Look before you leap. Or carry a first aid kit.
—Lucas
Lucas had expected her to leave, but she was still standing there.
“I have work to do.” And he was desperate to get started. The characters were coming alive in his head, becoming people with flaws and qualities. He could hear dialogue and picture scenes. For the first time in far too long he couldn’t wait to sit down in front of his laptop. He wanted to escape into the fictional world that was waiting for him. It was like someone in chronic pain, contemplating a syringe full of morphine. He wanted to grab it and empty the barrel into his veins until the sweetness of oblivion numbed the agony that had been his constant companion for three years.
The only thing stopping him was the source of his inspiration who seemed stubbornly determined not to leave. He might have scared her, but apparently he hadn’t scared her enough to send her running for the door.
“Your grandmother gave me this job, so either I call her and explain, or I do the job she sent me here to do.”
If she called his grandmother, any hope of being left alone over the Christmas period would vanish. He’d be required to explain why he was in New York rather than Vermont and, most awkwardly of all, why he’d lied about it.
“Look around you.” He tried intimidation, his tone silky soft. “Do I look like a man who wants his apartment decorated for the holidays?”
“No, which is why your grandmother wanted me to do it. She doesn’t think you should be living like this. She’s worried about you. And frankly, having met you, so am I.”
“Why would you care how I’m living my life?”
“Everyone deserves a Christmas tree in their lives.”
“Only if you’re trying to punish them.”
“Punish? A Christmas tree is uplifting.”
“What is uplifting about a fake Christmas tree, which is essentially a petroleum-based product probably manufactured in a Chinese factory?”
“Fake? Who said anything about fake? I don’t do ‘fake,’ Mr. Blade. I don’t do fake Christmas trees, fake handbags, or fake orgasms.” Color streaked across her cheeks. “I didn’t mean to say that last one. It slipped out. But my point is nothing in my life is fake.” The words tumbled over each other and Lucas found himself struggling not to smile.
He didn’t think he’d ever met anyone so deliciously indiscreet.
“You’ve never faked an orgasm?”
“Could you forget I said that?”
He imagined her in bed, naked and uninhibited. Heat raced over his skin and his thoughts were explicit enough to make him uncomfortable. Since his wife’s death he’d had no shortage of offers, from sex to marriage, but had never once been tempted. It wasn’t just that he’d left his bad boy days in his past. It was more that he no longer had the taste for it. Every time he looked at a woman he saw the expression on Sallyanne’s face the last time he’d seen her alive.
But he was definitely attracted to Eva.
To take his mind off sex, he pondered on how someone of her build could murder a man twice her size.
“I’m a writer. Human behavior interests me.”
She interested him.
He told himself that his interest was professional, but part of him recognized that as a lie.
She let her hands drop. “We were talking about Christmas trees. Real Christmas trees, which smell and look beautiful.”
“And drop needles all over my floor.” He remembered the way she’d felt underneath him.
“If needles drop you clean them up.” She unbuttoned her coat. “It’s not hard.”
“I don’t have time. I have a book to finish and I need to be left in peace to do that. If you decorate my apartment, you’ll disturb me.” It wasn’t the noise that worried him, or the intrusion of having someone else in the apartment, it was her.
She made him feel something he didn’t want to feel.
Maybe it was because she was nothing like his wife. Sallyanne had been tall and willowy. In heels, she’d matched his height. Physically, Eva was as different from Sallyanne as it was possible for a woman to be. He knew instinctively that losing himself in Eva’s soft curves would be a whole new experience, with no flashbacks or reminders, but he knew that for a man like him to get involved with a woman like her would definitely be a crime, just not the sort he wrote about.
“You won’t even know I’m here.”
“You’re not the type of woman who blends into the background.”
“You don’t need to worry about me disturbing you,” she said quickly. “I understand that creative genius needs space to work. Also there’s the fact that I don’t find your company that thrilling, Mr. Blade.”
The kitten had claws. “Tell my grandmother you changed your mind about the job.”
“No. I’m being paid to decorate your apartment and stock your freezer in your absence. That’s what I intend to do.”
“I’m not absent.”
“Which is inconvenient for both of us, particularly as you’re not allowing me to disclose that fact to the person who gave me this job. I don’t like lying.”
He discovered that those soft blue eyes and mermaid-like hair concealed a woman with a stubborn streak a mile wide.
The thought that his grandmother might finally have met her match almost compensated for the irritation of failing to shift her from his apartment.
Almost, but not quite.
“Leave, and I’ll match whatever she’s paying you.”
“It’s not about the money, Mr. Blade. It’s about my professional reputation. I take pride in my work.”
