Mistletoe Madness

Chapter 1

Merry Christmas and ho, ho, ho. And just who was the bright bunny who’d come up with the whole Secret Santa schmiel? Oh, yeah, boss’s daughter. Tatiana Allen rolled her eyes. Yep. It was brilliant. Double brilliant that now, in addition to everything else, with less than two weeks left until Christmas, she had to buy a Secret Santa gift…and for Cole Mitchell no less. Ugh. Cole, Where’s-My-Silver-Spoon, Mitchell.

Of course, truth be told, it wasn’t exactly as if her Christmas activity cup runneth over. For the second year in a row, after both retiring from the local power company in Yurgash, Indiana, her parents were taking a Christmas cruise. Late-December snow and ice in Yurgash or a float trip through the sunny Caribbean? That was a no-brainer. And after working hard all their lives, they’d informed her, they were learning to play before it was too late. In fact, her mother had been on something of a crusade for Tatiana to break what she called the curse of the legendary Rumasky work ethic. Crazy talk. Mom definitely needed a break.

Last year Tatiana had joined Grandma Rumasky for Christmas. This year Grandma and Ivan Chertoff were headed to Vegas for a Chapel of Love holiday hookup and a honeymoon parked in front of the slots. Grandma Rumasky didn’t have the best of luck with husbands-they tended to die on her-but she and Ivan were both determined to seize the day. More power to them.

And Tatiana was a big girl. At twenty-eight, there was no reason she couldn’t spend Christmas alone. In her co-op.In the city. Not a big deal.

Tatiana crumpled the piece of paper bearing her fellow food critic and archnemesis’s name and tossed it into the garbage can beneath her desk. Okay, so maybe she did have time to shop for a gift. Maybe, in fact, she had time in spades. But for Cole?As long as no one expected her to be filled with the spirit of goodwill when she shopped for him.

“Have you checked your e-mail?” Elle said, sticking her head in the door of Tatiana’s office.

When Elle, administrative assistant to their department head, made inquiries like that…Foreboding reared its ugly head. “No. Why?”

“Melvin’s had a brain fart.” Elle massaged her temple. “I swear, I think his therapist is screwing around with his Prozac dosage.”

Melvin, their esteemed department head, functioned optimally when medicated. And Elle, unlike her boss, was emotionally stable and a straight shooter without chemical enhancement. She called it the way she saw it. This must be bad.

Tatiana planted her forearms on her desk. “I’m braced. What is it?”

“Melvin has decreed, via e-mail, that in keeping with the spirit of the holiday, we’ll be celebrating the ‘Eight Days of the Season.’”

“Oh, boy. This sounds like a real winner. How’d he come up with this?”

“In order to be politically correct, he took the twelve days of Christmas, the eight days of Hanukah and the seven days of Kwanzaa. He averaged them to come up with the Eight Days of the Season. That means eight Secret Santa gifts and a biggie on the last day.”

Color her a whiner, but this holiday season was going from bad to worse. She did a quick calculation. And Melvin’s math skills sucked. It should be nine days, but she wasn’t saying squat.

“Do you know why the windows don’t open here on the twenty-seventh floor?” Tatiana jammed a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the window. “Because we’d be too damn tempted to jump.”

It was a good thing Melvin was brilliant at his job, because the other stuff that went along with him…Eight Secret Santa gifts-for Cole. Not only did she have to endure him at work, now she had to spend her hard-earned money on him, too. “Please tell me this is Melvin’s idea of a joke.”

“Uh…no.” Elle shoved her straight blond hair behind one ear. Tall, model-thin, sophisticated, it’d be so easy to hate Elle, except she was too genuinely nice to hate. Unlike Cole Mitchell, who was easy fodder.

Connoisseur had a long-standing reputation as the premier travel/food magazine. And Tatiana had known she wanted the high-profile spot of Connoisseur restaurant critic since she’d waitressed her way through college. Traveling to foreign, exotic locales to taste, test and review eateries for discerning travelers was her dream job. She’d worked long and hard, with unwavering determination, to earn one of the two coveted positions at the magazine. And then Cole had waltzed into the same job through family connections. She might’ve managed to overlook it if they hadn’t struck sparks off one another from day one. No, Cole Mitchell was easy to dislike. And his good looks and easy charm were simply another strike against him in her book.

