His First Christmas: The Lonely Billionaire - A Heart-Warming Romance Novel (3 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was Wednesday and four o’clock was slowly approaching. Anna had rehearsed her presentation countless times and was feeling ready. She was somewhat nervous, but mostly she wanted to get on with the meeting, wow the CEO, get the approval, and get planning.

She made her way from her desk to the elevator and pressed the button to go up. When the car arrived and the doors opened, Penelope stepped out.

“What’s up?” Penelope asked.

“Just on my way to get our esteemed CEO to approve this thing,” Anna said.

“Ooh. Well, just don’t take it personally,” Penelope said softly, as Anna pressed the button for the top floor.

“Why would I…” Anna started, but was cut off as the elevator doors closed.

Moments later, Anna stepped out onto the top floor lobby and the secretary motioned for her to take a seat. She had arrived ten minutes early, intending to use the time to mentally rehearse her talking points one last time. She glanced out the window at the bustling downtown.
Still no snow!
Anna thought, disappointed.
But it’s December!

At precisely four o’clock, the secretary told her: “You can go in now.”

Anna opened the heavy wooden door and walked in confidently before closing the door behind her. “It’s nice to finally meet you. I’m Anna Lionel,” she said, approaching the desk and extending her hand.

So this my boss. In the flesh.
He looked younger than she’d expected, in his late-20s, perhaps. He had a sort of boy-next-door thing going on, and blond hair and blue eyes.
Okay, maybe more like man-next-door…
Anna thought, noting his defined jaw and broad shoulders.

The late-afternoon sun glinted on the gold lettering of the nameplate in front of him, “Jason Hawthorne, CEO”.
Really nice view,
Anna noted.
As to be expected.

Jason looked up at her extended hand. “And what do you want?” he asked, frowning.

Anna was taken aback at his coldness, but tried not to let it show. She cleared her throat, and moved over to the waiting projector, thinking it best to launch into her presentation as soon as possible.

“Right now, we’re post-recession,” Anna began, gesturing to an image of the fluctuating stock market. “But there remains a collective scar in the psyche of the market. People are wary; clients have lost faith and trust in the housing sector.” Anna switched to a slide featuring the
Hawthorne Estates logo and a picture of smiling people. “And that’s where we come in.  We’re not one of those greedy companies that is just after our clients’ money—we actually care,” she said confidently, clicking through to the next slide. “We can demonstrate that we care via a Christmas fundraising dinner. Clients and employees of Hawthorne Estates can mingle, network and celebrate the holiday season, while raising money for a great, and relevant, cause: shelter for the homeless. A great way to build connectedness between coworkers and between clientele, at minimal cost to the company,” Anna concluded. She shut off the projector and flicked on the lights, waiting for Jason to respond. She caught herself holding her breath.

He was silent for while, before looking up at her for the briefest of seconds. “You can do your little charity appeal. Just make sure it doesn’t affect our margins,” he said, then motioned for her to leave.

Doesn’t affect our margins?! It’s a charity dinner for God’s sake!
Did you not hear the part about us not being one of those greedy companies?

While she was happy that the dinner was officially approved, Anna did not take kindly to such cold treatment. She tried not to let her anger show, knowing that whatever the CEO said to her, the ends would justify the means. “That’s great, thank you,” she said to him, smiling through gritted teeth and steaming internally as she made her way out of his luxurious office. She was waiting by the elevator when she’d realized she’d forgotten something.

“Here,” she said to Karen, pulling out a few Christmas trinkets from her bag. “To help inject some holiday spirit into the office,” she said. She attempted to sound cheery but in her anger and haste, ended up practically throwing the trinkets down onto the desk. Karen stared back at her, wide-eyed.

CHAPTER EIGHT

This time at Wednesday drinks, Anna enthusiastically echoed, “To another Wednesday finished with,” along with the rest of her coworkers, because this Wednesday had not been kind to her.
I guess it’s true how negative things stick in your mind more than positive ones.
Her workday had ended with the approval she was seeking, and yet she still felt grumpy because of the way the CEO had treated her.
No, that can’t be the only reason why I’m mad. There has to be something else that is irking me…

“So…” nudged Penelope, “how did our esteemed CEO find your presentation? Did you get that approval?”

