by Susan Meier
Wearing the black dress she’d worn in New York, the one Dean had bought her, Kristen stepped into the ballroom. All the feelings from that night came tumbling back to Dean. How she’d fit with his crowd of friends. How she’d relaxed him enough that he could mingle and enjoy the party he’d been dreading. How he’d known from the second he’d taken her into his arms to dance with her that she was his other half. The woman of his dreams. His perfect partner.
He didn’t let two seconds pass. He raced over to her. “Kristen.”
She turned slowly but didn’t say anything. Her green eyes caught his gaze. But there was no sparkle in them. No warmth for him. No welcome.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry things didn’t turn out better for you? I can’t imagine how since you seem to have gotten everything you want. Your game went to the beta testers today. A week ahead of schedule. Rumor has it you’re not worried about a new set of comments because this time the team got it right. You don’t have to move to Grennady... Though you have a free pass to return for corporate retreats anytime you want. You have access to our labor pool. You’re basically giving us nothing and getting everything...and all it took was making a fool of me to get it.” She raised her chin. Her dull green eyes filled with hurt. “If you’ll excuse me.”
She took a step away from him but he caught her hand. “I know this looks bad.”
She laughed. “Looks bad?” She shook her head as if his audacity amazed her. “Get lost.”
She wrangled her hand out of his and slid into the crowd. Sidling up to an American couple, she accepted their warm greeting and began to talk animatedly, probably about her charity.
Remorse tightened his chest. Not that she didn’t need him, but that he’d needed time to think this through, to realize not just what he wanted but that he could be what Kristen wanted. In the moment, he’d felt he was being noble. Now he realized he hadn’t had the right to make the decision to end their relationship by himself.
And even if he couldn’t win her back, he couldn’t let her go through life thinking any part of this was her fault.
He marched over to her. “Excuse me,” he said to the Americans, who smiled politely. “But Kristen owes me this dance.”
She said, “I don’t—”
But he didn’t give her a chance to finish. He tugged her along to the dance floor where he took her into his arms.
“I’m not just sorry that I treated you badly after the reception. I love you.”
The words hung in the air as Kristen stared at him and little things settled into his brain. Like the way she felt in his arms and the way he felt in general. He wasn’t playing a role. He wasn’t doing what was expected. He was simply being himself.
And that was why he loved her. She wasn’t just wonderful. She was the one person with whom he could be himself. His real self. The person he longed to be.
* * *
Kristen saw the second he realized what he’d said. Though part of her wanted to yank her way out of his arms and leave him, the other part melted. She knew how huge this was for him.
Unfortunately, he’d also hurt her and he would hurt her again if she let him.
She couldn’t let him.
“My whole point in walking away was to save you from getting hurt.”
“Too late for that.”
“I hurt myself as much. But not for the reasons you think. It hurt me to know you were hurting. And that sort of messed up my whole plan.”
Curiosity overwhelmed her and her gaze met his. His brown eyes were soft, almost happy. She wanted to deck him.
“In trying not to hurt you I hurt you.”
“You don’t need to spell it out. I got it.”
And she was softening again, mellowing to him. Not because he deserved her kindness, but because there was something about him that meshed with something in her. If either one of them believed in destiny anymore, she’d think they were cursed. As it was, she wondered if her hormones weren’t out of whack to make her believe she belonged with this crazy man.
“You see, I thought that the fact that I can’t be a good dad would either keep us from having kids or mess up our lives if we did have kids.”
She almost stopped dancing. “What?”
“I meant what I said about loving you. And loving you meant that I wanted everything you did...even kids.”
She did stop dancing. “And you saw far enough ahead to worry about what would happen if we had kids?”
He nodded.
“You didn’t stop to think you could look up fatherhood on YouTube?”
To her surprise, he burst out laughing. “Never thought of it. The idea of having a child or two or three paralyzed me and all I could think was how unfair that was to you.” He sucked in a breath. “But there’s more.”
The music stopped. Some couples left the floor. New couples meandered on.
He took her hands. “You’re at the start of your life, a wonderful career. I worried that I would drag you down.”
His hands holding hers felt so right, so good, but she couldn’t let herself give in. If they had a relationship, they had to be equals.
She carefully said, “You don’t seem worried now.”
“Because I finally realized I wouldn’t hold you back. In some ways knowing me might actually help you.” He grinned. “I did introduce you to Mrs. Flannigan.”
A laugh bubbled up. She raised her eyes to his. “So you love me?”
He rubbed his chest. “A lot, if the pain in my heart is any indicator.”
