Her Secret Santa: A Christmas Protector Romance (Perfect Kisses Book 3) Read online

  Her Secret Santa

  Miley Maine

  Copyright © 2020 by Miley Maine

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a piece of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

  If you are reading this book and book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to the seller and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  For any queries, reach out at [email protected]

  Created with Vellum

  Also by Miley Maine

  Sinful Temptation Series:

  Fake Boyfriend || Love Undercover || Maid By Mistake

  Billionaire Bosses Series:

  Baby Bump || Boss Me Forever || Pregnant with Boss’s Baby || His Forbidden Secret

  Her Protector Series:

  Bodyguard || Worth the Wait || Maid By Mistake

  Perfect Kisses

  The Christmas Proposal || Stranded

  Standalone’s

  Damaged

  Any book by Miley can be enjoyed as a complete standalone. So, you can choose your own reading order for her books within a particular series!

  Contents

  Also by Miley Maine

  Blurb

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  Excerpt: The Perfect Reunion

  Special Invite from Miley

  Blurb

  I’d spent so many years running away from love that I could barely believe I was feeling for my employee.

  Yes, my employee.

  The woman that I try every waking moment to stay away from.

  It took an office Christmas party and a late-night mistake to realize how much trouble I was in.

  Sleeping with her might have been a mistake.

  But I can’t stop obsessing over her.

  Julie is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever been with.

  And she’s also a train wreck.

  Her life is in danger and I can’t stand someone threatening to harm her.

  Julie’s past cannot become her future.

  Her ex-husband will have to leave her alone.

  The man doesn’t know who he’s messing with.

  He has no idea that I would destroy him before he ever gets the chance to lay a finger on her.

  This Christmas is all about healing past wounds and making Julie mine.

  No matter what the cost…

  1

  Tony

  I swung the racquet back as hard as I could. My shoulder muscles strained as I forced them to work harder and faster than they were really capable. The racquet wiggled slightly in my grip as I struggled to keep strength on my fingers, and it hit the ball squarely. I felt that sweet feeling of the ball bouncing off the webbing and flying through the air with explosive force.

  I realized that my legs were wobbly, and I was trying to stop myself to get back on the defensive. My tired legs were crying out for rest, but I would be damned before I gave up to anything. It had never been in my nature. Some people would attribute that very thing to my outrageous success, but they forgot that my father started the company, and his ego was far more out of control than mine.

  It was almost five-thirty in the morning. I was enjoying the regular game of racquetball with my best friend Quinton Morris. I’d known Quinton since college. He had a brilliant mind, and he was a good friend. He was however a lousy athlete.

  He rushed for the ball before it hit the point for me, and I could painfully see his foot landing awkwardly and his ankle twisting at just the wrong angle as he tried to rush for the ball. He cried out in agony and his body collapsed above it. He hit the hard floor and lay there like a dead fish. The ball zipped just past his head (which in a way was good else it would have probably caused a much worse injury since it was so close to his eye) and bounced off to the side before careening against the wall and slowing its momentum.

  “Buddy, you alright?” I asked jogging over to him.

  He was holding his ankle and wincing. I expected him to be in even more pain after the way I saw his foot turning, but he seemed to be doing ok just massaging the thing through his tube sock. He was a bit of a wimp at times, always milking an injury to be far more worse than it was. But the guy had some style. He could charm the shit out of anyone.

  “Yeah, I think. I just came down on it wrong.” He flexed his foot at the ankle and then back. Then he tried it again a bit faster, wincing each time.

  “It’s not broken. Is it sprained?” I asked.

  “Nah,” he said. “I think it’s just sore. That was close though. Why do we keep playing this game? I suck at it.”

  “Well, it is a great way to get some exercise. If you didn’t do this your blood would be like sludge trying to get through your veins. Tell me any other exercise you get besides this.”

  He shook his head. “Yeah, I should do more, but I don’t really want to. I’m pretty happy just being a lay about.”

  “Now you are being a little hard on yourself,” I said. “Tell Sophie to make you do that rock climbing stuff she is always into. I’ve been meaning to get back out there.”

  “Why do you want to do that? These extreme sports stuff where you are placing your life in your hands,” Quentin asked me.

  “That is the whole point. How do you know you are really alive until you are staring death right in the face? You have to come face to face with your own mortality time to time. Otherwise, you are really just coasting through and not really experiencing all of the great joys of the world.”