“And what is your work, exactly? You’re a Christmas elf? You decorate the apartments of unsuspecting Scrooge-like individuals, thus intensifying their loathing of this time of year?” His sarcasm seemed to slide right off her.
“I’m part of Urban Genie. We’re an events and concierge company.”
“Decorating my apartment is an event?”
“Your grandmother is one of our clients and this request came through her. We can do pretty much anything that’s requested of us.”
He bit back the obvious comment. He told himself that he didn’t want to make cheap jokes at her expense, but the truth was he was trying hard not to think of her that way. “Anything, it seems, except leave when you’re asked to.”
“I’d leave if requested to do so by my client. You’re not my client.”
“Give me the name of your boss, and I’ll call and explain that I no longer need your services.”
“I am the boss. I run the business with two of my friends.”
“How do you know my grandmother?”
“I met Mitzy earlier in the year when she requested a birthday cake. She was one of our first clients. We got talking, and since then she’s used us a few times. When the weather is cold I walk her little dog, and sometimes we just talk.”
No one but his grandfather had ever called his grandmother Mitzy. To everyone else she was Mary, or Gran. Clearly this girl was more to his grandmother than the face of an efficient concierge service. “What do you talk about?”
“Everything. She’s an interesting woman.”
“She pays you to chat? You charge an old lady for company?”
“No. I chat because I like her.” She was patient. “She reminds me of my grandmother. She’s a little lonely, I think.”
Even though there was no accusation in her eyes or in her voice, he felt another stab of guilt.
“She calls you?”
“Occasionally. More often she uses our Urban Genie app.”
“You’re confusing her with someone else. My grandmother doesn’t own a cell phone. She has always refused to have one.” He thought of the number of arguments they’d had on that topic. He didn’t understand how she was allowed to worry about him, but he wasn’t allowed to worry about her.
“She didn’t refuse me. And she regularly uses our app.”
“She hates technology.”
“She hates the idea of it, but she was fine once we’d given her basic training. She’s very smart.”
“You trained her?” How did he not know this? He thought back to the last time he’d seen his grandmother. The summer had been busy with an international book tour. He’d spent less than two days at home in July and August. Since then he’d been busy trying to find a way to start his book.
They were excuses and he knew it.
He could have found the time. He could have made the time.
The truth was he found it hard to be with his grandmother. Her intentions were good, but whenever she tried to soothe his pain she simply made it worse. No one could heal the wound that festered inside him, not his grandmother, and not this woman with eyes the color of a summer sky and hair the color of buttermilk.
He held out his hand. “Do you have the app on your phone? Show me.” He took her phone from her and opened the app. “Your wish is our command?” He raised an eyebrow. “My wish is that you leave and tell no one you saw me. How do we make that happen?”
She snatched the phone from him. “We don’t. Here’s the deal, Mr. Blade. I don’t know why you’re not in Vermont, and I don’t need to know. That’s not my business. My business is doing the job your grandmother paid me to do. I will decorate your apartment, fill your freezer and then I will leave.”
He would have been impressed if he hadn’t been so exasperated.
Finally, after months of struggling, he was ready to write and he couldn’t because this woman refused to leave him alone.
“I could have you removed.”
“You could. But then I’d call your grandmother and tell her where you are. I’m sensing you don’t want me to do that, so I’m sure we can reach a compromise we can both live with.”
“You’re blackmailing me?” After a decade spent exploring the darker side of human nature nothing ever surprised him, but this did.
Her eyes were kind, her mouth lush and perfectly curved. On the outside she was gentle and sweet. Inside she was solid steel. The contrast might have intrigued him, but right now all it did was aggravate.
He was about to find a way of forcibly ejecting her when he noticed the volume of snow falling past the windows of his apartment.
The sight chilled him.
He walked to the window in silence and stared at the world outside, transformed and remodeled by layer upon layer of snow. The thick curtain of flakes veiled his view of Central Park.
Memories rose in dark, menacing clouds, their presence blackening everything. He was yanked back in time to a night exactly like this one.
The same deceptively harmless swirl of snow had proved as deadly a killer as any he’d written into his stories. The unexpected twist had made it all the more brutal.
Time was supposed to heal, but he knew he hadn’t healed. He didn’t know how to heal. His emotions were as raw and real as they’d been three years earlier. All he could do was cling on and survive. Get up, get dressed, get through another day. He wouldn’t have thought there was anything that could make it harder, but one thing did and that was the pressure he felt from other people to “move on.” The knowledge that he’d been unable to meet their expectations when it came to recovery added to his sense of failure.
