Santa's Assistant

Chapter One

My eyes slid over the sign up sheet hanging up on the break room door. It was that time of year again, when Walker industries did their annual toys for tots kids drive and the employees volunteered to help hand toys out and do other festive things in honor of the company.

"Thinking of helping this year...?" Mandy a fellow co-worker I talked to here and there questioned me, forcing my eyes from the paper and to her face.

"Possibly, just depends." I shrugged. It was either help, or go to my overly prude parent's house for an evening of family fun.

Mandy smiled, her bright green eyes shimmering in the overhead lights. "That's great, I think I'll volunteer too maybe the same time that Nicolas does." I could tell from the way her voice went all breathy that she was just as attracted to our boss as I was, except I made it about ten time less obvious than she did. Though I knew I wasn't alone in my feelings, nearly every woman in the office had made a statement about him in one way or another.

I chanced a glance at Nicolas's over my shoulder. He was sitting on a desk across the room talking to Perry the accounting director. He was wearing a white button down dress shirt that was tucked into a pair of very expensive dress pants. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up showing very impressive forearms.

Oh how I would love to be wrapped up in those big arms of his.

Nicolas's Walker looked like a model that should be gracing the cover of GQ instead of sitting on a desk in a high-rise office building.

"Is he not the most beautiful specimen of a man you've ever seen?" Mandy questioned her voice just above a whisper as she noticed me watching him from across the room.

"He's..." I licked my lips, nervous for the first time in forever. "Yeah he is, but that doesn't mean he will ever notice women like us Mandy. I've seen the chicks he goes for and they definitely aren't his employees." I didn't want to have this conversation with her nor did I openly speak about how attracted I was to my boss. Not to anyone, not even Mandy even though we had a closer relationship than I did with anyone else here.

Instead I gripped my coffee cup more firmly and brushed past her entering the break room. The pitter-patter of feet directly behind me told me she had followed me.

"Why did you just walk away?" I could see the hurt in Mandy's bright green eyes. They didn't call her the gossip queen for nothing. I had seen this behavior before, and anytime you turned her down for a juicy conversation she got upset.

"I'm not going to openly talk about him when he's sitting a mere ten feet away from us." I scolded her, placing my cup on the counter and pouring some coffee into it. There wasn't enough caffeine in the world to handle today.

"Well, if what you said about him taking notice of us is true then we have nothing to worry about, right?" A mocking smile pulled at her lips.

I rolled my eyes, "Mandy, it still doesn't mean we should talk about..." I stopped mid-sentence as Nicolas himself walked into the break room, his mere presence stealing all the oxygen from my lungs. This man could command a room with a single look, hell he could command me too.

Whenever he was around I was a nervous wreck. My tongue slipped out over my lips wetting them, a heat filling my belly and working its way down into my nether region.

I was like a bunny in a trance, the prey to the big bad wolf. My eyes refused to leave his even as he made his way over to Mandy and I. His large body moving with ease, as if he was as light as feather.