Two Doms for Christmas (2 page)

Chapter Two

Haley opened the front door and
turned off the alarm. She was seriously regretting inviting Austin home, now
that she had calmed down a bit. Sammie immediately jumped on her, throwing her
off balance and almost sending her on her ass. Ginger, however, ran past her,
racing happily down the sidewalk and then stopping dead as Austin got out of
the car.

“Hey, cutie. What are you up to?”
he asked, leaning down and scooping the sheltie into his arms. She went limp,
her head tucking under his chin as a sure sign that she like the man. Austin
petted her as he walked toward the door.

“I’m sorry. She never runs out of
the house like that.”

“What’s her name?”

“Ginger. The little brute here is
named Sammie.”

“They’re adorable. She’s a sheltie
and he’s a pug.” He asked as a statement, obviously already knowing the answer.

“Yes. They are my buddies and my
sanity.” She ushered him through the door and shut it behind herself.

* * * *

Austin put Ginger down, and she and
Sammie trotted behind him into the kitchen. He turned on the coffee maker and
helped himself to a pod from the tray beneath the machine.

“Where are the cups?”

Haley pointed to the cabinet.

“I’ll make you one if you tell me
what kind.”

“Decaf please. Are you always so
forward?”

He grinned sheepishly. “I just
figured you were upset. I’m capable of making my own coffee. It has been a few
years since anyone was around to wait on me.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. So why don’t you
have a girlfriend?”

“I’ve had a few, but no one worth
keeping. My generation has an interesting bunch of females, or maybe it’s just
the ones I seem to meet. They don’t want to work. They can’t cook, and have no
clue how to clean properly. I’m not paying for a maid and a girlfriend at the
same time.”

Haley glared at him. “So the
girlfriend is supposed to be your maid and your cook? Isn’t that a lot
chauvinistic?”

He removed his cup and frowned as
he put hers in. “That didn’t come out right, did it?”

“I suppose that depends on how you
meant it.”

“Do you have any milk?” he asked,
waggling his finger over the top of the cup.

She replied with the obvious. “It’s
in the fridge.”

He groaned to himself, rolling his
eyes to the ceiling. He was sounding like a complete moron. He had a way with
business sense and with money. Casual friendships he was good at, but making a
good first impression on a woman was a forte that he seemed to have lost. Maybe
it was the messed up connections to his past, or maybe he was just an idiot.
Austin could never quite figure that one out. He had married Glenda with the
hopes of a better future, and then everything had gone to shit. “That was a
stupid question, huh? I’m batting a thousand.”

Taking out the milk, he retrieved
her cup and turned off the machine before sitting down. “Let me begin over. I
kind of told a half-truth about my work. I actually own the company. Women tend
to find out I have money and they want me for their sugar daddy. I have no
problem paying a maid and having a girlfriend. No, I don’t expect her to be my
slave. I just want a woman who is capable of doing things, even if she doesn’t
do them.”

He shrugged. At least he was no
longer sticking his foot in his mouth. His self-worth had gone to hell in the
last few years and he really needed to get it back. His ego had once been a
crucial part of who he was. “I want someone who can help me in the kitchen and
help clean up the mess afterwards if it’s the maid’s day off. I don’t want to
be stirring the sauce and worrying that she is going to cut her finger off
slicing cucumbers for a salad. I had that happen. It was only the tip of her
finger, but it was a nightmare. Then she tried to sue me as if it was my
fault.”

Haley’s face twisted as she tried
not to laugh and then did anyway. “Are you serious?”

“Completely. The judge threw it out
of court, but I still had to pay my lawyer.”

“That’s horrible. Are there really
women out there who can’t safely cut up salad fixings? That’s like boiling
water.”

“They can’t do that either.”

“No relevant stories on that one?”