He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, blocking out the images and the memory of the last time he’d seen Sallyanne alive. He wanted to be able to go back and think about the good times, but so far that hadn’t happened. Like a misbehaving computer, his mind had crashed and frozen on that one single moment he would have chosen to forget.
“I love snow, don’t you? It’s like being wrapped in a great big hug.” Her soft, dreamy voice cut through the nightmare playing out in his head and he opened his eyes, knowing that whatever his grandmother might have shared with this woman over cake and tea, she hadn’t shared all the details of his wife’s death.
Her innocent, optimistic comment grated on him, like sandpaper rubbed over raw skin.
“I hate snow.”
She stood by his side, gazing out of the window, and he turned to look at her, aware of the false intimacy created by their circumstances.
He wasn’t sure what he saw in her face. Wistfulness? Contentment? Either way it was obvious that she was as trusting of the weather as she was of people.
I’m a cup half-full sort of person.
Exasperation turned to resignation. He knew there was no decision to be made.
No matter how much he wanted to send her away, he couldn’t do it. Not with the blizzard currently engulfing Manhattan. No one else was going to die because of him.
“Decorate the apartment if you must. Tie bows on the stairs, hang mistletoe from the light fixtures. I don’t care.” He knew he was being ungracious, but he couldn’t help it. He felt trapped, cornered, even though she could hardly be held responsible for the weather. She probably thought he made Scrooge look like a man full of Christmas spirit. “I’m going to work. Do what the hell you like, but don’t disturb me.”
* * *
Eva felt about as welcome as a rat in a restaurant.
She stripped off her coat and carried her bags through to the kitchen. Everything shone and she stood for a moment admiring the blend of gleaming metal and smooth polished countertops. She’d been in enough kitchens to know that this one was custom-built and expensive.
“I may feel like a rat in a restaurant,” she muttered, “but at least it’s a beautiful restaurant.”
Keeping one eye on the door upstairs through which Lucas had vanished, she started to unload the food.
The refrigerator was huge. It was also mostly empty. He hadn’t prepared for the blizzard?
She stared at the empty shelves, comparing it with the fridge in her own apartment. That one was half the size and twice as full, brimming with vegetables and the result of her creative experiments in the kitchen. This one looked as if the person who owned the apartment hadn’t yet moved in.
Maybe he couldn’t be bothered to buy furnishings, but what had he been eating?
She pulled open the cabinets and found a few jars, a few tins and some pasta. And six unopened bottles of whiskey.
On the far side of the kitchen one entire wall had been given over to wine storage, row upon row of bottles with only the tops visible. The only time she’d ever seen so many bottles of wine in one place had been in a restaurant. It was eye-catching and decorative, but she had a feeling its purpose wasn’t to provide aesthetic appeal. Lucas Blade was either a collector or he was a big drinker.
No wonder his grandmother was concerned.
She was starting to have her own concerns, but mingled in with those concerns were other feelings. She paused and pressed her palm against her stomach, trying to subdue the butterflies. He was troubled and complicated. Not a man she should be looking twice at. Not that she was saving herself for Mr. Right, but at the very least she had to like someone and had to believe they liked her back.
She wasn’t sure what she thought about Lucas Blade. She felt sympathy for his situation, and she was certainly attracted to him, but as for whether she liked him—she needed more time before she could answer that. And he certainly didn’t seem to like her.
Reaching for more bags, she carried on unloading the food.
Why didn’t he just tell his family he was at home and didn’t want to be disturbed? Why concoct an elaborate story that he was in Vermont?
She stowed a box of eggs and glanced up the stairs where Lucas had vanished. In the brief moment before he’d turned his back on her, his face had been like thunder. She’d been sure he was about to forcibly eject her from the building, or at least find some legitimate way to get rid of her and reclaim his territory but something, and she had no idea what, had caused him to reverse his decision.
She’d expected to be on her own here for a couple of nights. A few hours ago she would have rejoiced in the prospect of company, but now she wasn’t so sure. There was something inexplicably lonely about being trapped in an apartment with someone who didn’t want you there.
Maybe she should have done as he’d ordered and left, but how could she possibly leave a person who was suffering as he was? She couldn’t, especially knowing that no one else was going to check on him. There was no way she could ever abandon another human being who was feeling that bad.
If something had happened to him she wouldn’t have been able to live with herself.
And then there was the matter of the job itself.
Paige was the one who had so far won most of the new business for their fledgling company. She was a dynamo who had worked tirelessly to get Urban Genie off the ground.
This was the first significant piece of business Eva had brought in and she didn’t want to lose it. Nor did she want to let her client down. And Mitzy had become more than a client. She was a friend.
