“I didn’t lose her.”
“You better not have!” Penny yelled at the phone. “I have months’ worth ofVanity Ragcontent for the New Year planned around her!”
“Just tell me where she is, and I’ll fix it,” I insisted.
“I don’t know,” Penny said. “I have to ask her first.”
After ending the call, I paced around the office. I felt crazed and angry.
I was even sympathizing with Hunter Svensson, who always seemed to be some flavor of miserable and angry. Walker had filled me in on what had happened between him and Meghan. Now that I was in the throes of losing the love of my life, I realized how agonizing it was.
But unlike Hunter, I wasn't giving up without a fight—or, more accurately, a groveling apology. Christmas was going to be miserable enough, but Christmas without Holly? Intolerable.
I couldn’t stand being cooped up anymore. I grabbed my keys and went down to the garage, Rudolph in tow. Driving would help clear my mind while I waited for Penny's response.
When I pushed through the door into the garage where all my cars were parked, something whizzed past my head and splatted on the floor. Rudolph pounced. I looked down to see him take a big bite of something red, green, and white.
“Is that a cupcake?”
73
Holly
“Screw Owen!” I shouted when I flung open the door to Fiona's apartment. She and Morticia stopped their heated argument about whetherThe Nightmare Before Christmaswas a Christmas movie or a Halloween movie.
“Owen is a Christmas-hating, cold-hearted bastard. I can’t believe I wasted my whole December with him!” I sank down onto the couch. Fiona poured me a shot. I downed the whole thing.
“Was it Sloane?” Morticia asked.
“It was everything—the lying, the manipulation, the fact that he’s so closed off. Most of all is the fact that he hates Christmas! I thought I could make him love it, but I think he was just tolerating it because, I don’t know, he wanted to sleep with me, I guess. I was used. I mean, it felt really good,” I said, remembering being with him, “but still. I have to have standards. He literally ruined Christmas for me!”
“Then we need to ruin it for him,” Fiona insisted.
“How? He doesn’t like Christmas.”
“Everyone has something they love,” Morticia said, face a little scary in her dark makeup.
“I’m not going after his family or his dog,” I added.
“Billionaires are like Ebenezer Scrooge. They have weird emotional attachments to money and nice things. Does he have golf clubs you could throw in the Hudson River? Tacky bronze replicas of himself?”
“No,” I said, “but he does have all his cars.”
“Perfect,” Morticia said, handing me a baseball bat.
“I’m not going to smash his cars!” I said, horrified, shoving it back at her. “They're expensive, and the only thing worse than spending Christmas in the company of all my debt collectors would be spending it in jail.”
“You can’t just let him off scot-free. At least make your exit a memorable one,” Fiona said, pouring all of us another round of shots.
While it was fun to think about getting revenge, I would never actually go through with it, I promised myself as I downed another shot.
“God, this vodka is disgusting.”
“I won it in a raffle last year,” Fiona said. “It’s eggnog flavored.”
“It’s nasty,” I said as she poured me another.
“How about we do a little cake decorating,” Fiona said.
