IF NOELLE HAD hoped shopping would prove a distraction to her sudden, uncomfortable and somewhat exhilarating awareness of Aidan, she was wrong.
It was December 23, and the mall was absolutely thronged.
If this bothered Aidan at all, it did not show. In fact, for a man who had seemed cynical about Christmas not so long ago, he was able to give himself over to the shopping chaos with a certain abandon.
He was the rarest of things—a man who was fun to shop with. She could not help noticing how unfailingly respectful he was to the harried sales staff, teasing smiles out of some of them, always dropping a kind remark about how well they were handling the demands of the crowds.
Their arms were soon laden with parcels: hair bows and the most gorgeous teddy bear Noelle had ever seen. The price of it took her breath away, but Aidan paid for it cheerfully. They bought Tess a set of little bangle bracelets, fuzzy Christmas pajamas, the kind with feet in them, and some new storybooks. Everywhere they went they were mistaken for a couple, for a mommy and daddy doing last-minute shopping, and that overlaid the happiness of the experience with faint wistfulness.
While they were in the bookstore, they came across a photo book of exquisite gingerbread houses.
“Rufus asked me to pick out something for Nana. What do you think?”
“Perfect,” he agreed. “Nana, check. Tess, check. Now I just need a bit of private shopping time—”
Noelle realized he intended to get her something. She wanted to protest how unnecessary it was, and at the same time she could not. She wanted to see what he would get her!
And, of course, she still needed to shop for her chosen gift of skates for everyone.
“Why don’t we meet at Percival’s for lunch?” he said. “It’s just a short walk from here.”
Noelle gulped. Percival’s? “Isn’t it, um, kind of hard to get in there?”
“I’ll figure it out,” he said, and then he cocked his head at her and winked. Winked! They probably knew him by first name at the exclusive eatery, where she had never even attempted a reservation.
She scuttled off to finish her shopping, trying not to be too bowled over by the surprises life could hold if you opened your heart just the tiniest bit.
The skates came in huge boxes. Plus, it was a tradition at the ranch to hang a sock on the mantel on Christmas Eve. The tradition continued no matter how old you were. So she didn’t just want to hang a sock for Tess, she wanted one for everyone. Noelle threw her slender budget—already strained by the skates, not to mention Mitchell emptying the account—to the wind and bought stocking stuffers of luxury chocolates, pretty envelopes of hot chocolate, colorful mittens, decks of cards and other Christmassy and cute trinkets.
Aidan had arrived before her for lunch but the maître d’ was waiting for her to arrive! He guided her to a private table in a small alcove. She plopped herself down at the table, exhausted but happy.
“What have you there?” he asked, reaching for one of her bags. She slapped his hand away.
He pretended to nurse it and they laughed.
“I hope you don’t mind. I ordered. I have a few favorites here.”
Of course he had favorites at the most exclusive restaurant in town!
After an absurdly delicious lunch, she said, “I think I’m about finished shopping. How about you? Is there anything else you need to do before we fly back to the ranch?”
She couldn’t help smiling at that. Plain old Noelle McGregor was sitting in Percival’s, after a lunch of crab-stuffed lobster tails, discussing flying back to the ranch as if it was a normal thing. She seemed to have adjusted to the dizzying heights she was visiting, after all.
“There’s going to be a bit of a delay in getting back to the ranch,” he said.
“There is? Has something come up for you? At work?”
He passed her a slender box across the table. “Not at work exactly. Here. An early Christmas present.”
She picked it up, looked at him quizzically, pulled the gorgeous wrapping from it and opened it.
There was a slim leather necklace box inside, the box tastefully embossed from Calgary’s number one jeweler.
Her fingers were trembling as she opened it.
Her mouth fell open.
Inside the box was a delicate necklace, with two tiny jewel-encrusted bells on it. Those jewels couldn’t really be diamonds, could they? She couldn’t see them being fakes, not from that jeweler.
She lifted her eyes to him. “Aidan, I can’t take this. It’s too much.”
“No, you have to take it. It’s a way of thanking you for all you’ve done to give Tess such a perfect Christmas. I called her before you arrived at the table. They made cookies. She and Nana and your Grandpa. She told me about Smiley knocking the cookies off the counter and eating most of them. She was laughing so hard she could barely get the story out. I have not heard my daughter laugh like that in so long. In way too long.”