She stepped close. The music started again. Couples waltzed around them, but they didn’t move. “Love is actually a very happy thing.”
He snorted. “I’d never have guessed.”
She laid her hands on his chest, flattened them against his silk shirt. “I have so much to teach you, grasshopper.”
He laughed.
She let her hands slide up to his shoulders.
His soft brown eyes caught hers. “You don’t hate me?”
“I love you. But we’re going to have to make a pact. You don’t get to make decisions for me. We talk about things.”
He smiled. “Okay.”
Her hands finally met at his nape. “Okay.”
A second went by, then two. “You could kiss me now.”
He laughed, dipped his head, pressed his lips to hers and Kristen’s heart sang. The love of her life was a strong, opinionated, sometimes arrogant man, but she had no doubt she was his equal.
He broke the kiss. Couples danced around them. He shoved his hand in his jacket pocket. “We need a little something to seal this deal.” He pulled his hand out and dropped a diamond bracelet into her hand.
She gasped. “My bracelet!”
“Aha! I knew you liked it!”
She bounced to her tiptoes and kissed him. “Of course I liked it. I just didn’t want to take such an elaborate gift from someone I didn’t know.”
“You think you know me?”
“Oh, I think we’re going to spend the rest of our lives getting to know each other.” She rose to her tiptoes to kiss him again. “But that’s what’s going to make our lives interesting and fun.”
He took her hand, led her off the dance floor, and Kristen nestled against him. They hadn’t had the most conventional courtship, but once-in-a-lifetime love had nothing to do with normal, ordinary things.
She had no doubt she and Dean Suminski would change the world...
Because together they were stronger than they were alone.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from A COUNTESS FOR CHRISTMAS by Christy McKellen.
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A Countess for Christmas
by Christy McKellen
CHAPTER ONE
THIS HAD TO be the most challenging party that Emma Carmichael had ever worked at.
As fabulous as the setting was—a grand Chelsea town house that had been interior designed to within an inch of its life, presiding over the genteel glamour of Sloane Square—the party itself felt stilted and lifeless.
The trouble was, Emma mused as she glided inconspicuously through the throng, handing out drinks to the primped and polished partygoers, it was full of people who attended parties for a living rather than for pleasure, in an attempt to rub shoulders with London’s great and good.
She knew all about that type of party after being invited to a glut of them in her late teens, either with her parents or with friends from her private girls’ school in Cambridge. But she’d been a very different person then, pampered and carefree. Those privileged days were long gone now though, along with her darling late father’s reputation and all their family’s money.
As if her thoughts had conjured up the demons that had plagued her for the six years following his death, her phone vibrated in her pocket and she discreetly slipped it out and glanced at it, only to see it was another text message from her last remaining creditor reminding her she was late with her final repayment. Stomach sinking, she shoved the phone back into her pocket and desperately tried to reinstate the cheerful smile that her boss, Jolyon Fitzherbert, expected his staff to wear at all times.
‘Emma, a word! Over here!’ came the peremptory tones of the man himself from the other side of the room.
Darn. Busted.
Turning, she met her boss’s narrowed eyes and swallowed hard as he beckoned her over to where he stood holding court to a small group of guests with one elbow propped jauntily against the vulgar marble fireplace.
Emma had encountered the bunch of reprobates he was with a number of times since she’d begun working for Jolyon two months ago so she was well used to their contemptuous gazes that slid over her face as she approached now. They didn’t believe in fraternising with the hired help.
If only Jolyon felt the same.
It was becoming harder and harder to avoid his wandering hands and suggestive gaze, especially when she found herself alone with him. So far she’d been politely cool and it seemed to have held him at bay, but as soon as he got a couple of drinks into him dodging his advances became a whole lot harder.
Fighting down her apprehension, she gave Jolyon a respectful nod and smile as she came to a halt in front of him.
‘Can I be of service?’
Jolyon’s eyes seemed to bulge with menace in his flushed face. ‘I do hope I didn’t just see you playing with your mobile phone when you’re supposed to be serving these good people, Emma, because that would be rude and unprofessional, would it not?’ he drawled.
Emma’s stomach rolled with unease. ‘Er—yes. I mean no, I wasn’t—’ She could feel heat creeping up her neck as the whole group stared at her with ill-disguised disdain. ‘I was just checking—’
‘I’m sure you think you’re too good to be serving drinks to the likes of us—’ Jolyon said loudly over the top of her, layering his voice with haughty sarcasm.
