CHAPTER 1
#SonOfABeanbagChair
“Spencer Baldwin?” an unfamiliar female voice asked.
Shit. Anyone who used his full name was most definitely not someone he wanted to speak with. After the past few months, he knew better than to answer his phone without looking at the screen, but with both hands busy directing a drone around the room, he’d answered on voice command without thinking about it.
“Wrong number,” he said, the drone hovering with perfect precision—and engineering—above his head. Then, to prevent a repeat call while he was working, he took one hand off the controls and chucked his phone out the high, narrow window of the basement.
Which felt great.
Directing the drone to continue hovering, he moved to the far wall of the huge basement below the Pacific Pier Building and climbed the three-foot ladder that was against the window for just this sort of situation.
Yep. His cell phone had landed directly in the fountain in the center of the courtyard. “Three points,” he murmured just as the elevator doors opened and Elle entered.
“Are you kidding me?” she asked in a tone that only she could get away with and not die. “You killed another one? Why don’t you just stop answering to the damn reporters—wouldn’t that be easier?”
He turned his attention back to his drone, impressed with the changes he’d made in the flight software. “Am I paying you to bitch at me?” he asked mildly.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” she said. “You’re actually paying me a hell of a lot of money to bitch at you. Why don’t I just change your phone number again?”
“He can’t,” Joe said from the other side of the room. He wore only a pair of knit boxers and stood in front of one of the three commercial-grade washer-dryers, waiting for his clothes. “Me and the guys like it when he gets all the marriage proposals.”
“You mean you like the nudie pics that come with the proposals,” Elle said.
“They send him presents sometimes too,” Joe said. “Junk food and panties. That’s always fun.”
Elle rolled her eyes. “Why are you in just your underwear?”
Joe was an IT wizard who worked at Hunt Investigations two floors up. He was second in charge there, a master finder and fixer of . . . well, just about anything, and fairly badass while he was at it. And although Elle terrified almost everyone on the planet, Joe just grinned at her. “Had a little tussle earlier on the job,” he said. “Spence let me in down here to use the machines.”
Elle was not impressed. “If by tussle you mean a takedown went bad and you got blood all over yourself again, you best not be using those machines.”
“Hey, at least it’s not my blood. And I’m fine, thanks for asking.”
Elle went hands on hips. She managed this building for the owner, who happened to be Spence—and she often mistook her job for actual world domination, trying to run his personal life as well.
But Spence had nixed his personal life a long time ago. It was the Baldwin curse. He could be successful in his business life or his personal life—pick one—but not both. Since he objected on a very base level to going back to abject poverty, he’d long ago decided business was a safer bet than love.
Although, to be honest, he’d made a few forays into attempting both and had failed spectacularly.
“Oh, and did you hear that Spence here is rumored to be one of the top ten nominees for San Francisco’s most eligible bachelor?” Joe asked Elle, giving a snort as if this was hysterical.
Spence leaned forward and banged his head against the wall a few times.
“Don’t bother,” Elle said. “Your head’s harder than the concrete. And yes,” she told Joe. “I know. I figure that’s part of the reason he just threw his phone out the window?”
“I could just scare everyone off your ass for you,” Joe said to Spence.
He was kidding. Probably. And actually, Spence was more than a little tempted. This mess was his own fault, for trusting someone he shouldn’t have. As a result, the press had been having a field day with his success in a very large way, threatening his privacy and also his sanity.
Just thinking about the “most eligible bachelor” thing had him groaning.
“Listen,” Elle said more kindly now. “Go take a break, okay? Then you can come back and shut out the world and work.”
It was a well-known fact that Spence’s ability to hyper-focus and ignore everything around him was both a strength and a giant flaw. Great asset for an engineer/inventor, not so great for anything else, like, say, relationships. But truthfully, he was hungry, so a break sounded good. He headed toward the elevator.
“Uh,” Elle said, gesturing to his clothes. “You might want to . . .”
