How My Brother's Best Friend Stole Christmas (Kane Christmas Book 3) Read online

  How My Brother’s Best Friend Stole Christmas

  Molly O’Keefe

  Copyright © 2020 by Molly O’Keefe

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Letter To Readers

  Untitled

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Untitled

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Untitled

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Letter To Readers

  Hey everyone! Happiest of Holidays to all of you. I hope How My Brother’s Best Friend Stole Christmas is the shot of sexy holiday spirit you need! This is the third book in the Kane Co Series - but can totally be read as a standalone! If you’re interested in the other two books in the series - one-click here!

  My Fake Christmas Fiancé by Julie Kriss

  Santa Baby Maybe by S. Doyle

  If you’re looking for more Christmas romance (though not as spicy as HMBBFSC) check out Christmas At The Riverview Inn!

  Untitled

  Kane Family Christmas

  1

  Sophie

  You know what’s bullshit? Those scenes in movies when a girl gets all dressed up. And she’s got on high heels and makeup, and a tight dress that shows off the ass and boobs she’s been pretending she doesn’t have because she doesn’t know what to do with them. Then, with the ass and boobs on full display, she walks into a big fancy party, and the guy she’s been secretly pining for most of her life sees her and instantly falls in love.

  Like fake eyelashes and a push-up bra were what he needed to finally see her for the total fox she’d always been.

  Total bullshit, right?

  Well, guess who was putting on a push-up bra and a pair of high heels that were probably going to break her ankle.

  Yeah. Me.

  This was what fifteen years of Sam Porter in my life had reduced me to: a Christmas Eve makeover.

  I was officially that girl.

  My phone buzzed on the edge of the desk, but I ignored it. I could really only do one thing at a time right now. And all my energy was on this—my mental breakdown.

  “Okay,” my friend Joy said. “It’s time to go look in a mirror.”

  “Can’t I just take your word for it?”

  “Well, you haven’t yet.”

  She marched me from my desk in the big main room of the Kane Co warehouse down the small hallway to the employee break room, which had a mirror for making sure there wasn’t food in your teeth after lunch.

  Joy was all zen and easy because Joy was all zen and easy. And she was glamorous in a low-key way that made me believe she knew what to do with eyeliner and a curling iron. Until I found out she was about as clueless as I was and she just got lucky with all that low-key glamour, which probably came with the gig of being an artist. Joy was the head glass artist at Kane Co.

  We make holiday ornaments. Well, she does. I ship them.

  You know what kind of glamour comes with the gig of warehouse supervisor? None.

  So…makeover.

  Joy was a dream with the hair and makeup but as clueless as me when it came to the dress and the shoes, so we’d gone shopping a week ago and gotten professional help. Shopping was not at all my thing, but Joy got me a bubble tea every time I wanted to bolt from the mall. It was an expensive, fattening day. But we got the job done and I bought a dress of blue sequins that made me feel like a beautiful disco ball. Joy got a dress too. She had a whole embarrassed thing with her boobs, which were amazing, but tonight the two of us were ignoring our mother’s voices in our heads and years of not knowing what to do with ourselves and we were going all out.

  Joy was wearing a strapless black cocktail dress that made her look like a Bond Girl.

  “Shoes,” she said, pushing a pair of strappy, glittery high heels in front of me.

  In for a penny and all that shit. I put the shoes on, and because I couldn’t bend over in my dress without popping the seam over my ass, I let Joy buckle the shoes.

  She stood up and put her hands on my shoulders. She was trying hard not to smile.

  “Are you laughing at me?” I gasped, shocked she would do that, but she wasn’t the first and totally wouldn’t be the last.

  “No, no, honey. Never. I’m smiling because you look…”

  “Ridiculous?” I put a hand to my hair, which was like an explosion of corkscrew curls over my shoulder held in place with glittery barrettes. This was why I wore ponytails and ball caps, because my hair was the worst and Joy had spent, like, an hour on it.

  “No. Honey. Look…”

  She stepped to the side and turned me around to face the break room mirror. And the person looking back at me was…

  “Holy shit,” I breathed, stepping forward to look closer in the mirror. “That’s me.”

  I’d worn the dress at the mall. The shoes. But the whole package was something…else.

  Those were my eyes. My terrible hair made into something…fun. I wore a tight blue sequined dress that was held up by a strap on one shoulder, and my arms, strong and toned from my work in the company, looked pretty damn good. Freckles and all. My nonexistent boobs had been given an existence and my ass…I mean my ass. “Look at my ass!”

  “Total knockout,” she said. “But let’s…” She stepped in behind me and then reached out and pushed my lips up into a smile. “There. Now. You are a total fucking knockout.”

  If I’d been the kind of twenty-five-year-old who giggled, I would have giggled. That’s how good I looked. How good I felt. Which I had not expected to come from this makeover.

  “We’re pretty hot, Joy,” I said, pulling us together, side by side, to look at ourselves in the mirror. The Bond Girl and the Disco Ball.

