A Christmas Exchange Read online

  A Christmas Exchange

  By A. J. Morrow

  Published by JMS Books LLC

  Visit jms-books.com for more information.

  Copyright 2021 A.J. Morrow

  ISBN: 9781646569748

  Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

  Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

  All rights reserved.

  WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

  No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

  This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It contains substantial sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which may be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America.

  * * * *

  To Blake, Gabbi, and Susie. May good friendships always last, and Christmas always be sweet.

  * * * *

  A Christmas Exchange

  By A. J. Morrow

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 1

  Warm yellow light spilled out onto the snow from the shop window. The street itself was quiet, with only a few late season shoppers wandering along the uneven cobblestones, and Rachel couldn’t help but be entranced by the flakes of snow falling gently against the glass.

  Something stirred in the distance. A figure—a woman—waded across the street, bag in hand. Rachel squinted, trying to figure out who it was. When she realized that it was Emily, her coworker and friend, she smiled.

  Emily was tall and muscular, a natural athlete, with thick brown hair and glasses. Her nose was long and wide, with freckles clustered over the bridge, and her eyes were only a shade or two darker than her hair. Dressed in an all-black version of the coffee shop’s uniform, she cut a striking figure against the snow.

  “Psst, Rach—” Ryan, one of the other baristas on shift, nudged Rachel out of her trance—”you’re staring again.”

  “What?”

  “You’re staring out the window. You’re meant to be clearing tables.”

  “Oh, right.” Rachel smiled sheepishly and turned back to her work. The late evening had sent most of their patrons home, but the Hideout Cafe was popular enough that there was still work to be done.

  “What’s got into you?” Ryan asked. He whisked himself away from her and onto the next table, one arm slung casually around a tray used for carrying empty plates.

  Rachel shrugged. “Just tired. Phil gave me too many shifts this week.”

  “Mm-hmm. And it’s got nothing whatsoever to do with the hot goth coworker currently walking through the snow?”

  “Nothing whatsoever.”

  Ryan gestured at the window, where Emily, now right outside, could be seen stomping the snow off her boots. “Are you sure?”

  “Oh, shut up.” Rachel gave him a playful shove, glad that the only people left in the shop were regulars who wouldn’t mind a bit of horseplay, if they even noticed. “I thought you said we were meant to be clearing tables?”

  Ryan opened his mouth but, before he could answer, the bell above the door rang. It was a light, airy sound, easy to miss beneath the chatter and clinking of plates, but Rachel noticed immediately. Her eyes darted over to Emily, whose boots were now clear of snow, as she pushed open the door.

  “Hi Emily!” she said, just a little too eagerly.

  “Hey.”

  Rachel scrabbled for something to say as Emily made her way to the back door to clock in.

  “Are you excited for your shift?” she said eventually.

  Ryan groaned from behind her.

  “Yeah, I guess,” said Emily, her American accent showing. She paused, eyeing Rachel up and down, then smirked. “More so now I know that you’re here.”

  “Oh, uh—”

  Rachel’s eyes grew wide. Was that flirting? That was definitely flirting—no arguments about it, right? But what if she was just being friendly? What if Rachel was just massively misreading the situation?

  “I’m glad you’re here, too,” she stammered out. Emily, of course, had already disappeared into the back of the shop.

  “Oh wow. I actually can’t watch this.” Ryan looked like he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or just stare in shock. “You’re useless. Absolutely useless. You’re the most hopeless flirter I’ve ever met.”

  “I wasn’t flirting, Ryan.”

  “No, you weren’t—but she definitely was!”

  Rachel had to resist the urge to murder him—that would almost certainly get her fired, after all. Instead, she just glared at the back of his head as he moved away, and wiped down her table with unusual vigor. “Emily wasn’t flirting with me,” she said, “she’s not into me like that.”

  Ryan snorted. “You may be in denial, Rach, but those of us who live in the real world are busy formulating plans.”

  “Plans? What plans?”

  “You’ll see.” He grabbed his tray and darted off, leaving Rachel to the mercy of Ms. Baker at table 2B, who was signaling for another refill and would probably want a chat along with it—something she was known to extend for as long as physically possible.

  Rachel liked to think of herself as a calm, reasonable person—the sort of person you could bring home to your parents, really, and introduce to your grandma without a fuss. In reality, though, she knew that she could be a bit of a spitfire. She was quick to anger and quick to forgive, and, perhaps unfortunately, she had a very small amount of patience.

  Working at the Hideout was good for her in that sense, since it was a fast paced, busy environment, despite the fact it was in a pretty small town. Talking to Ms. Baker, however, was enough to put anyone off, and it drove Rachel to the end of her already limited patience. After the fourth tangent (something about her nephew’s dog, Rachel thought) she had to cut the conversation short with a smile and a pretend wave to another customer.

  “I’m so sorry, Ms. Baker, but there’s a customer over there who needs me to clear their table.”

