Page 59 of The Mistletoe Bluff
Me
Pardon?
A moment later my phone rang. It was so loud in the silence of my Jeep that I jumped.
A frustrated exhale on the other end made the line crackle as I accepted the call. “Oliver?”
“Why, hello, princess. How are you?”
She grunted. “My dress is stuck.”
Of all the things I expected her to say, I didn’t expect her to saythat.
“Oh. That’s rather unfortunate. Uh…”
“The zipper got stuck, I can’t reach it, and now I can’t get it off.” Her voice sounded utterly defeated.
“Um,” I said, my brain stuttering over the mental image of Maya in a dress.
“Oliver, I need your help,” she said. There was a slight wobble in her voice, and the sound of it threatened to undo me.
“I’ll be right there.” She sighed before I ended the call and jumped out of the car.
Snow was starting to fall, drifting in lazy circles from the sky. I buzzed her apartment on the intercom and waited for the door to unlock before jogging up the stairs and down the hall.
I had just raised my hand to knock when the door opened, revealing Maya’s dejected face. Her blonde hair was curled in loose waves, her makeup subtle aside from bright red lips that were perfectly kissable. The breath caught in my throat when I saw the dress she was wearing, though not for the reason it should have.
Maya looked like she was wearing tinsel from a Christmas tree. Were those…sequins? It did incredible things for her figure but looked…itchy.
“I know. It’s hideous,” Maya admitted, interpreting my expression the wrong way. She waved me inside.
“Hideous is not quite the word I would have used,” I said, following her, careful to keep my gaze from the open zipper that exposed half of her back.
She led me down a short hallway into her bedroom where her pink floral bedspread was covered with clothes. The room smelled like her—pears mixed with some sort of flower.
The walls were covered in framed photographs, all of them likely hers. There was a large dresser on one wall with a mirror next to it, and a small shelf on the other side of the room that held various knickknacks. I stepped closer to get a better look when I noticed a colorful piece of paper sticking off the shelf.
It was a flyer for theRising Star Photography Contest.
Why—how—did she have that?
Had she entered the contest too? If she had, why wouldn’t she have told me?
“What word would you use then?” she asked, spinning to face me, and cutting my perusal of her room—and my thoughts about the contest—short. “Ugly? Disastrous? Unflattering?”
Pushing the contest out of my mind, I reached out a hand, wrapping my fingers around her arm. Maya stilled, glancing down at where I touched her before meeting my gaze. Her blue eyes filled my entire body with a flood of heat.
“None of those, princess. You look beautiful. It just…looks uncomfortable.”
She snorted. “You have no idea.”
“Then why wear it?”
“It’s called trying to be pretty.”
“But you don’t need totry.”
Maya cocked her head, blinking at me like I had spoken another language. I stepped closer.
