Harlequin Special Edition November 2014 - Box Set 2 of 2: The Maverick's Thanksgiving Baby\A Celebration Christmas\Dr. Daddy's Perfect Christmas (29 page)

“Cullen Dunlevy,” he said. “And this is Lily.”

It didn't escape Lily that Cullen hadn't said her last name. Was he purposely preserving the illusion that they were married? But they'd just talked about his ex-wife.

That put things into perspective.

“Of course I've heard of it,” said Cullen. “The ball raises money for the New Harvest Food Bank. I've been to your event in the past.”

Joan clapped her hands. “Yes! Are you going this year?”

“I must confess, it's been so hectic lately that I haven't purchased tickets.”

Joan nodded. “As chairwoman of the ball, I like to give tickets to a handful of deserving couples. I would love for you to be my guest this year.”

She held out an envelope to Cullen, but he hesitated.

“I'm happy to purchase the tickets.” He frowned.

Lily took a step back. She'd just started to suggest that they continue on to the booth and not only lay down their load of stollen, but also relieve Sydney from child-care duties, when Joan jumped in.

“Giving away the tickets serves double duty. Not only does it raise awareness of New Harvest, but it gives a lovely, deserving couple like you a night out away from the kids. It's just something I like to do during the holidays. Of course, if you'd rather purchase them, I'm happy to carry your check back to the offices.”

Lily saw what the woman was doing. She thought they were married. She was getting the wife's hopes up about attending the ball and putting the husband in a position where he couldn't refuse. This was guerrilla salesmanship at its finest. Ticket sales must have been low this year.

Lily braced herself for Cullen to politely refuse Joan. The best way for him to get out of this was to simply tell the woman that they not only weren't married, but weren't a couple, and they'd have no use for the tickets.

“Don't worry. There will be a silent auction and plenty of other opportunities for you to donate if you wish. So, please be my guest. Take your beautiful wife to the ball. You two deserve a romantic night out.”

“May I bring you a check tomorrow?” Cullen asked.

Joan nodded eagerly.

Then he turned to Lily. “What do you say,
honey?
Would you be my date to the ball?”

Chapter Eight

D
uring the week it was open, the holiday market closed at five o'clock Monday through Wednesday. The earlier hours allowed the vendors time to restock and rest up for the days of heavier shopping traffic and later hours on Thursday through Sunday.

Tonight, Wednesday, Lily had planned on getting together with Sydney, who was going to let her try on some gowns in her wardrobe that would be suitable for Lily to wear to the ball.

As a single schoolteacher on a limited budget, Lily didn't have any formal wear in her closet. Aside from prom dresses, her wedding gown was the fanciest dress she'd ever owned—or almost owned. When the wedding fell apart, she'd given back the dress, which had been part of the prize package she'd forfeited when she and Josh called their engagement off.

She'd never attended a ball before. Despite her excitement, right now she simply couldn't afford to spend a lot of money on a dress she'd probably wear once in her lifetime.

Once again, Sydney was coming to her rescue, playing fairy godmother to her Cinderella, Lily thought as she rang the doorbell of the sprawling Texas-ranch-style house that Sydney shared with her movie and television director husband, Miles Mercer.

“Hello, love,” Sydney said after opening the wooden front door.

“I hope you're hungry.” Lily held out the nine-by-thirteen-inch pan of lasagna she'd put together after she and the kids got home from the market. “There's plenty, so I hope Miles will join us. You'll still have leftovers that might come in handy since we'll be working late this weekend.”

Actually Lily had made a double batch of lasagna, a pan to take with her and one so that Cullen and the kids would have a nice meal when they sat down to dinner together tonight. Cooking dinner for him and the kids had never been part of the plan, but they all had to eat anyway. And Cullen always invited her to stay and eat with them. At first she'd been hesitant. Now it was becoming their routine.

She wondered what the girls would say if they knew Cullen Dunlevy had curtailed his philandering in favor of family-style dinners.

He always seemed so appreciative, and she had to admit, she loved seeing the look on his face as he enjoyed her home-cooked meals.

“Actually Miles is out of town on a shoot tonight,” she said. “So it's just us.”

All the better.
Right now Sydney was the only person who knew that Cullen was taking Lily to the ball. She'd let the others know eventually, but since the dance was nearly two weeks away, Lily didn't see the need to raise their eyebrows. Not right away, at least. Her friends were great, but she didn't want to hear their warnings or cautionary tales about Cullen.

“That smells delicious,” Sydney said, ushering Lily into the kitchen. “I was going to suggest we order in, but this is even better.”

Even though Sydney worked for Celebrations Inc. Catering, everyone knew she wasn't a cook. She handled public relations for the company, of which she owned a quarter. She was just as good in the public-relations office as A.J. was in the kitchen. It was a business partnership made in heaven.

