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Miles laughs against my hair, and I bury my burning face against his chest while the entire team watches with way too much interest.

"Alright, alright, settle down," Coach Dave announces, sounding deeply unbothered by the chaos he's unleashed. He waves his thermos vaguely toward the hallway. "You've got two hours. Go get yourselves presentable for the sponsor dinner. And I mean presentable—no sweats, no beards, and for the love of Christmas, somebody make sure Baxter wears underwear this time."

"That was ONE charity calendar shoot!" Baxter protests.

As the team scatters, Stevie catches me by both shoulders and studies me with enough concentration to make Miles’s arm tighten around my waist.

“What?” I ask.

“Please tell me you’re not getting ready for this dinner alone,” Stevie says, swatting at her blonde hair and tucking it behind her ear.

“Well, I have successfully dressed myself for several years, so yeah.”

“Not tonight, you’re not,” Stevie says as Eden joins us. “I have jewelry, Eden has hair products, and between us, we might prevent you from using that horrendous emergency mascara currently living inside your handbag.”

"She's right." Eden slips her arm through mine and flashes me a smile. “We’re coming upstairs. I have time to kill before Nate collects me for a pre-dinner drink later, and I don't want to go home to my grandmother.”

I glance at Miles, who looks like he’s considering whether captaincy gives him the authority to tackle two women stealing me from beneath his arm. “Apparently my suite has been occupied.”

His gaze moves slowly down my body. “I’ll come reclaim it later. I'll pick you up, say around seven?”

The promise beneath the words sends heat straight between my thighs.

"Sounds good."

I giggle and start walking towards the exit.

Across the room, Baxter is still demanding to see whether his face photographed heroically, as the resort's social-media manager helps Iris post the picture from her phone with a caption full of snowflake emojis and the Madden Mistletoe Resort location tag glowing right there for the entire internet to see.

By six o'clock, my suite has become glamorous female chaos.

Stevie is on her knees behind me with a fistful of hairpins in her mouth. Eden is sprawled across my bed critiquing everything, and there's a bottle of champagne open on the vanity that Darcy sent up with the dress.

The sponsor dinner comes with a formal dress code, which creates a small problem when your entire available wardrobe was packed for escaping a wedding rather than entertaining wealthy hockey executives. Darcy solved it by sending up one of the resort boutique’s evening dresses with a note promising Big Mike was paying and therefore subtlety was unnecessary.

The dress is a deep green color and fitted through every curve I own, with a neckline that makes Stevie's borrowed velvet number from the other day look like church clothes.

It has a split that runs up my thigh, and whenever I move, the soft fabric shimmers like the inside of a Christmas ornament.

"Okay, be honest," I say, turning in the mirror. "Does this make me look too eager?"

"Too eager?" Eden asks with a frown. "Eager for what?"

Stevie coughs into her hand, badly and not subtle at all. "Miles Stratton."

Eden sits upright and points at me. “Finally. Are we admitting there’s something happening between you and Miles?”

I freeze with both hands smoothing down the dress. “Who said anything is happening?”

“Your face. His face. The fact he spent an entire photo shoot looking at you like the camera was interrupting something filthy.”

Stevie makes a choking sound around her mouthful of hairpins.

“That proves nothing,” I say, although the heat climbing into my cheeks proves several things.

Eden scrambles off the bed. “Audrey, he looks at you like he wants to rip off every cute little sweater you own and eat you for lunch.”

“Maybe I just want to look nice for dinner.”