Page 35 of The Duke Who Saved Christmas
I grinned. “I thought as much. These are the…” I grabbed the tag on one of the branches. “The nine-foot ones.”
“Right. They need to be kind of… similar. Nice and triangular. Aesthetically pleasing, if you will.” Sylvie stepped in front of me and started examining the trees.
I dug in my pocket for the sold tags and pen and waved the tags. “Just tell me which ones you want, and I’ll tag them as sold.”
“Oh? Does that mean you’ll do whatever I say? That’s a tempting thought.”
“I could hide a body really well among these trees, Sylvie.”
“I suppose. Just not enough room for your ego though, right?” She flashed a quick smile at me and grabbed one of theidentifying tags from a branch. “None of them have prices on. Just the size.”
“They’re priced to order since they tend to be a bit more resilient than ones that are already cut.”
“How do I know which ones to choose if I can’t keep a tally of the price?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“What?” She looked over at me, confusion marring her pretty face. “I am working with a budget, you know.”
“Don’t worry. Julian called me before you got here. He said you were on your way and to send him the bill when you’d picked them all.”
A tiny frown wrinkled her forehead. “Oh.”
My lips curved to the side. “He said it cuts out the middleman, so just choose the best trees, I’ll tag them, and I’ll bill him for them.”
Discounted, of course.
It was for his wedding, after all.
“Oh,” Sylvie said, this time in a smaller voice. “That seems like a lot of pressure to stick to a budget.”
“What’s your budget?”
“Eighteen hundred.”
I choked on thin air. “On bloody Christmas trees?”
She paused, but her gaze skittered from left to right and back again. “Look, I don’t set the budget, I just get given it.”
“But eighteen hundred pounds on Christmas trees? Do you not think that’s…” I trailed off.
Sylvie put her hands in her pockets, bringing her shoulders up to her ears. “Insane? Excessive? Financially careless and irresponsible?”
“Your words, not mine.” I chuckled.
She shrugged. “Julian’s richy-rich-rich.”
So was I.
Richer than him, in fact.
“So am I, but I wouldn’t spend eighteen hundred pounds on Christmas trees.” And I was someone who had seventeen of the fucking things in his house.
“Not even for a good cause?”
“A wedding isn’t a good cause,” I said dryly. “It’s an overpriced, overexaggerated, needlessly extravagant party where one party always dips out.”
She blinked, staring at me. “Wow. Tell me how you really feel, Thomas.”