  “Oh, really? I don’t see anyone—”

  Rachel made a quick escape, glad that Ms. Baker was trusting, at least. It only took a bit of quick pleading before her coworker Johnny was willing to switch places with her behind the till. That, at least, allowed her to stop talking for a moment.

  As she wiped down the surface beneath one of the coffee machines, she caught a glance of Emily from the corner of her eye. She was serving a couple very obviously working their way through an awkward first date, her face lit up by a patient smile as the boy fumbled through his order. It was endearing, really, the way Emily dealt with people—she was always so calm and collected, never stuttering or showing a sign of nerves. Rachel wished, desperately, that she could do the same when talking to Emily.

  The surfaces behind the till were squeaky clean by that point, but Rachel was still going through the motions when Emily stepped away, order apparently taken, and glanced at her phone. At the exact same moment, Rachel’s phone buzzed in her pocket. Then, a second later, another buzz.

  Had Emily texted her?

  Something in Rachel’s stomach dropped as she wondered whether or not to check her phone. She wasn’t meant to at work, technically—not that that had ever stopped her before—and there was no one she needed to serve, so it wasn’t like it was a distraction…

  From across the room, Ryan gestured something. Rachel squinted—he was miming for her to take out her phone. Well, that settled it; it couldn’t have been Emily who texted her, or he wouldn’t have known about it.

  Rachel slid the phone out of her back pocket, resting it just beneath the counter so it wasn’t obvious what she was doing. The notifications—unsurprisingly—were from the work group chat they all shared. Specifically Ryan.

  Hi guys, he’d written, who’s up for a Christmas game?

  A Christmas game? wrote Emily.

  Yeah. Phil already wants us to do a Christmas party. We should do a Secret Santa!

  Rachel rolled her eyes so hard they nearly fell out of her head—of course he would suggest something as cheesy as a Secret Santa. She glanced back down at her phone, hoping that Phil, the shop’s owner, would say something against the idea. To her dismay, it was Emily typing.

  Cheaper than getting individual gifts.

  Johnny, their coworker, sent a laughing emoji and Rachel fought the urge to roll her eyes again. She could see, without a doubt, that this was another one of Ryan’s ploys to set her and Emily up together—and they usually ended in disaster. Very embarrassing disasters, if the painted-egg-incident of last year’s Easter was anything to go by.

  In front of her, someone coughed loudly. A customer, looking to get a teacake and hot chocolate apparently. Rachel smiled and apologized, her attention falling back to the customer as she forgot, for a second, about the Secret Santa. Hopefully she wouldn’t get Emily—it wa
sn’t like Ryan could control that.

  She fumbled through the rest of her shift, doing her best to keep Emily, and the Secret Santa, out of her mind. It was no secret she had feelings for her—had had them for the last year, really, ever since Emily started working at the Hideout—and sometimes she worried that it got in the way of her job. She couldn’t afford to lose this job, even if it was only a side gig, technically, and if the crush was obvious to other people—which, according to Ryan, it was—then that was a definite possibility. There are only so many times you can accidentally spill coffee over the counter because you’re staring at a coworker before your boss begins to notice, after all.

  Despite all this, she did her best. She avoided Emily when the shop was busy, and tried to organize her shifts so they only overlapped with Emily’s at the end—that way she’d still get to see her, but she could blame any distraction on being tired. She tried not to flirt, even on the rare occasions that she wasn’t absolutely tongue tied, and she didn’t say anything about it to Emily. There was absolutely no way she could admit her feelings to her—at least not without making sure she felt the same way first.

  The snow fell harder as the evening became more firmly night. It was dark before, of course, but by the time the last customers had ordered and drank their tea, and all the tables had been swept down, the darkness had grown deep and encompassing. It became, somehow, thicker. By the end of the shift, even just a glance outside had Rachel shivering at the thought of trudging home through the snow.

  “All-righty, everyone,” said Johnny, who was informally in charge when Phil couldn’t be there. “Time to lock up, I think.”

  Rachel nodded. Ms. Baker, the last person to leave—was barely out the door, but it was near enough closing time anyway. She began to stack chairs on top of tables to get them out of the way when, from just behind her, she heard a voice.

  “Hey there,” said Emily.

  “Oh, hi!” Rachel spun round, plastering a smile onto her face.

  “Did you see what Ryan put on the group chat?”

  “About the Secret Santa? Yeah, yeah I did.” Rachel winced as she moved round one of the tables a bit too fast, clipping her hip on the edge. Emily watched her, eyebrows arched with concern, and joined her in making her way round the room to stack chairs.

  “I just hope I get someone good,” Emily said, “I wouldn’t know what to do if I got Phil.”

  Rachel laughed. “Me neither. Johnny or Ryan would both be pretty easy to buy for, though. Or maybe Amy—just so long as whatever you got her was cat themed.”

  “Oh yeah, of course—talk about the stereotype of a cat lady. Not a bad thing to be though—I’d love to get another cat.”

  Rachel hummed, pulling out another chair and stacking it on top of the table.

  “Hey, though,” said Emily, “maybe I’ll get you.”

