A Mistletoe Kiss with the Boss

by Susan Meier

  Probably in time for her flight. Or she could simply tell Dean Suminski to instruct the pilot to take her back to Grennady. “That’s generous.”

  His eyes turned down at the corners as he frowned. “Generous?”

  “Well, you could leave me at the airport.”

  “I could.” He glanced away, then looked back. “I know I have a reputation for being...well, not a nice guy. But you don’t need me to be a nice guy. You want time to make a pitch. I’m offering it. Consider this an early Christmas present.”

  It suddenly struck her that he must be interested. He hadn’t told her to get lost at the hotel. He’d offered her time in his limo, though that hadn’t worked out. But here he was again, giving her a chance to sell him on her country.

  “Thought you said you weren’t thinking of relocating?”

  “Thought you said I should be.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “YOU SHOULD.”

  Dean Suminski studied the pretty girl in front of him. Blonde with pale green eyes and a generous mouth made for kissing, she wore a simple black wool coat over black pants and sensible shoes. Normally, he would have had his bodyguard deal with anyone who approached him, but she reminded him of himself ten years ago, when Suminski Stuff was in its infancy. When he wore simple, practical clothes, hoping he didn’t stand out for his lack of sophistication, and when he was trying to raise money from investors to start his business.

  Still, he hadn’t gotten this far by being stupid. He’d texted his executive assistant and told her to get everything she could on Kristen Anderson of Grennady, and that’s what the call in Spanish had been about. This woman really did work for Princess Eva.

  If Grennady’s royal family had sent her to him, there was a reason. He might not want to be part of a renaissance precipitated by a near coup, but he wouldn’t mind having a desperate country at his mercy.

  He said, “All right. I’ll admit that the most popular places to locate a corporation in the United States are getting crowded.” He speared her with a look, delving deeply into those pretty green eyes, knowing she wasn’t very experienced at negotiating and wondering why a princess would send her. Surely, more astute negotiators or even public relations people would do a better job.

  Especially since he knew Alex Sancho, Princess Eva’s husband, didn’t like him.

  Her eyes brightened. “So there is a chance you’d relocate?”

  The sparkle in her eyes hit him like a punch to the gut, surprising him. Those soft green orbs were little mirrors to her happy soul. And that lush, kiss-me mouth? It took a stronger man than he was not to notice its plump fullness.

  Still, he shouldn’t be looking. He only dated sophisticates. Women who took lovers, who weren’t seeking happily-ever-after, as this bubbly, obviously naïve woman would be.

  But the feeling in his gut wouldn’t go away. It kept telling him that something about her was important. And he should pay attention.

  He pointed at the plane. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  She preceded him up the short stack of steps into his jet. When she gasped, he laughed.

  “The princess never takes you on her jet?”

  “Up until last year, she didn’t do much government business. Actually, she didn’t even have bodyguards.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Are you going to waste these next few hours gossiping?”

  “No.” She waved her hands. “Sorry. I know your time is precious.”

  “Let’s just buckle in and you can start your pitch once we’re at cruising altitude.”

  As he spoke, his second-in-command and best friend, Jason Wilson, stepped into the corridor from the office in the back.

  Short, twenty or thirty pounds overweight, but looking expensive and self-assured in his three-piece suit, Jason said, “We have a problem.”

  Dean motioned for Kristen to take a seat and buckle in. “I suppose we do if you flew the whole way to Europe rather than phone me.”

  Jason caught Dean’s arm and moved him to the back of the plane before he whispered, “While you were in meetings yesterday, I got word from a few investment firms that our stock’s about to be downgraded and they’re going to advise investors to sell.”

  Forgetting all about Kristen Anderson, he gaped at Jason. “Sell?”

  “Tech Junkie ran an article about you. They suggested that the new product is late because we don’t have one.”

  “That’s absurd!”

  “Oh, it gets worse. They said you’re so far removed from real life and so far removed from real people that it’s a miracle you came up with the original operating system and games that you did. They claim being out of touch with real people means you can’t figure out what they want because you’re not one of them.”

  “How I live has nothing to do with my abilities.”

  “Not according to the pundits quoted in the article. They say your reign is over. That you had five or six good ideas and exhausted them.”

  The urge to shake his head at the stupidity of some people was nearly overwhelming. He was a genius, for crying out loud. Of course he didn’t live like a normal person.

  “I spent my childhood poor, looking for ways to entertain myself. I know software. I know games.”

  “They say that’s what got you here. But your ideas are gone.”

  He tossed his hands in frustration. “We have a fantastic series of games in the works!”

  “In the works for three years. Too long in this market.” Jason snapped his fingers. “Everything’s all about speed these days.”

  “The series has to be perfect before I can even talk about it, let alone roll it out.”

  “Then you’re pretty much screwed.” Jason’s gaze strayed to Kristen. “Who’s that?”