“That’s Melvin, spreading love and peace, eighteen people at a time,” Elle continued. She stepped closer to the desk and lowered her voice. “So who’d you get?”

“Oh, no. I’m not telling.” Elle was fun and a great source of departmental information, but she was also an inveterate gossip. And the animosity simmering between Tatiana and Cole was something the whole department had been avidly watching. There was no way Elle wouldn’t spill the beans. “You’ll slip up and I’ll be outed to Melvin. Then he’ll come up with something totally horrible because I screwed up the surprise element of his Eight Days of Secret Santa Season. No can do.”

“I would not slip up.”

Uh-huh. Just like a fat man and eight reindeer were gonna be making rounds on Christmas Eve. “Not deliberately.”

“Well, go ahead and pull up the e-mail. Read it and weep. Ta.” Elle left as suddenly as she’d appeared.

Tatiana clicked on her e-mail icon and skimmed Melvin’s missive. Eight gifts for Cole Mitchell? Maybe she could start out with a personality to go along with his ego. Unfortunately she didn’t know where to purchase a personality for Mr. Arrogant Imbecile, but she knew just what she could order for his first gift. She clicked on the search and typed in her request. An evil smile played about her mouth. She loved online shopping.

Tatiana Allen. Cole Mitchell rolled his neck, to no avail. Tatiana pain was mental, not physical. And anyway, she was a pain much farther south than his neck.

Eighteen people in the department and he got stuck playing Secret Santa to Ms. Acid-Tongued Shrew. Oh, joy. Maybe he could buy her a one-way ticket to some far and distant place. Trouble was, she went to far and distant places, but she always returned-like his recurring pain. Perversely he’d begun to anticipate matching wits and trading barbs with her on the occasions when they were both in the office.

He reconsidered. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all when her Santa gave her just what she deserved. And he got to make that decision. It would definitely be something that would leave the group laughing and her squirming. Hey, this Secret Santa could be heady stuff.

His phone extension buzzed. “Cole?” Elle’s disembodied voice came over the intercom.

“Yeah?”

“Melvin needs to see you in his office. ASAP.”

“Sure thing.” Cole pushed back from his desk and picked up his day planner.

Melvin was a bona fide nut job. One of those guys you looked at and wondered how he’d made it as far as he had with his numerous quirks. Lucky for him, he had a damn fine eye for critique and editorial. Professional schizophrenia.

Of course, quite a number of people considered Cole’s success questionable. He knew that accounted for much of Tatiana’s attitude. She only saw what he had seemingly stepped into. She had no clue what he’d walked away from. It had taken about five whole minutes for word to spread of Cole’s father’s meeting with Connoisseur’s publisher. Of course, no one other than Cole knew his father had been there to try and thwart his son’s career move. But if that’s what people wanted to believe, screw ’em. He’d quit playing the if-you’d-give-me-a-chance-you-might-like-me game when he was a kid.

Cole strolled down the hall, bypassing the cubicles. He paused outside of Melvin’s corner office. Elle, on the phone, waved Cole in.

He walked in, closing the door behind him. Great. The Evil Fairy Queen was already planted in one of the two guest chairs facing Melvin’s desk. Red unruly curls and piercing green eyes.A prominent nose reminiscent of Streisand. A generous mouth that deceptively led to thoughts of hot kisses…until one encountered her rapier tongue. More striking than pretty.

Melvin, thin, angular and prematurely balding, motioned Cole into the chair next to Tatiana. Cole slid into the seat, noticing, not for the first time, her legs. Nice legs. Very nice legs…especially for a virago. She smiled at him and he didn’t trust it for a second. She was either sick or up to something. “Not feeling well today?”

“I’m just fine.” Her smile, even though it was faux sweet, sent a jolt through him. “Thanks for asking.”

Melvin spoke up. “You’re probably wondering why I wanted to see the two of you.”

Cole slanted a sidelong glance at Tatiana. He could all but see her bite back a scathing comment. He had to admit, things were never dull with Madame Snark around.

She swallowed and said, “You wanted to tell us firsthand that the Eight Days of the Season was a practical joke?”