  “I wasn’t sure about this, but I have to agree. We are pretty hot,” she said.

  Joy reached up and did a scrunchy type thing she’d been doing for two hours to my hair. Like there was any chance my hair was going to lose the curl. I’d been praying for my hair to lose its curl since I was a kid, and no dice.

  She’d covered my lips in bright red lipstick. My eyes in glittery eye shadow. I was me but…sexier. Brighter.

  I had not expected miracles here, but it sort of felt like one had happened.

  “He doesn’t stand a chance,” Joy said to my reflection.

  I’d said not one word about Fucking Sam Porter. Not one. But Joy knew. Hell, maybe everyone knew. Butterflies exploded in my stomach.

  “Am I that obvious?” I couldn’t keep the panic out of my voice. I mean, if I walked into that party and people knew what I was after…forget it. I’d put my jeans back on and drop this stupid idea.

  “No. But I have a sense about these things,” she said. “As long as I’ve been here, you haven’t been interested in shopping or makeup or hair products, and suddenly your brother’s best friend shows up and you’re…” She waved her hands around me.

&nbs
p; I groaned and put my head in my hand. All this time, I’d thought I was playing it so cool. “You want to talk about it?” Joy asked.

  “God no,” I said. Talk about Sam? How? Like, what words would I even use? If there were words to describe him and how I felt…well, I didn’t know them. I didn’t know the language.

  Joy laughed. “If you change your mind, I’m here.”

  Joy was the big-deal ornament designer my brother had hired to turn Kane Co. Inc around. Prong one of his three-pronged approach to saving our family business. Joy was half witch, half artist, half…absolute goofball. And yeah, yeah, that was three halves.

  I stood there in the shipping break room in a sequined gown and high-heeled shoes (that weirdly didn’t hurt my feet) among the beat-up lockers and the old fridge and the bulletin board with the Heimlich and CPR posters and the sign-up sheet to buy popcorn from Rodrigo’s kid’s Boy Scout troop.

  So, yeah, I looked like a fish out of water in this place I’d created and controlled. Where I felt strong and capable and the lingering shit from my parents couldn’t touch me.

  But up there. Up on the top floor with the new windows and the big deck and all the staff and everyone in suits and dresses and my mom floating around like some kind of poisonous cloud…ugh.

  This was a mistake. I could feel it in my bones. I wasn’t some woman in a rom-com whose life got wrapped up in a bow in an hour and a half.

  I was Sophie Kane, the black sheep of the Kane family. The embarrassing one. The screwup. And I just looked stupid in this dress.

  “Stop!” Joy cried. Because she was part witch, she could tell I was about to tear the thing off my body. “Stop. You look beautiful. You do. And I won’t fight you if you want to go out there in your jeans and hoodie. You’re beautiful that way, too. But that dress cost so much money.”

  It really had. Come to find out, sequins were expensive.

  “Fine,” I snapped. “Let’s just…do this.”

  I’d spent most of my life wearing smooth the grooves between embarrassment and anger. I’d made that a real easy transition for myself. I could go from embarrassed to outrage in .05 seconds. I wasn’t proud of it, but whatever. When you grew up with my mom you learned some fucked-up coping mechanisms. I mean, look at my brother. The shit that guy did? That bravado? Getting engaged to some strange woman on a whim? It wasn’t healthy.

  Joy handed me a little black purse. “What do I need that for?” I asked.

  “Lipstick. Key badge. Phone. Condoms?”

  I felt myself blush bright red. So fast and so hard I got dizzy.

  “Isn’t that the point of all of this beauty?” she asked. Waving a finger over all her hard work. “To get laid?”

  Was that what I wanted from Fucking Sam Porter? To get laid? I mean, the truth was that I had imagined it more times than I could count. But my imagination and reality were miles apart. Sam talked to me all the time–about the Broncos and Skyrim. Books we were reading. Some politics. My brother, Wes, and how he had lost his mind with this crazy engagement.

  So, what I wanted…really, really wanted was for Sam to look at me with…I don’t know, softness? Care? Not see me as one of the guys, but as…me?

  Not my brother’s little sister.

  Not the pesky kid who’d followed him around all those years.

  Not the trash-talking video game buddy.

  I wanted Sam Porter to see me.

  The girl who’d loved him silently but passionately for five long years.

  “Fine,” I grabbed the purse. “The condoms are in there?”

  “Three,” Joy said with a waggle of her eyebrows. “Just in case.”

  All of this felt stupid. Stupid, stupid. But I was doing it. I had a thong on, so there was no point in backing out now. “Let’s go,” I said and we left the break room to go back to the main room of the warehouse with my desk and the packing section and the shelves of ornaments.

  Joy grabbed her own purse. Another tiny little bag, but whatever she saw in there made her face go white. Her entire body still.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Fine,” she said, closing the bag and waving me off. “Just something I forgot. Let’s go.”

