Be the sunshine, not the rain.
—Eva
The full force of the storm hit just after dawn. It swirled past the windows, dumping several more feet of snow on the New York streets.
Lucas didn’t notice. He’d worked most of the night, snatching a couple of hours’ sleep on the sofa when his brain was too tired to continue.
Despite the brevity of the nap, he’d woken refreshed and energized and ready to continue, and had carried on writing until he’d heard the sounds of Eva singing.
Not loudly, but enough to disturb his concentration.
He moved to the top of the stairs. From here he had a perfect view of the whole of the downstairs, including the kitchen.
When he’d moved, he’d brought nothing from his old life but his books. This place held no memories, nothing to remind him of the past. It was impersonal and it suited him that way.
Until now, when he barely recognized his own apartment.
A huge Christmas tree dominated the space by the window and several magazines lay open and abandoned on the sofa, alongside a sweater in a bright shade of green. A half-drunk mug of tea was growing cold on the low table and a pair of shoes lay strewed on the floor where they’d been kicked off.
The place looked…lived-in.
But the biggest change was Eva. She filled the place with her summery scent and with her voice. He could see the cascade of honey hair and the roll and bump of her hips as she danced to the music. There was no doubt that she knew how to move, and oh God how she did move. As if she was seducing the hell out of his kitchen as she confessed to Santa in a surprisingly tuneful voice that she’d been an awfully good girl.
She was chopping, dicing, crushing, all while putting on a one-woman show worthy of Broadway.
Turned out she could sing and dance as well as she could cook.
Lucas felt sweat prick the back of his neck.
If it was left up to him, she wouldn’t be a good girl for long. He’d take her from good to bad faster than it took for Santa to drop a parcel down the chimney. Last night he’d come so close to kissing her, but fortunately for both of them something had stopped him.
He stared at those hips, feeling like a voyeur.
One word from him and she’d stop dancing. She’d stop swinging those hips like a pole dancer and singing in that throaty voice.
He opened his mouth but no sound emerged.
A man could be pretty much blinded by those hips, imagining what all that subtle movement could do. It was performing art. He remembered her in those peach silk pajamas, the peep of curves and the hint of cream. The pajamas had been replaced by the shortest skirt he’d ever seen, although to be fair she wore it with black tights that made it mouthwatering but perfectly decent. Her black sweater hugged her waist and hips, the color a dramatic contrast to the gold of her hair.
She turned to pick up a knife and saw him.
She froze, the knife in her hand, and for a moment he wondered if he’d picked the wrong murder weapon.
Maybe she didn’t poison her victims. Maybe, as a skilled chef, she filleted them expertly.
Jill the Ripper.
He would have turned back to his study and carried on writing, but she was smiling at him and he decided that he could spare some time to talk to her, particularly as talking to her seemed to spark ideas in his head.
“Er—good morning.” She put the knife down and tugged the headphones away from her ears. A smile dimpled at the corner of her mouth. “Did my singing disturb you?”
“No.” She disturbed him. He almost wished she hadn’t noticed him. Then she would have kept swinging those hips for a little longer and he could have stayed suspended in a world driven by nothing but elemental instincts. He gestured to the living area. “Were we burgled?”
“I made myself at home. I hope you don’t mind. I’ll clear it up later.”
“I owe you an apology.”
“What for?”
“Last night. I was rude.”
“You have nothing to apologize for. This is your home and you weren’t expecting visitors.”
“Are you always this understanding?”
“Would you rather I was upset?”
It would have been the natural response. Years of experience and close study enabled him to predict with almost faultless accuracy how a person would react in any given situation. Eva seemed to defy all his expectations.
“Does anything upset you?”
“Plenty of things. Animal cruelty, cabdrivers who lean on their horns, men who talk to my chest and call me ‘honey’ when we’ve never been introduced, people who cough without covering their mouth—” She paused. “Do you want me to go on?”
“Good to know you’re human. By the way, I owe you a thank-you. I took your advice and made a grilled cheese sandwich. Thanks to you, I’ve written twenty thousand words.”
“In one night? That’s not a grilled cheese sandwich, that’s a nine-course tasting menu.” She looked impressed. “How did you do it?”
“One grilled cheese sandwich led to another.”
“As a lover of grilled cheese sandwiches, I can understand that. They’ve always been my downfall.” She waved a hand toward the counter. “Sit down. In case it was my food that triggered your burst of creativity, I’ll fix breakfast.”
He knew the source of his motivation had nothing to do with food, and everything to do with her. The character she’d inspired was going to be one of the most complex and interesting that he’d ever written. “I don’t eat breakfast.”
“You don’t seem to eat much at all. But I’m here to change all that.” She started humming again and he decided it was a reflex.
“Do you know anything that isn’t Santa-themed?”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m wondering if we could change the playlist. I’m not a lover of festive music.”
