Authors: Sugar Jamison
Have Yourself a Curvy Little Christmas: A Perfect Fit Holiday Novella (A Perfect Fit Novel)
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Contents
Chapter 1
I Don’t Want a Lot for Christmas …
Sleigh bells ring. Are you listening?
Dina Gregory had heard that song no less than twenty-six times on her five-day bus ride from California. Twenty-six. Freaking. Times and now it was stuck in her head like some kind of brain-eating ear worm.
A beautiful sight. We’re happy tonight. Walking in a winter wonderland.
She had never thought about winter being wondrous. Or beautiful. She had always thought it cold and dark and depressing. That’s why she had escaped to LA for two years. But as she walked up the steep driveway to the Windermere mansion she had to amend her thought. A fresh snow had just fallen, leaving the trees and ground covered with beautiful, shimmery snow. There were no footprints or tire tracks to muddy it. It was beautiful. The stuff that Christmas cards were made of.
And if she weren’t cold, pissed off and carrying a twenty-pound baby, she might be able to enjoy her surroundings more.
“Ma?” Her ten-month-old son, Dash, touched her cheek, pulling her out of her head for a moment.
“It’s okay, lovey,” she said to him as she held him a little closer to shield him from the wind. “We’re almost there. Just a couple million more feet until we reach the top. Hopefully Mommy won’t have a heart attack before we make it. I’m not sure what these people were thinking when they built this place. Surely a moat would have been good enough to keep the riffraff out. Or a dragon. I think building a house on top of a mountain was just a way to keep chubby people out. They should just have a sign that says: ‘No Fat Chicks Allowed.’ But they don’t know your mommy, do they, baby? They’re not keeping me out.”
Her son grinned at her, one of those happy baby grins, like he knew what she was babbling about, and it kicked her in the heart. Good God she loved him. He was the reason she was here. He was the reason she had spent five days on a bus with people who looked like they had just been released from mental institutions. He was the reason she was huffing and puffing her out-of-shape ass up this steep hill. He was the reason she kept going.
There were just thirteen days until Christmas. Normally the holiday would pass as just another day to her, but this year was different. This year was special because it was Dash’s first Christmas. She didn’t want anything for herself. Somewhere along the line material things stop mattering. If she had one wish it would be to give her son the world.
That’s why she was back in New York, a place she had been too afraid to show her face in the past year and a half. Her family lived just a few towns over, but she couldn’t face them. Not after what she had done. The best gift she could give them was to never darken their doorstep again. But she would gladly darken Windermere’s doorstep.
She was here to face Dash’s father. Virgil Worthington Rowe. The man who knocked her up and disappeared the day after she told him about it.
Asshole.
At first she didn’t bother tracking him down. The pregnancy had been a wake-up call for her. The thirty-four years of her life before she became pregnant with Dash had been spent partying too much, destroying too much, not caring enough. Dash had changed all that. He made her want to become a better person. He made her want to stand on her own two feet.
But Dash didn’t deserve to live in squalor just so she could prove a point. He was innocent in all of this. And his father had more money than he knew what to do with. She was going to get some of that money. And if she couldn’t she was going to kick his no-good ass. With the fifty pounds she had put on during her pregnancy she was pretty sure she could take him.
Another blast of icy wind smacked her in the face, reminding her that her poor nose was going to fall off if she didn’t get inside soon. She wished she could have taken a cab right to the front door to save them from some of this brutal cold, but in the tiny village of Sleepy Ridge there were none. Virgil had to be here, because it was too damn long of a walk back to town to leave with nothing.
She had looked for him all over LA. She called around to the hotels he liked to stay in, checked in all the bars they used to frequent. But he wasn’t there. Nobody had seen or heard from him in months. The coward was probably hiding from her.
She finally came to the front door, her hand raised to knock, and she froze.
She was nervous.
Shit.
Nerves were the one thing she hadn’t planned on. She had been too pissed to be nervous before, but now that she was facing the front door of this huge mansion nerves snuck up on her and grabbed her by the throat.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” The southern-accented voice that came through the intercom caused her to jump.
Duh, Dina
.
They probably saw you coming as soon as you stepped foot on the driveway.
“Ma’am, is there something I can do for you?”
“Um…”
“Ma?” Dash called to her, reminding her of her purpose. Reminding her that this trip was about him.
“Yes. My name is Dina Gregory. I’m here to see Virgil.”
* * *
Benjamin Rowe sat in his office staring at the stack of legal documents and bills that he had just inherited. Thirty-seven thousand dollars for a hotel bill. Fourteen thousand on a bar tab. The money just kept adding up and he wondered how one person could waste so much. Not the money. In the end money was nothing. Ben wondered how one person could waste so much of their life.
He shut his eyes, unable to look at the mountain in front of him any longer. With each bill he paid, with each lawsuit he studied, his stomach sank even further.