Melvin recoiled. “Absolutely not. It’s a wonderful opportunity for us all to grow closer.”

Oops. Someone had been adjusting Melvin’s feel-good pills again.

“I really want you and everyone else to think about what their person might want or need. As I mentioned in my e-mail, the gifts should speak to both the giver and the recipient.”

Cole couldn’t contain a grin. He planned to speak to Tatiana with his gifts, for sure.

“See, Cole’s excited about it. You’ve just got to enter into the spirit of the season, Tatiana.”

She skewered Cole with a look that suggested he nosh on something vile.

Okay, there was no holding it back. His grin gave way to a full-blown smirk. Thank you, Melvin. Score one for him.

“Now on to the matter at hand. As you both know, the magazine market is getting tighter and tighter, and it’s increasingly important for us to evaluate on an ongoing basis…”

Cole’s eyes began to glaze over. He’d heard this about a freaking million times. Melvin pulled out the same state-of-the-industry preparatory speech and meandered through it for ten minutes before actually making a point. Cole’s attention wandered to Tatiana’s legs. Shapely.Curvy, like the rest of her, with nice muscle tone in her calf.Slender, sexy ankles. Just the kind of legs a man could imagine wrapped around his waist or thrown over his shoulders.

What would Tatiana Allen be like in bed? Would she always be jockeying to be on top? He’d bet the family farm she wasn’t a quiet, gentle lover. No way. She’d moan and scream his name and sink her red nails into his shoulders, nipping and biting. Climbing into bed with her would be like going to war. And damn it if the thought didn’t leave him squirming in his chair and more than a little turned on.

What would she taste like? It’d been his experience that no two women tasted the same, whether you were lazily licking along her neck, kissing her mouth or something more intimate.

Wasabi. Tatiana would taste like wasabi. Not hot to the initial bite, but then it set your senses on fire. That’s what she’d be-exotic, spicy, hot, with an incendiary afterburn…

“So, Cole…” Hearing his name snapped him out of his sexual contemplation and back to the present, “What do you think?” Melvin asked.

A quick glance at Tatiana made up his mind. She looked disgusted and thoroughly pissed off. Anything that elicited that kind of response in her, he was all for it.

“I think it’s a great idea.” Did she actually grind her teeth? “I think you’ve got a real winner.” Yes. He was sure he just heard enamel on enamel. He laid it on thicker. “Best I’ve heard in a while.”

Melvin preened. “See, Tatiana, Cole likes it.”

If looks could kill…“That’s because Cole is an imbecile with a mouth. He doesn’t have a clue as to what he just endorsed. He was drifting along in la-la land. And besides, he wouldn’t know a good idea if it came up and bit him in the butt.”

Oh, shit. She was far more observant and sharper than Melvin. Well, except for that bit about a good idea biting him in the butt. Still, he knew the best defense was a good offense. “Just because you don’t like the idea…” What the hell was the idea? “Well, darling, you really shouldn’t sulk, because it’s not very becoming.” He tossed her a flirtatious smile. “And I’m flattered you’ve noticed my rear.”

Her look turned docile, almost sweet, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. He’d pushed too far. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is a great idea and I just need to see it the same way you do. Why don’t you recap it for me but with your spin on it? You know, a different perspective.”

Damn her. Melvin jumped in, saving his proverbial butt.

“Perfect. This is just the kind of thing we want to play up. Siskel and Ebert.Hepburn and Tracy.Michael Jackson and Bubbles?”

Mother of God. What the hell was Melvin babbling about? Siskel, Hepburn and Tracy were dead. And Jackson and Bubbles?

“Melvin, be reasonable.” Tatiana adopted a conciliatory tone. “It’s the holidays. I have obligations and a full schedule. I’m sure Cole does, too.”

Melvin templed his fingers in front of his mouth. “I appreciate that and I also appreciate that this takes precedence over anything else you’re working on for Connoisseur at the moment. You and Cole will just have to figure out when you can get together and take it from there. I’m not worried because I know I have two consummate professionals in front of me.”

Well, Melvin had just neatly backed Madame Snark into a corner. Any further protest would mark her as unprofessional. Nice job, Melvin.

And what the hell had he agreed to?