  He didn’t like explaining himself to anybody. Not even his best friend—especially since he wasn’t entirely clear why he was willing to hear Kristen Anderson’s pitch. Every time he looked at her, he got a “there’s an opportunity here” feeling. Which made no sense since Alex Sancho was married to her boss. Couple that with the way he kept noticing all the wrong things about her, and being around her was tempting fate. Which was absurd. He did not tempt fate, push envelopes or even take risks. He was cautious. That’s why he was rich.

  Yet here she was in his jet.

  He held back a wince as he said, “She’s a girl I met at the hotel.”

  Jason’s eyes widened. “Really?”

  Deciding to let honest and genuine Kristen explain this, he turned and started up the aisle to the four plush seats. “Kristen, this is Jason Wilson, my second in command.”

  Kristen jumped off her seat and extended her hand. “Kristen Anderson. I work for Princess Eva of Grennady.”

  Jason’s gaze walked back to Dean. “Prince Alex’s wife’s assistant is your new girlfriend?”

  She laughed. “No. I’m not his girlfriend. My country wants your company to consider relocating to Grennady.”

  The pilot’s voice came over the speaker, advising passengers to buckle seat belts and get ready for takeoff.

  Dean caught the gaze of Kristen’s happy green eyes. An unwanted tingle of attraction zipped through him, but so did that damned feeling that she, somehow, was important.

  He said, “You buckle in,” then he faced Jason. “Let’s take this discussion to the office.”

  He followed his friend down the aisle to the compact room. As they fastened their seat belts, Jason said, “So, who is she really?”

  Dean focused his attention on his cantankerous buckle so he didn’t have to look at Jason. “She told you. She’s from Grennady. Her country wants us to consider locating there.”

  Jason’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t like her?”

  He did actually. Even if he paid
no attention to the “she’s important somehow” feeling or the way her physical appearance kept tempting him, she was smart and ambitious. She was also totally inexperienced, but that might be why she was such a curiosity. She wasn’t a shark. She wasn’t a schmoozer. She was too naïve, clearly too green to be either of those. She was just a woman trying to do a job. If the royal family had an agenda in sending her, he didn’t think she knew it.

  “If you’re asking if I want to take her out, the answer is no.” He might be attracted to her, but he didn’t date. And she was too naïve to fit the role as his lover. “I told her I’d listen to her pitch in the car, but got caught up in a phone conversation with Stella. So I told her I’d listen on the plane. When we land in New York, the plane will turn around and take her home.”

  Jason said, “Okay, fine,” as the jet taxied. “As long as this mess with investors comes first.”

  “Of course.”

  When they were in the air, climbing to cruising altitude, he and Jason began a discussion of how to combat the Tech Junkie article. But in hours and hours of studying schematics, employee reports and his own damned business plan—which was shot to hell because the schedule was now almost two years behind—all they could come up with was a stopgap measure: contact the most influential brokerage firms and ask them to delay advising their clients to sell to give Suminski Stuff time to get the games to one more set of beta testers.

  They made a list of firms to call when they got to New York, and created a script of what they would say, but Dean knew brokers were right to be concerned. The games they’d been working on had had one setback after another because the series was too ambitious. No one really knew how far away it was from rollout. The staff had gotten tired, worn down, and everything was now taking longer than it should.

  He’d been warned. But he’d gotten arrogant. His staff could do anything...

  Or so he’d thought. And now they were in trouble because he couldn’t even give a hard date for when it would be ready for another round of beta testing, let alone a hard date for when it would be for sale.

  When the script was ready, Jason scrubbed his hand across his mouth. “So this is what we say?”

  Dean shrugged, then leaned back in his comfortable chair. “Yes. If the brokers listen to us, I think we’ll buy about six weeks. But we’re going to have to do some hand-holding. And at the end of that six weeks, we have to have something—even if it’s only a date for when it can go into beta testing again.”

  “Christmas is smack-dab in the middle of those six weeks. Then New Year’s.”

  “So we’ll cancel Christmas.”

  Jason laughed. “We can’t cancel a holiday.”

  “No, but we can cancel vacations and leave.”

  “They’ll hate you.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not feeling warm and fuzzy toward them right now, either. Three years they’ve been working on this. If anybody’s got a right to be disappointed, it’s me.”

  The pilot announced that it was time to buckle in for landing and Dean wasn’t surprised. The flight to New York had felt like the shortest of his life because he’d spent it figuring out how to keep investors from dumping his stock, when, really, if he was one of them he’d drop his stock like a hot rock.

  He and Jason buckled in. The jet landed and taxied to his private hangar. They unbuckled their seat belts and stepped into the aisle only to find Kristen Anderson facing them, looking furious.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. This was why he didn’t deal with people. He wasn’t considerate. He had a one-track mind. Right now his company was in danger of total failure. He didn’t have time to listen to a pitch for something he neither needed nor wanted.

  “Sorry. I’d say you could have the limo ride to my office to chat, but then you wouldn’t be able to turn around and fly home.”

  Her pretty face softened a bit. “I’m okay with that. Just have your plane take me back to Grennady instead of Paris and I’ll be fine.”

  Dean started to say, “Okay,” but Jason caught his arm. “She can’t have the limo ride. You have to start making those calls the minute we step off this plane. I’m guessing you’ll be spending the entire day talking. After that there’s the Christmas gala.”