“What?” he asked, looking down at himself. So he hadn’t shaved in a few days—so what? And okay, maybe he lived out of his dryer, grabbing clean but wrinkled clothes from there in the mornings when he got dressed. Whatever. There were worse things. “Joe’s in his underwear.”
“Hey, at least I was wearing some today,” Joe said.
Elle took in the guy’s nearly naked form, clearly appreciating the view in spite of her being very much taken in the relationship department by Joe’s boss Archer Hunt. She finally shook it off and turned back to Spence. “You know damn well when you walk across the courtyard talking to yourself, hair standing up thanks to your fingers, all stubbly because you forgot to shave, and those black-rimmed glasses slipping down your annoyingly perfect nose, women come out of the woodwork.”
“They do?” Joe asked.
“It’s the hot geek look,” Elle said.
“Huh.” Joe rubbed his jaw, where he too had stubble. “Maybe I should try that sometime.”
“No,” Elle said. “You can’t pull off hot geek. Your looks say sexy badass, not geek, which apparently is like a siren call to crazy women everywhere.”
Joe looked pleased. “I’m okay with that.”
Elle ignored this and looked at Spence. “After your last romantic fiasco, you vowed to take a break, remember? So all I’m saying is that you might want to change up your look.”
“How?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Slouch. Get a beer gut. Fart. Whatever it is that guys do to organically turn us off.”
“Wait,” Joe said. “You gave up sex after Clarissa dumped you, what, two years ago now? Like, willingly?”
“Something you should try sometime,” Elle said to him.
“Woman, bite your tongue.”
“No, really,” she said. “How do you even keep all their names straight?”
“Easy,” Joe said with a smile. “If I forget their name, I just take them to Starbucks in the morning and wait until the barista asks their name for their cup.”
Elle rolled her eyes. “Seriously?”
“Hey, you know I run on caffeine, sarcasm, and inappropriate thoughts at all times.”
“I didn’t give up sex,” Spence said. Okay, yes, his latest project required his 24–7 attention and he hadn’t had time to connect with anyone. But quick hookups weren’t really his thing anyway. What was his thing at the moment was creating a system for getting meds to people via drones, in far-flung areas where they were nearly nonexistent. Meds and also medical care through camera-equipped drones, allowing doctors to remotely diagnose and monitor patients.
He’d had problems. Accommodating for the atmosphere and varying weather patterns, for one. The security, for another—making sure pirates couldn’t intercept and steal the meds and equipment was a high-stakes priority. And then there was the ratio of the changing weight of the cargo to getting enough battery charge to make the long flights, not to mention limited battery life and the struggle to stay connected no matter the conditions. But he was getting close, very close. All he needed was time, uninterrupted time, a rare commodity. He moved toward the door. “I’m going after my phone.”
“The one you just killed dead?” Elle asked.
“I’ll bring it back to life.”
“You’re a genius, Spence, not a miracle maker.”
When he kept going, he heard Elle mutter “great” to Joe. “Now I’ve issued some sort of challenge to his manhood and he has to prove me wrong.”
The truth was, Spence could rebuild his phone in his damn sleep. What he wished he could do in his sleep was get this project up and running. Maybe a part of his problem was that it happened to be for Clarissa’s One-World charity and he’d promised her.
And Spence no longer broke promises.
He took the stairs because he hated the elevator, and when he stepped out into the courtyard, he stilled for a beat. He’d grown up hard and fast and without a home. This building had changed all that for him, and normally the sight of the fountain, the cobblestones, the building itself with its amazing old corbel brick architecture, all worked together to lighten his day.
But when he hadn’t been looking, Christmas had taken over the place. There were garlands of evergreen entwined with twinkling white lights in every doorway and window frame. On top of that, all the potted trees that lined the walkways had been done up like Christmas trees.
