Page 30 of All About Christmas

The morning rays penetrate my closed eyelids. The scent of star anise, cinnamon, and orange fills my nostrils. I groan. The evening spent in the Love Lounge has left Olivier and me smelling of mulled wine.

Slowly, my eyes open. My body feels heavy, like I ran a marathon yesterday.

Something not far from reality when you consider that I first dragged some hundred eighty pounds of drunk man to my hotel room, and, as the icing on the cake, ended the evening with a round of cardio. Multiple rounds, actually.

“Good morning.” Olivier looks at me with a warm smile on his face. He presses a kiss to my forehead. “Did you sleep well?”

“Like baby Jesus,” I reply and stretch. My muscles thank me for the relief. “And you?” I turn onto my side and look up. My goodness, how can this man look so good even in the morning?

He grins. “Good. Very good, in fact. By the end of the ride, there, I was pretty exhausted.”

I playfully slap his chest. “Don’t let Tina hear that,” I say.

Olivier doesn’t respond, but I feel his grip tighten around my waist.

“Do you think it will be bad if she finds out?” I continue.

Olivier mindlessly plays with my hair, which lies like a fan on his chest. “I don’t really care that much about what Tina thinks,” he says. “We are two grown people who ended up in bed together by mutual consent. That’s totally different from what happened at...”

I get up and lean on my elbow to look at him. “Than what happened at The Love Farm , you mean?” I ask curiously, remembering my extensive research a few months back on the subjects of Olivier Wolfs and the last show he worked on.

His gaze darkens a bit, but he nods.

I bite my lip. “What exactly happened there?” I ask. “The details were never really released.”

Olivier lets out a deep sigh, bends down, and presses a kiss to my lips. “That doesn’t matter.”

I frown. “Why are you avoiding the question?”

He sits up straight, his back against the headboard. “Nothing happened that you haven’t already heard from the media. People in higher positions abusing their power, sexual harassment... All involved had to leave. Including me.”

I pull my head back a little, looking at him in bewilderment. “You? But you didn’t...?”

His eyes widen in shock. “No, of course not!” he hastens to say.

“No. That wouldn’t even occur to me.” He plays with a lock of my hair and peers out the window.

“Okay. Since I’m the one who brought it up,” he says softly.

“I caught one of the producers with a contestant once. He laughed it off and tried to dismiss it as something insignificant, but I could see from her face that she was uncomfortable about it. I took her aside and asked her what was going on, and that’s how the ball got rolling.

” He shakes his head. “A whole cesspool opened up. Apparently, he had done it before. Sending dickpics to women who weren’t expecting them, promising jobs in the movie business in exchange for sex.

” An angry look appears in his eyes. “That whole show was put on hold because of me. The producers and my father were not happy with me at all. Why? Bad publicity. They also thought it would be better if I started working somewhere else.”

“They made you leave because you brought it up?” I say furiously. “What kind of message does that send? That when you speak out you can also lose your job?”

He smiles. “It’s all right, Holly. It wasn’t a show I would have wanted to stay with anyway.”

As far as I know, we haven’t had any of that conduct at All About Love . We’re one of those sugar-sweet TV shows where things like that don’t really happen. That’s one of the advantages of a show whose contestants are all already hopelessly in love with someone who doesn’t work for the show.

Perhaps that’s why John Wolfs placed his son with us, to prevent him from doing any more damage to his beloved channels.

“I think it’s brave that you dared to stand up to your father like that,” I say. “I think a lot of people would have been too cowardly to do so.”

Olivier blushes a little at the compliment, and I want to kiss him even more now than I did ten seconds ago. And there is—apart from my morning breath—nothing stopping me right now. I bend forward to press my mouth to his. His hand wraps around my cheek as he kisses me back with closed lips.

“It’s a wonder you became the way you are with a father like that,” I murmur as he releases me and I nestle against his chest.

He chuckles. “Fortunately, I was raised mostly by my mother. I don’t remember much of our ‘family.’”

I nestle even closer to him and his thumb absentmindedly strokes my shoulder.

“Do you think we should report this to Tina?” I ask after a while.

When Olivier doesn’t answer immediately, I continue, “I mean, we did break the rules of conduct last night.” My finger slides along the shape of his pectoral muscle, through the indent at his diaphragm and down to his navel. “More than once.”

He chuckles. “Maybe that’s the polite thing to do. Then it will come as less of a surprise if she catches us in the restroom when we really have crossed the line.”

I bite my lip. I find it very uncomfortable that someone else suddenly has something to say about my sex life. “On the other hand,” I try to argue, “one of us will be gone in a few weeks.”

Olivier frowns. “Yes. So?”

“Well, then those rules of conduct don’t really matter anymore, do they?

” I laugh uncomfortably. “I mean, we may never see each other after that.” That statement sends a pang of disappointment through my chest, but I also don’t want to assume that this is anything more than what happened last night. I hear Olivier’s heartbeat quicken.

“What do you mean by that?” he asks after a brief silence.

“Well, exactly what I’m saying.” I turn my head up so I can look at him. He has an inscrutable look in his eyes. “If this is nothing more than a fling, maybe it’s a bit excessive to report it.”

His gaze darkens, and when he doesn’t respond, I babble on: “I mean, we slept together, but it’s not like I expect more from you now...” I swallow. I don’t know what I expect at all. I only know that last night felt really good and that hate and love are very close. “But if you...”

Olivier puts a finger to my lips, and I stop talking. With big eyes, I look up. “Listen, Holly, if it’s up to me, this won’t be over when I get the promotion.”

I make a hissing sound, and he looks at me with an arrogant but sexy smile.

“You sure are sure of yourself,” I mutter against his finger.

“Oh, yes,” he replies airily. “Some things you just know.” His tone is joking, but then his face regains a serious expression. “But to be serious for a moment, if it were up to me, this wouldn’t stop in a few weeks.”

Relieved, I press my face against his chest again, a few coarse hairs tickling my cheek. “Okay, thank goodness.”

Olivier strokes his hand over my upper arm.

“This isn’t morning-after talk, is it?” he says, chuckling, in an attempt to lighten the mood even more.

He turns me onto my back, comes to lie on top of me, and looks at me mischievously.

His stiff beard hairs brush against my neck as he kisses me there.

“There are more fun things we can do right now.”