SUSAN MEIER - One Winter's Night - The Twelve Dates of Christmas / Frozen Heart, Melting Kiss / A Cadence Creek Christmas

He turned. “What are you doing?”

“Oh, I just thought because you have the invitation, you should go first.”

He frowned. “The lobby is wide enough that we can walk side by side.”

Seeing the photographer’s attention had been caught by another guest, she laughed. “Of course. I’m sorry.”

They entered the elevator and rode up to the ballroom in silence. Ricky noticed that she’d kept hugging her cape, almost as if she was trying to hide it, and winced a bit internally. She clearly believed she didn’t belong here and was embarrassed.

But wariness overcame his worry. This was their first date. He wanted her to have a good time and meet perspective employers, but he was more concerned with how his friends reacted to her . If they didn’t believe their dating was real, then all bets were off, and she wouldn’t have to worry about how she looked.

The doors opened, and they walked out of the elevator together.

He caught her gaze. “Let me take your cape for coat check.”

She slid it off and handed it to him. He shrugged out of his top coat and gave the two to the young woman manning the station.

They turned to go into the dimly lit foyer that would take them to the ballroom, and a photographer snapped their picture. Eloise’s face drained of color. He would’ve sworn she swayed.

At Tucker and Olivia’s party, she’d given him the impression she was as close to a princess as a woman could be without actually being royalty. Yet she was suddenly shaking in her shoes.

“Are you okay?”

She faced him with an overbright smile. “Yeah. Sure. I’m fine.”

He knew she wasn’t. Her eyes shone with fear. Her face was pasty white.

“You’re not afraid to meet these people, are you?”

She sucked in a breath. “I need to meet these people.”

“So what’s wrong?”

“I hate to have my picture taken.”

Which explained all the questions she’d had about the photographers...but raised new ones about why she wouldn’t want her picture taken.

Before he could say anything, regal Eloise reappeared. She straightened to her full height. Her expression shifted. The green dress that she’d altered slid along her curves like decadence incarnate. She turned and headed for the entrance to the ballroom, and Ricky’s eyes bulged.

The neckline might be normal in the front, but the back dipped to the bottom of her spine. Smooth yellow hair flirted with her naked skin, swishing back and forth.

His mouth watered.

How the hell had he missed that her dress had virtually no back?

Realizing he wasn’t following her, she stopped and faced him. “Do you like getting your picture taken by people you don’t know?”

He raced to catch up with her. “I’ve been getting my picture taken by strangers for so long I guess it doesn’t faze me anymore. Especially because they rarely turn up anywhere.”

She shook her mane of yellow hair down her back and strode ahead again. “Fine.”

Watching her walk away, he stood frozen. The smooth material of her dress caressed her perfect butt so well the fact that she didn’t like getting her picture taken faded into insignificance. At Tucker and Olivia’s he’d noticed she was gorgeous, but in that dress she was a showstopper.

Which was perfect. One look at her and everybody would totally understand why he had come out of his self-imposed social hiatus and was going out with her.

Imagining his friends’ reactions to her, he bit back a cheesy grin and caught up to her right before the desk where he’d present his invitation. There could be a million reasons why she didn’t like getting her picture taken, and most of them were innocent. He wasn’t going to ruin what could be the perfect return to the party scene with unfounded suspicions.

“If it’s any consolation, cameras are off-limits in the party.”

“Yes. It is a consolation.”

He presented his invitation at the discreet desk by the entry, and they were routed to the greeting line for the host and hostess.

Paul Montgomery’s eyes lit when he saw Eloise. “My darling, however did you get this guy to finally break down and bring a date somewhere?”

She laughed and slid her arm through Ricky’s. “We met at the party of a mutual friend.”

“Tucker and Olivia Engle,” Ricky said, shaking the old man’s hand. “She’s a friend of Olivia’s. I’m a friend of Tucker’s.”

“Oh, we love Olivia,” Mrs. Paul Montgomery said, leaning in to air kiss Eloise’s cheek. “She simply glows with her pregnancy.”

Eloise smiled. “She certainly does. She will make an amazing mother.”

Their twenty seconds of greeting time expended, Ricky and Eloise were guided to the next section, where they were given their table number and a hand-carved Christmas ornament as a gift from the Montgomerys.

The huge ballroom shimmered with laughing, talking people. Rich red velvet drapes billowed from ceiling-high windows and glittered festively as if they’d been sprinkled with stardust. Round tables boasted gold tablecloths and huge centerpieces of calla lilies and evergreens accented by a ribbon of gold that wove through them.

Ricky took Eloise’s hand and guided her through the sea of round tables. “That went smoothly.”

“Our story’s very believable.”

“Then we’ll stick with it.” He paused, turned and caught her gaze. Now that he’d realized the impact gorgeous Eloise would make on his friends, a bit of fear tugged at his gut.

“We’re seated with some of my best friends. I don’t want them to know you’re a fake date. These are the people I most want to reassure that I’m fine. Dating someone is the living, breathing symbol of that. If we’re convincing enough, they won’t ask questions. They’ll see I’m fine.”

“Okay.”

“But if anybody even suspects you’re a fake date, I’m going to look pathetic. This has to be as real as possible for my friends to buy in. That means I’m going to put my arm around you.”

She nodded.

He sucked in a breath. “And we’re going to dance because I love to dance, and it will look odd if I bring a date and don’t dance.”

She straightened the collar of his tux, then tightened his bow tie, the gesture both casual and intimate. His nerves shivered. Not from fear of her touch, but from easy acceptance of her fingers on him. Which scared him to death. She was gorgeous and, probably like every other man in this room, he wanted to touch her and be touched by her. Their situation might be fake, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t get the feelings.

“Relax. Not only do we seem to be compatible, but I have dated a guy or two. I know how to act.”

He sniffed a laugh. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. We’re actually doing better than people on a real date because we’re not afraid to be honest.”

He fought a wince. She would not be pleased if he’d honestly tell her that her little ministrations with his bow tie had shot white-hot need through his veins. “I guess that’s true.”

“So if either one of us does anything wrong, we know we can be honest and tell the other one.”

Okay. As long as they weren’t admitting things like awakening hormones, he could get on board with that. “That’s good.”

She took his hand. “We are going to ace this.”

He led the way to the table and introduced Eloise to his first business partner, Elias Greene, and his fiancée Bridget O’Malley, the couple getting married on Christmas Eve. As they sat down, another friend, George Russell and his wife, Andi, joined them.

When introduced, Eloise smiled and nodded, and the knots in Ricky’s stomach began to unravel. He expected the husbands to fawn all over her, but he would have never guessed the wives would instantly like her.