Eva unpacked the rest of the bags, leaving only the ones that contained decorations for the tree.
Those could wait until the tree was delivered.
Trying to forget about Lucas, she pulled on her headphones and selected her favorite festive soundtrack from her playlist, reminding herself not to sing. She didn’t want to disturb him while he was writing.
Two minutes into the song, Paige called.
“How are you doing? Is it weird being in an empty apartment?”
Eva glanced upward to the silent space above her. “It’s not empty. He’s here.”
“Who is ‘he’? And I’m putting you on speaker. Frankie is gesturing to me.”
“Lucas Blade.” She explained the situation, leaving out mention of the police.
There was no point in worrying her friends.
“Why would he pretend to be away?”
Eva remembered the look in his eyes. She glanced at the knife on the table. “I don’t think he wants company.” She suspected he didn’t want his own company either, but that wasn’t something he could easily escape.
“So you’ve seen him then? Hey, is he smoking hot or did they use a body double in that photo on the book jacket?” It was Frankie who spoke and Eva thought about those strikingly masculine features and those eyes. Those eyes…
“He’s smoking hot.”
“There you go.” Frankie sounded triumphant. “You wanted to use up that condom before Christmas—this is your opportunity.”
Eva thought about how his body had felt crushing hers and her stomach did a succession of flips. “He’s not my type.”
“Sexy as hell? He’s every woman’s type.”
“I’m not denying he’s sexy, but he’s not friendly.”
“So? You don’t have to have a conversation. Just use him for great sex.”
Her words must have set off alarm bells because Paige came back on the phone.
“What do you mean he’s not friendly?”
“Nothing. Forget it. He doesn’t want me here, that’s all.”
“But you’re staying anyway? You are one of a kind.” Frankie muttered something indistinct. “If a man didn’t want me around, I’d be out of there so fast you wouldn’t see me for dust.”
“But you’re an introvert. And you’re weird around men.”
“Do I need to remind you I’m in love and engaged?”
“You’re weird around all men except Matt.”
“In this case I agree with Frankie. If he makes you feel uncomfortable, you should leave.” Paige was emphatic. “We have a rule, remember? If a situation feels wrong then we get the hell out, especially when we’re working alone.”
“I don’t feel threatened. And I can’t leave him.” She lowered her voice. “There was almost no food in the place until I showed up. And it’s not only food that’s missing. There’s hardly any furniture. No mess. It’s as if he just moved in.”
“Having you there will soon change that,” Frankie said, but Paige didn’t laugh.
“The more I hear, the less I like. How did he persuade you to stay?”
“He didn’t. He wanted me to leave, until—” Until he’d noticed the weather. She turned and glanced toward the windows. That was it. He’d been pushing her to leave right up until the moment he’d looked out of the window and seen that New York was virtually shut down. “He didn’t want me to travel in a blizzard. Don’t worry, if he was planning to do away with me, he would have booted me out into the street and let the weather do the job for him.” She strolled toward the windows and peered through the swirling wall of white. The streets and the park had vanished behind the ferocious fury of the storm. “I couldn’t leave now even if I wanted to.” The knowledge made her nerve endings tingle. It was just the two of them. Alone. Only this time the word alone conjured up different feelings. Her stomach felt jittery.
“Do you have everything you need?”
“Yes. I came equipped to turn his house into a winter wonderland with gourmet extras.” But she hadn’t expected the place to be quite so stark. She could decorate, but she wasn’t a magician.
“Stay in touch,” Paige said. “If we don’t hear from you, we’re coming down there, blizzard or no blizzard. Jake’s here and he’s staying over. And Matt’s here with Frankie. We miss you!”
Eva felt a pang. Both her friends were in committed relationships. They’d found love and she was happy for them. But there was no denying it made her feel even more alone.
“Remember that self-defense move I taught you?” Frankie’s voice came down the phone and Eva smiled.
“This guy is a black belt in you-name-it-I-do-it martial arts, so my single self-defense move isn’t going to get me far.” She remembered the skill with which he’d brought her to the floor. “I’m going to trust my natural instinct about people. I know he writes about bad guys, but he isn’t a bad guy himself.”
She tried to forget what he’d said about the man in the street hiding who he really was.
He was wrong about that. Perhaps some people hid who they were, but most people were kind. She’d seen it time and time again.
Damn the man for planting that nasty seed in her usually optimistic mind.
“So you’re staying the night with a guy you never met before tonight?” Paige sounded worried. “I don’t like the sound of it, Ev.”
“I can assure you he has no interest in me.” Eva glanced up the stairway again, but upstairs was still and silent. “What does it mean when a guy says you have good bones?”