“All I have to do is warm it up for about a half hour,” Lily said.

“Help yourself to the oven,” Sydney said. “That is so not my territory. I'm lucky to have friends and a husband who cooks.”

Sydney paused and gave her a knowing stare. “I'd say a certain Dr. Studly is pretty lucky to have you. How's that going?”

“How is what going?” Lily feigned ignorance as she punched the buttons on the oven to start it preheating.

“You know exactly what I'm talking about,” Sydney said, hands on her hips. “The big date. The reason you're here tonight—to look gorgeous for Prince Charming when he escorts you to the ball.”

“First of all, it's not a
big date,
” Lily said. “We're just going. As friends. Joan Cotton gave us tickets and we didn't have the heart to refuse her. She was so nice about it.”

“Yeah, she thought you were married,” Sydney said. “I don't recall either of you setting her straight. In fact, what I do remember is Prince Studly looking pretty smug about it. I think he has his eye on you. And, Lily...”

Sydney frowned and Lily knew what was coming before she could even finish her statement.

“Just be careful, okay?”

“I'll be just fine. In fact, I'll be even better if I can try on the dresses before we eat. I don't relish the thought of trying to slip into a slinky gown after indulging in a big plate of pasta. I might get stuck. Actually you're a lot smaller than I am. Are you sure you have something that will fit me?”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Sydney said. “Of course I do. You have a great figure. Come on. Let's go back to the bedroom and I'll show you what I've laid out for you.”

Lily's mind tried to take her back to the past. It tried to dredge up every insecurity she'd ever felt about her curvy figure and compound it with the very real fear that nothing Sydney had to offer would fit. She'd be embarrassed and back at square one. But she wasn't allowing herself to go there.

Nope, worry was like paying on a debt you might never owe. She'd heard that somewhere and it had become her mantra. So she did her best to brush off the nagging doubts and followed her friend through an elegantly decorated living room, down a hardwood hallway and finally into one of the largest master suites she'd ever seen.

She'd been to Sydney and Miles's house numerous times, but this was the first time she'd seen the master bedroom. Sydney had laid out at least a dozen gowns of various colors, cuts and levels of sparkle and bling.

As Lily took it all in, Sydney held up the arts and entertainment section of the
Celebration Daily News.
“Did you see the great article they did on the holiday market? There's a picture of the kids on page eight.”

Sydney handed it to her. Lily perused the story on the first page before turning to page eight.

When she and the kids had gotten home from the market today, Lily had barely enough time to get the kids situated and the lasagnas made before Cullen got home. They'd talked for a bit—nothing dramatic or earth-shattering, just easy conversation about each of their days: his at the hospital and hers with the kids at the market—before she'd rushed to get over to Sydney's house. She hadn't had time to read the paper.

But there it was, a great picture of the girls smiling as Megan handed a loaf of stollen to a customer. The caption under the picture talked about how the children would donate the money they made from sales of the homemade bread to the Grace Children's Home.

“That's such a sweet picture,” Sydney said.

“Isn't it? The girls will be so thrilled to see it.” She had just started to close the paper when a familiar face caught her eye and made her do a double take.

She gasped. Because there smiling up at her from the section featuring the engagement announcements was her ex-fiancé, Josh Stockett, with a pretty, petite blonde. They'd been photographed in a posture Lily and her friends used to jokingly call the “awkward prom pose,” where the couple had their arms around each other and their free hands were intertwined. The petite blonde's name, Lily learned after reading on a bit, was Ann-Elizabeth Hardy, daughter of Dr. Bernard and Daphne Hardy. Ann-Elizabeth—her name was hyphenated, so Lily was just sure she went by both names. Not Ann. Not Elizabeth. Certainly not Liz or Lizzy or, heaven forbid, Beth or Betsy. She was beautiful and thin with sorority-girl posture and a perfect toothy smile.

She was exactly the type Josh liked. And she was gazing up at the idiot as if he were the second coming.

Engaged.

Josh Stockett, the man whom Lily had had to goad into engagement, was finally getting married.

* * *

When Josh broke up with her, he'd originally told her he wasn't marrying her because she was too heavy. At a size twelve, he'd told her, he didn't want to risk getting stuck with a
fatty
and he'd bailed as fast as he could.

The memory made Lily's heart ache. Not for the loss of the man she'd once thought she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, but because she'd truly believed he'd loved her. Just the way she was.

She'd been traumatized.

It had taken her months to put everything into perspective. She'd never be a small woman. She loved to cook. Of course she wanted to be healthy, but she wasn't going to weigh every ounce of food she put in her mouth and she wasn't going to deny herself the foods she loved to cook and eat.

The truth of the matter was, Lily was comfortable in her own skin. Some women might've gone on a starvation diet to sculpt themselves into a so-called better version of themselves, but not Lily.

