The Holiday Gamble Read online

  The Holiday Gamble

  Sam E. Kraemer

  This book is an original work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Sam E. Kraemer

  Cover photograph: Canva

  Editor: Ann Attwood, Editing and Proofreading Services

  Content Reader: Gen

  Published by Sam E. Kraemer 2019

  These characters are the author’s original creations, and the events herein are the author’s sole property. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form, printed or electronic, without the express permission of the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  WARNING: This book contains material which may be offensive to some readers: Graphic language, violence, and/or consenting adult sexual situations. For readers 18 and over.

  All products/brand names mentioned in this work of fiction are registered trademarks owned by their respective holders/corporations/owners. No trademark infringement intended.

  Summary

  Edridge Holiday basked in his reputation as an international playboy, traveling to exotic lands and notching his bedpost without a care in the world, funded by his father’s black card and his trust fund. Life was sublime… until his father had enough.

  When JD Holiday insisted Ridge return for Thanksgiving to the family home outside Philadelphia for a come-to-father meeting, Ridge had the feeling his perfect world was about to shatter, and JD didn’t disappoint. Take a job at one of the family toy stores as a photography elf for thirty days. No credit cards. Little cash. A dingy studio apartment. None of the privileges he’d grown so fond of growing up.

  Ridge’s older brother didn’t believe the spoiled brat of the family could handle it, so Elliot threw in a sweetener… Ridge would win Elliot’s mint condition Porsche if he pulled it off without any help from the family.

  Ridge took the bet, thinking it would be a walk through a winter wonderland. Little did he know, his life would never be the same.

  ***

  Cristian Gamble worked hard to support his sister after their parents were killed. Cris worked as a mechanic, but from Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve, he was Santa Claus at a toy store in West Philadelphia. Cris enjoyed the break in his routine, the joy on the faces of the kids when they told him their Christmas wishes, and the extra money he made didn’t hurt either.

  When his sister was invited to the Winter Formal at her prestigious private school, Cris had a big problem… buying a party dress wasn’t in the budget. From out of nowhere, the guy who played Santa for one month a year met someone he believed could be his biggest Christmas wish ever. Was Cris willing to make a holiday gamble with his heart?

  Please Note: This M/M romantic novel contains material which may be offensive to some readers. It includes graphic language, adult situations, and descriptions of sexual activity between two, consenting adult males. This fictional story is intended for adults over 18 and is approximately 61,000 words in length. The Holiday Gamble is a standalone H-E-A and doesn’t end in a cliffhanger. I hope you enjoy it.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  A Note to My Readers

  About the Author

  Also by Sam E. Kraemer

  Chapter 1

  Thanksgiving Day

  “Ah, the prodigal brat has returned,” Ridge heard from the doorway of his room at his parents’ estate. He’d arrived at the manse—as he and his siblings called the family mansion—at three o’clock in the morning after the Gamble company jet came in from Greece.

  Ridge had hated to leave the beautiful, azure-blue waters and even more beautiful men, but he’d been commanded home for the holidays. The email message from his father, alerting him that they were going to have a serious discussion, had scared the shit out of him. He didn’t have the guts to whine or even ask his parents to give him until the beginning of the New Year before he had to look for a real job. What he was going to do was still a mystery, but he was quick on his feet.

  ”I’ll figure it out eventually,” he told himself.

  Ridge turned to see the reason he was awake without his consent. He saw his older brother, Elliot, leaning against the door jamb with his usual smug smirk firmly in place. Ridge’s response to Elliot was always the same. “Fuck you.”

  “Aw… yeah, I missed you, too, little bro. Get your fill of ass, or was it ass filled, on your little vacay while the rest of us were busy adulting?” Elliot asked, making Ridge chuckle.

  Ridge’s older brother was a member of the C-suite of Holiday Toys, Inc., along with his dad and Uncle Todd. Ridge had determined long ago that it didn’t matter what Elliot’s title was at the company, he would always be the biggest kid at the place.

  Holiday Toys had been the brainchild of Ridge’s grandfather, Leonard Holiday, and had remained a family-owned toy company since its inception. It was comprised of over one thousand toy stores worldwide, and surprisingly, the company was stable. Oh, they’d gone through economic ups and downs over the years, but Holiday Toys had survived and was currently thriving.

  Ridge’s father, JD, had been named Chairman and Chief Executive Officer when Grandfather Holiday stepped down and became the Chairman Emeritus after receiving a scolding from his doctor regarding his cholesterol. Once Leo had endured his triple bypass and recovery, Ridge’s grandparents, Leo and Ginny, moved to Arizona to live the high life at a posh senior citizens’ golfing community, though Leo remained on the board of Holiday Toys, “to keep an eye on things,” or so he told everyone.

  The grandparents returned to Philadelphia for Thanksgiving and stayed until December 28. Ridge always looked forward to their arrival…and departure. Grandfather always got lost in his stories of “when I was a young man…” and by the time they were packing to leave, Ridge and his sister, both of whom still lived at home with their parents, were hiding somewhere in the manse to avoid them.