He laughed. His life was smattered
with relevant stories. “Actually, yes. Different girl. It was the third time we
met and she drove over to my house after work. I was running late and went to
take a quick shower. What I didn’t know was that she decided to boil water in a
regular pot to make herself a cup of her dieting tea. In the time it took me to
take a shower, she forgot about it. I, of course, didn’t realize this. I
hurried her out the door because we were going to miss our reservation.
Luckily, I have a good alarm system and it notified me when the smoke detectors
went off. I had to walk away from a two hundred dollar dinner.” That had been
such an expensive, wasted night. “I left her with her meal and she had to take
a cab home. She was furious.”

“It never occurred to her that she
had left the stove on?”

“No, she was actually stunned. To
this day, she claims she didn’t do it, but I certainly didn’t put water on to
boil. I use the Keurig for tea. There was also the paper wrapper with her tea
bag still sitting on the counter with the cup.”

“I guess that would imply guilt. I
could use some of that tea myself,” she said with a sigh. “So, how long have
you been divorced?”

“Four years. My sons were a year
old when she moved out. Then it took a year to get divorced, because I was
fighting the living arrangements for my sons. Unfortunately, I lost.”

Austin took a sip of his coffee.
Did he really want to tell her the whole thing? She had been honest with him
and their stories were so eerily similar. “My history isn’t much better than
yours. Mine was grand theft auto at fifteen. I did it to piss my father off
because he had grounded me for something my sister did. I stole his car and
drove to Florida in it. I was there for almost a week before they caught me.
What a great vacation that was. Then there was the drunk and disorderly six
months later. I beat the shit out of some guy who hit his girlfriend. At
seventeen, my father put me in boot camp for troubled teens. That didn’t work
too well. After my fourth fight where I broke the kids jaw, they threw me out.

“It sucks to be six foot two at
fifteen. I learned to fight because everyone wanted to beat me up. I guess it
was an ego thing. The other kids liked to pick on the tall skinny kid because I
wasn’t a bully and they were. At nineteen, I was arrested for hitting a guy in
a bar with a bottle. He got a hundred stitches, and I got six months for something
I didn’t do. It wasn’t me that time, but witnesses said it was. I took anger
management while I was in jail and came to term with my issues. It didn’t
matter when it came down to custody of my sons. A judge doesn’t like to see
those kinds of things on your record. It’s even worse when you are twenty-two
and single, with no family to fall back on.”

She nodded, but said nothing. Haley
Joy was an attentive listener.

“Unfortunately, my ex had her
family. They offered her the guesthouse on their property. They also promised
that someone would always be home with the boys so they would never have to go
to a sitter or daycare. I couldn’t promise that. It broke my heart to say
goodbye to my boys. They are five now and I’ve seen them all of ten times. I
missed the first words and their first steps. They are going to be like I was,
really tall and thin. I won’t be there to help them, or show them what to eat
to bulk up in a body that refuses to gain weight. It really sucks sometimes.”

“I agree.”

Ginger hopped in Haley’s lap as if
sensing her owner’s sudden despair. Sammie was there pawing at her leg and
Austin picked him up. The little dog sloppily licked his face and Austin
couldn’t help but laugh.

It brought a nice, very warm smile
to Haley’s lips. The woman had amazing lips, tinted a beautiful shade of
maroon. He didn’t think she was wearing lipstick or any makeup for that matter.
He wondered how old she was. If she had been married for fourteen years, she
was probably in her late thirties. Hadn’t she said that she had been divorced
at thirty-eight? That would mean she was near forty. Was that even possible?
She didn’t look even close to that old. She had a nicely rounded everything and
he really liked that. Skinny women just didn’t appeal to him. They looked too
fragile. He inspected the skin of her face and hands as he petted Sammie. She
had some light freckle type spots on her cheeks, and just the tiniest hint of
crows’ feet in the corners of her eyes. “Would you be offended if I asked how
old you are?”

“I don’t get stressed over my age.
I’m forty-one. From what you have said, you are twenty-seven.”

That was interesting. He had
actually given her all the numbers to figure it out, but to have her do it was
amazing. “Yes, I am.”

“May I ask what happened to your
parents?”

“A year after my divorce, my father
had a heart attack. My mother couldn’t deal with his death. She died the night
after his funeral. My sister lives in Minnesota, and we rarely speak. We sold
everything we didn’t want and split the estate. That gave me the money to
finance my business and pay for my house.”