‘No, of course not—’
The expression on his face was now half leer, half snarl. ‘—but since I’m paying you to be here, I expect to have your full attention.’
‘Yes, of course, Jolyon. You absolutely have it,’ Emma said, somehow managing to dredge up a smile, despite the sickening pull of humiliation dragging her spirits down towards the floor.
He eyed her with an unnerving twinkle of malice in his expression, as if he was getting a thrill out of embarrassing her. ‘In that case I’ll have a large whisky.’
Emma opened her mouth to ask whether anyone else in the group required anything, but before the words could emerge Jolyon flapped a dismissive hand in her face and barked, ‘Go on, fetch!’
Stumbling backwards, stupefied by his rudeness, she gave him a jerky nod and turned away, mortification flooding her whole body with unwelcome heat.
Twisting the chain she always wore around her neck to remind her of better times—before everything in her life had gone to hell in a hand basket—she took a deep, calming breath as she walked stiffly over to where Jolyon kept his whisky decanter in an antique burr walnut drinks cabinet. Pouring his regular measure of two fingers of the dark amber liquid into a cut-glass tumbler with a shaking hand, she managed to slosh a little over the rim and had to surreptitiously wipe it off the wood with her apron so she didn’t get shouted at for not treating his furniture with due respect.
That was the most frustrating thing about working for Jolyon; he treated her with less respect than an inanimate object and all she could do was bite her lip and get on with it.
Clio Caldwell, who ran the high-end agency Maids in Chelsea that had found her this housekeeping position, had warned her that Jolyon was a difficult character when she’d offered her the job, but since he also paid extremely well Emma had decided she was prepared to handle his irascible outbursts and overly tactile ways if she was well remunerated for it. If she could just stick it out here for a little while longer she’d be in the position to pay off the last of her father’s debts and be able to put this whole sordid business to bed, then she could finally move on with her life.
What a relief that would be.
Out of nowhere the old familiar grief hit her hard in the chest.
Some days she missed her father so much her heart throbbed with pain. What she wouldn’t give to have him back again, enveloping her in a great big bear hug and telling her that everything was going to be okay, that she was loved and that he wouldn’t let anything hurt her.
But she knew she was being naïve. All the years he’d been telling her that, he’d actually been racking up astronomical debts. The life that she’d once believed was real and safe had evaporated into thin air the moment she’d lost him to a sudden heart attack and her mother had promptly fallen apart, leaving her to deal with a world of grief and uncertainty on her own.
Gripping the tumbler so hard her knuckles cracked, she returned to where her boss stood. ‘Here you go, Jolyon,’ she said calmly.
He didn’t even look at her, just took the glass from her outstretched hand and turned his back on her,
murmuring something to the man next to him, who let out a low guffaw and gave Emma the most fleeting of glances.
It reminded her all too keenly of the time right after her father’s funeral when she couldn’t go anywhere without being gossiped about and stared at with a mixture of pity and condescension.
Forcing herself to ignore the old familiar sting of angry defensiveness, she plastered a nonchalant smile onto her face and dashed back to the kitchen, and sanctuary.
Stumbling in through the door, she let out a sigh of relief, taking a moment to survey the scene and to centre herself, feeling her heart rate begin to slow down now that she was back in friendly company.
She didn’t want anyone in here to see how shaken up she was, not when she was supposed to be the one in charge of running the party. After years of handling difficult situations on her own she was damned if she was going to fall apart now.
Fortunately, Clio at the agency had come up trumps with the additional waiting staff for the party today. Two of the girls, Sophie and Grace, had become firm friends of hers after they’d all found themselves working at a lot of the same events throughout the last year. Before meeting these two it had been a long time since Emma had had friends that she could laugh with so easily. The very public scandal surrounding her father’s enormous debts had put paid to a lot of what she’d thought were solid friendships in the past—owing someone’s family an obscene amount of money would do that to a relationship, it seemed, especially within the censorious societal set in which she used to circulate.
Sophie, a bubbly blonde with a generous smile and a quick wit, had brought along an old school friend of hers tonight too, a cute-as-a-button Australian who was visiting England for a few months called Ashleigh, whose glossy mane of chestnut-red hair shone so radiantly under the glaring kitchen lights it was impossible to look away from her.
During short breaks in serving the partygoers that evening, the four of them had bonded while having a good giggle at some of the entitled behaviour they’d witnessed.
Emma’s mirth had been somewhat tainted though, by the memory of how she’d acted much the same way when she was younger and how ashamed she felt now about taking her formerly privileged life so much for granted.