“When a crime writer says it, it means you need to get out of there,” Frankie muttered. “Lucas Blade writes scary stuff. The last guy he wrote about used to strip his victims.”
“Of their clothes?”
“Of their skin.”
“Ew.” Eva wished she hadn’t asked. “Why would you read that?”
“Because I can’t not read it. Everything he writes is gripping. He gets into the minds of people. Exploits your fears. He is hugely successful and his books are getting better and better. Everyone is waiting for his next book, including me. Hey, if you get a glimpse, send me a couple of chapters. What’s he like, anyway?”
Intimidating. “He wasn’t expecting to see me here, so I don’t think I’ve seen him at his best.”
“If you can’t find anything good to say about him then he must be truly bad,” Paige said. “You always see the good in people.”
“He isn’t bad. He bought his grandmother a puppy.”
“So? Psychopaths can be pet owners. Come home, Ev. He’s not your responsibility.”
“I’m the only one who knows he’s here,” Eva said simply. “And he’s in trouble. Whether he wants me here or not, I’m not leaving.”
* * *
Lucas stared at the glow of the screen.
Do I look like a murderer to you?
Those words had triggered a flow of ideas in his head, but none of them had made it from his head to his fingers. There were still too many unanswered questions.
It was like looking at a tangled ball of wool. The threads were there, but so far he hadn’t managed to untangle them and weave them into a pattern that would keep his readers turning the pages.
But he had something. He knew he had something.
He rose to his feet and paced to the window of his study.
It was his superpower, the ability to delve deep into the psyche of the average person and expose, and exploit, their deepest fears. If he hadn’t been a writer, he would have been a profiler for the FBI. He had contacts, had developed a few close relationships over the years. If he’d thought about it for too long he might have been disturbed by the directions his mind took. Right now though it was going nowhere.
His agent would be calling again soon. And his editor.
Soon they wouldn’t just want a few chapters, they’d want the whole damn book.
He was running out of time. The book was due on Christmas Eve. He had less than a month. He’d never written a book that fast. He was approaching the point that he was going to have to tell them the truth. He’d have to tell them that the book wasn’t finished. It wasn’t even started. He didn’t have a single word on the page.
A scent rose up through the apartment and he turned his head to the door, trying to place it.
Cinnamon.
The moment he identified it coincided with a soft tap on the door.
He dragged it open and saw Eva standing there, holding a tray.
“I thought you might be hungry. I’ll make supper later, but for now I made a batch of my special Christmas spice cookies. I was going to freeze them for you, but as you’re here you might as well eat one now.”
He stared down at the plate. The cookies were shaped like Christmas trees and specs of sugar dusted the golden brown surface.
“Aren’t cookies usually round?”
“They can be any shape you choose.”
“And you chose Christmas trees?”
“It’s a cookie, Mr. Blade. Eat it or don’t.”
He eyed the tray in her hands. Next to the plate of cookies was a mug full of—
“What the hell is that?” A slice of lemon floated on the top of straw-colored liquid.
“It’s herbal tea.”
“Herbal—?” He shook his head. “I’m pretty sure you didn’t find that in my cupboards.”
“I didn’t find anything much in your cupboards.”
“I drink coffee. Strong. Black.”
“You can’t drink strong black coffee in the afternoon. It will stop you sleeping. Herbal tea is refreshing and calming.”
He rarely slept, but he didn’t tell her that. He’d seen enough of his life plastered across the press over the past decade to make him miserly with the personal details he shared.
Herbal tea. As if that was going to solve his problems.
“Take it away.” If it had been neat whiskey he would have downed it in one, but he wasn’t swallowing herbal tea for anyone. “Do I look like a guy who drinks herbal tea and eats cookies shaped like Christmas trees?” His tone was infused with a harshness a thousand times more unpalatable than the brew in the cup in front of him and she studied him for a long moment.
“No, but you can’t tell much about a person by looking at them, can you? You were the one who taught me that. Has it occurred to you that maybe I’m not trying to sweeten you up, Mr. Blade. Maybe I’m trying to poison you.” She pushed the tray into his hands and walked away, dismissing him with a swish of her golden hair.
He stared after her, reeling from the contrast between her sweet face and the sharp rebuke.
Poison him?
That was it.
Finally he was ready to type something, and he had his hands full.
He took the tray into his study and set it down on his desk.
It was already dark and the only light in the room came from the glow of his laptop and the strange, luminescent light reflecting off the snow beyond the windows.
He returned to the screen. So far there were only two words on the page.
Chapter One.
He sat down and started to write.