“Aren’t you afraid I’m a
money-grubbing, broke writer?”

“Not really. I Googled you on the
way over with my hands free. Your income last quarter was impressive.”

Her eyes lowered into slits as she
glared at him. “How the hell did you get that? I mean, the publisher is
supposed to protect my information. How dare they release how much I actually
made? Shit, my ex will take me back to court for support if he finds out. He
takes home four hundred thousand a year. He doesn’t need my money.”

He was teasing her, but hadn’t
meant to make her angry. “I don’t really know how much you made. I was just
breaking your balls to see how you would respond. You live in a nice house that
is well kept. You are nicely dressed and have beautiful, well-crafted jewelry
on. That’s usually the first thing a woman pawns if she is having financial
problems.”

“Oh,” she said flatly. “I do buy
bonds for my daughter and have them put away for her future, but I don’t want
to give that money to my ex-husband.”

“I agree. That’s a good way to do
it. I have accounts set up for my sons and every year I add to it. I still send
them stuff for their birthday and Christmas, and she has never returned it.”
The comment made him feel bitter. “I used to love Christmas. Now I hate it. It
is such a depressing holiday when you are alone. It’s getting close again,
isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Two more weeks. I agree that
it sucks. How about we skip it?” she asked as a grin flashed on her face. “Let’s
go somewhere that doesn’t have Christmas.”

“I wish I could. I have winter
contracts and I can’t walk away in case there is a problem. I know this sounds
like a weird question because we just met, but would you spend Christmas with
me? Maybe we can do something to make it fun again. Is that possible?”

Tears instantly filled her eyes,
and he could see she was trying to hold them back. “I would actually love that.
Fuck!”

He wanted to cry with her. “Fuck
what?”

“I don’t even know. I used to
decorate the whole house and put up a big tree. I have a box full of family
ornaments in the attic. Every year I would make a point to get one for each one
of us. Jane always had a princess or whatever female character was hot that
year.” She sniffled and grabbed for a napkin, swiping at her nose. “My husband
loved Charlie Brown, so I would find him one every year. Mine were always
Tasmanian
Devil
. I bought it for myself. Now I avoid
the stores because I can’t even stand looking at the stuff. Of course it gets
harder every year because they start putting decorations out right after
Halloween.”

“Yeah, no shit. My parents used to
go all out for Christmas, the huge tree, the yard decorations. I kept some of
it after they died, dreaming I would do my own house the same way. I was too busy
the year we got married and then…well, let’s just say that it never happened.”

“We are just such a depressing
pair, aren’t we?”

“Misery loves company.”

“Does it really? You would think a
miserable person would rather be with someone happy to cheer them up.”

He smiled. “But you have cheered me
up. I know that you understand because your circumstances have been similar. I
guess it makes me feel closer to you. I feel like I can trust you and tell you
things without having you judge me. That has to count for something, doesn’t
it?”

“I guess you’re right. I feel the
same way. I want to do something fun. I want a new memory that makes me smile.”

That was an interesting theory. The
problem was what to do. “Hey,” he said in a moment of inspiration. “It’s supposed
to snow later. How about we go sled riding tomorrow? I know the perfect spot. Then
I can light a fire, and we can drink hot chocolate with marshmallows in it.”

She laughed, the sound warming his
heart more than hot chocolate ever could. “Are you insane? I’d kill myself.”

“No, you won’t. I promise. My yard
isn’t that steep.”

“We’re going sled riding at your
house?”

“Sure, why not? It’s perfect.” She
was obviously intrigued. “Please?”

“Aren’t you afraid I will sue you
when I break something?”

She was kidding, but he rolled his
eyes dramatically anyway. “Nope. The judge will think you were nuts for doing
it in the first place and throw it out of court.”

“He will be right. At least I’ve
got some added padding to help.”

That was the second comment she had
made about her weight. Should he let it pass, or say something? Why not lay it
on the table and get a reaction? “I actually love the way you look. I don’t
find thin women attractive. I never have.”