This being winter in San Francisco, specifically the district of Cow Hollow, the afternoon foggy air burned his lungs like ice. He grabbed his phone from the coin-filled fountain, dried it off on his pants, and shoved it into one of his pockets to restore later.
“Spence!” Willa called out from the pet shop that opened into the courtyard. She ran a pet day care out of her shop and sometimes when Spence needed to think, he often did so while walking her clients for her.
She gestured to the large dog snoozing in the sunspot with a cat on either side of him. “Got time to help me out?” she asked.
“Sure.” The dog was a regular client named Daisy Duke, and she came out of a dead sleep at Spence’s voice, leaping over the cats in sheer joy as she headed right for him. When she got to him, she jumped up and down in place, attempting to lick his face. Spence calmed her down somewhat, hooked her up to the leash, and hit the courtyard with her, heading toward the wrought-iron gates so he could walk her to doggy Disneyland—the park.
But Daisy Duke wasn’t a walker. She was a runner. More accurately, she was a 125-pound bunny, bounding with enthusiastic energy, tugging at the leash.
“Hold your horses, Daze,” he said. “Save it for the park.” He muscled her to his side, his mind miles away on his drone problems. Lost in thought, he wasn’t exactly on his game when a black cat appeared out of nowhere.
With an excited bark, Daisy Duke broke free to charge after it, heading back toward the fountain and the woman now standing there, suitcase at her side, arm primed to throw a coin into the water.
The cat managed to dodge the woman, but Daisy Duke wasn’t nearly as dexterous. Barreling forward at warp speed, she clearly saw the problem at the last minute because she let out a bark of surprise. She was probably mostly Irish setter, but Spence was pretty sure she was also part Wookiee. She was huge and uncoordinated, and a few crayons short of a full box. She did drop her head and try to stop, but her forward momentum was too much. Her back end slid out from beneath her and she flipped onto her back, plowing headlong into the woman and toppling her over.
Right into the water.
Jesus. “Stay,” Spence said to Daisy and lurched forward as the woman pushed up to her hands and knees in the water, coughing and sputtering. “Are you okay?”
Gesturing that she didn’t need his assistance, she swiped a hand down her face, muttering what sounded like “I should’ve gone to Toronto.”
She was completely drenched thanks to him, and yet she wasn’t yelling. She got serious points for that, he thought. And because she was wearing one of those flowy dresses that gave a man thoughts about what might or might not be under said dress, along with a denim jacket and boots—all of which were now clinging to her and fighting her efforts—he stepped into the fountain to help her.
“The water’s . . . warm,” she said in surprise. “It’s freezing out. How is the water warm?”
He looked down at the water. Green. He could feel coins beneath the soles of his shoes. “That can’t be good.”
She choked and he did a mental grimace. He deserved the tears. Hell, he deserved fury. But when she lifted her face, he realized she was laughing?
She’d found humor in this shitty situation.
He felt something shift in his chest at that, a zing of attraction maybe, which he hadn’t seen coming. In fact, he actually wasn’t seeing too much at all, since he was now nearly as wet as she, including his glasses. He took them off to wipe the lenses on his equally wet shirt and eye contact was made.
She had big green eyes. Big, green, smiling eyes. “I’m a mess,” she said.
That wasn’t what he was thinking. Her clothes were plastered to her body. Her very nice, curvy body. He forced his gaze back to her face, then stepped out of the fountain and turned back for her, offering a hand.
She took it but still fumbled because her dress had shrink-wrapped itself to her legs, making moving all but impossible. They struggled a moment, hands grappling for purchase on each other until finally he just wrapped an arm around her waist and lifted her out, then set her down on the cobblestoned ground.
“Wuff!” Daisy had flopped around on her back for a few seconds, trying to right herself. Eventually she’d given up and stayed down, tail wagging like crazy, her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth.
That is, until she eyed something in one of the big potted trees lining the courtyard, now decorated to within an inch of their lives with lights and ornaments.
The black cat.