  “I can miss that.”

  Jason sniffed a laugh. “Really? After you spend an entire day convincing brokers that the company’s solvent and you’re fine, not some prima donna genius who doesn’t understand real life, you think you can miss an event where you actually mingle like a normal person? The one that opens the season? The one that everybody goes to?”

  Damn it. Jason was right. The speculation of why he hadn’t attended the party of the year could undo all the hours he’d spend making those telephone calls.

  He unhappily caught Kristen’s gaze. He hated messing up the way he had with her. He didn’t make mistakes. And even when he did, somehow or another, the situation turned out okay, as if his instincts could see the future and know there was a reason he’d done whatever unusual thing he’d done.

  But not this time.

  There was no “reason” that he’d strung her along except that he had an odd feeling in his gut every time he looked at her. And now he had to brush her off.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Anderson. It appears I really don’t have time to talk to you. It’s best you take the plane back.”

  “Seriously? I just sat patiently for hours and you won’t even listen for fifteen minutes?”

  The word sorry was on the tip of his tongue again but he swallowed it. Technically this wasn’t his fault. “You orchestrated this. I told you I was a busy man. You took a risk and it didn’t work out.”

  Jason caught his arm, but he addressed Kristen. “Just hold on for one second.” Then he faced Dean. “Can I talk to you in the back?”

  Dean reluctantly followed Jason to the aisle in front of the office.

  “We sort of have a weird opportunity here.”

  Not following how or why, Dean said nothing.

  “We want to counteract that article. We want brokers and big investors to see you as a normal guy, and be comfortable that you’re not worried about the situation with the new games.”

  Dean quietly said, “Yes.”

  Jason nudged his head toward the front of the plane. “So why not take her to the party tonight?”

  Dean laughed. “What?”

  “No one’s ever seen you date. You keep your relationships private. The press has been dying to catch you with a woman. But more than that, a date makes you look normal. Happy even. Who knows? The next article might come out speculating that the rollout is late because you’re preoccupied with your new girlfriend. It’s a chance to totally spin this mess in our favor.”

  Dean glanced up at Kristen. His heartbeat slowed. The sweet tingle of attraction rolled through him. Attending a party with her was exactly what his hormones wanted. “She is pretty.”

  “She’s more than pretty, Dean. She’s gorgeous. The kind of girl everybody expects you to end up with. She, personally, might not have breeding, but she works for a royal family. She’s on the periphery of the jet-set crowd, good-looking enough to attract someone like you. The connection is logical. We’ll send her out with Stella to get something for the party. Shoes, dress, whatever the hell she needs. Then she’s on your arm tonight.”

  “I’ll have to listen to her pitch. Right now,” Dean said emphatically. “I’m not stringing her along and I’m not going to let her think I’m using her.”

  Jason shook his head. “Your honesty is going to bite you in the butt one of these days.”

  “Yeah, but my arrogance will save me.”

  Jason slapped his back. “Whatever.”

  Dean led Jason to the front of the plane. “I’m going to listen to your pitch right now.”

  Her eyes wide
ned. “You are?”

  “Yes. But then I’d like to hire you to do something for me.”

  “Hire me?”

  “Yes.” Though he and Jason hadn’t discussed paying her, with all the strange feelings tumbling through him when he was around her, he needed to make sure they kept this “date” in perspective. He also wouldn’t ask Kristen Anderson to go to the party with him as a favor. Favors implied that he’d be indebted to her. He was indebted to no one. “I’ll pay you a hundred thousand dollars to go to a party with me tonight.”

  She laughed.

  He waited until she realized he was serious.

  Wide-eyed, she asked, “Why would you do that?”

  “You heard a bit of the discussion about my company hitting a bumpy patch?”

  She inclined her head in acknowledgment.

  “Well, I believe it will make me look a little more—” He wouldn’t say “normal.” Refused. Being a genius took him out of the normal column, but that didn’t mean he didn’t understand kids. Especially lonely kids. He had been one. He knew how to entertain them. “—approachable if I go to tonight’s gala happy. Having a date will make it appear that everything’s fine.”

  She just looked at him.

  “Stocks are funny things,” Jason said. “They sometimes rise and fall on rumors. How a company’s leader is perceived dictates how much money people are willing to risk.”

  Dean frowned at Jason. “She has a degree in economics. I’m pretty sure she knows that.” He faced Kristen. “What I really need to counteract that article is for people to perceive me as a regular guy. Dating is something a regular guy does.”

  “And if I say no, you won’t listen to my pitch?”

  The odd feeling rolled through him again. The feeling that something about her was significant. Holding the gaze of her pretty eyes, which were serious this time, he knew he had to be fair with her.

  “No. Regardless of whether you go to the party with me or not, I’ll listen to your pitch. But if you decide to come with me, we’ll make arrangements to get you something suitable to wear, and we’ll put you up in a hotel suite. Party’s not until eight. You can get some sleep so you’ll be fresh and happy for tonight. Then tomorrow you’re back on this plane, on your way home.”