Festive in Death (In Death #39)(76)

“She’s not supposed to—wait.” She twisted herself around again, narrowed her eyes in the mirror. “Kiss my ass? Huh. Maybe I won’t kick hers for doing it.” She untwisted, looked at him.

“You dressed me to match the decorations.”

“Precisely the opposite. The decorations were chosen to spotlight your dress. You.” He flicked a finger down the dent in her chin. “We should go up to the ballroom, be ready to greet guests—or we’ll both suffer Summerset’s wrath.”

“Okay.” Ordering her feet to suck it up, she put on the shoes. “If men had to wear heels, they’d be outlawed across the land.”

But she took his hand, walked with him.

• • •

It did look pretty great, Eve admitted, and looked even better really when people began to arrive. When they began to mingle around or gather in clutches. Servers wove through with offerings from the spectacular display of food or sparkling drinks from one of the bars.

Speaking of colorful, she spotted Peabody and McNab come in. He wore Christmas red tails with a silver shirt, a reindeer tie, and short silver boots. To complement, Eve supposed, Peabody’s frothy dress of holly green picked through with glittery silver. Since her partner’s hair was a mass of tiny curls with silver banding woven through, Eve felt less self-conscious about the hint of curls in her own.

“Peabody.” Roarke kissed her hand, then her cheek, then her lips. “You’re gorgeous.”

“Oh boy. I really worked on it.”

“You’re a vision. Ian, you’re a lucky man.”

“You got it. Here you go, She-Body.” He plucked two glasses of champagne from a tray. “This is the iciest party of the year. We’re ready to cut the rug, kick the heels, shake the booty.”

“Look at the food. It’s so pretty. We have to dance asses off so I can eat the food. Is that a sugarplum tree? It’s a sugarplum tree. Oh my God.”

“Before you pick sugarplums,” Eve interrupted, “I need you a minute.”

Wanting to get this part over with, Eve started out—got waylaid twice by people who wanted to be sociable—and finally managed to get into the salon, shut the door behind Peabody.

“It’s going to be hours of that,” Eve realized. “Hours of people wanting to talk to me.”

“Here, you need this more than I do.” Peabody started to hand Eve the glass. “Wait, there’s more.” Instead, she walked over to the ice bucket, poured champagne into a glass on the tray nearby.

“Great. Good. Thanks. Listen.”

“I’m going to keep digging on Felicity Prinze tomorrow. I think she’s clear, like you do, but I can dig deeper, see if there’s anything there.”

“This isn’t about that.” She picked up a box from the table where Summerset had arranged her wrapped gifts. “It’s for you. Roarke has something for McNab.”

“Oh! We put yours under the tree downstairs. I can go get it.”

“No, we’ll get to it. Thanks in advance. I’m just—I’m giving these out tonight when I can, that’s all.”

“So I can open it now? I love when I can open it now. The paper’s so pretty.”

She picked at it delicately, carefully breaking seals.

“Jesus, Peabody, rip the damn thing open. I don’t have all night.”

“I can use it again. I haven’t wrapped everything yet.”

She slid the box free, carefully folded the paper, preserved the ribbon and bow. And finally opened the box.

“Oh!” She pulled out the gift, stared at it, eyes and mouth wide. “It’s a magic coat. It’s my own magic coat. It’s pink! It’s a pink magic coat. Holy shit! Holy pink magic shit, Dallas.”

“The pink was Roarke’s doing. You can’t hang that on me. I said brown.”

“I have to sit down. No, I have to try it on, then I have to sit down. Holy shit, you got me a pink magic coat.”

“Don’t blubber! Why is there so much blubbering today?”

“Thank God I used all waterproof, sweatproof, smudgeproof face enhancers, because I’m going to blubber. Dallas, wow. Just wow, it’s leather. It’s pink leather.”

“The pink’s not on me. Ever.”

“Holy, holy, holy shit. I can’t stop saying it.” She swung the coat on over the frothy dress. It looked silly with it, Eve thought, the military style of it over the party dress. But apparently Peabody didn’t think so. She twirled in it so the knee-length pink leather billowed and swirled.

“Oh my God, it’s beyond. Just beyond. It feels like leather. It is leather. It has pockets and pretty buttons. And it’s magic. and it’s pink.”

“I can’t go around wearing coats with internal body armor when my partner’s not.”

Peabody stopped twirling. She didn’t blubber, but a couple tears trickled down. “It means so much to me, that you’d have it made for me. For my safety. That all by itself means everything. But the rest? It didn’t have to be leather, it didn’t have to be pink. But you did that because you knew it would make me happy.”

“You get stunned or stuck or blasted, it’s pretty damned inconvenient for me.” On Peabody’s watery laugh, Eve sighed. “You’re . . . family. That’s it.”