“Stay,” Spence warned the dog and turned back to the woman.
“Thanks,” she said, her voice matching her husky laugh. “Appreciate the help . . .” She paused, clearly waiting for him to fill in his name.
“Spence,” he said, purposely skipping his last name. Anonymity was hard to come by lately, but he’d made a habit of keeping up the effort.
“Well,” she said. “Thanks for the help, Spence.” And then she . . . turned to walk away.
“Wait—” He’d gotten her soaked and he felt terrible about that. He wanted to make sure she was okay, that he got her dry and warm. “You didn’t tell me your name.”
She looked back, seeming oddly reluctant. “Colbie,” she said. “My name is Colbie.”
“Colbie, I can’t let you just walk away. You’ve got to be freezing cold. At the very least I owe you dry clothes and a warm drink.”
“No, really. It’s okay.” She started to wring out her long, dark hair and paused. “You might want to stand back. My hair needs its own zip code when it’s wet.”
This made him smile.
“Oh, I’m not kidding,” she said.
Out of all the women Spence had known in his life, he couldn’t think of a single one who’d be taking this so well, and shit, he realized she was absently rubbing her elbow. Gently, he pushed up the sleeve of her denim jacket and found an abrasion along with an already blooming bruise.
“It’s nothing,” she said.
Maybe, but her skin was broken and he had no idea what was in that water. “We need to clean that cut and ice your elbow. And I want to pay for your clothes to be cleaned or replaced—”
“Wuff!”
He shot the impatient Daisy a long look that promised no cookies today just as Elle came out of the elevator into the courtyard, striding toward them with a concerned look on her face. “Hi,” she said to Colbie. “I’m Elle Wheaten, the building manager. What happened? Are you okay?”
“She took a header into the water,” Spence said. “Daisy’s fault.”
They all looked at Daisy, who was sitting there smiling wide, not a concern in this world.
“I’m taking Colbie upstairs,” he said. “To clean out her cut and get her some dry clothes.”
Elle turned to him in shock.
Spence understood the surprise. He usually avoided dealing with people, especially people he didn’t know. And then there was the fact that his penthouse apartment was an inner sanctum that he didn’t let just anyone into. “The gym,” he clarified, which was on the top floor next to his apartment. It had its own entrance, separate from his living quarters and office.
“I’ll take her,” Elle offered, doing as she always did, which was keeping herself between Spence and the rest of the world.
“Really,” Colbie said, her voice firm if not a little shaky. “Not necessary. I’m fine.”
Spence didn’t claim to know all that much about women, but even he knew that fine didn’t mean fine. The scale went great, good, okay, not okay, I hate you, fine. And as a bonus, she was beginning to tremble from the cold as she gripped her suitcase and tried to walk off—not that her dress was having it.
Colbie stopped fighting it, sighed, and tilted her head back. “Really? Are we serious with today?”
Both Spence and Elle glanced up at the sky. Nothing but clouds. He looked over at Elle, who was brows up, giving him a slow shake of her head. And while it was true that Elle was one of his best friends and he trusted her with his life, he didn’t agree with her silent opinion to just let the woman go.
He couldn’t. There was just something about the very wet, cute-yet-sexy Colbie No-Last-Name that appealed to him in a way that nothing else had in a long time. So when she tripped over her dress yet again and swore with a low, muttered “Son of a beach!” he grabbed for her, keeping her upright.
“Please,” he said as her clothes began to soak his. “Please let me help you.”
At his other side, Elle’s mouth fell open. She wasn’t used to hearing the word please from him. Ignoring her, he kept his gaze on Colbie.
Wary, she rolled her eyes, but gave a slight nod. She’d let him help her out but she wasn’t happy about it.
Fair enough.
Chasing Christmas Eve. Copyright © 2017 by Jill Shalvis.
available September 26th, 2017,
wherever books are sold!
And don’t miss Jill’s next Heartbreaker Bay romance, , coming January 2018!