Chapter 10

10

MASON

G abby set another folder down on my desk before thumbing through a stack of letters, organizing them neatly on my desk.

“Great, great,” I said into the phone. “That’s doable, but I need to know how many units you need in the long term, preferably quarterly. Once you have those numbers, I’d be more than happy to meet up and hammer out a plan.” I glanced at Gabby, and under my breath, I whispered, “Gabby, add a meeting to my calendar for January twenty, Brown Jug enterprises. I need Colin and James from accounting there.”

Gabby nodded, continuing to sort the incredible amount of mail that’d been dropped off today. My desk was a wash of colors, the mess starting to grate on my nerves.

“Thanks. Merry Christmas to you as well.” I hung up the phone and ran my hand over my face before turning back to my computer.

“Shelly from the Aster Foundation called a few minutes ago. She wanted to know whether you were attending the Mistletoe Ball tomorrow. I told her I’d get back to her.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I’m planning on it. What time did they want me to make an appearance?”

She neatly stacked the mail in order of importance, just how I liked it. “You’re not just making an appearance, remember? Heritage Spirits has an activity booth?—”

“Oh, shit.” I closed my eyes and leaned back in my chair. “I totally forgot about that.”

Gabby shot me a matronly look with a slight arch of her neatly manicured brows. “You know, this isn’t an actual ball. It’s open to the public. The tickets are sold out but it’s going to be very casual, Mr. O’Leary. You don’t need to pull out any stops. You’re just a sponsor.”

The Mistletoe Ball was a New York City staple during the holiday season. Half craft fair, half Christmas market, the event was held at the New York Public Library and spilled out into the street, where stalls and booths teeming with hot chocolate and fatty holiday food had Manhattan smelling like heaven. My company always had a booth, but this was the first year I’d offered to do it myself instead of sending our army of interns to run it. They kept wandering off to enjoy the festivities.

“My son just had his Christmas festival at school,” Gabby said as she grabbed a few folders off my desk and tucked them under her arm. “They had this wonderful activity where the kids made mistletoe bundles. I could give Shelly a call and see if they already have something like that going on, and if not, I can order everything you need.”

“Sure, that sounds fine.” My head pounded as I turned back to my computer screens.

“You know, Mr. O’Leary, everyone in the office is about to start their Christmas time off. You should consider taking some vacation time as well. Maybe go upstate to see your parents?”

I gave Gabby a kind smile to hide the tightness in my chest. “I’ll think about it. Someone has to stay here to run things, you know, especially with you taking three weeks off.”

She matched my smile, rolling her eyes as she shuffled away. I really liked Gabby. She’d been working for me for five years, and I wouldn’t have been able to do what I did without her. But she was also a mother to four children under the age of ten and tended to try to mother me, too.

She was usually right, though. I hadn’t taken any vacation time in years. I even planned to be here Christmas Day, which suddenly felt wrong, but I chalked that up to spending so much time with Fia lately. The mere thought of her always got me all tangled up inside. The feelings I’d kept under control since I started going through puberty became almost too difficult to contain. I liked her. A lot. I looked forward to seeing her and talking to her.

I normally didn’t like talking.

The day passed by in a blur of last-minute details for an outgoing shipment of our special edition holiday scotch, a fan favorite. I took phone calls that ranged from emergencies at the distillery to a rogue investor calling to wish me and my family a happy holiday. Gabby poked her head into my office around four to tell me she’d ordered everything I needed for the event tomorrow, and then left for the day to go pick her oldest son up from school. She wouldn’t be in next week, since Christmas break had just begun for her kids, so I was now completely on my own in my slice of the New York City skyline.

Six rolled around, and I was still behind my desk. A brisk knocked sounded at my office door, filling the otherwise silent room. Before I could react, the door opened.

Dad closed the door behind him and tucked his hands in his pants pockets. “Burning the midnight oil?”

“It’s a busy time of year,” I answered, even though I’d been sitting here for an hour doing nothing but thinking of texting Fia.

“I tried calling you.” He sat in one of the leather chairs in front of my desk, crossing an ankle over his knee. “Your mom is planning a dinner on Christmas eve at our city estate. She expects you to attend, of course.” He looked at me with eyes identical to mine, then dropped his gaze to the window overlooking the skyline. “She wants to meet—what was her name? Mia?”

“Fia,” I corrected. I cleared my throat, swiveling to face him. “I can see if she’s available.”

“Dinner’s at eight, so if you have earlier plans with her family, you’d still have time to make it to ours.” He tapped his fingers on his knee, his Rolex watch glistening in the soft overhead lighting. “Where did you meet her? She’s impressive .”

“Impressive?” I didn’t like the way he said it. There was a little lift to his voice, something that made me wonder if he meant it in a sarcastic way. “You mean, normal?”

“Who’s her family?”

Here we go. “Colin, my CFO, is her older brother.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Ah, I was wondering if there was a connection there.”

“Her mother is a teacher at a public school in Brooklyn, and her father works for the city, union.”

Dad glanced at me, then went back to the skyline.

