“Wow. I do look glamorous. I don’t look like me, but I look good.”
“You look beautiful. Just like you. Do you like your hair?”
Mrs. Scheinberg had curled it with a fat curling iron, and after adding a little hair gel, Flash had a head full of sleek and elegant waves.
“It’s perfect. Thank you for everything,” Flash said, and left a bright red kiss on Mrs. Scheinberg’s cheek.
“My pleasure. Now you need to go. You’ll be late.”
“I’m going. I’ll have the dress back to you by tomorrow night,” Flash said.
But Mrs. Scheinberg only smiled.
“No rush. Kiss that handsome man of yours for me when you see him.”
Flash grinned. She’d been doing that a lot lately.
“My pleasure.”
She headed for the door.
“Veronica, dear?”
“Yes?” Flash turned around.
“A little birdie told me that Mr. Ian Asher has a big present he’s giving you tonight.”
“Is he?” Flash said, smiling again. “That devil. It’s not even Christmas yet.”
“He is. I want you to know that you should accept this gift even if you don’t want to at first.”
“You’re being strange.”
“I know,” Mrs. Scheinberg whispered. “But I’m eighty-eight so I get to use that as my excuse. Now go. Have fun. Be safe.”
Flash had no idea what big gift Ian was giving her tonight. The mystery occupied her mind the entire ride to the Mount Tabor neighborhood of Portland. Ian had warned her a week ago that he would have to meet her at the party. His father would need him to help organize the staff and that was Ian’s job every year. Flash didn’t mind. It would give her a second chance to make her grand entrance and blow Ian’s mind. He’d never seen her in a dress before, not even a skirt. All she wanted to do was put a huge smile on his too-handsome face, kiss him, drink wine together and celebrate their first Christmas together. The first of many, she hoped.
And tomorrow, she’d put in her thirty days’ notice on her apartment and start moving her stuff into Ian’s house.
“Oh, shit,” she breathed when she pulled up to Ian’s father’s house. She knew it would be a nice house. Dean Asher was a millionaire, after all, but she hadn’t expected this place—a sprawling white Victorian mansion that consumed the large corner lot it had been built upon. White Christmas lights edged the roof, the porch and the balcony, and their yellow glow made the whole house look as if it had been trimmed in gold leaf. Every door wore a green-and-red wreath and every window held a flickering yellow candle. And through the front bay window Flash spied a Christmas tree that must have been twelve feet tall from the looks of it. And Ian wondered why sometimes she worried he was out of her league...
Then again, maybe there were some perks to dating a rich guy’s son. This was a nice fucking house. Spending Christmases here would not be a chore. When she imagined herself growing up in a house like this, she couldn’t imagine she would have turned out as well as Ian did. Ian was down to earth, normal, grounded. He didn’t throw his money around. He could have lived in a house like this in a wealthy neighborhood and he didn’t. He could have driven a Porsche but instead he drove a Subaru like everyone else in Oregon. And he could have fallen in love with someone with money or connections. Instead he’d fallen in love with her. If he wasn’t going to punish her for being working class, she wasn’t going to punish him for belonging to the one percent as long as he didn’t lord his father’s money over her. And so far he hadn’t. So far he’d been the perfect boyfriend. Although he had apparently gotten her a big Christmas gift. That made her a little uncomfortable. She hoped it wasn’t expensive whatever it was.
Flash tried not to think about it. She was nervous enough as it was, coming to this important Asher family party. Ian said all his dad’s family would be there—aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins and grandparents. She’d find one of the out-of-town cousins to talk to, preferably one who felt as out of place as she did. They could hide in the corner somewhere, sip wine and ignore the rest of the party.
As she pulled in front of the house she saw that Ian’s father had hired valets to park the guests’ cars. Valets? For a private house party? Flash took a deep steadying breath. She could do this. She was an artist, after all. A real one now that her work had sold to an art collector. When people asked her what she did for a living she could say with all honesty, “I’m a professional artist.” She’d been waiting for years to be able to say those words. She told herself she didn’t care what Ian or anybody was giving her for Christmas this year. Some stranger out there with good taste and deep pockets had already made her biggest dream come true. What more could she ask for? Nothing.
She passed her keys to the teenage valet who declared, “Cool truck,” before hopping in and driving it away. She really hoped Dean Asher had hired those guys. If you wanted to make good money stealing cars, this crowd was the one to target. She walked through the front door of the house—no one stopped her—and found a glittering horde of people gathered in the downstairs rooms. She saw the mayor, the governor, a few cast members from that TV show that filmed in Portland every summer and drove Ian crazy by blocking traffic in front of his Pearl District apartment. Everyone was dressed to the nines. Some to the tens. Like that guy over there in the tuxedo and the white bow tie who could have been James Bond, as suave as he looked in that getup. She stared at him boldly, and he returned the stare before plucking a champagne flute off a passing tray and walking over to her where she stood under a large bough of mistletoe hanging from the ached doorway.
“Did it hurt?” he asked.
“Did what hurt?” she replied as she took the champagne from his hand.
“When you fell from heaven?”
“Ian—that was the most pathetic pickup line I’ve ever heard. And I’ve heard a lot of them.”
“I’ll have you know that was a very good pickup line.”