A Gigolo for Christmas

By Natalie Peck

Shelia Everett couldn’t have imagined a worse company Christmas party. By the end of the evening she’d been fired and evicted.
Fortunately her boss’ date, Anders Adamson was willing to help her repair the damage. He even offered to help her get a job at his escort service.
What’s a good girl to do when she discovers she’s fallen in love with a gigolo?

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Electric Scroll
• Release date: Dec 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9781940311029

Natalie Peck

Natalie Peck lives in Gilbert, Arizona with her family and a thousand romance novels. She enjoys dining from her good china by candle-light, especially when the special guests are her husband and children. She loves to hear from her readers, and promises to answer every email.

Book preview

A Gigolo for Christmas

Natalie Peck

Copyright 2012, The Electric Scroll

Smashwords Edition

The Characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and entirely in the imagination of the reader.

Table of Contents

A Gigolo for Christmas

Thanks

A Letter to my Readers

About the Author

Connect with Natalie

Chapter One

Sheila looked around her apartment. At least it was clean, and as ready for the party as she could make it. She still wasn't quite sure how Miss Jacobson, the office manager, had persuaded her to host the division's annual Christmas party. Actually, she knew how it had been managed. Miss Jacobson had sent her a memo telling her she was the hostess, and setting the date for tonight, and then had changed the subject every time Sheila had tried to explain that she really didn't have the space to host a party, and that her complex had strict curfew rules, especially for Sundays.

Her tiny apartment was certainly too small to comfortably house even those who worked in the office, and would certainly never hold the sales force too, not to mention that everyone was expected to bring a spouse or significant other. When and how had the terms boyfriend and girlfriend fallen out of use?

The complex manager had wanted a huge deposit to use the clubhouse and pool area; a deposit Sheila couldn't afford, and one that the practically non-existent office party fund Miss Jacobson had handed over along with the injunction that every cent must be accounted for, wouldn't cover.

Sheila's third-floor apartment included an empty balcony only large enough for a barbecue grill and one chair, although she possessed neither. Her living room would be hard pressed to hold more than a couch, love-seat and entertainment center, although it was spacious enough with her meager furnishings – the bean-bag chair left over from her college days and the old CRT television/VCR combo which sat on an unfinished board balanced on two stacks of pre-med books.

The cooking space was a refrigerator, stove, sink and a single counter all lined up against one wall, while a half-wall and table-height work-surface formed the other boundary. A bedroom only large enough to hold her double-height full-sized air mattress and the plastic organizer drawers she used for a dresser, and a tiny bathroom not large enough to hold two bodies at once completed the apartment, unless you counted the empty exterior storage closet that opened off the end of her balcony. All of her possessions not in her dorm room had been destroyed last year in the fire that took her parents, her home, and her chosen career from her.

Sheila went over the expected guest list again. There were fifteen salespeople, each of them had a full-time support person in the office handling their paperwork for them, plus three supervisors, Miss Jacobsen, the owner Mr. Thomas, all of their spouses, and the Thomas' five year old who roamed through the office at will, since his parents wanted him to grow up with the business. She just hoped they wouldn't all come at once, because there was simply no place to put seventy people.

Sheila glanced over her hors d'oeuvres, such as they were. She had purchased several veggie and deli trays from the local supermarket. One of each was carefully balanced on the half-wall between the kitchen area and living room. A stack of clear plastic plates and red and green cocktail napkins rested near each of the trays, and the spare trays waited in the refrigerator. A large, clear plastic bowl and ladle from the party outlet had been pressed into service as a punch bowl. Cherry Kool-Aid spiked with 7-up for a little fizz was her punch offering. A stack of clear plastic cups sat rim-down on a napkin next to the punch bowl, which was also balanced on the half-wall.

She was a little uneasy that it would be rather easy to spill things balanced there, but the wall was nearly six inches thick, having been intended for holding potted plants and other decor. Besides, her kitchen was too small for people to go in and out of to serve themselves, and she didn't have another stable serving surface in the house.

The Christmas gift she'd purchased for the office's name drawing was neatly wrapped and sitting in one corner of the room underneath the construction-paper Christmas tree she'd spent three days creating. She had scrupulously stuck to the announced twenty-five dollar limit, scouring discount stores and coming up with an individual coffee maker the receptionist could keep at her desk, because she was seated so far from the break room that she never had time to get fresh coffee between phone calls.

Although Sheila rather liked her tree and the other decorations she'd made largely from construction paper, she was well aware that they were a far cry from what most people would expect. The clear push-pins that held them to the walls had been inexpensive and wouldn't make much visible damage to the apartment.

From the bedroom, Sheila's cell phone gave a single chirp and fell silent. She ignored it. The single chirp meant a calendar item, and she had only one item on the calendar for this evening. It was eight thirty, and time for the party to begin.

She heard footsteps pounding up the cement and steel stairs, and squared her shoulders. For better or