Page 4 of A Billionaire for Christmas
“Mommy, I wanna tree! Youpromised,” a little girl whined loudly.
The hole Sara wanted to dig and hide inside of needed to bebigwith all the guilt she carried right now. Her father had trusted her to do thisonelittle thing, and so far, it had been a disaster.
Normally customers used cards to cash at about seventy-thirty, but today had been mostly cash, and they’d had a decent day’s sales up until then. Which meant the money wasn’t safely tucked away in an account her father could transfer out of, but gone for good.
The crowd quickly dispersed after checking wallets and purses before sliding her pitying looks. She apologized again and watched them go with a knot in her stomach, hearing the little girl’s cries because they had to leave without a tree.
They were the only lot on the island, but there were others not too far away. No doubt they’d just drive over the bridge to one of them and get a tree there to make the little girl happy again.
She needed to call her father. And the police.
“I’ll take them,” the man closest to her said.
She blinked, the fog crowding her brain pushing away everything until all that remained was what a failure and disappointment she was to herself and to her family in their time of need. One more burden to worry about when they were drowning in others. “I’m sorry, what?”
She finally managed to focus on the man standing nearby, his arms crossed over his chest.
He looked familiar. So familiar.
Short, dark hair fell slightly longer over his forehead, and the string lights crisscrossed around the lot above their heads hinted at the barest of silver at his temples. Piercing, dark eyes focused unwaveringly on her, but she wasn’t able to make out the color.
He was tall, around six feet—give or take an inch, she’d guess—and dressed nicely in slacks and a crisp button-down beneath an elegant coat. He didn’t look like a local. They tended to dress more casually and not look like a model.
“I said I’ll take them. The trees.”
She blinked at him. “Oh, of course. You have cash, I guess. Um, which one do you want?”
A slow smile pulled at his full lips, and she found herself watching it happen like it was slow-mo. The fluttery thrill that filled her came out of nowhere, blindsiding her, since men were not on her wish list for the foreseeable future, what with her life such a mess at the moment as an unemployed woman living back home with her parents.
“All of them.”
ChapterThree
Sara blinked and then blinked again, sure she’d misheard him. Maybe the stress had finally gotten to her, and she was having a stroke? “I’m sorry, what?”
“I’ll take all of them,” he said patiently. “That truck is for delivery, yes?”
“Yeah, it is but—” She looked around, but only the two men had stayed behind after her cash-only announcement. “Is this a joke?”
A frown overtook his model-worthy face, and the man stepped toward the table.
“It’s not a joke. I can’t do anything about what happened with the tree or the cash box, but I can take the rest of the trees off your…raccoon hands.”
The second guy made a noise that sounded like a choked laugh he tried to disguise. She glared at him and then turned it on the jokester himself. “Haha. Seriously,notin the mood, dude. I need to call the police and make a report, so if you’re done...”
The guy opened his wallet and studied the contents.
“I’ll make a deposit to secure the purchase and pay the rest first thing in the morning. Will that work?”
He handed her a stack of hundreds, twenties, and five dollar bills. Not a couple. A freakingstack. Sara went back to blinking. “Are thesereal?”
The second guy outright laughed this time, and she shot him her best corporate glare. The layoff had done a number on her self-esteem because she’d been so blindsided by the news after rearranging her life in order to take the position. But she wasn’t an idiot.
“They’re real, sweetheart.”
Her cell buzzed again and again until she finally answered. “Dad, I can’t talk right?—”
“Sara? Are you okay? I saw what happened on the camera,” her father said in his booming voice.
