Page 1 of New Year's Eve

1

Ellie

It’scriminal how good my fiancé looks in a tux.

Also criminal is the fact we’ve had to spend the last four hours in public, and me molesting him would be frowned on at a New Year’s Eve charity ball.

“Mr. Strong…” someone else says smoothly, emerging from the crowd. Another face, another hand to shake.

My cheeks hurt from smiling, but Gavin’s a natural. He stops and leans in, listening with his entire body as the…director…of some agency tells him about something important.

I’m usually better at these official things, but the last couple of days I’ve been distracted. Ever since we got back from B.C. and our first Christmas with Gavin’s family. With his mother, a woman I’ve adored since my first social studies project on influential Canadian women. With his father, who might just be the sweetest man on the planet—and who cooked dinner.

And with Gavin, who held me close through big family gatherings, who took me hiking and showed me where he wanted to get married come the summer—halfway up a mountain.

It was a crazy, wonderful holiday, and the entire time I was bursting to tell him a secret about his best friend, but it wasn’t my secret to share.

A baby secret, and that’s part of the distraction, too, because now my biological clock is ticking hard.

So really, how could I be expected to focus on yet another introduction when Gavin’s wearing a tux, and we’re so close to him taking it off. And once he does, our real celebration of the new year can begin.

“Now if you’ll excuse us…” he says to the person he was speaking to just then, and it sounds like a request, but as he turns back to me, I see it as the dismissal it really is. His gaze burns into mine as he looks down at me. “Ready to go?”

I nod slowly. Most definitely.

He gestures subtly toward his chief of security, Lachlan, who disappears out the side door of the ballroom, then Gavin presses his hand into the small of my back and we turn.

Someone starts to get up from the table now in front of us, and Gavin calls out the guy’s name, interrupting the upward motion. The guy freezes, then sits as Gavin’s hand lands heavy on his shoulder.

“We didn’t get a chance to talk tonight,” my slick, politician man says as he keeps moving. He’s now pointing at the guy and grinning. “Next time, for sure. Give Beth a call.”

I hold my tongue until we’re at the cloak room and one of the security team has our coats. “What happens when that guy calls Beth?” I whisper.

Gavin takes my lace and velvet stole and wraps it around me, pulling me close for a quick kiss. “He gets another runaround. I didn’t talk to him tonight for a reason.”

“You scare me,” I say with a little smile. “He totally thinks he’s getting access to you.”

“How about that.” He shrugs. “Game’s gotta be played sometimes.”

There’s an edge to how he says it, even if he isn’t aware of it.

I smooth my hands over the front of his tuxedo. “I’m sorry.”

He looks at me sternly. “I’m not. The better I get at playing it, the more I can actually change things for the better.”

That makes me beam, and he gives me another kiss, this one on the nose. I hear the camera click and force myself not to react, not to jerk away.

We’ve become experts at these public shows of affection. They’re never inappropriate, and people like them. I really struggle with being real, but also controlled—giving our country the glimpse they want into our relationship while always being…behaved. And the fact that people speculate all the time about just how misbehaved we probably are in private doesn’t help.

Like everyone else isn’t doing exactly the same thing under the cover of darkness.

Or maybe not exactly the same thing. I blush as I remember our last morning in Vancouver, when Gavin tied me to his bed.

But the principle remains the same. Intimacy is a normal part of being a grown-up, and more people like a good ravishing or spanking or row of clothespins on their sensitive bits than you might ever guess.

“What are you thinking about?” he growls under his breath. “You just started blushing.”

“I’ll tell you in the car.” I sway against him. “Let’s go home and ring in the new year alone.”

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