’t get smashed to pieces with Sawyer in his house, down the hall from his room, seeing him at the breakfast table. At least there was no chance of running into him in a towel or anything wet-dream inducing because Ford wasn’t sure how he would stop himself from jumping on his boss and wrapping his legs around the man’s waist and grinding for dear life. His dick was already plumping at the thought.
****
They made it the rest of the way in complete silence, Sawyer looked lost in thought and didn’t even realize they had parked the car.
“Sir… I mean, Sawyer... We’re here,” Ford had to say his name twice and give his shoulder a small tap before he got his attention.
“Sorry, what did you say?” Sawyer asked.
“Oh um, I said we’re here,” Ford answered pointing at his parents’ house.
Sawyer looked away from him and glanced at the house, like he was taking it in. Ford looked at his family home, trying to see it through Ford’s eyes. It had five bedrooms, three baths and was a custom log home his dad had had built about ten years ago. He loved the house. It was the perfect blend of mountain and contemporary as he liked to call it.
Stranded With His Boss Page 2
