Page 432 of The Parkers' Handsome Holiday
My father puffed his cigar and watched me out of the corner of his eyes.
Armie sat up a little straighter. “Are you talking about that little blonde bombshell of an elf who’s been following you around? What’s her name? Tinsel?”
“Tinsely,” I corrected.
“She’s quite charming,” my father interjected. “She’s worked for me for a decade, and I have to say, I’ve never met a woman with such grit and integrity in the workplace. She has saved my company a lot of money.”
“Is she single?” Armie asked.
“As far as I know,” my father said.
Hold on.
This conversation was really getting away from me.
Armie pumped his eyebrows. “Do you have her phone number?”
“No,” I said somewhat sharply.
But my father, bless his old dumb heart, took his phone out of his pocket, found her name, and read her number out loud to Armie. “She has quite a busy month on her plate right now,” my father explained, “so don’t go taking up more of her time. I need her focused. But she’s a lovely young woman with a lot to offer, and maybe a night out for some fun would do her some good. Don’t you think, Chad?”
“I think giving out our employee’s private information is a serious breach of trust,” I grumbled.
Armie finished adding Tinsely as a contact in his phone before setting it face down on the table. Notifications rolled in one after another, and I had to imagine they were all women he was most likely love-bombing on dating apps.
He had a track record of being an ass. I’d have to fill my father in later and ensure he didn’t give any women’s numbers to the guy in the future.
“Maybe I can convince her to come over for a drink in that little elf costume of hers,” Armie said. The men chuckled. I brooded over my whiskey. “Any pointers, Chad? Does that thing have zippers or buttons?”
Classy, I thought. Real fucking classy.
CHAPTER 11
TINSELY
“Look up.”
I turned my eyes up to the ceiling in the board room while Ivana, my makeup artist for the shoot we were doing today, swept thick coats of mascara over my eyelashes. When she finished with that, she swept black eyeliner on my upper and lower lash lines and went back in to touch up my highlighter.
I’d been sitting in this chair for over two and a half hours while Ivana did my makeup and her sister, Alana, did my hair. Chadwick, damn him, only had to do an hour in the chair while his hair was touched up and they put a minimal amount of makeup on him, so his complexion looked right under the flash of the camera.
On the other side of the room, he joked with his wardrobe team, who presented him several options of what he could wear for the first portion of the shoot.
Today we were working on a photo shoot for the Bamford’s marketing campaign that would run from December tenth straight through until Christmas Day. It would consist of two main images: a before shot and an after. It was pretty self-explanatory. In the before shot we would wear our everyday clothes. In other words, Chadwick would wear a flashy suit and a Rolex watch, and I would wear a blouse with a form-fitting skirt and black nylons.
While I watched out of the corner of my eye, Chadwick selected a dark green suit—it was so dark in fact that when the light didn’t hit it, it nearly looked black. His wardrobe manager nodded approvingly, like this was the wisest selection, and proceeded to reselect my wardrobe to better complement Chadwick’s.
I sighed.
“You’re so lucky,” Ivana muttered as she went in to swipe red lip stain on my lower lip. “Every woman in the city would claw her way up a mountain to be in your shoes.”
“So lucky.” Alana packed up her hairstyling tools in a heatproof bag and cast an envious look in Chadwick’s direction. “So sexy.”
“He’s a spoiled daddy’s boy,” I said.
“So?” Alana shrugged. “For a man like Chadwick, you have to make exceptions. Besides, I kind of have a thing for daddies.”
I rolled my eyes.