It took a while for her pride to mend, but soon she realized that Josh's problem with her size was just a cover for a problem that ran much deeper in him. And the problem, she decided, wasn't hers. It was his.

From that day forward, she decided she wasn't going to starve herself or otherwise try to change herself to fit his image of the perfect woman. She was simply going to live.

Most of all, she wasn't going to let him rob her of her belief that even at a size twelve, she was perfectly deserving of marriage and a family. Because if she ever wanted that happiness, that sense of belonging, she'd have to find it in her own family. Someday when she met the right man she would have that. Until then, she would keep doing the best she could.

“What's the matter?” Sydney asked as she came back into the room. “You look like you've seen a ghost.”

In many ways Lily had. It was the ghost of her old relationship come back to haunt her. Just when she thought she'd exorcised it once and for all.

It wasn't that she wanted him back; that ship had sailed long ago. But seeing him in the paper with a woman who was everything he'd wanted her to be cut a little bit. It shouldn't, but it did.

“I wish I had brought my Spanx,” Lily said as she handed the paper to Sydney, who glanced at her askance as she accepted it.

“Engagement announcements,” Lily said. “Second picture in the top row.”

Sydney's eyes grew wide when she obviously realized what she was looking at. “Oh! Oh, honey, I'm sorry.”

“He finally found his perfect woman.”

“Well, I'm sorry for her,” Sydney said, in a show of solidarity that Lily simultaneously loved and hated.

Lily wasn't sorry. Or at least if she told herself that enough, she might believe it.

If the truth be told, perhaps she was sorry for herself. Sorry that everything she'd thought was real with Josh had been nothing but a mirage. How could she be with someone for that long and not see the handwriting on the wall?

They'd been together since they were teenagers and had been broken up nineteen months. Now the guy she thought was the love of her life would be married to someone else by the spring. That fast.

Badda-boom, badda-bing.

Sydney was still glowering at the paper when Lily said, “He's getting everything he ever wanted. She seems to come from a good family. She's what? A size two?”

Sydney snorted. “On a bloated day.”

“I was born bigger than a size two,” Lily said. She took a deep breath and exhaled. “Oh, well, I wish them nothing but the best.”

“She's a sorority girl,” Sydney read. “Says so right here. Tri Delta. What in the world does she want with a guy like Josh?”

“He always was ambitious,” Lily said. “I guess we can't fault him for that.”

“But we don't have to forgive him, either.”

Lily wasn't sure if Sydney's venom stemmed from Josh's breaking Lily's heart or because he'd put Sydney in the hot seat. Her job had been in jeopardy when he'd backed out of the wedding. Sydney had pushed so hard for Lily to win the Celebration's Bride contest. Josh's decision to break the engagement had thrown the show's production into a real bind. Then, when one of the producers had wanted to use the footage of Josh breaking up with Lily in place of the wedding footage, Sydney had gone to bat to save Lily's dignity.

She was such a good friend. The source of her rancor didn't really matter.

“I'm glad you seem to be over him,” Sydney said, tossing the paper aside.

“It's amazing how much a little time and distance will heal,” Lily answered. If she said it out loud enough, surely she'd start to believe it. Wouldn't she?

Sydney held up a gorgeous emerald-green ball gown and cocked an eyebrow. “Of course, going to the ball with Dr. Studly does help, I'm sure.”

Lily couldn't help smiling. “I think a woman would have to be dead to resist Cullen's charms.”

Sydney squinted at her. “You're falling for him, aren't you?”

Lily raised her shoulders and let them fall. “Would that be such a bad thing?”

“A bad thing?” Sydney repeated. “I don't know if I'd go so far to call it a
bad thing.
Risky, maybe. I mean Cullen Dunlevy does have a reputation for dating beautiful, one-dimensional women. You certainly can hold your own in the looks category—especially in this dress.” She held up the green number again and gave it a little shimmy.

“I haven't seen that side of him,” Lily said. “Except for one text that he received from a woman named Giselle. He was supposed to see her that night, but he didn't. He came home and he's been home every night since I've been working for him.”

“From what I understand about Cullen, he's involved with a lot of women and none of them are interested in a relationship.”

“What makes you think I'm interested in having a relationship with him?”

“Really?” Sydney gave Lily a look that said she didn't completely believe her. “You're not?”

Lily's gaze found the newspaper that Sydney had discarded. Her heart squeezed. Maybe it was just her pride. She and Josh had been together for so many years. She'd been on a few dates since they'd broken up, but she hadn't found anyone that she wanted to get serious with. Still, she knew herself well enough to know that not wanting a second date with Mr. One-Date-Wonder was a far cry from being one of many in the dating pool of a guy she wanted to see again. She couldn't deny the chemistry she felt with Cullen. Was the chemistry mutual or was that how he worked? His M.O.?