Harlequin Romance December 2020 Box Set

by Susan Meier, Sophie Pembroke, Jessica Gilmore

  She was about to back out again, to claim that she really had to stay and support Celeste after all, when Damon said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got that covered. Just need to grab it from the car. Hang on.’

  Rachel watched as he eased his way through the queue with grace and charm, smiling and chatting as he went, and out through the door back to the car park. When he was gone, she turned back to Amy, who was still looking puzzled by this whole turn of events.

  ‘I don’t have any idea what he has planned, but I suspect I’m going to need to take you up on that offer of hair and make-up.’

  Amy beamed. ‘Follow me.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  WHEN DAMON RETURNED from his trip to the car, he found Amy waiting for him—and Rachel nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Is that her outfit?’ Amy grabbed the bag from him without waiting for much of an answer. ‘Great. I’ll give it to her. You head through there and help yourself to a drink; they’re almost ready to start.’

  Ambling into the studio, Damon took a glass of something sparkling from a waiter circulating with a tray, and surveyed the crowd. It was easy enough to see who had planned to be here and who had been drafted in at the last minute. The original female partygoers all wore the kind of sparkly sequinned dresses and heels he’d expect at a swanky New Year’s Eve party, while the men were in dinner jackets or smart suits. The last-minute additions were more casually dressed, although most had at least dressed up for their visit to the studios anyway, so there weren’t many jeans or trainers to be seen.

  His work suit stood up well enough, he decided, and the dress he’d bought for Rachel would be fine too—even if it meant Celeste would now have to find her own Christmas present for her best friend.

  The studio itself was party ready too. On the main stage area was a giant digital clock, ticking inexorably down towards fictional midnight. Right now, it seemed to think it was around ten-thirty at night, rather than, as his watch told him, not quite eight o’clock. There was a Christmas tree in the corner, decked out with tasteful decorations and lights—although no kind of display at all compared to Rachel’s windows. Cocktail-bar-style high tables had been set up around the perimeter, allowing people to gather in small groups and chat. He spotted a couple of assistants with the same clipboard-and-microphone-headset ensemble as Amy darting around encouraging people to mingle. It seemed they wanted this place to look like an actual party—right down to the dance floor in front of the stage.

  A band was setting up on the stage itself—a big band, the kind that played classic swing music—and every now and then a few bars of one of the Rat Pack’s greatest hits would boom out across the party. The host—a well-known TV personality—was chatting with the director off to one side of the stage. Damon was surprised that Theo Montgomery, the host of the quiz show Celeste was appearing on, hadn’t been tagged for the role, until he remembered that of course Theo would be doing the actual live broadcast on New Year’s Eve. It would ruin the illusion to have him in two places at once.

  Still, if Damon knew his sister—and he did—he’d bet that Theo would rather be here with a glass of warm sparkling wine than asking Celeste questions and having to deal with her dissatisfaction with the answers.

  One of the assistants clapped his hands, obviously trying to get everyone’s attention before filming. But Damon wasn’t really listening. Because, at that moment, the door to the studio opened again and Rachel walked in.

  I was right about the dress, was his first thought. It clung perfectly to those glorious curves she usually hid away, dipping to a slight vee at the front to give shape without being revealing enough to make her self-conscious, he hoped. The skirt swirled around her legs to her knees, above the same ankle boots she’d been wearing earlier. The woodland animals in the pattern almost seemed to dance around under the studio lights, peeping around the tree print on the fabric. It reminded him of the magical window displays she’d created, he realised.

  Maybe that was why he couldn’t stop looking at her. Sure, the hair and make-up team had done stuff to her hair and face but, to be honest, he’d always thought Rachel looked lovely without all that. And even her fabulous figure wasn’t a surprise; he’d always known it was there. He just hadn’t spent much time thinking about it lately.

  Now, watching her cross the room towards him, he couldn’t think about anything else.

  ‘You look fantastic,’ he said, the words a little hoarse as they made their way out of his suddenly dry throat.

  ‘I can’t believe you bought this dress—how lucky was that? Who was it for?’ Rachel glanced down at the dress, her fingers holding out the skirt a little as she studied the pattern. ‘It’s so cute.’

  ‘It was for you,’ he said, honestly. Rachel looked up sharply, that frown line back between her eyebrows. ‘I saw it in the pile of dresses you’d been trying on and, well, it was the only one that actually looked like you. So I bought it. I figured Celeste might like to give it to you for Christmas, or something.’

  It had seemed like a perfectly normal impulse when he’d done it, but now he had to explain his reasoning he wasn’t so sure. Neither was Rachel, by the look of things.

  ‘That was…kind of you.’ Kind was better than weird, right? He’d take it.

  ‘It looks a bit like your windows,’ he said.

  Rachel beamed. ‘That’s what I thought when I saw it! But Gretchen said it would draw too much attention to my, well…size.’

  ‘Trust me,’ Damon said, with feeling, ‘it’s drawing exactly the right amount of attention to your figure. You look incredible.’ And he really had to stop looking at his big sister’s best friend that way. Not least because she’d never given him even the slightest hint that she wanted him to.