  I picked up my phone from where it had been sitting facedown for the duration of this makeover. I had two missed calls from my brother and a bunch of texts.

  Hey! The first one said. Are you at the party? I can’t find you.

  Soph, the second one said. Get up here now! I’m making an announcement…

  Crap, said the third. I can’t put this off any longer. Hurry your ass up.

  Well, shit, I thought. This seemed dramatic. But then, everything with my brother was dramatic these days.

  The shipping department was on the first floor of the Kane Co. building, separated by a door from the workshops where Joy made her magical you-wouldn’t-freaking-believe-how-expensive-they-are Christmas ornaments. The workshop had windows that allowed people to stroll by on the sidewalk, look in, and get swept up in Joy and her crew of glassblowers.

  I had a heart made out of concrete and zero Christmas spirit, and even I was amazed by what they could do.

  The party was on the top floor. The fancy floor. You can probably guess how much time I spent there.

  Zero. The answer is zero.

  My brother had gone all out for this party. And let me tell you, usually Christmas was a dry, panicked affair around here. Like, we spent all this time creating wonder and good cheer only to ship it off and leave ourselves with none. But since Dad was arrested and Wes took over, Kane Co. was turning things around. A few weeks ago I almost put up a tree in my own apartment. Almost.

  We climbed the three steps out of the warehouse, through the door into the cool and quiet workshop to the lobby.

  The elevators were doing a brisk business shuttling employees and guests up to the fifth floor. Outside snow was swirling. Another winter storm that was about to pound Denver. But what bothered the good citizens of Denver every other day was somehow magical on Christmas Eve. Everyone coming in laughed, red cheeked, as they shrugged snow off their coats and brushed it out of their hair.

  Standing there, surrounded by holiday joy and delight, dressed like some kind of holiday vixen, I allowed myself to get swept up in the spirit—in the possibility. And I let go of my fear and my stress and I let myself to believe that everything was going to be all right.

  That this holiday party was going to be the start of a whole new life for Kane Co., for my brother, but especially for me.

  And Fucking Sam Porter.

  2

  Once we got up to the party, Joy took off like a shot. And I realized how much I’d been counting on her as a wingman.

  Okay. All right. No need to panic.

  I needed to find my Drama Queen brother anyway.

  The party floor was amazing. There was a band and free-flowing booze and waiters walking around with snacks on trays, all making it clear that just because my father had been hauled off for embezzlement no one needed to panic. There was a new sheriff in town—that sheriff being my brother—and things were A-okay at Kane Co.

  The band was a nice touch.

  I skirted the edge of the party, where the shadows were thick. People were gathered around cocktail tables talking shit and eating fancy snacks. They were laughing—which was good—and I slipped by them all, unnoticed or maybe even unrecognized by employees.

  Getting cocky I grabbed a glass of champagne from a passing waiter and turned, only to come face to face with my mother. Gloria Kane.

  Oh God.

  “I didn’t recognize you,” she said. My mother was the personification of a cool breeze. A draft that made you reach for a blanket. She wore a black suit; she always wore a black suit. Her only nod to the holiday was a pin on the jacket, a gold circle that maybe was supposed to be a wreath. I mean, ho-ho-ho and all that. Her hair was in its bun, pulled so tight it made my own head hurt.

  “It’s a party,” I said, running a hand acro
ss the navy sequins of my dress.

  “I thought I’d dress up.”

  “You look lovely,” she said. And leaned in for one of those two cheek air kisses. I was so stunned by the compliment I gave the air around her cheeks kisses of my own. But nothing came free from Gloria Kane, especially compliments. “It really is too bad you inherited your father’s hair. You always look like you’ve rolled in hay.” She pulled a curl straight, until it stung my scalp and I pushed her hand away.

  She turned, looking out at the party and the fancy decorations, and I resisted the urge to rub away the sting of my scalp. The room was beautiful. The silver tinsel and the bright red and green baubles, the lights and beauty, and it looked expensive. It was so different from the way it had been when my father ran things. “You’ve heard, I suppose. He probably told you. You were probably there,” Mom said.

  “Where?”

  “At the wedding.”

  Mom looked over at me and I couldn’t handle my shock. My surprise. Or…maybe my hurt. “Penny and Wes? They…did it?” I asked.

  “Apparently.”

  “Bullshit.” He would have told me. I would have been there.

  “Really, Sophie. Do you have to be so vulgar?”

  “Yep.”

  Mom, if it was possible, got even stiffer. “He just made a big announcement. You missed it.”

  The messages…

  Son of a bitch actually did it.

  Penelope Gold and her company, The Christmas Experience, were the second prong in the three-prong plan. What was supposed to be a merger had somehow turned into an engagement. Apparently during merger negotiations, Was had fallen in love with Penelope and asked her to marry him. I’d called bullshit on this, but my playboy brother, who usually dated a new woman every week, had been sticking to the story. I hadn’t met Penny until this week, and I’d wanted to hate her, but Penny was just too damn nice.