Dancing With Velvet by Judy Nickles Read Free Book Online Page A

and makeup.
    As if she’d read Celeste’s mind, Paula offered to do her hair and makeup tonight. “You don’t need much. Just a little powder on your nose and some of your light lipstick. I wear Tangee, too. Looks more natural.” She brushed Celeste’s hair and pulled it to the side, fastening it with the rhinestone clip so that it fell over her left shoulder. “Do you ever curl your hair?”
    “I’ve tried, but it just goes straight again.”
    “I saw these,” Veda said, fingering the pin and earrings when Celeste came back from the bathroom and took them out of their box. “They don’t look like some of the cheaper stuff we have.”
    “That’s why I bought them,” Celeste said. “I saw something similar at Hemphill-Wells but couldn’t afford them. They gave me an idea of what to look for, though.” She let Paula put on her pin while she screwed on her earrings.
    “You don’t have to have a lot of money to dress well,” Paula said. “I learned that from some of the magazines I’ve read. Like you said, you just have to know what to look for.”
    “She made me over,” Veda said, laughing. “I had some of the gosh-awfullest things you ever saw, when I first came.”
    “They weren’t that bad.” Paula readjusted the neckline on her roommate’s dress. “That’s better.”
    “See, she’s still doing it.”
    The girls walked arm in arm to the hotel, laughing at nothing and everything. “I couldn’t have done this on my own,” Celeste admitted as they crossed the lobby. She stopped to stare at the shaggy buffalo head on the wall.
    “Him we don’t want to meet upstairs,” Paula laughed, urging her toward the elevator. “Next stop, paradise,” she said as they stepped inside.
    Celeste caught her breath and held to the brass rail as the car moved upward. “It’s almost magic,” she murmured.
    Veda patted her arm. “Got your dollar admission ready? Or like magic you’ll be on your way back down.”
    The lights dancing across the polished wood floor almost took Celeste’s breath away. “In warm weather, the casement windows are open,” Paula told her. “And through those French doors is the garden area.”
    Celeste pressed her nose to the glass and drank in the tiled roof. “I’ll bet you can see the whole town from up here,” she said.
    “Well, part of it, anyway,” Veda replied. “It’s beautiful in the spring with all the plants set around the parapet.”
    Celeste chose a chair near a window and forced herself to keep her eyes down, though she wanted to search the room for her prince, the reason she’d come. She’d dreamed about him again last night. Though he looked like Kent, who wouldn’t be there, she knew she’d recognize her real dream prince.
    Folding her hands in her lap and crossing her ankles the way Coralee had taught her, she felt inexplicably afraid. Maybe I shouldn’t have come, but please, let him be here. Please .
    ****
    The familiar voice descending from somewhere high above sent a thrill through her. Her stomach knotted as she lifted her face.
    “May I have this dance?”
    Kent stood there smiling at her.
    “It’s you.”
    “Just got in this afternoon. Pretty lucky, huh?”
    Celeste felt the warmth in her cheeks. “I guess so.”
    “I see you got the dress in time.”
    “I earned some extra money helping out with some holiday parties,” she said, lifting her chin.
    “Hey, you don’t have to explain it to me. Some things are just meant to be, and that dress was meant for you.”
    She dropped her eyes. “Thank you.”
    “So, do you want to dance?”
    She rose, feeling the skirt swirl around her. “Yes, thank you very much,” she said.
    He was clean-shaven and smelled of shaving soap, but the hair curling around his ears announced his need for a haircut. “I’m headed home for Christmas tomorrow. It’s been two weeks.”
    “Your mother will be glad to see you.”
    “She’ll kill the fatted calf—or maybe my brother, if he doesn’t clean