The Billionaire's First Christmas - A Sweet Christmas Romance

Aaron and I had cheesecake and coffee after our monopoly game. I didn’t want to embarrass him, so I didn’t ask, but I got the feeling he’d never played. I was beginning to discover that there were a lot of “normal” things he’d never done. I looked outside and saw that the snow had slowed.

“Okay, it’s snowman time!”

“Excuse me?” he said as if he was surprised. I was sure I had mentioned it.

“Didn’t I say that earlier? It was on the agenda.”

“I thought you were kidding,” he said.

“I would never kid about making a snowman,” I told him. “You brought gloves, right?”

“Oh no! I don’t think I did.” He was fibbing.

“Yep! Here they are,” I told him. He’d taken them off when he was petting Mr. Pibbs earlier and put them on the table.

“Oh… goody,” he said, sarcastically.

We bundled up and went outside. I led him to a little courtyard on the side of my apartment complex. The snow was barely falling now, but enough had fallen during the night and morning that making a snowman was going to be easy. I started packing the snow so that I could roll a big bottom when I noticed that Aaron was making little piles of snow and then tamping them down with his gloves.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“Making a snowman.”

“That’s not how you do it.”

“You make your snowman and I’ll make mine,” he said. I rolled my eyes and got back to work rolling my snow bottom. I guess it would be his fault if his snowman wasn’t as brilliant as mine, I’d offered to help.

I had my back to him, but what could have only been ten minutes later he said, “Done!”

“You are not… Oh my goodness!” In ten minutes, the man who hated cold weather and Christmas only two days ago had built the most beautiful snowman I had ever seen. “He’s beautiful!” I said. His face lit up like a child. He was so proud of his work. “You’ve definitely done this before.”

“Thank you,” he said, “But no, this is my first snowman. It’s all about mechanics though. I’m good at building and designing things.” Looking over at my half-rolled snow bottom with his lips quirking like he was trying to hold back a smile he said, “Yours is…”

“Not finished,” I told him, turning my back on him again, I got back to work. I was rarely outdone in the snowman department and by a first timer to boot. Another five minutes or so passed when I felt the whiz of a snowball next to my head. I looked around and Aaron was still the only one out here with me. He was trying hard to look innocent.

“Did you just throw a snowball at me?” I asked him, incredulously.

“Of course not. I would never indulge in such an immature…” I’d already been packing one in my hand. While he talked, I threw it and hit him in the side of the face. SMACK! “Oh that’s it!” he said, “It’s on now.” He was rubbing his cheek with his wet glove and I was feeling a little bit bad until…

SMACK! A tightly packed snowball hit me, right in the forehead. I stood still staring at him in disbelief as ice cold water dripped down over my eyes and slid down my cheeks.

He suddenly looked worried. “I’m sorry, Robyn! Are you okay?”

Not answering him still, I dropped to my knees and began digging deep into the snow, losing the glove off my left hand. He’d taken a step towards me, thinking I was hurt at first, but then he realized what I was doing. He dropped down to do the same but before he got his hole dug I had packed it together into a ball and stood up and threw it at him. I heard the SMACK and bent down to get my glove, smiling with satisfaction.

“Ha ha! You missed!” he said. He sounded like an insolent twelve year old and even though I’d missed him with my snowball that made me happy. He was having fun. I was wondering how I could possibly have missed him. I turned around to see and SMACK! He got me right upside the head with that one.

I narrowed my eyes and pulled my eyebrows together as I dropped down to make another. He was facing away from me, I think doing the same thing I was. I threw my snowball first and this time I watched it connect with the back of his head.

He was laughing and still rubbing the back of his head when I felt, SMACK to the back of my own head. How the heck did he do that? I turned to see who was behind me and SMACK! I got hit dead on in the face. It was my neighbor’s kids, Sue and Conner. They were eight and ten years old and I’d tangled with them before. They were vicious little snow ball making machines.

“Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be?” I said, “Aaron, I think you and I should…” SMACK! A snowball came from Aaron’s direction and struck me. The kids were laughing hard now. I turned to look at him and said, “Hey! I thought you’d be on my side.”

“It’s a dog eat dog world,” he said. “Every man, woman and child for themselves.” While we talked, the little ones made more snowballs. Suddenly it was SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! Aaron and I both had a barrage of snowballs raining down on us. I couldn’t make my own ammunition fast enough and when I finally had one made, I’d throw it recklessly, missing my targets. Aaron hit them a few times, but they were still way ahead of him. When he got too frustrated with them, he would turn back on me. Traitor!

Snowballs were zooming across the courtyard. They flew away from me and then they flew towards me. I had no idea anymore if any of mine were hitting any of my targets. I was scooping, packing and blindly throwing. There was snow and ice in my face and in my eyes. I squealed occasionally, and I heard Aaron do the same, only in a more manly way.

Finally, as I sat, wet and thoroughly exhausted in the snow I felt him sidle up next to me. “I think we should finish this,” he said in a conspiratorial voice.

“I thought it was every man, woman and child for themselves?”

“Okay, we can keep getting bombarded then…”

“Okay, let’s do this together,” I finally agreed. “What’s the plan?”

“You make ‘em faster than me. Start making them, stay low behind me and keep me loaded with ammo.”

If I’d stopped and thought right then about the fact that this was the CEO of my company, I probably would have died laughing. I didn’t though. To me, he was just Aaron and I was having a great time.

I started making snowballs and he started throwing them. I could hear the kids squealing and getting further and further away. By the time I made about fifty snowballs Aaron turned and held his hand out to help me up.

“They’re behind the building… let’s go!” With that, we ran back inside, leaving the children out in the snow looking for us. It was awesome. Aaron slammed the door behind us and it took us a good ten minutes to stop laughing.

“Wow,” he said when he finally stopped laughing. “That was great.”

“It was, and I can only imagine what I look like. I’m going to go dry off. I’ll bring you a towel.”

I started to walk away and felt his hand on my arm. “Wait, look up,” he said.

I looked up and didn’t see anything. “What am I looking at?” I asked.

Aaron was trying to get his hand out of his pocket and he laughed and said, “I was hoping it would go smoother. Now look up.” He had his arm stretched out above our heads and dangling from his fingers was a piece of mistletoe with a red ribbon tied around it. I looked back at him and his face looked so focused and intense. He put his hands on the sides of my face and wound his fingers in the hair that had fallen loose from my hat. It was so sweet, the way he set the whole thing up, like he’d been thinking about how he wanted to do it for a while. Something about the way he touched me made my eyes close and as he leaned down towards me, my lips parted. My breaths were coming so fast that I was almost dizzy. I felt the edges of my body melt into him and it felt like we’d become a part of each other as soon as his lips brushed against mine. It was a sweet, tentative brush at first, and then it got more urgent as he pulled me up and held me into his chest and crushed his against mine, letting his tongue slip in and explore the dark caverns of my mouth. His tongue tasted sweet and his touch was firm and gentle at the same time. We kissed like that for a long time and when he broke it and pulled back, I think it took me several more minutes to open my eyes. I wanted to savor it, it was perfect.


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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

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ROBYN