  There was that one night, his brain reminded him. That one night when you could have kissed her, if you’d wanted to.

  But he hadn’t. Because she was Celeste’s best friend. Because she wasn’t the sort of girl you messed around with, and he hadn’t known how to do anything else.

  Because she’d seen deeper than he liked, and it had scared him.

  Her smile turned shy and she went back to studying the creatures on her dress, thankfully oblivious to his thoughts. ‘It is like my windows, isn’t it?’

  Somewhere someone clapped their hands again, and bellowed for them to take their places.

  ‘Come on. We’re starting.’ Damon took her arm and led her towards the bar. He needed another drink, and she hadn’t even had one yet. ‘Let’s grab a glass of something bubbly, and you can tell me more about your windows and your work until it’s time to shout out the countdown, or whatever we need to do.’

  ‘You really want to know more about the windows?’ She sounded astonished at the prospect.

  ‘As it happens, I really, really do.’ And not just because of the way she lit up when she spoke about the things that mattered to her. Or because it would give him a chance to listen to her melodious voice. Those things weren’t important to him. Or shouldn’t be anyway.

  No, he wanted to know more because he had the inklings of an idea that could help both of them get what they needed in life. If he could persuade her to take a chance on him.

  It was just business. That was all.

  He needed to keep reminding himself of that.

  * * *

  ‘And it’s ten minutes to midnight!’ the host bellowed as the band finished its latest song and the crowd whooped loudly. The free sparkling wine had been flowing merrily, and the last-minute partygoers had definitely been taking advantage of it.

  ‘Funny,’ Damon murmured. ‘It only feels like quarter past nine.’

  Rachel hid a grin behind her hand as one of the cameramen swooped past. ‘Yeah, this is weird.’

  Except somehow it really wasn’t. Oh, the whole ‘pretend it’s actually December the thirty-first’ thing was wacky as anything, but be
ing with Damon for the night? That wasn’t nearly as weird as she’d expected it to be when Celeste had told her he’d be there tonight too, and that was when she’d thought they’d just be sitting next to each other in the audience for the quiz show.

  She felt a pang of guilt about abandoning her best friend, but pushed it aside. There was no way she’d have been able to sit through an hour or more of Celeste and Theo Montgomery verbally sparring anyway. If Amy the production assistant hadn’t asked them to join the party filming when she did, Rachel had already been planning an emergency escape to the loos, and maybe getting lost on the way back. Conflict really wasn’t her thing.

  Hanging out with Damon at the fake party was a lot more fun than pretending to lose her way in the TV studio’s corridors.

  He’d meant it when he said he wanted to talk more about her windows. And not just the window displays; he’d asked more questions about her job, her career ambitions, her hopes and dreams, than anybody else had, ever. Not her family, not even Celeste—although, in fairness, that was mostly because Rachel had been shutting down conversations about what she wanted from life for so long now that Celeste had stopped even asking. She knew her best friend meant well, but it was hard to talk about maybe possibly taking on some freelance clients who she could run social media accounts for as an actual career path, when Celeste’s academic ladder was so well scaled already.

  But with Damon…somehow, the fact that he was rich and successful didn’t intimidate her the way his sister’s success did. Perhaps because he was so casual about it compared to Celeste’s laser focus. As if he was just doing what was fun, and what he was good at, and it all worked out rather well—although she suspected there had to be more to it than that, no matter how relaxed he was talking about his own business.

  It had been fascinating spending this evening with him, seeing the man he’d grown into rather than the boy she remembered. They hadn’t spent much time together in the years since she’d left university, and definitely not alone. In fact, in almost ten years of acquaintance, there was only one night where it had been just the two of them.

  One night that was seared into her memory, even though nothing had happened.

  Suddenly she needed to know if Damon remembered it too.

  ‘Do you remember that night at university where we went to that party in our college and lost Celeste?’

  It was just a casual question, a reminiscence of sorts. There was no reason for Damon to freeze up as suddenly as he did at her words.

  Or maybe she imagined it, because a moment later he was smiling, his shoulders loose and relaxed again.

  ‘She showed up in the library, didn’t she?’ he said.

  Rachel nodded. ‘She’d had an idea about her essay and the library was still just about open, so she’d snuck over to check her sources or something.’

  ‘And got locked in,’ Damon added. ‘While we scoured the college—and the city—looking for her.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She met his gaze, and just for a second she could believe that he remembered that night the same way she did. As an unforgettable interlude in an otherwise boring life.

  Except, of course, Damon’s life was anything but boring. He probably stayed up all night and talked about his innermost dreams and feelings with people all the time. Back then, she’d hoped him opening up to her that way, listening to her talk about her own life, meant she was special. Now she realised, with the hindsight of age, he was probably that way with everyone. He had friends all over the world, and a whole list of women desperate to spend the night with him—and do a lot more than talk.

  While she had Celeste, and her family. And tonight.

  Which wasn’t nothing.

  ‘Do you think we’re supposed to be going somewhere?’ Rachel asked, suddenly uncomfortably aware that all the other partygoers seemed to be congregating on the dance floor.

  ‘Apparently so.’ Damon got to his feet and held a hand out to her just as the band struck up another tune—a fast, fun, reeling jig of a tune that had even Rachel’s reluctant toes tapping.