Anna took a long sip of her beer. “Ugh, I don’t even want to talk about it. I always thought you guys were exaggerating about what a curmudgeon he was, but
yeesh.
It was pretty painful interacting with him.”

“Aw, I’m sorry he didn’t approve it,” Jane said sympathetically. “But you can be proud that you got further than most people!”

“Oh right, well I did get it approved, actually,” Anna clarified. “He was just an asshole about it,” she said.

“Wait, so you actually got it approved?” Victor exclaimed. “That…never happens,” he said.

The rest of the team nodded fervently. “You did good, Anna, you should be proud of yourself,” Kirk said.

Anna’s mood wasn’t much improved by the news that she, out of everyone who had tried, had been the first to coax an approval out of the CEO’s cold heart. “It’s not as if we’re asking him to donate a kidney or something,” she muttered. “And, also, what is with him taking two weeks off while we’re expected to work practically right up until Christmas day?!” she raged on. It was uncharacteristic of her to be so angry, but apparently Jason Hawthorne’s miserly attitude had pushed just the right buttons in her.

Victor smirked. “Hey, one day, when you climb the ranks and become a magnate, you, too, can make your underlings work during the holidays while you go get wasted on a yacht somewhere.”

Anna sighed, shaking her head. The coworkers sipped their drinks quietly.

“Anna, don’t be so upset, okay?” Penelope said. “Jason is an asshole to literally everybody, don’t take it personally.”

“So he gets an asshole pass while the rest of us have to act like decent, respectable people?” Anna grumbled.

“The asshole pass is granted to all rich people, not just Jason Hawthorne, young grasshopper,” Victor joked.

Anna was going to protest, but she sensed that she was reaching her coworkers’ complaint threshold. “Alright, alright, I’ll drop it,” she said. Switching to a more cheery tone, she asked, “So I’ll see you all at the dinner, right?”

“You bet’cha,” Penelope said, and the others nodded.

On her bus ride home—Anna never drove on Wednesdays—she dissected her mood. The resentment had somewhat cleared and left room for objectivity.
It’s not just that he was rude…
she thought, racking her brains. Suddenly, a light bulb clicked on.
Oh my God. What’s bugging me is his total lack of regard for the holidays,
she realized.
So, apparently, I have this primal defense of Christmas within me. Like a momma bear with her cubs. I’m the momma bear, and the cubs are the holiday spirit.
She started giggling at the absurdity of it, inciting a few raised eyebrows from the surrounding bundled-up passengers.

Makes sense, given my history…

***

“Mommy, how come you and Daddy never pretended that Santa exists?” an eight-year-old Anna asked, swinging her legs as she sat at the dinner table while her mother heated up some soup. In one hand, she clutched a disintegrating rag doll that was almost as old as her.

Smelling food, the family dog Bayou came shuffling in. He rested his head on Anna’s lap, biding his time before he could begin scrambling for leftovers.

Her mother, Jenny, turned away from the stove, bouncing Anna’s one-year-old sister, Cathy, on her hip. She’d gotten home from her shift at the factory an hour ago, and her whole being seemed to sag with exhaustion. Anna couldn’t recall a time in her early years that her mother
didn’t
have bags under her eyes.

“Oh…” her mother said, caught off-guard by the question. “I suppose we never had the time for all of that,” she said wearily.

“But Mom!” Anna protested. “When I told Katie and Jimmy that Santa doesn’t exist, they cried. And then they wouldn’t play with me.”

Jenny sighed, freeing up one hand to tuck a lock of hair behind Anna’s ear. “They might feel sad now, but they’ll move on soon enough, sweetie.” Her mother placed Cathy in the high chair before pouring some soup into a bowl for Anna. “Here you go. The food bank had Alphabet Soup, your favorite.”

Anna beamed and set to work arranging words in her soup. “Look, Mommy—noct-urn-al! Like owls and bats and Daddy.”

Her mother smiled, looking impressed. “That’s my Anna,” she said, shuffling her daughter’s hair. “But Daddy isn’t nocturnal, sweetie—he just works the late shift,” she corrected.

Anna never saw much of her father, Karl, except for an hour or two before he left for his evening shift as a security guard. Before Cathy was born, her father would sleep during the day. But now he would take care of Cathy while Anna’s mom worked at the factory, taking a nap as soon as she came home, before going out to work himself.