  “Fine, you guys can go and leave me out of it. And yes, Sophie is always trying to get me to do stuff like that. She thinks I should be way into extreme sports and do more macho pursuits.”

  “She is not using the word ‘macho’,” I said. “It doesn’t sound like her.”

  “No, but you know what I mean,” he said. He reached his hand out to me and I helped him up. He started slowly walking around on the ankle. He was limping slightly with some pain. He could tough through it to finish the game, but I knew he would use it as an excuse to get out of being beaten. It sounded like both me and his girlfriend Sophie were trying to awaken the beast within him.

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said. I knew what he meant, but it was more fun for me if I made him say it.

  “She doesn’t say it as much as she implies it. And I get it. She wants me to be more daring. She wants me to be more like you.”

  I looked at him. I wasn’t sure why he was saying this, but I could see what he meant. I’ve always been the type of guy who is bored shitless sitting around. I want to do something or make somethin
g or at least make something happen. We are all going to be in one place far too long one day. I want to move as much as possible while I still can. And I love adrenaline rushes. I’ve always lived for them. I never really thought I’d live to see thirty and I didn’t care. Hell, I was thirty-five now. I was supposed to be responsible and mature, but if anything, I was even more reckless than I was at twenty-five. I loved every second of it.

  “You don’t have to be more like me,” I said. “You just need to be less like yourself.”

  I laughed at my joke and he punched me playfully on the arm. “I know. I just don’t have that level of energy. After the hellish hours I put in each week how can I expect to have the energy to go skydiving?”

  “Skydiving requires no energy,” I said. “Almost ninety percent of it is falling. That’s it. You aren’t doing anything.”

  “But doesn’t it really take it out of you just falling, the rush, the sky around you, and just knowing that if something goes wrong, you are going to die?”

  “No. That gives you the energy. That’s where that adrenaline rush comes from.”

  “Well, maybe I can start out with something less extreme. What else could I do that might be fun?”

  I thought for a moment. He needed something more beginner level where he felt that he might have some control. And then Sophie would give him the ride of his life after. That was what he was after. I knew my friend. Sophie and Quinton had been going out for almost a year, and he had told me recently that their relationship was fizzling on the sexual side a bit. Were they getting sick of each other already? That sounded like a problem, but he might have been on to something as a way to put some more spice back up in there.

  “Ah,” I said. “I have it. How about white-water rafting?”

  He grimaced, but then thought more about it. I saw him coming around a bit. “Really? Isn’t that dangerous?”

  “Yeah, but not as dangerous. I mean, you know how to swim? You will have a life jacket on. The rest is all just riding the waves and getting tossed around. And you should take up surfing, speaking of waves.”

  “We live in Los Angeles,” he said. “You’re right. I should know how to fucking surf. It’s ridiculous that I don’t. And yes, I know how to swim. I’m not great at it, and I’m not sure I can learn to surf since I have no balance whatsoever. But I’m down with this white-water rafting thing. Let’s set that up sometime soon.”

  “Sure thing,” I said. “You want to finish this game?”

  “No. My ankle is killing me,” he said. “Also, I need to get to work and get started on some stuff anyway.”

  “Ok,” I said. “I need to get going, too.” I had plenty of time, but I wasn’t going to play anymore racquetball. Maybe I would take a few minutes to get a quick round on the heavy bag to practice my Muay Thai. That might be great for a pump. I loved a damn pump first thing in the morning. People wondered why they spent half the morning trying to wake up. It was because they barely moved all day. So, the body still felt asleep. Get up and get a sweat going and that will awaken thyself.

  I left the racquetball court after saying goodbye to Quinton and then I made my way down the hall to where the dojo was set up. The entire first floor of the building was setup for various forms of exercises. Mostly it was employees and their families who would drop by to use any of them first thing in the morning before they got anything else done for the day. I was happy to see that so many of them had adopted my philosophy.

  I wished that my father had. He died at the age of fifty of a massive heart attack. He worked a hundred and twenty plus hours a week. He barely slept. He also did nothing for him or his health. He smoked like a chimney, and he drank like a fish. I don’t know if he ever saw the inside of one of these rooms. This was all my idea, my baby. I had revamped a lot of it in the years right before his death and even after when I had taken over as the CEO of Caplan Tech Industries. I loved what I did, but the business part of things was not really all that I was about. I made sure to keep time to pursue other things. I had to have some fun. I worked hard and I played harder.

