All She Wants For Christmas (4 page)

"Monica, you
didn't seem surprised to hear that Ryan spanks
Lyndsay
on a regular basis," she said.

The dark-haired
girl tucked a curl behind her ear as she shook her head. "Actually,
Lyndsay
just let me in on her secret about a year ago," she
admitted.

Hayley lifted a
brow. As close as the two girls were, she would have thought that
Lyndsay
would have revealed her love of spanking to Monica
long before that.

"What did you do?"
Genevieve asked
Lyndsay
with a smile. "Have a little
too much to drink and let it slip?"

Lyndsay
glanced at
Monica. "Not exactly," she said, giving the other dark-haired girl a grin.

Monica let out a
sigh. "Should I tell them about the dirty, little trick you played on me?"

"Go ahead,"
Lyndsay
said with a smile. "They'll all agree that I did it for your own good."

Monica made a
face. "Why don't we let them decide that?" she said, and then, without waiting
for an answer, continued. "It all started out when
Lyndsay
and I went shopping one afternoon..."

"Come on, Monica,"
Lyndsay
urged. "Let's just go in and see what they have."

Monica hesitated. She and
Lyndsay
had come to University Village to get a head start on their Christmas shopping,
and despite their pact that they weren't going to buy anything for themselves
while they were there, her friend wanted to go into one of the more exclusive
boutiques and look around. Eyeing the beautiful cocktail dresses the mannequins
in the store window were wearing, Monica had to admit that she was tempted, but
she forced herself to shake her head.

"We don't have time,
Lyndsay
,"
she told her friend. "And besides, we didn't come here to shop for ourselves."

Lyndsay's
brow furrowed. "Just a quick look," she begged. "I
can only stare at men's cargo pants for so long before I start going
cross-eyed, you know. And anyway, it'll just take a few minutes. Come on!"

Shaking her head, Monica followed the other girl
into the store. They would take a quick look, and then leave, she told herself.
They still had a lot of other shopping to do.

But the minute they stepped foot inside the
boutique, that thought went out the window. She had a hard time saying no to
clothes as it was, and this particular store had some really great stuff. At
first, she and
Lyndsay
just looked around, but it
wasn't long before her friend found something she wanted to try on.

"Aren't you going to try on that cocktail dress you
were looking at?"
Lyndsay
asked.

Monica gave the dress in question a wistful look as
she shook her head. "I'd better not," she said. "If I do, I'll end up wanting
to buy it, and I'm trying to be good."

The other girl frowned. "There's no harm in just
trying it on," she cajoled.

Lyndsay
did have a point, Monica thought,
her
gaze going longingly to the dress again. It wouldn't
hurt to just try it on. A smile curving her lips, she grabbed it from the rack
and followed her friend into the dressing room.

Choosing ones that were side by side, both girls
went inside their respective dressing rooms and closed the door. Tossing her
shoulder bag onto the chair, Monica quickly wiggled out of her jeans and
T-shirt, and then slipped into the dress. Sapphire blue in color and made of a
silky chiffon, it left her arms bare and dipped low in the back, accentuating
her curves and showing a sexy amount of skin. Monica couldn't help but smile.
It was perfect!

"How does it look?"
Lyndsay
called from the other dressing room.

"It's
beautiful!"Monica
called back.

Outside, Monica could hear the other girl open the
door of the adjoining dressing room. "Let me see."

Giving her reflection another look in the mirror,
Monica opened the door of the dressing room wide so that her friend could see.
Lyndsay
had changed into the skirt she'd brought in to try
on, and Monica had to admit that it looked great on her friend. The other girl
nodded approvingly at Monica, a huge smile on her face.

"That dress looks absolutely gorgeous on you!" the
other girl exclaimed. "You have to buy it!"

Monica chewed on her lip, hesitating. "I don't
know," she said after a moment. "It's really expensive."

Lyndsay's
brow furrowed. "But it's on sale, right?"

"Well yeah, but even on sale,
it's
four-hundred-and-twenty-five dollars. And that's with a hundred-and-fifty
dollars off," Monica said. "There no way I can buy it."

The other girl put her hands on her hips.
"Why
not?"she
demanded. "You can
afford it, right?"

Monica sighed. As an architect, her husband made
good money, and she made pretty good money herself, but nevertheless, spending
five-hundred dollars on a dress wasn't something she made a habit of doing.
Turning away from her friend, she looked at her reflection in the full-length
mirror on the opposite wall.

"I suppose," she agreed. "But Cole and I agreed that
neither of us would buy something really expensive without talking to the other
first. We're trying to get bills paid off."

Lyndsay
studied Monica's reflection. "But Cole will think
you look gorgeous in it. And it'd be perfect for the Christmas party that his
firm puts on," she pointed out.

Monica hadn't even thought of that, but her friend
was right. The dress would be perfect for the party. It was still a lot of
money, though. "I don't know..." she hesitated.

"You have to buy it!"
Lyndsay
insisted. "I mean, look at
that!"
she
added, pointing at the mirror. "That dress looks like it was made for you. It
would be a crime not to get it!"

One of the salesgirls chose that moment to walk by
and upon seeing Monica, she stopped in her tracks. "I agree," she said. "That
looks fabulous on you!"