As soon as Anna finished her soup, her mother took her bowl away. Since her mother wasn’t working overtime for once, Anna knew this was the cue for schoolwork.

“Alright,” Jenny said, passing Anna her pencil and notebook. “What’s seven times nine?”

“Uh…fifty-four?” Anna said, unsure.

“Nope. That’s six times nine. Seven times nine is sixty-three.”

Her mother watched as Anna wrote out the multiplication table of nine.

“Anna…you do know why I’m making you do this, right?”

“Um,” Anna said thoughtfully. “So that I can have a big brain and be smart?”

Her mother laughed. “Well, yes. But also because—” her mother was cut off by Cathy’s crying, and she got up to sooth her before continuing, “Because I don’t want you to end up like me,” she said sadly. “This kind of life is a hard one. You need to work hard, get good grades, and go to college so that you can get a good job. Okay, sweetie?”

Anna nodded slowly. 

“And stay away from boys,” she warned. “You’re pretty, so they will come after you. But you just ignore them.”

Anna blithely agreed, understanding little of what her mother was talking about.

Despite the absence of a certain jolly red character in her childhood, Anna always had an affinity for Christmas, because that’s when she got to spend quality time with her family. Sure, her presents weren’t as flashy as her classmates’, but Anna knew how hard her parents worked to get them. Her favorite gift by far had been last year’s: the Yorkshire Terrier currently scarfing down kibble from his bowl.

Anna had overheard her parents debating their decision to get a dog when they thought she wasn’t listening. They knew Bayou was an expensive investment, but in the end, they had decided that he was worth it. “Look at how happy he makes Anna,” her father had pointed out.

Anna’s father emerged groggy-eyed from his bedroom. “Alright, well, I’m off to work, ladies,” he said, giving a kiss to all his family members. “Hoo boy, it’s so dark already,” he noted, flicking on the porch light switch.

A sickening, thundering bolt ripped through the air as Anna’s father yelled out in pain: the electrical current that followed turning everything in its path to flames. Karl clutched his burnt hand and crouched down to the floor, eyes closed at the pain. Jenny screamed and sprinted to the alcove where the fire blanket was kept. Bayou rushed over to Anna’s father, and Anna followed. “Daddy! Are you okay?!” she yelled, as the flames danced menacingly above her.

Her mother attempted to smother the fire, but it was futile. It seemed to be feeding off the insulation inside of the wall, and one side of the kitchen was soon entirely covered.

From then on, Anna remembered everything moving in slow motion: the relentless creep of the fire, the constant drone of her mother, father and sister’s screams. The world was fine in one second; in the next, it had taken on a nightmarish, orange hue.

“Get out the back window!” her mother screamed. Baby Cathy in one arm, Jenny helped her husband, who was still clutching his badly burnt hand, and the family scrambled down the corridor to the back of the house. Jenny frantically shoved the window open, sending Karl through first. As her mother passed baby Cathy down to her husband, Anna turned to look for Bayou. She gasped as she saw her dog dashing down the flame-filled corridor, carrying her treasured doll in his mouth. As Bayou reached the back room, however, the roof began to disintegrate and the light fixture detached itself from the ceiling. Anna watched horrified as the mass of metal and glass landed with a crash on the floor. Thinking only of her beloved pet, Anna turned and ran frantically towards Bayou. Her mother, having turned around to grab her other daughter, screamed at her. “No Anna! Don’t go back in there!”

Anna lifted up the fallen ceiling fixture, scooped Bayou into her arms, and bolted back to the window where her mother practically launched her and the dog through before jumping out herself.

The family quickly got some distance between themselves and their ember of a house.

The neighbors must have called 911 because sirens were already wailing in the distance. Amidst the commotion of the siren wailing, the people evacuating, and the thousands of gallons of water being pumped to douse out the flames, Anna stood silently. She watched, transfixed, as the only home she’d ever known disintegrated before her, its orange glow standing out against the winter night. When the fire finally sizzled away, what remained was a shell of her childhood.

Anna hadn’t noticed, but a neighbor had put a blanket around her while she watched her house burn to the ground.

At the hospital, after an exhausting evening of talking to firemen, filing out papers, and getting Karl’s minor burns treated, Anna’s parents contemplated their next move. Anna’s mother rubbed her forehead with one free hand. In the other, she held Cathy.