  Elliot owned a rowhouse in Chestnut Hill, but he came out to the manse and spent Thanksgiving weekend and Christmas week with the family. He always left on December 30 to avoid the New Year’s Eve party his parents had thrown for as long as either brother could remember, and Ridge was jealous his brother got out of it so easily.

  Ridge customarily bowed out of the party about ten in the evening and went on the hunt, usually ending the night in a strange bed or hotel. Poor Evie, she was captive at the manse, because their father was very protective of his baby girl.

  “Are they here yet?” Ridge asked, finding a sweatshirt in a drawer and gingerly pulled it over his sunburned skin. He’d forgotten to have one of his two companions slather sunscreen on his back on their last day at the beach.

  Ridge had been too busy fucking the boys to think about sun protection. When they got back to the hotel that late afternoon, Ridge felt the sting of the warm shower and was reminded of his misstep when he looked into the full-length mirror in the corne
r of the bathroom and saw his lobster-red skin.

  Fortunately, his companions, gorgeous Greek twins he’d picked up when he coasted through Lorsia on his way to Athens, had been happy to slather his whole body with aloe while they took turns sucking and fucking him before he had to pack to leave that evening. No one ever accused him of being selfish in his sexcapades. He was an equal-opportunity lover.

  “They stayed in town last night to have dinner with Uncle Todd and Aunt Leslie since they’re going down to New Orleans to Cissy’s house for Thanksgiving. Cissy’s on call at the hospital for the holiday and working the Friday after, so she can’t come up this year.”

  “The grandparents should be out here in a few hours, or so Mom said when we had breakfast two hours ago,” Elliot told him as he held up his smartphone with the current time illuminated, to remind Ridge it was just after twelve noon.

  “I got in at three this morning, as Patsy will attest, because I lost my house keys and had to wake her to let me in,” Ridge explained, seeing his brother shaking his head.

  “So, how was the fuckfest? You come back with the clap or crabs? How much did you pay for your company?” Elliot asked as he flopped down on Ridge’s unmade bed after pulling the covers up so as not to come into direct contact with the Egyptian cotton, fitted sheet.

  “You know, you’re wasting your time as the COO at Holiday. You should take that act on the road, old man,” Ridge taunted, then went into his ensuite to brush his teeth, having taken a shower to get the airplane grime off of him when he arrived at the manse earlier that morning.

  He wet his hands to slick down his blond hair, which was standing on end, and pasted his toothbrush, jamming it in his mouth before he went to the doorway to see his brother rifling through his wallet, tossing a condom and two packs of lube on the bed before shaking his head. It was Elliot’s usual response to be disgusted by everything regarding Ridge, and it had grown old.

  “Get out of my wallet. Why did JD demand I should return home by today?” Ridge asked, as he brushed his teeth.

  “Your credit card is officially canceled as of noon today. Your trust fund is frozen until January 1 when you turn twenty-five. He’s pissed about the money you’ve blown through and the fact you don’t have a job, Ridge. You’re fucking twenty-four. Time to grow up,” Elliot admonished.

  Ridge went to the sink to spit and rinse his mouth, splashing some water on his face. He dried it and tossed the towel on the floor as he usually did in hotels and at his parents’ home. He walked into his room to see his bed was made, and his brother was sitting on the side. “You made my bed?” Ridge asked with a joking grin.

  Elliot looked up and… yet again… shook his head. “It’s what normal people do when they get out of bed before noon unless they work a night shift, which you don’t. You know, if you didn’t have that goddamn silver spoon in your mouth, you wouldn’t even be able to feed yourself,” Elliot assessed.

  “Could too,” Ridge retorted, which made his brother laugh. It was quite lame, as Ridge evaluated when he thought about his response.

  “Could not,” Elliot bounced back, equally as lame.

  “And America… I give you this very mature display of communication between my two older brothers. What a fine example they set for me as the youngest in the family,” they both heard from the doorway, turning to see their sister, Eve, standing in a rust-colored sweater and a pair of black, velvet jeans.

  Eve always looked like a supermodel. She carried herself with confidence and sophistication like their mother, and both men felt very protective of her. She was the gem of the family.

  “Hi, Evie,” Ridge walked over to hug her. After double-kisses to her cheeks, he pulled her into the room and closed the door. Eve was still in college at Penn State. She had one more year before she had her undergrad, because she’d taken the year off between high school and college to have a traditional European gap year, even though they weren’t European.

  In order to convince her parents of the idea’s worthiness, Eve had provided statistics and a slideshow offering the theory students who took a break between high school and college to perform community service projects fared much better in their college careers, having taken advantage of the break from studying to spend a year in the real world doing volunteer work.

  Evie neglected to mention all of the partying she’d be doing while she was working with inner-city kids at a community center in West Philadelphia. Ridge remembered laughing when Evie did her dry-run presentation for him as she was fighting a hangover from a high school party she’d attended while she was supposed to be studying.

