Her Festive Baby Bombshell

She frowned at him. “Of course not. That wouldn’t be possible considering there are thousands of packages.”

“Then I’m not following what you’re telling us.”

“My friend is a pilot, but he’s just one of many. When he’s not flying commercially, he takes part in a national flying club.” She glanced around the table and when no one said anything, she explained further. “This flying club has hundreds of members around the country. If we were to enlist their help, we could get the packages to their destinations.”

“I don’t know.” Finn had to think this over. The men started chatting amongst themselves. Finn glanced up to find Holly with a determined look on her face. When she opened her mouth to elaborate, no one noticed.

Finn cleared his throat and then said loudly, “Gentlemen, shall we let Ms. Abrams finish her presentation?”

When silence fell over the room, Holly continued. “I’ve already put feelers out to see if there would be an interest in helping such a worthy cause, and I have close to a hundred pilots willing to fly the packages.”

Finn rubbed his chin. “You trust these people? And they’re going to do it out of the goodness of their hearts?”

“Yes, I trust them. And aren’t you all doing this project out of the goodness of your hearts?”

One by one the men’s heads nodded except Finn’s. He didn’t have faith in her plan. There were just too many moving parts. But he would give her credit for thinking outside the box. He was lucky to have her on staff at Lockwood.

Not about to discuss the pros and cons of her plan in front of her, Finn said, “Thank you for your input. We greatly appreciate your efforts. We’ll need a little bit to discuss it. In the meantime, you could—”

“But don’t you want to hear the rest of my plan?” Holly sent a pleading stare his way.

How could he say no when she turned those big brown eyes his way? He felt his resolve melting.

“Let her finish,” Wallace chimed in.

The other men agreed.

Finn nodded at her to proceed.

“Getting the presents from the distribution center to the airstrip will take more transportation.”

He was almost afraid to ask. “And what did you have in mind?”

“We’ll go public and ask for volunteers.”

“More volunteers?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Listen, I know you were hoping to operate under the radar. And I know none of you are in this for the publicity, but if you would reconsider, this project might be bigger and better than before.”

He wanted to put a stop to this, but he knew what it was like to be a child with no Christmas presents. Although his lack of presents had nothing to do with his parents’ financial standing, it still hurt. He didn’t want that to happen to other children, not if he could make a difference.

But he refused to put out a public plea asking for help. He didn’t do it for the Mistletoe Ball, which meant so much to him—a continuation of his mother’s work and a way to support the foundation seeking a cure to the horrible disease that stole his brother’s life. Besides, he was the very last person in the country whom people would want to help. After all of the companies that he’d bought up and spun off into separate entities, causing job consolidation and ultimately downsizing, he was certain people would go out of their way to make sure he failed. He couldn’t let that happen with Project Santa.

Finn met her gaze. “I’m not going to make this a publicity campaign.”

“But at least hear me out.”

He didn’t want to. His gut told him she was about to give them a unique but tempting solution to their problem—but it would come at a steep price.

“Go ahead.” Wallace spoke up. “Tell us how you would recruit these people?”

“We could start a media page on MyFace.” She paused and looked around the table. “Do you know about the social networking service?”

They all nodded.

“Good. Well, it’s hugely popular. With a page set up on it specifically for Project Santa, we can post updates and anything else. It even allows for spreadsheets and files. So there can be an official sign-up sheet. Or if you are worried about privacy, I could set up an online form that dumps into a private spreadsheet. In fact, last night when I couldn’t sleep I started work on the graphics for the media page.”