“I just don’t understand what happened,” she said.

“Faulty wiring,” her dad said, frowning.

“I
told
you we should’ve had someone in to check it!” her mother exclaimed, furrowing her eyebrows.

“But we couldn’t afford it,” her father said quietly.

Anna’s parents sighed at the same time.

“I’m not sure where we’re going to stay tonight…” her mother said.

“And our insurance won’t be enough to cover this,” her dad said from the hospital bed.

Jenny sank down in a seat next to Anna, exhausted. “Well, we could go and stay with my brother and Lynn…but they’re a couple of hours away.”

“And it’s not just tonight. We need to work out where to stay until we get a new place sorted out…” Karl sighed.

Anna’s parents looked at each other worriedly. They didn’t really have any family or close friends nearby that they could go to for help.

“Well…we could stay in Davidstown with Robbie and Lynn until we figure things out,” Jenny suggested.

“But what will we do about our jobs? And it’s not like your brother is well-off either. We can’t burden him—especially since there are no jobs in Davidstown that we could get in the meantime…”

At that moment, a nurse came in. “Mr and Mrs Lionel? You have a visitor,” she said. The visitor in question, standing just behind the nurse, was a robust woman with a kind face.

“Hi there,” the woman started, “Name’s Leone Geller. You’ve probably seen me around, ‘cause I live by you guys,” she said. “I’m so sorry about what just happened to you folks today. Just so you know, you’re welcome to stay with us for the night… For as long as you need, really. I live with my husband, Kent, and two toddlers. The three of them might snore and scream, but they ain’t too bad,” she grinned.

“You’re offering your home to us?” Jenny asked, astounded. Anna’s mom and dad looked at each other, overwhelmed at the invitation, and searching each other’s expressions for how they should respond.

After a moment’s silence, the couple smiled at each other and resigned to accept their neighbor’s generosity. “That’s so kind of you,” Anna’s mother breathed. “Thank you so much.”

“Yes…thank you, Leone. It means everything to us,” her dad said.

It turns out, Leone was the person who had given Anna the blanket.

While the situation was painful and traumatic for the Lionel family, the atmosphere in the Geller household provided a happy respite. The Geller toddlers, three and five, were like extra siblings that Anna could interact with more substantially than her infant sister, and while she missed pretending the floor was lava at her house, the game was much more fun with co-adventurers who could actually walk.

“Anna, Anna, your foot is dead,” Benny pointed out one dinner time. “It’s touching the lava.”

“Oh no,” Anna giggled, as she speared a head of broccoli with her fork. Jessie cooed in response.

Kent proclaimed grandly, “Well, if Anna’s foot can survive a fire, then it can survive lava.”

“Floor-lava, anyway,” Leone said wryly. “How’re the burns doing, Karl?”

“They’re healing up pretty decently,” Anna’s dad replied.

“But they didn’t give you any days off to recover?” Leone scoffed.

“No, well I could have taken it unpaid, but I can’t afford not to work. I was deemed fit enough, so to work I’ll go, right after this,” he shrugged.

“And you, Jenny, you went straight to work right after the fire, too,” Kent noted. Anna’s mother nodded.

Leone shook her head. “That just ain’t right. You guys need time to recuperate and figure out your situation. Not be worked to the bone. You have both been loyal employees, don’t they care at all about that? ’Tis the season, for Chrissakes! They ought’a give you paid leave,” she said indignantly.

Anna’s mom put her hand on Leone’s. “Thanks for your concern, Leone. You care about us so much, and I know I’ve said it before, but we really can’t thank you enough for welcoming us into your home. To think that before, we were just neighbors who would wave hello every now and then… and now…”

“And now we’re friends,” Kent grinned.

It wasn’t just the Gellers who surprised Anna’s family with their kindness. In the days after the fire, other members of the community stopped in at Leone’s house, offering to help however they could.

Anna opened up a package from the Yates family, who lived next door. Inside were two tin boxes, one large and one small. “Some treats for the children,” a note on the big box read. On the small tin box, it read “Some treats for Bayou.”

“Oh,” Anna’s mom said. “That’s so nice of Linda and Tom,” she smiled. Anna had just gotten home from school. Normally, her mother would still be at the factory.

As Anna gave a small handful of treats to a grateful Bayou, she asked, “Mommy… how come you aren’t at the factory today?”