Title: A Very Bossy Christmas
Author: Kayley Loring
Genre: Contemporary Romance
What’s the actual last thing you’d ever want your executive assistant to see you doing the morning after you had hot, drunk, angry sex with her in a terrible hotel room? Dancing around your terrible hotel room to “Come and Get Your Love” like Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy—naked? Yeah. Me too.
And yet, here we are.
This isn’t even the most unprofessional thing that’s happened between us in the past couple of weeks.
The first was when I agreed to let her have Christmas Day off, but only if she goes with me to three family gatherings as my fake girlfriend.
The second was when she caught me belting out a Christmas song on stage in the awful hotel bar.
The third was the hot, drunk, angry sex that followed, but I do not regret it.
And she hasn’t even found out the real reason I need her by my side this holiday season.
I need to pull it together before I do the dumbest, most unprofessional thing of all—fall head over heels in love with the only assistant who’s lasted more than a month at the job and claims to hate me and my moods more than she hates eggnog.
And I’ve seen how much she hates eggnog.
Declan has some super sweet things to say to his love…
Keep reading to see the full Love Note!
DECLAN: Cooper, you there?
DECLAN: I can’t believe you talked me into waiting until New Year’s Eve to make you a Cannavale. Devil woman.
DECLAN: Fine. You’re not there. Probably busy working for that new boss of yours that you claim is “a breath of fresh, non-asshole air.” <face with rolling eyes emoji> We’ll see how long that lasts. My new assistant still scares the shit out of me, btw. Thanks for hiring her. No, really. Thanks for hiring and training her. She just sits at her desk frowning, never looks at me and never talks to me unless she’s barking out orders. I love her.
DECLAN: But not as much as I love you. I miss you every fucking minute I’m here at work. I miss being able to look out that glass wall and see your stunning, scowling face. I miss the intoxicating scent trail you’d leave as you stormed out of my office and I really miss watching your ass as you strutted away from me, fuming.
DECLAN: I never told you about the first time I saw you. I mean, I know I’ve told you about all the filthy things I wanted to do to you, but I didn’t tell you the other part. We’d already talked on the phone a few times, back when you worked for Artie. I already liked the sound of your voice, the way I could hear you smirking through the phone, the way you kept up with me. I thought I was dead inside. I thought I was the owner of a heart that could not truly love a woman in the way that others seemed to. As you know, I am never wrong about anything. But when I saw you outside the restaurant, that time I was having lunch with Artie, I had a hunch that I might be wrong about this one thing. When I saw you, I wanted things that I’d never wanted before. When I saw you, I saw myself with you. When I saw you, I quite simply, wanted you and I wanted to love you. I knew I didn’t deserve you yet. But I wanted to deserve you. Every day since then, every day for the rest of my life, I want to be the man who deserves you.
DECLAN: I used to hate Valentine’s Day – that annual reminder that I didn’t have a heart to give away to anyone, even when I felt I should. This year I’ve been looking forward to February 14th like a fucking schoolgirl. You already got the gift I left on your pillow. You already got that gift I placed next to your breakfast. You’ve already found that thing I placed inside your handbag this morning. And you’ve had me, ever since the first time I took you to Ohio. Happy first Valentine’s Day as the reluctant keeper of this once-lonely heart, Maddie Cooper-Future Cannavale. You are the first, you are the only and you will be the last woman ever to have this tender virgin heart. Be gentle. And also, don’t be. And be naked when I get home.
Before writing steamy romantic comedy novels, Kayley Loring got her BFA in creative writing from a Canadian university and had a fifteen-year career as a screenwriter in Los Angeles (under a different name). She mostly wrote PG-13 family comedies that studios would pay her lots of money for and then never make into movies. In 2017 she decided to move to the Pacific Northwest and write about all the fun stuff that she wasn’t allowed to write about in those PG-13 scripts. Now she’s breathing cleaner air and writing dirtier words. It’s an adjustment that she’s happily getting used to.
I loved this one. Thank you for sharing.
I don’t have a preference.
This was adorable!