“I wasn’t even there! How can you thank me for that?”
“It’s not that, specifically. It’s all of it. Snowball fights and cutting down trees.”
“I don’t know,” she said uncertainly. “I don’t want gifts for it. It’s not as if you have to pay me to make a great Christmas for Tess. I like doing it. I want to.”
“I’m not paying you. I’m thanking you. Plus, the necklace goes with the theme.”
“What theme?”
“Silver Bells.”
She cocked her head at him. “I’m not following. I thought you didn’t like Christmas carols.”
“Despise them,” he agreed. “I’m not talking about the Christmas carol called ‘Silver Bells.’ I’m talking about the Christmas Enchantment Ball. Tonight.”
She gulped. “Are you asking me to go to the ball with you?”
He smiled and nodded.
“Like a date?”
He looked slightly taken aback. “I hadn’t thought of it in those terms.”
Of course, he hadn’t.
“More like I have tickets, we have some time and when it came up the other night, it sounded like something you might enjoy. Like a little Christmas present.”
“But you’ve already given me the necklace. I can’t—”
“One for your birthday, one for Christmas. There’s no point to the necklace if we don’t go to the ball.”
“But we’re expected back,” Noelle said, feeling faintly panicky. “Tess. And Nana. My Grandpa.”
“I’m sure Smiley will miss us, too,” he said patiently, “but I cleared it with all of them. They were fine with it. Truth to tell, I don’t know if they’re going to miss us. I’ll still get you home tonight. My helicopter turns into a pumpkin at midnight.”
She stared at him. She really did feel like Cinderella. What girl didn’t want to be Cinderella once in her life? She fought the impulse.
“I don’t know what to say. It’s impossible, of course. You’d need a special kind of dress for an event like that.” Her voice froze, and it felt as if the fight was draining out of her.
Because she thought of the red dress hanging, never unwrapped, in her closet. That dress didn’t have to be a caution against hoping for too much. It could be something else entirely. It could be a statement about saying a bold yes to life and to the adventure.
“I can buy you a dress,” he said.
“Actually,” she said slowly. “I have one that will do nicely.”
“Is that a yes, then?”
She stared at him. She couldn’t believe the difference a few hours could make in a life.
“It’s a yes,” she said, and he let out a hoot of delight much as he had done when Jerry Juicejar appeared on his desk. The people at other tables smiled indulgently. She supposed to them it looked like more than it was.
A young couple in love. Maybe it looked as if she had said yes to something else.
He leaned toward her.
“You look beautiful when you blush.”
She ducked her head and then looked back at him. Something unfurled inside of her. A great bravery. A wonderful boldness. She felt the shocking jolt of ecstasy from saying yes to the unexpected, to life, to adventure.
Several hours later, she just wasn’t as sure. In fact, Noelle felt like she was crumbling like a dried-out Christmas cookie. She had the dress on. Despite the fact that she seemed to have lost some weight, the dress fit like a glove, maybe even better than it had when she first bought it.
The problem was that the dress was shocking.
It was a deep, deep shade of red, like red wine sangria. It was the only designer dress Noelle had ever owned. It was possibly the only dress that had ever taken her breath away. This was the first time she’d put it on since she’d tried it in the store. She remembered the sales lady flitting around her, going into paroxysms of approval.
For your engagement, you say? It is perfect. It’s a girl-to-woman dress, yes?
Yes, it was that. There were deep Vs at both the front and the back of the dress that were very daring, and didn’t allow for a bra. The dress clung in some places and flared in others, and her near nakedness underneath it heightened that feeling of being sensual and being aware of her sensuality, and of leaving the girl behind.
The paleness of her skin became not a detriment but an asset, as if her body had been cast in the finest Versace porcelain.
She had upswept her hair and dusted her features with makeup. Her eyes didn’t look murky. They looked like moss, thick and deep, on a forest floor. There was a calm in them that belied how nervous the dress made her feel.
The dress had a red-carpet-ready feel to it. Oh, dear. Was there a red carpet at the Christmas Enchantment Ball? She should look it up. If anybody was bound to trip, it would be her, especially in the unfamiliar two-inch stiletto heels.
