Page 1 of His Boss for Christmas
Chapter 1
The world went crazy on Wednesday.
Or at least it felt like it.
Peter Hayes was less than impressed as he watched his employees buzz around like bees, practically jumping in excitement, as if they were in a madhouse instead of the most prestigious, successful law firm in the city. For a moment, he wondered if it had something to do with Christmas, but no, his employees were unlikely to let the holiday season affect them to that degree.
“What’s going on here?” he said.
Everyone froze, then there was a mad scramble to return to their desks, paralegals, associates and partners alike studiously avoiding his gaze.
Peter walked forward, toward the associates’ cubicles, and his lips thinned when he saw the empty cubicle of his personal associate. “Where’s Justin?”
“He’s—I think he’s in the file room, Mr. Hayes,” a dark-haired associate to his left (Dan, Dean?—they all looked and sounded the same to him) stammered out.
“Find him. Tell him I need the Sabatini briefs on my desk in five minutes.” Peter turned around and headed for his office. He became more bemused as he walked, noticing the same frantic, excited behavior everyone around him demonstrated beforethey saw him and scrambled to act like the sane, mature adults they were supposed to be.
He entered his office and sat down in his chair, glowering at the leather couch his associate usually occupied. Where the hell was Justin?
Fifteen minutes later, the door opened and Justin ran into the room before slamming the door shut.
Peter glared at him. “You’re late.”
Justin dumped the folders he was carrying on Peter’s desk, a scowl firmly set in the creases of his mouth, green eyes flashing mutinously. “Late? I never left! I didn’t sleep at all last night to get these proofed for you. This is slave labor!”
“Is that why you look like you slept in your suit? Change your clothes. You look like a mess. My associate’s appearance reflects on me.”
“I don’t have another suit here,” Justin said in the same sulky tone, raking a hand through his messy, reddish brown hair. “Not all of us have walk-in closets full of designer suits at work.”
Peter wondered why he still hadn’t fired that mouthy little shit. No one else at Hayes and Turner dared to backtalk to him, even senior partners. Peter was the managing partner. Justin was just a lowly second-year associate.
“Fine,” Peter said. “Take one of my shirts. My suits will look too big on your scrawny frame.”
“I’m not scrawny,” Justin grumbled before disappearing into Peter’s walk-in closet. “I just don’t have the time or moneyfor a personal trainer to get me looking like I stepped off a GQ cover.”
“Your poor-little-me act would be more convincing if I didn’t know your salary. $250,000 a year is more than enough to afford a gym membership.”
“I still have student loans,” Justin said from his closet, his voice a little muffled. “And I need to help my brother. Rent in Manhattan isn’t cheap, either. Not to mention that I literally have no time to go to the gym, because I basically live at work, thanks to you.”
“Maybe you should really live in the office. You’ll save on the rent.”
“An ingenious solution,” Justin snarked, finally emerging out of the closet in a white shirt. Peter’s shirt. Truth be told, Justin really wasn’t scrawny. He was lean but fit, his shoulders pretty broad—but not as broad as Peter’s. The shirt was a little big across his shoulders and chest, but it wouldn’t be noticeable under his suit.
Peter nodded. “Passable. Put on a tie. No, the gray-green one—it suits your eyes. Now tell me what’s wrong with everyone. What’s gotten everyone acting so strange?”
Justin blinked, his green eyes filling with confusion—and then puredelight, as the little shit realized that he knew something Peter didn’t. “You don’t know? The great Peter Hayes, the best corporate lawyer in the city, doesn’t know something?”
“You’re fired.”
Justin scoffed. “You fire me every week, but you wouldn’t know what to do without me if I actually took it seriously and walked out.”
“I asked you a question. Enough chitchat. Tell me what you know.”
Justin let out a chuckle. “It’s been all over the news since last night. I’m surprised you haven’t heard it yet. Basically, the witches of the Eastern European coven cast a spell last night, to destroy the thrall the Hungarian vampires have over the people they enslaved. The spell was supposed to make the enthralled people feel an irresistible urge to go home, breaking the vampires’ control over them, but they messed up.”
“Of course they did,” Peter said, his lips twisting derisively. He didn’t have a high opinion of magic. He was a fan of law and order; magic was something that was hard to define and order. He utterly despised the way things became unpredictable in court if anything supernatural was involved. “How does it explain everyone acting like an idiot this morning?”
Justin plopped down in the chair across Peter’s desk and yawned. “Basically, as I understand it, it was a bastardized version of the Christmas Wish spell, tweaked to suit their purposes. But the witches didn’t take into account that last night was some kind of rare planetary alignment, which made their spell much larger in magnitude. Instead of being aimed at Hungary, the spell affected all of Europe and part of North America. Moreover, they apparently used an ambiguous combination of runes for ‘home,’ and the spell interpreted it as the person’s home. Their soulmate.”