Disappointment. It was a familiar feeling to him. It was all he had felt when he thought of his brother for the last few years. He wished he didn’t. He wished he could just wash his hands of the whole mess. He had a team of lawyers and accountants at his disposal. All of this could be sorted out in less than a week. He wouldn’t have to think about it. But he couldn’t let it go. He couldn’t let somebody else handle this. This mess was too personal, too revealing. If he let somebody else fix it he knew he would be letting down his father.
You’ve got to be a man now. Protect your little brother. You’re the only one he’s got.
He had tried to protect Virgil. Their mother had died when they were just little boys. Their father had died when they were just barely men. They had money. They had employees, people who called themselves friends, a company worth billions, but they only really ever had each other.
Now all Ben had in front of him was a pile of debt. His brother was gone. He’d pulled away from Benjamin a long time ago. Virgil didn’t like being controlled. He balked at his brother’s guidance. He didn’t like rules or limits or expectations being placed on him. He wasn’t cut out for a life of hard work. All he had ever wanted was freedom. Ben almost couldn’t blame Virgil. It was hard being a Rowe man. It was hard running a billion-dollar company, living up to the extremely high example set by their father and grandfather. There were times in his life when Ben wanted to be like Virgil, when he just wanted to be free too. But he couldn’t.
And now Virgil was gone and it left Ben wondering would he still be here today if Ben hadn’t cut him off?
“Sir?”
He looked up to see Miguel, his assistant and personal security guard, standing just inside of his office door.
He hadn’t heard the man coming. He was too deep in his thoughts.
“Do you have a brother, Miguel?”
Miguel, who was usually unflappable, was taken off guard. “No, sir. Three sisters. All younger.”
Ben studied the young former Marine who had been with him for nearly eight years now and realized that he wasn’t so young anymore. “Do you have a father?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s he like?”
“Sir?” Miguel frowned. They had never had a conversation in all the years Miguel had been there. But Ben trusted this man with his life. He should know something about him.
“I want to know what your family is like.”
Miguel blinked at him, hesitation clear on his face. “My family lives in Texas. My parents own a food truck that runs six days a week. My sisters Angela and Marielle are both married with babies and my younger sister, Carmen, is in college.”
“When’s the last time you saw them?”
Miguel looked guilty for a moment, but he shouldn’t have. It was Ben’s fault. Ben worked, so he made his entire staff work. He never paid much thought to holidays. Holidays stopped having any meaning for him when Karen got sick nine years ago.
“It’s nearly Christmas, Miguel. Maybe you should go see them.”
“But, sir—”
“The last time I saw my brother was nearly three years ago. You can’t be like me. Go see your family. I don’t want you to come back until January second.”
“But that’s too long.”
“You deserve it. You put up with me for eight years without a complaint. I think I owe you some vacation time.”
“I get ten days a year. This is too much.”
“Go tell Dovie and the whole downstairs staff that they have off too.”
“But you’ll be alone.” The way Miguel said it, the way he looked at him with a little bit of pity in his eyes, made Ben pause. He would be alone, but then again he had been alone for years. The presence of people didn’t change that for him.
“I’m nearly forty. I think I can manage. Now go. I’ve got to get through this.”
Miguel turned to leave, but he stopped. “Sir? I came here for a reason. There’s a woman at the front door. She’s here to see your brother.”
“Send her away.” Ben put his glasses on and picked up the document on top of the stack. Lots of people came to see his brother. They usually wanted something from him. But Virgil had nothing left to give.
“We will, but we wanted to check with you first.”
“Why? I trust your judgment.”
“Her name is Dina Gregory and she’s carrying a baby.”
* * *
“Mr. Rowe will see you now.”
The enormous mansion door slowly swung open, causing a delicious wave of warm air to touch Dina’s face. For a moment she just stood there, absorbing the tease of warmth. She also stood there because for the first time she realized she didn’t have a plan. Well, she did have a plan actually. But a life plan. Get support for Dash, find a job teaching dance and then open her own dance studio. But she had no idea what she was going to do when she faced Virgil. Too many emotions ran through her whenever she thought of him
“Are you coming in, ma’am?”
Dina almost didn’t notice the woman who had answered the door. She was a tiny older African-American woman with skin the color of fresh-baked bread, startling white hair and the most delicate set of cheekbones she had ever seen. “Holy shit. You’re beautiful.”
The woman’s eyes widened, as she was clearly offended by Dina’s potty mouth.
“I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I’ve been on a bus for five days and the little bit of class and poise I had was probably left somewhere in the Midwest.”
“It’s quite all right, ma’am. Please follow me.”
“You betcha,” Dina said, which earned another curious look from who she presumed must be the housekeeper. It was then she decided to keep her mouth shut until she saw Virgil. There was no need to waste her energy when she was going to need it to confront him.