Chapter
One
Hayley Knowles
loved everything about Christmas, from decorating the house to shopping for
gifts to baking cookies. She especially loved the party that she and her
husband, Conner, held every year. It wasn't a huge gathering or anything like
that, just a small get-together with their closest friends, but they always had
the best time.
Not that any of
them really needed an excuse to hang out together, Hayley thought with a smile
as she listened to her girlfriends talking about what they had gotten their
significant others for Christmas. Since all of the men had gone off to play
pool in the game room downstairs, there was no chance of the women being
overheard, so the girls could all talk freely.
Hayley and the
other girls had been best friends from the moment they'd met in grade school.
Somehow, they had managed to keep their friendship strong through high school
and college, and when they had all graduated and come back to Seattle after
getting their degrees, they had picked up right where they'd left off. Even
though they now all had boyfriends and husbands, they still spent a lot of time
together.
Two of her
friends, Lyndsay and Monica, sat on the other end of
the big sectional couch from Hayley, sipping spiked eggnog. Petite with
dark-hair and brown eyes, both girls looked so much alike that they could have
been sisters. They acted like sisters, too, which made Hayley sometimes wonder
if the two girls had been separated at birth.
She let her gaze
move to her other friend, Genevieve, who was curled up in one of the
overstuffed chairs, a glass of wine in her hand. The tall, slender redhead was
as fiery as her hair color suggested. Outgoing and often outrageous, it seemed
like she was always doing something wild. If it wasn't rock climbing, then it was
scuba diving, or hang gliding, or something else equally adventurous. Most
recently she had taken up skydiving with her current boyfriend, Chase. Now that
was one thing Hayley could honestly say she had never had the urge to try.
If Genevieve was
the thrill-seeker, then Hayley's other friend, Jill, was the complete opposite.
Always calm and dependable, the blond was the most mature of the group. Which
was probably why she was the one they all went to when they needed advice,
Hayley thought.
As she sipped her
eggnog, Hayley realized that the conversation had gone from what they were all
giving their boyfriends and husbands for Christmas to what they hoped their
boyfriends and husbands were going to give them.
"Monica and I
were just talking about that the other day," Lyndsay said. "And we've decided that we'd
really like to just drop the kids at our parents' so that our husbands can
pamper us for an entire day. Breakfast in bed, followed by a bubble bath for
two, then a nice, long full-body massage, and a romantic candlelit dinner."
Genevieve rolled
her eyes. "Sounds boring to me."
"That's just
because Lyndsay forgot to mention the part about the
mind-blowing sex," Monica said. "We'd get to that part at some point!"
The redhead
shook her head. "If you're going to ask for the perfect Christmas present, then
you need to think big. I'd want Chase to whisk me off to a private island
somewhere, rub my naked body down with oil, and then make love to me for hours
on end out on the beach while the waves roll over us."
When Hayley and
the other girls laughed, Genevieve gave them a disbelieving look.
"Come on," she
said. "I can't be the only one who has kinky Christmas wishes!"
Hayley felt herself blush at that and hastily sipped her eggnog so that
her friends wouldn't see how red her face was. She wouldn't exactly call making
love on the beach kinky, at least not compared to the fantasies she'd been
having lately. Just thinking about them made her pulse quicken.
"Well," Jill
said, giving them a mischievous smile. "I've been thinking about how much fun
it would be if Philip tied me up and had his way with me!"
Hayley almost
choked on her eggnog at the
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