  “Oh, uh, yeah, maybe—”

  “That would be pretty sweet.”

  Rachel blushed, knowing that her face must be going bright red. “Yeah, it would,” she said.

  She set the last chair on top of the table and craned her neck back toward Johnny, hoping he’d give her something to do that would let her hide her face from Emily. Looking around, though, she could see that not much else needed to be done.

  She was about to say something to Emily—though she wasn’t sure what—when Johnny called out for all their attention.

  “Right, guys, for those of you who don’t know, there’s going to be a Secret Santa at the end of the week, so we all have something to open when we go for drinks before the holiday.”

  There was some muttering from Amy, who apparently hadn’t checked the group chat on her break, but everyone else just nodded. It was only a small cafe, so most of the staff were already there.

  “Ryan said he’d be happy to volunteer his hat—” Johnny held out an oversized bobble hat in one hand—” so if everyone could write their name down on a slip of paper and then come and take one from the hat, please.”

  The group nodded, each scrambling to find a pen and a bit of paper. Emily tore off a piece from one of the napkins and passed it to Rachel, who took it with a muttered thanks.

  When she’d dropped her name into the hat, she leaned back against the counter, Emily on one side, Johnny on the other. He’d given name sorting duties back to Ryan—who’d taken the hat with a suspicious amount of glee—so they just had to wait until it was their turn.

  Amy went first, then Ryan and Johnny. Next, of course, was Emily, who smiled and glanced over at Amy when she took out her paper. Rachel’s heart dropped. Secretly, she’d hoped that Emily had gotten her, instead. When Ryan held the hat out to her, there was only one slip left—a name written on an empty sugar packet, definitely not the napkin piece Emily had used—and Rachel sighed as she reached her hand down to pick it up. Her fingers pinched the corner of the packet, her eyes darting around the room in embarrassment as it took her a moment too long to get a good grasp on the paper, before she lifted it out.

  Carefully, she unfolded the sugar packet, frowning as a few stray grains landed on her apron.

  Emily.

  She raised an eyebrow. She knew Emily hadn’t written her name on a sugar packet, and that definitely wasn’t Emily’s handwriting—it might have been Ryan’s, but the little heart above the ‘i’ was just a bit too on the nose for him. She lifted her head back up and smiled, trying not to show her confusion to the rest of the group.

  “Ryan, can you make sure the people not on shift tonight get theirs as well?” Johnny asked.

  “‘Course,” Ryan said, but his eyes were flicking between Emily and Rachel, and he wasn’t even bothering to hide his grin.

  It didn’t take long for Rachel to grab her things—bag, jacket, snow boots—and saw goodbye to Johnny. She exited out the back, followed by the rest of what Ryan called ‘the gang’, her hand clasped tight around the sugar packet in her pocket.

  “You happy with your Secret Santa?” Emily nudged her shoulder, giving Rachel another one of her infectious smiles.

  “I think he tampered with them, to be honest.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Yeah,” Ryan called from behind them, “I would never!” He clasped his hand to his chest in mock outrage. “How could you even think that of me?”

  Rachel laughed, one eyebrow raised. “Never mind. It’ll be fun, anyway—I’ve just got no idea what to get for my Secret Santa.”

  Emily shrugged. “I’ve got a pretty good idea for mine,” she said, “but if you’re really bothered, I’m sure I can help you brainstorm.”

  “Nah, it’s fine.” Rachel hid her sudden alarm by pretending to brush the snow off her coat. She shivered—for real this time—as she tried to think of a reason not to include Rachel without revealing which name she’d pulled out of the hat. “I just need time to think it through. I like to make sure that whatever gift I get is exactly right for that person.”

  “Huh,” said Emily, “you know what? Me, too.”

  She smiled, looping her arm through Rachel’s in a way that Rachel could only hope wasn’t platonic, and continued chatting to her until they reached the road where their paths home separated.

  Crap, thought Rachel, I’ve really got it bad.

  Chapter 2

  Two days later, Rachel still had no idea what to get Emily. She’d gone through all her hobbies and interests—and there were many—but none of them gave her any ideas for what Emily would really like. She knew that Ryan had organized this Secret Santa as a chance for her to impress Emily—to really pull out all the stops—and while she didn’t appreciate his methods, she didn’t want to waste this chance.

  So, she hatched a plan—first, she’d ask Ryan if he wanted to go shopping with her in front of Emily, and then extend the invitation. There was a Christmas fair on that Saturday, so it was the perfect opportunity. Next, she’d have to clue Ryan in on the plan, so he could help her steer the conversation in a direction that would let her know what Emily might like. And then, hopefully, she’d get to spend a little time getting over her crush. Exposure therapy, she called it—if she spent enough time with Emily, maybe she’d get used to her and would be able to squash her feelings down better.

  With her plan all plotted out, Rachel was left with only the problem of what to wear that day. Usually, the question of what to wear to work was an easy one—the uniform. For the last week before Christmas, however, they were told to come in ‘dressed for the season’. Phil, their boss, had been quite specific about it.