The Bachelor’s Christmas Bride by Victoria Pade Page A

gonna love this. And you know Hadley knows chocolate.”
    â€œShe really does,” Issa assured Shannon just before Tucker and the sisters moved back to the table they’d all been sharing so they could be served the dessert.
    â€œLooks like that tiny corner booth is empty—what do you say?” Dag suggested then.
    They’d had dinner at Hadley and Chase’s table, after which everyone had begun to mingle and table-hop. Now some—like Tucker, Issa, Zeli and Tessa—were returning to their original spots, some remained standing and some were taking new seats.
    Shannon had no problem with the idea of taking a new seat. In the corner. With Dag.
    Not because she wanted to be alone with him, she told herself. But merely because talking to Dag always seemed to come easily, and after a long evening of trying to remember names and relationships and make conversation with a whole lot of people she didn’t know, she was more than ready to sit back and relax a little.
    â€œThe tiny corner booth it is,” she agreed, moving thefew steps required to get there and sliding in from one side just as Dag was waylaid before he could slide in from the other.
    Shannon had been introduced to the man who had stopped to talk to Dag and thought she remembered him to be Noah Perry, Meg’s brother. He was intent on talking hockey with Dag—a subject that had cropped up several times tonight. Shannon didn’t know much about Dag beyond the fact that he was Logan’s half brother, but she had gathered here and there that for some reason he had a serious interest in the sport.
    But rather than eavesdropping on the conversation the two men were having tableside, Shannon instead fell into studying Dag.
    Dress had been decreed casual for the rehearsal and the dinner, so she was wearing charcoal gray pinstripe wool slacks and a white fitted shirt she’d left untucked.
    But Dag had gone more casual still. He—and several other men—had on jeans. Dressier jeans than Shannon had seen him in before, jeans that fitted him to a tee, but jeans nonetheless.
    And with the jeans he wore a bright pink shirt that he’d taken some ribbing for from Logan and Chase before they’d all left home. But if any man was masculine enough to wear a pink shirt, it was Dag. In fact, somehow the pink shirt topped off by a dark sport coat seemed to lend even more depth to his nearly black eyes, and both shirt and jacket were so expertly tailored that they accentuated the pure massiveness of his shoulders, leaving nothing at all feminine about the way he looked.
    Noah Perry didn’t keep Dag long and about the time one of the waitresses came to the corner table with thecrème brûlées, Dag slid into the booth the way he’d initially intended.
    â€œWe need three, Peggy,” he told the waitress.
    If the teenager wondered why, she didn’t ask, she merely left them three of the confections with three spoons and fresh napkins to go with them.
    â€œHadley isn’t the only McKendrick who likes chocolate?” Shannon guessed.
    â€œMaybe I got the extra for you.”
    â€œOr maybe you got the extra for you,” Shannon countered with a laugh.
    â€œI’ll share,” he tempted.
    â€œI think I’ll be fine with one.”
    Shannon had cause to rethink that after her first bite of the rich, creamy delicacy lying beneath a crusty shell of caramelized sugar. But she kept her second thoughts to herself even as they agreed that Hadley had made an excellent choice of desserts.
    Then Shannon opted for giving Dag a tad more grief and said, “So, between the Dag-gets-a-dress-for-Christmas and the pink shirt, I’m beginning to wonder if there’s something I should know about you….”
    That made him laugh boisterously. “The shirt is salmon-colored—that’s what the sales guy said. Salmon, not pink.”
    Shannon leaned slightly in his direction. “The