  It had been a huge burden having to curtail some of my activities and take over the company when I was so young. I’d only been twenty-five when I had become the CEO. It was in the cards that I would take over for my father Roy when the time came, but I never anticipated that time coming for a long time. And then when it happened, it all hit me at once. It was a pretty vicious blow to be dealt. I loved my father. I missed him all the time.

  But I had managed. I had a great team who took me under their wing and showed me exactly how the business worked and then I applied my own skills to take things even higher. There was nothing out of our reach. I wanted us to become the biggest global company on the planet. I wanted our reach to stretch into everything.

  I kicked a few rounds on the heavy bag and followed up with some speed bag drills to work on my punching technique. As usual, all the employees working out there kept watching me. It had to be weird having the boss there working out with you, but I’d tried time and time again to get them to relax with all that stuff. I’m a pretty normal guy. They didn’t need to fear me.

  I finished my workout and then I hit the showers. I was ready to tackle the day. I could hardly wait to get started. It was Monday, which meant that I had a full week worth of fun and exciting events to get through. There were meetings, there were parties, fundraisers, public appearances, international conference calls, etc. It was never ending, and I loved it that way. I had been born into it.

  “Hey, Tony,” Jill Mathers, my secretary said when I came through the doors. She let her eyes linger too long on me as she usually did, and I ignored it as always. Jill was attractive, but I had never really wanted to mix business with pleasure. I’d done so on several occasions, but it was not an ideal scenario for me. It was in fact downright dangerous, which might have been why it was so appealing.

  I’m honestly not sure why I’d never asked Jill out for dinner. It was tempting and maybe one day I would do it, but it just didn’t feel right. Maybe she was too close to me. She was my personal secretary. That was kind of a sticky issue for me for some reason.

  “Hey, Jill,” I said. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I walked by. I was looking good, even if I did say so myself. I was decked out in my three-piece Armani suit and my hair was combed back perfectly. I purposely stopped checking myself out in the mirror and directed my attention back to Jill. I really did not want to be one of those fucking vain weirdoes who were obsessed with themselves.

  “You are here bright and early,” she said.

  “So are you. The last to leave and the first to show up. I’m wondering when you sleep.”

  She giggled. “I sleep just fine…”

  I decided not to go near this line of flirtation. “What do you have for me today?”

  “The first thing you should do is call Alan Eisler back.”

  “Ah, ok. He is finally ready to talk.”

  “It sounds pretty urgent. You have a few more minutes to catch him before he leaves the London Office for the day, I think.”

  “Ok,” I said. “Anything else?”

  “Yes, you have an eight o’clock meeting with the intern you hired,” she said. “Julie Ashby.”

  I groaned. “I’m sure I can let someone else handle that meeting.”

  “Yeah, but she is part of that program that you helped sponsor. You should probably do it. Otherwise, what will people think?”

  I sighed. “You are right. That is why I need you so badly. You really are like my work-wife.”

  She giggled and blushed. “That would make me your only wife.”

  “True,” I said. “Or my only female significant other, but that is heading down the lonely territory I wish not to pursue right now. Thanks, Jill.”

  I felt her eyes watching me as I walked down the hall to my office.

  I hurried into my office and sat my things down. I sat down on the couch and reached for the phone, but the
n decided I would wait and bide my time. After all, that son of a bitch had been dragging his feet for months about finally getting on board with the new software we were producing. It was ready to go into the second phase already, but we were waiting on the capital from Alan’s group to go ahead with this. I could have thrown my own money at it, and I would probably have to, but it was far easier and more profitable to use someone else’s money. That’s the way it always was. Alan just didn’t see how it was profitable to him directly. He was older and he just didn’t understand the way that these things worked nowadays. Business happened much faster now than it used to. It was a changing world and you had to get with the program, or you would be left behind.

  I pulled up SportsCenter on the television and waited for my meeting.

  2

  Julie

  “Yes, this is the outfit I want to be buried in.”

  I looked at the horrible thing I had just put together that was supposed to pass for a nice ensemble for my first day interning at Caplan Industries, and I wanted to hurl. It was mostly black. What was I mourning for? My new job if I didn’t put together the right thing.

  I quickly took off the ridiculous outfit and scanned through my closet to find something else. I was not finding anything remotely close to what I wanted. Everything looked either too old or too young, too formal or not formal enough, too big or too tight, or too bright or too dull. What was I looking for? I had thought to buy something new for this, but then I figured it would be a silly thing to waste that much money on.