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All I Want...
Copyright 2004 Amy O’Connor
ISBN: 978-1-55410-229-7
Cover art and design by Martine Jardin
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
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Smashwords Edition
All I Want for Christmas is... A Viking?
‘T was the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse...
Bah! Humbug!
Holly shifted restlessly, crossing and uncrossing her legs before taking another moody sip of the hot rum punch, swirling the milky sweetness over her tongue several times before finally swallowing.
Was she mixing her metaphors? Nah. Just mixing her Christmas stories.
Who cared anyway?
And that was another thing... She hated—hated—her name. It was bad enough to have been born on Christmas Day, but how insane had her parents have been to decide ‘Holly’ was a good name for a Christmas baby?
Her birthday.
Huh!
In approximately—she glanced at the clock above the mantle—three minutes she’d be thirty-eight years old. Thirty-eight! She snorted. And what did she have? Nothing! Couldn’t even get laid on her own damn birthday...
She took another unsteady gulp, eying the glass suspiciously when she had to tip it right up to catch the last smooth drop. Holly reached for the nearby jug, trying not to wince when it clattered unsteadily against the glass. Empty? She shrugged and slumped back into the soft leather of her sofa.
Thirty-eight years old, and what did she have to show for it? For fifteen years she’d kicked and scrambled her way to the top of her field. She could safely say she was a successful lawyer—with a paycheck her friends envied. A shame they didn’t consider the huge hours and lack of a decent man in her life when they were cooing over her latest pair of Jimmy Choos. Decent man? Any man would do right now!
Huh!
She closed her eyes, trying to ignore the roiling fireworks that suddenly headed in all directions behind her lids. Maybe she shouldn’t have drunk the whole jug of punch after all... Just because that miserable, scum-sucking pig of an excuse she’d called ‘boyfriend’ for the past six months had been running late for their dinner date, then had phoned—phoned, mind you!—to tell her it was all over. Dinner, relationship, everything. And on Christmas Eve, no less!
Legs curled up, she settled more comfortably into the corner of the lounge, clenching her eyes more tightly shut as the world spun. Dammit! She’d known from the beginning the relationship was bound to fail. They all did. If she’d been a man, she’d have said it was penis envy. There was probably a term for the way men couldn’t cope with her paycheck being so much larger than theirs. Kind of childish, but there it was.
The world spun crazily, the fireworks loping off in opposite directions, and she shuddered. It got worse. Definitely shouldn’t have drunk the whole jugful.
Her body may have been drooping, but her brain was still racing around in circles. There was always something to be organized, or a new goal to achieve. Tiring, but true. Holly smiled. Maybe, just maybe, the alcohol would knock her brain out too, then—for once—she might wake up feeling like she’d actually had a decent night’s sleep, rather than thinking that she may as well have just spent the night at her desk.
Even as the hopeful thought popped into life, her brain skittered off on a different track. She was taking three days off for Christmas, so that would leave her with an extra three days of work to cram into the following week. Then there was her new paralegal who’d already clashed with her long-time personal assistant... Would the flowers she’d ordered for her mom be the right ones? There was the holiday picnic catering to be confirmed, and the marketing budget still to be finalized...
Holly sighed and snuggled her face deeper into the faux-fur cushion. No matter what she did, her brain didn’t seem to have an off-switch.
* * * *
Erik stood six-foot-four in bare feet, had linebacker’s shoulders, and—so he’d been told—had a chest that was enough to make a full-grown woman swoon. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t do it on purpose. But with his sort of build, if he didn’t keep working out regularly, and make a point of keeping fit, he’d turn into a disgusting tub of Jell-O.
Still, he was big, and he was imposing. And he knew it.
He had no problem dealing with the elves. The reindeer respected him. Even the bloody Ice Giants at the other end of the valley were relatively polite when he pounded by on his daily run. At least, they didn’t throw axes at him. He’d often wondered why not—hell, they attacked anything that moved!—and he’d eventually settled for the theory that they liked him. Maybe.
Yet there was nothing like a petulant twelve-hundred-year-old to make him lose every ounce of his hard-earned self-composure.