her hand at Riley’s expression. ‘Maybe your time has passed but you’ve known him all your life. Maybe you should try to be friends again, reclaim that at least.’
Riley folded her arms and narrowed her eyes. She didn’t trust Morgan’s earnest expression. ‘You’re just trying to throw us together in the hope that we end up in bed again.’
Morgan’s eyes widened and she placed her hand on her heart in mock outrage. ‘You wound me.’
‘I wound you, my ass. Get out of my office, Moreau, and go and practice your manipulation skills on Noah.’
‘I don’t need to manipulate him; I just get naked.’ Morgan kissed Riley on the cheek.
Riley returned her hug. ‘Lucky you. I miss sex.’ She sighed.
Morgan patted her on the back. ‘Just get naked in front of James; I promise he’ll get the hint.’
Riley pushed Morgan through the door. ‘Out! Now!’
What part of ‘Let it go’ did Morgan not understand?
ACCORDING TO THE Moreau family, her Christmas windows were her best yet, Riley remembered as she walked through the lobby of the MI building, her feet dragging after the long, long day. The Christmas season, as far as Riley was concerned, had officially started and, instead of feeling the excited anticipation she always did, all she wanted to do was to fall flat down on her bed and sleep for a week.
Riley wound her scarf around her neck, pulled on a woollen cap and buttoned her coat, preparing to step into the frigid air outside. It was nearly midnight and they’d had a record crowd for the unveiling of her windows earlier. In between rotating her neck looking for James—who hadn’t been at the unveiling, again—she’d watched Lorelei sing her heart out. Hannah had been gracious and everyone had oohed and aahed over her displays. But now, at this late hour, the gawkers and guests were gone, the road had reopened and the stage had been removed. Riley, who had supervised the returning of the street and pavement to normal, was running on fresh air and emotion.
Holy smokes, it was cold, she thought as she stepped onto the pavement, hunching her shoulders. She should get home but instead she walked around the corner, heading towards the jewellery store, wanting to see her windows as the customers and tourists would—not as the artist but as the viewer. If she got a visceral punch, that flood of pleasure, then she’d know that she’d adequately translated the vision in her head.
But it wasn’t the windows, as spectacular as they were, that momentarily stopped her heart, that had her gasping for breath. It was the blond head in front of the first window, one hand on the glass pane, looking—really looking—at the old-fashioned turn-of-the-century Christmas scene she’d created in the first window. As she quietly approached him she could see his broad smile, his enjoyment of what she’d done.
She’d always thought that she needed James’s words of praise for her work but she didn’t, she realised; she just needed to see this look on his face. Just once.
‘Like it?’ she softly asked.
James’s head whipped around and his smile broadened when he saw her. ‘Like it? No. Love it, absolutely. It’s fantastic, Ri.’
Ri … something he hadn’t called her in far too long. James held out his bare hand and Riley placed hers in it and didn’t resist when he tugged her closer and tucked her under his arm. They both turned to look at the first display. ‘Why a display of Moreau family Christmases over the years?’
‘The interest in Morgan’s wedding, the continued interest in your family from the press and people in general.’ Riley laid her head on his shoulder, happy to rest there in the strength of his arms. Just for a moment and then she’d be strong again. ‘I read an account in Marie Moreau’s diary of the first Christmas she spent with Jasper in that tin shack at his first claim, just before he struck it big with that rich diamond pipe. They were dirt poor but it was a happy day. Her next Christmas—’ Morgan gestured to the window showing a lusciously dressed nineteenth-century couple and their smart friends sitting by a huge tree drinking champagne ‘—was very different. Very rich. Marie writes that Jasper gave her another whacking diamond and impregnated her that Christmas Eve. Apparently they did it in front of that tree …’
‘Hopefully, when all the guests were gone,’ James said, with a rumble of laughter in his voice. ‘Did she really write that down? With descriptions and all?’
Riley rolled her eyes at the hope in his voice. ‘There was nothing graphic in her description, you pervert. Anyway, that sparked the idea of doing a series of windows depicting how the Moreau family spent Christmas. Hannah gave me permission and allowed me to trawl through the photo albums.’
‘You actually asked permission? Amazing!’ James teased.
Riley gave him a shoulder bump as they moved to the next window. An animatronic version of a four-year-old James sitting in front of a tall Christmas tree at Bon Chance, a massive toy train in his lap. His baby sister, still in a nappy, sat next to him chewing a teething ring. ‘I remember that train.’
‘You were a pretty cute kid, Moreau. What happened?’ she quipped.
‘I’m still cute.’ He grinned with smug confidence.
James moved her to the next window—a Christmas spent at their house in Aspen, the snowcapped mountains an exact representation of the view from their steel and wood cabin. The scene was straight from her memory, her first Christmas abroad with the Moreaus at fifteen, when James had taught her to ski.
‘I owe you for all the hours you spent teaching me to ski when you could’ve been chasing those ski-bunnies.’
James waggled his eyebrows at her. ‘Who said I didn’t chase the bunnies?’
The last window depicted the post-Christmas lunch dining table at Bon Chance, the one on the veranda where they normally ate their Christmas meal. It looked like a bomb had hit it—wine bottles and wrapping paper, a diamond necklace lying next to a plate, a glass vase full of rings. Place names—Hannah, Jedd, James, Morgan, Noah—lay on their sides or upside down and to the side a replica of the engaged couple, Morgan and Noah, stood in the corner overlooking the vines, his strong arms wrapped around her slight body, his dark brown head resting on her bright blonde one. Her delicate hand rested on his arm and a copy of Morgan’s exquisite engagement ring glinted in the artificial sunlight.
There was serenity and peace and happiness in the window, a sense that another offshoot of the Moreau clan was coming to fruition. James’s arm tightened around her waist as he stared at the window. ‘How did you recreate that old vine, the one that covers the veranda at Bon Chance?’
‘Trade secret,’ Riley replied, unable to stop the shiver that coursed through her at his touch. Neither was she able to stop the question she’d been dying to ask since she’d first seen him standing in front of the windows. ‘Why are you here, James? You’ve never come down here before, been with me—us—at the unveiling.’
‘I’m always here, Riley. Whenever you change the windows and every Christmas, I stand at the back of the crowds and a lot later in the evening, usually past midnight, I come down here and really look at your designs, looking for the tiny details that most people normally miss. The things that make it personal.’
Riley felt a warm glow in her stomach. ‘Like?’
James
