A Beaumont Christmas Wedding by Sarah M. Anderson Read Free Book Online Page A

going to look?” he asked, his voice warm and, if she didn’t know any better, inviting.
    She could feel him waiting right next to her, the heat from his body contrasting with the cool temperature of the room. So she opened her eyes. What else could she do?
    The sight that greeted her caused her to gasp. An elegant, sophisticated woman stood next to a handsome, powerful man. She knew that was her reflection in the mirror, but it didn’t look like her.
    “Almost perfect,” Matthew all but sighed in satisfaction.
    Almost.
What a horrible word.
    “It’s amazing.” She fought the urge to twirl. Someone as buttoned-up as Matthew probably wouldn’t appreciate a good twirl.
    The man in the reflection grinned at her—a real grin, one that crinkled the edges of his eyes. “It’s too long on you. Let’s try the shoes.” Then, to her amazement, he knelt down and held out a shoe for her, as if this were some backward version of
Cinderella
.
    Whitney lifted up her skirt and gingerly stepped into the shoe. It felt solid and stable—not like the last pair of fancy shoes she’d tried to walk in.
    She stepped into the other shoe, trying not to think about how Matthew was essentially face-to-knee or how she was in significant danger of snagging these pretty shoes on the edge of the dais and going down in a blaze of glory.
    When she had both shoes firmly on, Matthew sat back. “How do those feel?”
    “Not bad,” she admitted. She took a preliminary step back. “Pretty good, actually.”
    “Can you walk in them? Or do you need a ballerina flat?”
    She gaped at him. Of all the things he might have asked her, that wasn’t even on the list. Then it hit her. “Jo told you I was a klutz, right?”
    He grinned again. It did some amazing things to his face, which, in turn, did some amazing things to the way a lazy sort of heat coiled around the base of her spine and began to pulse.
    “She might have mentioned it.”
    Whitney shouldn’t have been embarrassed, and if she was, it shouldn’t have bothered her anymore. Embarrassment was second nature for her now, as ordinary as breathing oxygen.
    But it did. “Because you thought I was drunk.”
    His Adam’s apple bobbed, but he didn’t come back with the silky smile he’d pulled out on her last night, the one that made her feel as if she was being managed.
    “In the interest of transparency, I also considered the option that you might have been stoned.”

Four
    W hitney blinked down at him, her delicate features pulled tight. Then, without another word, she turned back to the mirror.
    What happened? Matthew stood, letting his gaze travel over her. She was, for lack of a better word, stunning. “The color suits you,” he said, hoping a compliment would help.
    It didn’t. She rolled her eyes.
    Transparency had always worked before. He’d thought that his little admission would come out as an ironic joke, something they could both chuckle over while he covertly admired the figure she cut in that dress.
    What was it about this woman that had him sticking his foot in his mouth at every available turn?
    It was just because she wasn’t what he’d been expecting, that was all. He’d been up late last night, digging into the not-sordid-at-all history of Whitney Maddox, trying to get his feet out of his mouth and back under his legs. She
was
a respected horse breeder. Her horses
were
beautiful animals and that one
had
won a gold medal. But there weren’t any pictures of Whitney Maddox anywhere—not on her ranch’s website, not on any social media. Whitney Maddox was like a ghost—there but not there.
    Except the woman before him was very much here. His hands still tingled from zipping her into that dress, from the glimpse of her panties right where the zipper had ended. How he itched to unzip it, to expose the bare skin he’d seen but not touched—slip those panties off her hips.
    He needed to focus on what was important here, and that was making sure that this