  Ridge helped her polish it up a bit and offered a few tips along the way. The older brother was pretty proud of the little sister when their parents bought into it, much to Elliot’s shocked surprise. Ridge always had a way of figuring out what people wanted and how he could use the knowledge to satisfy his own needs in the process.

  Ridge walked over to the bed and sat down next to Elliot, facing his sister. “Do you know why Dad demanded I come home?”

  Eve looked at Elliot, and they both began laughing hysterically. When Eve finally collected herself enough to speak, she dried tears from her cheeks and wrapped an arm around Ridge’s neck, offering a hug that was likely meant to be reassuring, but missed the mark.

  “That’s why I was sent up here, aside from the fact Mom’s pissed you didn’t come down for breakfast. It’s a family meeting before Grandfather and Gram get here. Dad wants everything done and dusted.”

  Ridge looked at his brother, who was grinning mischievously. “I’ll sweeten the pot before we go down there. You win, I’ll toss in my Porsche you’ve wanted ever since I bought it. I want you to have all of the incentives in the world so you’ll succeed. I have faith in you, little brother,” Elliot told him, without explaining the details of what was about to happen. Both of his siblings seemed to have insider information, and they weren’t sharing, which pissed him off, though not nearly for the first time.

  Ridge couldn’t imagine what the hell was going on, but he’d wanted that Porsche ever since his brother had acquired it after scoring his promotion to Chief Operating Officer for Holiday Toys, so Ridge decided he’d do anything he could to win that car.

  It was a 1956 Porsche 356 Speedster convertible in cherry red that Elliot had bought at auction. It had a tan interior, and had been refurbished to perfection. Elliot kept it in a climate-controlled garage near his rowhouse, only bringing it out on dry, sunny days. Ridge had been envious of it since the first time he’d ridden in the damn thing.

  Ridge stood and offered his hand to shake. “It’s on. Whatever it is, I’m game,” he told his brother, hoping he didn’t regret his quick decision. Nothing could be that hard to keep him from winning that car, he was sure.

  Chapter 2

  “Hannah? I’m home,” Cristian Gamble called out as he entered the small apartment he shared with his sixteen-year-old, half-sister.

  Cris worked days as a mechanic, and during the holiday season, he worked nights as the Santa Claus at Holiday Toys, a big toy store in their little corner of West Philly.

  Cris started his workday at the garage at six in the morning, Monday through Friday, which made for a very long week. He was home between three and three thirty in the afternoon, so he was back when Hannah got home from school to allow the two of them to see each other for a little while before he had to go to his second job.

  Cris had to clock in at the store by three forty-five in the evening, so he was there in time to fulfill his Santa duties by nine that evening. It wasn’t a schedule Cris was fond of, but it was necessary.

  Cris’ high school friend, Kirby Visintine, worked as the store manager at Holiday Toys, and he’d been instrumental in helping Cris get the Santa gig for the last three Christmases since Hannah had come to live with him, and Cristian would always be grateful for Kirby’s assistance.

  Cris—as he was known to most—glanced at the clock to see he had about thirty-five
minutes to get cleaned up and dressed for his second job. He was never late, because for Santa to complete his Christmas Eve responsibilities on schedule, the man had to be very punctual.

  To be sure he could meet the expectations of his young admirers, Cris ensured he was in his chair on the stage at precisely five o’clock. He also wanted to be sure management was happy with his performance as the jolly old elf, because the extra money he earned at the store helped pay Hannah’s tuition for the spring semester and put some gifts under their small tree for her.

  Besides, Cris enjoyed seeing the kids get excited at the prospect of visiting with Santa to make their Christmas wishes known. It reminded him that there were more important things out there than the bills that seemed to rain down like snowflakes during the holidays.

  During the summer, Cris worked a lot of overtime at the garage to help out with his and Hannah’s standard of living. He didn’t see working overtime as a chore. He loved his sister more than anything and was determined to give her the life she deserved. It wasn’t a burden at all.

  Cris heard Hannah’s bedroom door creak open before she walked down the hall to greet him. Her eyes were red and swollen, and he didn’t like the prospect of what was to come.

  Having a sixteen-year-old girl dependent on him was a lot of work, but he loved her like nobody else. He’d do anything for her.

  “What’s wrong, Hannah?” Cris asked, while slipping off his dirty green parka and placed it on the back of a kitchen chair, because he’d need it again in a few minutes. Cris knew he should get his ass in gear, but first, he wanted to know what was wrong with his sister.

  “I don’t have anything to wear to the Winter Formal on the twenty-second. I got invited by Scott Blake, but I don’t have anything fancy enough for the dance. I told him I can’t go. Livy said he likes me, and I broke his heart by saying no,” she sobbed before she stepped into Cris’ open arms.

  He kissed the top of her head, feeling like a failure for not being able to buy her the dress of her dreams to wear to the dance. Sadly, it wasn’t the first time he’d had to let her down since he’d become her guardian.