Page 29 of Puppy Christmas

“Yes, moppet,” he said as he dropped a kiss on his daughter’s hairline. Once again, that sapient, all-seeing child had managed to sum up the situation in a few disconcerting seconds. “I imagine Princess Lila is always making the young, unmarried gentlemen laugh.”

At that, a look of pain swept across Lila’s dark gaze. It was a brief flicker and nothing more, gone so fast he might have missed it. But hehadn’tmissed it, and he didn’t care for the way it snagged and caught in his chest.

Before he could do any probing into its cause, however, Lila turned to Emily. She waited until she had Emily’s full attention before speaking, but it was obvious she had something serious to impart. “We’re going to have a very important tea party today, so I need you to go to your room and put on your prettiest dress,” she said.

“A tea party?” Emily breathed. “For real?”

“For absolute real,” Lila replied. “I brought an obscene number of cakes and cookies with me, so I hope you’re hungry. And, um, that your dad doesn’t mind if I pump you full of sugar first thing in the morning.”

“Why not? I can always sleep when I’m dead.”

“There are treats for Jeeves, too,” Lila said with a casual disregard for Ford’s state of well-being.

At the sound of his name, the cockapoo’s ears perked. He was a restful little creature almost all of the time, patient in ways that seemed unnatural to Ford, but he was never quite able to subdue his ears. They drooped when he was sad, twitched when he was playful, and flopped the rest of the time.

Emily clasped her hands in front of her. “And it’s all for me? Just for me?”

“Well, you’re the guest of honor,” Lila said with a nod, “but I’ve invited a few others to join us.”

Just like that, a shutter came down over Emily’s eyes. “What kind of others?”

Abort. Change course. Back oh-so-slowly away.

It was sound advice. He’d tried throwing parties for Emily in the past—birthday parties and summer parties and, yes, even tea parties—but they rarely ended well. Each time, the RSVPs flew in and lifted Ford’s hopes accordingly. They rarely stayed that way for long. It only took a few arrivals and even fewer minutes to realize that the children were there under strong parental compulsion. When she was younger, Emily hadn’t noticed as much, but school had taught her a lot more than the basics of the alphabet. Social training started early these days.

But in this, as in all things, he’d underestimated Lila.

“I can’t tell you, I’m afraid. It would jeopardize their safety.”

Although Emily’s thumb was still snaking a treacherous path toward her mouth, she allowed herself to be distracted. “Whose safety?”

Lila cast a careful look around the living room as if expecting villains to emerge from the dusty corners. “I can’t say more without risking everything. But you should definitely put something fancy on. They’ll be expecting it.”

There was nothing more for her to say. Emily took Lila at her somber, regal word, her eyes wide with the importance of the task laid before her. Without another word of protest—and with her thumb now firmly at her side—Emily lifted her chin and went to her room.

Jeeves followed, of course, but not before he lifted his ears in an almost exact imitation of the tilt of Emily’s head.

“Um, I hate to critique a plan you’ve clearly put some thought into, but nothing short of the Queen of England on that doorstep will do now,” Ford said. “You realize that, right?”

“You really don’t have anything nicer than pajama pants?” she asked by way of answer. Her eyes flicked over his bare torso. “Not even a matching shirt?”

He might have felt embarrassed to be caught in such a state of bare-chested déshabillé if not for the way her gaze lingered a shade too long. It was the same way his own eyes kept trailing back to the tight bodice of her dress, enjoying the way each breath swelled both fabric and skin.

“Alas, my wardrobe is the product of my existence,” he said. “There’s no need for finery when I rarely leave the house.”

“Surely you must go out sometimes,” she persisted. “What do you wear on dates?”

“Nothing.”

A flush of color washed over her, by now a familiar sight. Ford was coming to realize that it was the only sign Lila ever gave that she was the least bit flustered. She held herself prim and polite in almost all situations, but not even she could control the movement of blood through her veins.

“I don’t go on dates, that is,” he supplied with a grin. “I’m not in the habit of sauntering around in the nude.”

“You could have fooled me.”

That response, almost as much as the blush, told Ford that she wasn’t as indifferent as she wanted him to think. It was a much-needed boost to his ego, which had been showing signs of deflation lately. Back in the day, he’d been just as vain as the next relatively good-looking young man with the whole world before him, and he’d done what he could with it.

Unfortunately, it was difficult to puff up with self-importance while doing things like making peanut-butter sandwiches and buying toilet paper in bulk. And, if the email that had crossed his desk last night was any indication, when there was a good chance his employer was no longer going to offer flexible options in working from home.