“I’m sorry to disappoint,” I said, trying not to grit my teeth. “She doesn’t carry a last name from the Gilded Age. Don’t worry, I won’t be asking for Grandma’s engagement ring. I think I can afford to buy her one on my own.”

Dad slowly looked back at me, his eyes characteristically unreadable. “You looked smitten at your Thanksgiving dinner.”

“I am.” The truth echoed through the words. I didn’t even have to try to fake it. “Did you come here to invite me to Christmas eve dinner or interrogate me?”

“I just wanted to make sure you’re thinking this through.”

“Thinking what through? My relationship?” For years, I spent my life on track to go to Yale, like he did. I would have gone into finance, like he did. I would have married a socialite from a family who founded New York City, like he did. This rift between us had been growing for years.

It started when I chose Columbia instead of Yale, getting a degree in business. Then my grandma died, and instead of inheriting a chunk of our family’s wealth, she’d given me the most priceless, most guarded secret that had been passed down from generation to generation, from a time when the men in our family where still wearing kilts and living in clans.

I hadn’t guarded the secret, though. I’d built an empire with it.

Dad might have forgiven me for following a different path in life, but he never forgave me for that. It festered, turning into something I wasn’t sure could be fixed. Being born to wealth came with expectations. I hadn’t met them yet. If anything, I’d ignored those expectations at every turn, and now that I was older and wiser, I’d begun to see the damage this rift was causing.

Hence, my fake relationship with Fia. It had nothing to do with business, and everything to do with this man, right here.

I hated that even after all this time I was still seeking his approval, that I wanted it. Sometimes I wanted it more than anything.

“We just want what’s best for you,” he said, rising from the chair. “Your mother worries you’ll never marry.”

“I’m going to marry Fia. I hope that’s enough for you.”

He blinked and nodded as he pulled out his phone. “I saw the pictures from the Blue Winter auction. The family name is making the rounds in the tabloids again. Everyone is curious about your mysterious girlfriend, and so are we. Bring her to dinner before you do anything you might regret.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Regret?”

“You’ve yet to acknowledge how precarious your situation is, Mason. She’s not from a family like ours.”

I got to my feet, my fingertips pressed to my desk. “She’s not with me for the money.”

“You’re young and inexperienced. You need us?—”

“I need you to trust me, Dad. I—I love Fia. I’m going to marry her. She’s not some fling, someone I’m throwing money at to keep happy. If you’d given her even an ounce of your time during Thanksgiving, you’d see why I want to spend the rest of my life with her.” The words fell so easily from my tongue that it caught me off guard. “Mom will love her.”

Dad stiffened but shrugged, which was as close to approval as he ever got. “I’ll try to trust your judgment.”

There it was. The line that always had me in a chokehold.

“I have a dinner meeting,” he said and left, leaving me reeling like a cyclone had just flown through.

I walked to the cabinets lining the far wall, pulled out an unlabeled bottle of whiskey, and popped the cork. Batch one. This stuff went for fifty to a hundred grand at auction now, and I’d brewed it in a dorm room I shared with Colin. I poured myself a dram and drank it down, barely tasting it, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

Then, without giving myself a second to talk myself out of it, I pulled out my phone and called Fia.

She answered on the second ring, Christmas music blaring around her as she laughed. “Mason? Did you butt-dial me?”

“Am I not allowed to call my girlfriend?” I sat down on the arm of one of the chairs and looked out over the clouds.

“I have to remind you that this is fake, remember? You don’t have to call me—ow!” A shattering sound burst through the line.

I sat up a little straighter. “Are you okay? What was that?”

“I’m trying to decorate my parents’ house and I just broke something, it’s fine,” she replied, a little breathless. “What are you doing right now? Wait, let me guess. You’re at your office, loving every second of being bored to death?”

“You caught me.”

“Well, enjoy it, because it sounds like we have a very busy day tomorrow. Your assistant sent me an email about… something about mistletoe? Oh, and a kissing booth?—”

“A kissing booth?” I asked.

“Yeah, you’re signed up to do the kissing booth,” she replied with a laugh.

“No, I’m not.”

“Oh, you are. After Gabby emailed me,” she said, panting, then held the phone away from her ear to tell her Dad to turn the volume of the TV down. “I checked in with someone named Shelly, who I guess is overseeing the whole event, and she mentioned how you have a time slot at the kissing booth.”

“If I’m kissing anyone, it’s going to be you.” Oh, my God, what was wrong with me? “Because you’re my fake girlfriend.”

“Just this once, I’ll let you smooch other ladies. It’s for the library, remember? You have a reputation to uphold, being all giving and whatnot.” She squeaked with alarm suddenly, which was followed by a deep male voice telling her to get off a ladder. My chest tightened with sudden unease. But Fia charged forward, asking, “What do I wear to this thing? Are we dressing up?”

“I was told it’s casual. Wear whatever you want.”

“Oh, you might regret telling me that,” she said with a hint of mischief. “What size shirt do you normally wear?”

“Oh no. Why?”