  She didn’t dance. She couldn’t dance. She’d been thrown out of junior ballet for her total inability, and hadn’t ever danced since. She’d avoided it at every nightclub, every party, every wedding she’d ever attended.

  Now she was expected to dance on not-even-a-little-bit-live TV. With Damon Hunter.

  And the absolute weirdest part of all was that she wanted to. Because it was Damon. She’d never have sought out this opportunity, never even hoped for it, but now it was here…even though every bit of her emotional muscle memory was screaming at her to turn it down, to fall back on her usual ‘Actually, I’m happier just watching’ line, she didn’t.

  Her stomach clenching with nerves, Rachel took his hand and followed him onto the dance floor, ignoring all the bits of her brain that were telling her what a terrible idea this was.

  ‘It’s ages since I’ve had a night out dancing,’ Damon said, pulling her into his arms. Rachel tried desperately to remember where her hands were supposed to go—no, definitely not there, she reminded herself as she recalled how good his backside looked in his suit trousers—and was relieved when he took one of hers in his larger hand, entwining his fingers with hers, and rested the other at her waist.

  The music had changed. When had the music changed? Probably while she was agonising over whether she could even remember how to dance, and the fact that most of her dance experience was actually just watching Dirty Dancing too many times as an impressionable teen. Either way, the lively, jive-like music had faded into something more sultry. Not slow, exactly, but definitely sexy. Definitely intended to get the audience up close and personal before the fake midnight gongs.

  As the music instructed, Damon tugged her a little closer, one big hand at the small of her back, the other still holding hers. They must look ridiculous; she was more than a head and a half shorter than him, even in her low-heeled boots. If she wanted to see his face she’d have to crane her neck right back. As it was, she was mostly staring at his nicely muscled chest in his white shirt, trying not to imagine undoing the buttons.

  ‘Okay?’ Damon murmured, somewhere around the top of her head, and she felt the word vibrating through that very fine chest.

  ‘Mmm-hmm.’ She didn’t trust herself to speak actual words at the moment. When would this song be over? She’d known dancing was a bad idea. She had no idea what her feet were doing, her hips were probably swaying far too much but she couldn’t seem to stop them, and her face ached from smiling stiffly in case the cameras caught them.

  ‘Only, you’re gripping a little tight there, you know,’ Damon said, casually.

  Rachel’s eyes widened as she looked down and saw his suit jacket fisted in her fingers. That suit was probably worth more than her entire wardrobe, and here she was scrunching it up. The only reason her other hand wasn’t doing the same was probably because it was in his, and she was scrupulously trying to avoid touching him any more than necessary.

  An endeavour that was promptly ruined by Damon himself. Taking his hand from the small of her back, he peeled her fingers away from his suit jacket, all while still moving in time to the music. Then, he placed her hand under his suit jacket, resting just above his hip, so she could feel the warmth of his skin through his thin shirt.

  Oh, this was such a bad idea…

  She glanced up. He was smirking. ‘Better?’

  ‘For your suit, I suppose,’ she said, amazed she could find any words at all.

  He chuckled, replacing his palm against her spine and sending a shiver all the way up it.

  She’d never been this close to him before. And now, all she could think was that she might never be this close again.

  Last time they’d been alone together for a night, they’d just talked. This time… Rachel couldn’t help but imagine so much more.

  All those repr
essed impulses she’d spent so many years ignoring bubbled up inside her, as if loosening up enough to dance had given them all the same hope of a way out. The possibility that she’d suddenly start taking chances she’d always swerved away from before.

  She wouldn’t, of course. But that knowledge wasn’t enough to stop her thinking about them. Wondering what would happen if she just…gave in, and asked for what she wanted for a change.

  One dance and she was thinking about breaking a lifetime of caution, reticence and wallflowerness. Heaven help her if Damon ever actually showed any interest in her.

  Don’t think about it. Especially not now, when you’re in the man’s arms, for heaven’s sake.

  But she was thinking about it. In fact, as the song finished, and the host grabbed the microphone again to start the ten-second countdown to fake midnight, it was all she could think about.

  They’d stopped moving with the music, naturally, but they hadn’t moved apart at all. Rachel tilted her chin up to look into his bright blue eyes.

  ‘Five,’ he whispered, and a buzzy feeling started somewhere in her chest.

  ‘Four,’ she said, her hoarse voice almost lost amongst the shouting. All around them, people were preparing for midnight, acting up for the cameras, and Rachel knew they should be too. But she couldn’t look away from Damon’s blue, blue eyes…

  ‘Three. Two. One!’ The crowd cheered, the confetti came down, Big Ben chimed midnight—presumably recorded—and it was officially a new year, a fresh start, a chance to do things differently…even if it was all pretend.

  If it was all pretend, none of this would count tomorrow, right? It could all be forgotten. A dream, a fairy tale. Something that happened to another girl in another world.

  That was what Rachel was telling herself anyway, as the band broke into the introduction to ‘Auld Lang Syne’, and she stretched up on her tiptoes, her mouth tantalisingly close to Damon’s as he dipped his head towards her.