She picked up the jewelry box he had given her earlier and opened the lid. She looked longingly at the necklace. If she just put it on, the transformation would be complete, just like Cinderella putting on the glass slipper.
She lifted it out of the box and felt the weight of it, the expense of it.
“Oh, God,” she whispered. “Miss McGregor, just who do you think you are?”
Instead of putting on the necklace, she put it back in the box and slammed the lid shut.
Noelle reminded herself tautly she was the woman who had been left. Because she was too predictable. And too controlling. Because she never surprised and avoided spontaneity as if it were the plague. Because she was pale and plain, not golden and exotic.
You couldn’t change that! You couldn’t change by saying yes instead of no. You couldn’t change it with a dress. Or a necklace. Had she lost her mind? She couldn’t attend a ball with Aidan Phillips! Every single person would look at her and know she was a fraud, an impersonator, an imposter. They would know that she really wasn’t sophisticated enough to pull off a dress like this.
It would show, in the barely-there makeup and in fingers that weren’t manicured. And everyone would know that despite the fact that she had been in the city for years, she was still just a girl from the country. Aidan had had her totally pegged in the first few minutes of meeting her. She was wholesome and plain. She had a horrible heartbreak, a betrayal, under her belt. A dress couldn’t fix that!
She decided to take the dress off. To put on her housecoat and see if she had any chocolate ice cream left. Aidan could go to the ball by himself.
Or she could get dressed in her old blue jeans and her flannel shirt and they could fly home early if he didn’t want to attend by himself. She doubted, though, that he would have a normal person’s reticence—read her—about entering such a gathering alone.
Suddenly she just wanted to go home to her grandfather’s. She wanted to play with the dog and eat cookies and sit by the crackling fire in her pajamas with penguins all over them. She wanted to try to build that snowman again, on a day with stickier snow, and laugh over gingerbread houses. And as night fell, she wanted to go sit in the loft, in a cushion of sweet-smelling hay, with the stars studding the sky outside the open loft door. And not to look at social media postings, either.
Her comfort zone. She wanted back into her comfort zone!
Except Aidan Phillips had invaded her comfort zone, and somehow now, each of those scenarios seemed as if it might feel oddly incomplete if he was not there. If Tess was not there.
There was a knock on the door. There was no doubt it was him. She hadn’t ordered pizza. The knock was firm, that of a man sure every door he knocked on would always be opened to him.
She actually looked for a place to hide, but of course, her place was too small to hide anywhere. It was a studio apartment. She’d rented it in a reckless effort to leave behind the space she’d shared with Mitchell. She had been willing to sacrifice size for the awesome central location. The tininess had allowed her to get rid of most of the things they had owned together. Thankfully, selling a few quality pieces had brought her some much-needed funds.
But now she could clearly see—looking around her space with its mishmash of used furniture and mismatched dishes—this was not the type of place a dress like this came out of. It was not the impression you wanted to make with a man like Aidan.
She took a deep breath and marched to the door. On her floor tiles, the shoes made a snappy sound like machine-gun fire. Despite the confidence that should have inspired, once she was at the door, her courage failed her completely. She took another deep breath, and then held her nose closed between her thumb and her pointer.
“Aidan?”
“None other.”
“I’m not feeling well. You go.”
Silence.
“Without me,” she expanded.
Silence.
“To the ball.”
Silence.
“Have fun!”
Why didn’t he say something? He was probably so used to doors being flung open for him that he was in shock. She waited, holding her breath, like a child playing hide-and-seek, trying to be invisible, trying not to be caught.
Finally, he spoke. His voice was every bit as firm as his knock had been.
“Open the door, Noelle.”
She shivered at the calm in his voice, at the expectation of obedience. “I can’t. I want you to go without me. You can come get me when it’s done. I’m sure I’ll be feeling better in a few hours, ready to go home, ready for—”
“Open the door right now, or I’m kicking it in.”
She hesitated. “You wouldn’t do that.” She forgot to plug her nose.
“Try me,” he said.
Really? Aidan Phillips did not seem like the kind of guy you wanted to challenge in that particular way. Where did you get a broken door repaired just before Christmas?
She opened the door. Just a crack. She peered out. “I can’t,” she reiterated, in her best sick voice, a convincing croak. “You need to go away.”
“I’m not going away.”