Ginny handed me an envelope.
"You won," she said.
"Excuse me?"
"The contest," Ginny explained.
I looked in the envelope. There were two tickets to theNutcrackerballet.
"I didn't enter a contest."
"Your email is entered automatically," Ginny said. "It's something fun I'm doing for clients this year."
"I don't have anyone to take," I said automatically.
"No one special in your life?" Ginny asked. "No bakers?" She winked.
I was taken aback. How did she know about Chloe?
"I watchTheGreat Christmas Bake-Off," Ginny gushed. "I must have seen all the episodes like five times each. You and Chloe are adorable. You two have your own fan page, did you know that?"
"I don't even want to know," I muttered.
"Yeah, you probably don't," she said thoughtfully. "The implications people make about you two are, quite frankly, graphically sexual in nature."
I tried to keep my face cold and emotionless. She smirked. Clearly I had failed.
"I will pick Milo up this afternoon," I said.
"Sure thing. He's a well-behaved boy, not like Gus."
The corgi howled.
I left the groomers, tucking the tickets into my suit-coat pocket.
Should I take Chloe? I knew she liked Christmas, but she had been angry when I joked about buying her stuff and insisted she didn't want handouts. But she was happy about the gifts I had bought her. I was a little frustrated when I walked into the office.
"Look who decided to join us," Liam said loudly. The marketing team was assembled in one of the large meeting rooms. I didn't like to make people wait. That was a douche power move that was reserved for less successful people. I liked to be on time. I checked my watch and stifled a curse. I was two minutes late.
"Apologies for my lack of punctuality," I told them.
The marketing director waved away my apologies. "It's all pine needles under the Christmas tree. Sorry," he said sheepishly. "In my house, it's all Christmas all the time. My kids are obsessed. I had a nightmare about a talking snowflake last night."
Liam snickered. "Down to business," he said, clapping his hands and gesturing to the graph on the screen.
"These are preorders for the product," the marketing director said. "The factories have finished the first round of production, and it's all being boxed today and will be shipped off tonight." He pulled up another picture. "This is the line outside Williams-Sonoma of people waiting to buy the product."
"Wow," I said.
"The news is running stories about it," a young woman said, holding up her tablet. "Platinum Provisions special Christmas kits are the hot item this year."
"It's also translating into our medical sales," the VP of operations added. "We've had interest from hospitals as far away as Japan and Australia inquiring about our products."
My life was looking up. If I could convince Mark Holbrook to rent in my tower, this would be the best Christmas ever.
43
Chloe
