Page 38 of Her Holiday Arrangement

She froze.

Elizabeth didn’t move. Didn’t flinch or pull away. Her breath caught, then steadied.

Riley swallowed.

“Sorry,” she said, voice barely a whisper. “I wasn’t, I just?—”

Still, Elizabeth said nothing.

But she didn’t move away either.

That was worse. Or maybe better. Maybe both.

Riley’s fingers hovered there, light against silk and skin. She could feel the curve of Elizabeth’s waist, the tension in her stillness. It would be easy to move. To break the moment, laugh it off, turn back over and pretend it hadn’t happened.

But she didn’t want to pretend anymore.

She closed her eyes. Her fingers pressed in, just slightly. The contact was barely anything, tame, tentative, but her whole body was suddenly electric.

Elizabeth let out a slow breath. Then, quietly, “You haven’t ruined anything.”

Riley’s eyes snapped open. “What?”

Elizabeth shifted, turning onto her side to face her. The air between them was barely an inch. Her voice was even softer now.

“You said this is the part where you ruin everything. You haven’t.”

Riley’s throat felt too tight to speak.

Elizabeth reached up, hesitated, then brushed a strand of hair from Riley’s cheek. Her touch was light, reverent. The kind of touch that shouldn’t mean anything but somehow did.

“You think too much,” she said.

“I have to,” Riley whispered. “You don’t.”

Elizabeth smiled faintly, a wry curve of her mouth in the dark. “No. I just pretend better.”

Riley laughed, breathless. “God, that’s bleak.”

“I know.”

They stared at each other. Neither moved.

Riley’s hand was still at Elizabeth’s hip. Elizabeth’s fingers ghosted at her jaw.

This should not be happening.

They weren’t supposed to feel like this. It had been a game, a deal, a well-outfitted lie dressed up in silk and Christmas lights. And yet here they were, tangled in silence, breath catching on the edge of something neither of them could name.

Riley whispered, “Tell me to stop.”

Riley’s hand tightened at Elizabeth’s hip, and for one dizzying heartbeat she thought she might still back away. Then Elizabeth’s voice, low and steady, cut through the silence:

“Don’t.”

The word slid into Riley’s chest like a key turning. She blinked, searching Elizabeth’s eyes. “You mean that?”

Elizabeth didn’t flinch. “I do.”