Beside the salesgirl,
Lyndsay
was smiling. "I told you!" she said. "You have to get it!"

Monica took one more look in the mirror before she
finally nodded. "Okay," she announced. "I'll get it!"

Of course, because of the way the dress was made,
she couldn't wear a regular bra, or even a strapless one for that matter, so it
was over to the lingerie store next, where she picked up a very expensive
invisible-shaping style bra. At
Lyndsay's
urging, she
also got a new pair of high-heeled shoes and a matching evening bag to go with
the dress, too, which put the grand total close to eight-hundred dollars.

"Cole is going to have a fit if he finds out how
much I
spent!"
she
said as
they left the shoe store.

Lyndsay
dismissed Monica's concerns with a wave of her
hand. "Don't worry about it," she said. "He'll never know."

Monica chewed on her lower lip. Cole was playing
golf with
Lyndsay's
husband that afternoon, she
reminded herself. If she were lucky, then she could get back to their house and
have everything put away before he even got home. Then she could just pull the
dress out before the party and claim that it was a dress she'd had for years.
He didn't know what was in her side of the walk-in closet anyway.

But when she and
Lyndsay
got back to her house, it was to find both men relaxing in the living room.

"Hey honey," Cole said. With a grin, he got to his
feet and walked over to give her a kiss. "Did you get your Christmas shopping
done?"

Monica glanced at
Lyndsay
,
who had gone over to stand beside Ryan. "Most of it," she told Cole. "Let me go
put this stuff upstairs, and then I'll be right down."

"You should model that new dress you bought,"
Lyndsay
called as she started for the steps.

Shocked that her friend would mention the dress
she'd bought, Monica whirled around to look at the other girl in dismay, but
from the expression on
Lyndsay's
face, it was clear
she didn't seem to think she'd done anything wrong. Annoyed, Monica opened her
mouth to tell her husband that she would try it on later, but Cole was already
grinning.

"You bought a new
dress?"
he
said. "I'd love to see it."

Shooting
Lyndsay
a glare,
Monica started up the stairs, only to stop in mid-step when her friend called
out to her again.

"And don't forget the shoes,"
Lyndsay
reminded her. "They're a perfect match!"

Monica's grip on the shopping bags tightened. What
part of the promise to keep her little shopping spree a secret didn't her
friend understand? Furious, she stomped up the stairs to go change.

When Monica went back down dressed in her sexy new
dress and high-heels ten minutes later, it was to find her friends seated on
the couch and talking to Cole about the men's golf game that afternoon. At her
entrance, Cole let out a low whistle of approval. Getting to his feet, he walked over to her.

"You look gorgeous," he told her, his dark eyes
smoldering as he admired the way the dress showed off her curves.

"Doesn't she?"
Lyndsay
agreed. "And she got a great deal on it."

Monica gave her friend a pointed look, silently
trying to remind the other girl to keep quiet about how much she'd spent. But
Lyndsay
ignored her as she continued.

"I mean, it was still way more than I'd want to
spend on a dress, but once she tried it on, she couldn't resist," the other
girl said. "And it does look great on her."

Cole nodded in agreement. "It does," he said, his
gaze gliding over Monica's slender figure again. "How much was it?"

"Not that much, really," Monica answered quickly.
"Just a hundred and fifty."

At the amount she'd named, Cole looked visibly
relieved, and Monica felt herself relax. She hated lying to her husband, but
she disliked the thought of getting into an argument with him in front of their
friends even more.

"A hundred and fifty off the regular price, you
mean,"
Lyndsay
added. "Which is a good deal, I admit,
but four-hundred-and-twenty-five dollars still seems like a lot to me."

Monica gasped. She couldn't believe that her friend
had
ratted
her out.

Beside her, Cole folded his arms across his chest
and gave her a scowl. "You spent four-hundred-and-twenty-five dollars,
Monica?"
he
demanded.

"And that's not counting the shoes and matching
handbag,"
Lyndsay
pointed out. "I advised her not to spend so much, but she
wouldn't listen. She had to have it, and said that you'd never know how much it
cost anyway."

Monica stared at her friend in shock, unable to
believe that her friend was throwing her own words back at her. What was
Lyndsay
trying to do? She was already going to be in
trouble with Cole. Did the other girl have to make it worse?

Monica turned to her husband. "Honey, it wasn't like
that..."she began, but he silenced her with a look.

"Oh
really?"he
said. "Then what was it like?"

Monica tried to think of something to say that would
diffuse the situation, but nothing would come to mind.

On the couch beside
Lyndsay
,
Ryan shrugged. "It's just like I was saying on the golf course," he said. "It
sounds to me like your wife needs a spanking, Cole."

"I agree,"
Lyndsay
said.
"Not only did she spend a fortune on that dress, but she lied to you about how
much it cost. If that doesn't deserve a spanking, I don't know what does!"

Monica's eyes went wide.
A
spanking?
What were they talking about? And why the heck was Cole nodding in agreement?

"Maybe you're right," her husband said, his jaw
tight. "I didn't agree with you on the golf course, Ryan, but now I think that
maybe a spanking is exactly what she needs."

Stunned, Monica automatically took a step back, but
Cole had already taken her arm and was leading her over to the loveseat. He
couldn't be serious about giving her a spanking. She was a grown woman, for heaven's
sake!