She slid a tray of tomatoes into the oven. “Always happy to take requests from the audience. I know you love Mozart, so how about a little aria from The Marriage of Figaro?”
“What makes you think I love Mozart?”
“Aha!” She waggled the spoon in his direction, triumphant. “You’re not the only one capable of spotting clues. You could put me in your next book. I’d make a cute FBI agent. Perhaps everyone underestimates me because of my blond hair and my impressive rack and then boom, I let them have it.”
He decided this wasn’t a good moment to tell her that aspects of her were certainly going to be in his next book, but she wasn’t going to find herself on the right side of the law.
“Does that happen often?”
“People underestimating me? All the time.”
“That must be frustrating.”
“Mostly they’re the ones who are frustrated.” She flashed him a wicked smile. “Don’t worry about me. I can handle myself.”
“With that deadly move you keep warning me about?”
“That’s the one. When you’re least expecting it I’ll take you by surprise and wham, you’re history.”
He’d come out of his study with the intention of asking her to keep her noise down. He’d had every intention of returning to work, but now he felt in no hurry to do so. Instead he joined her in the kitchen. Eva’s energy and enthusiasm were infectious, filling every dark corner of his soulless apartment. And talking to her sparked ideas. His character was becoming clearer and clearer in his head, layer upon layer.
“So what powers of deduction did you use to discover my taste in music?”
“You have CDs next to your bookshelf. I saw a whole shelf of Mozart.” She lowered the spoon. “You don’t just stream the music like most people?”
“The CDs belonged to my father. He played principle cello for the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.”
“Lucky you. So I guess you didn’t have to scramble for tickets like the rest of us mortals.”
“You like opera?”
“Love it.” She sang a few notes from The Marriage of Figaro, in Italian and pitch-perfect.
“Don’t tell me—your grandfather was a music professor.”
“In fact my grandfather was a lobster fisherman, but he happened to love music. And he loved my grandmother. I grew up with singing and Shakespeare. If my singing is disturbing you, I’ll try to remember not to do it, but you might have to keep reminding me.”
“It’s not disturbing me.” The singing was nowhere near as disturbing as the bump and grind of her hips as she’d danced.
“Paige, who used to share the apartment with me, wore noise-reducing headphones most of the time. She needs silence to concentrate.”
“Is that why she’s now your ex-roommate?”
“No. She’s my ex-roommate because she fell in love.”
“Ah. True Love’s Kiss?”
“I think it was closer to True Love’s Steaming Hot Sex, but same principle.”
“So now you live alone?”
“Yes.” Her expression changed and then she tugged open the door of the refrigerator and looked inside, so he could no longer see her face. “Although not exactly alone, because my other friend lives upstairs with Paige’s brother, Matt— he owns the whole brownstone—and downstairs is Roxy and her little girl, Mia, who is adorable. Roxy works for Matt and she found herself homeless back in the summer so he gave her a place to stay. Paige seems to spend almost as much time at our place as she does with Jake, so it’s not exactly quiet. And then there’s Claws.” She talked without pausing for breath, painting a picture of her life. He’d expected a one-word answer, but by the time she stopped he knew more about her than he did about people he’d known for a decade. It took months of close questioning to get that quantity of information from most people.
“So Claws is your friend’s psychotic cat?”
“Yes. You could put her in one of your books. She’d be a great murder weapon. She has a sweet face and a psychotic personality, but I don’t blame her because she had a horrible life before Matt rescued her.” She selected various items from the refrigerator and in the moment before she closed the door he caught a glimpse of color layered upon color.
“Are you planning on entertaining? Because if that’s all intended for me I think you might have overestimated my appetite.”
“It’s going in the freezer. The idea was that you could have access to the perfect meal whenever you need one. I discussed the menu with your grandmother.”
“You were discussing menus designed to help my libido?”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Food allergies,” she said slowly. “Some people are allergic to peanuts, or wheat or shellfish. I needed to know if you were gluten-free or vegetarian. If you’re likely to go into anaphylactic shock if I feed you nuts, that’s something I need to know. Jabbing adrenaline into a half-dead client isn’t generally one of the complimentary extras we like to offer at Urban Genie. Prevention is better than cure and all that. Dead people are bad for business.” She gave a half smile. “Except for in your business, of course. Your business is all about dead people.”
“So you weren’t discussing how to seduce me with my grandmother?”
“I love your grandmother, but if I want to seduce a guy I don’t generally take advice from someone in their eighties.” She studied him for a moment. “Does your libido need help?”
Not since he’d met her. “She would go to pretty much any lengths to see me married again,” he said, skirting around the question.
“That may be, but as far as I’m concerned you’re an adult, presumably capable of making your own choices. If you choose to stay in sexile, that’s really none of my business.”
“Sexile?”
“Sex exile. Sexile. I’m there through no obvious fault of my own, unless you count being picky as a fault.” She frowned slightly. “But you’re there on purpose. You’ve chosen to live in sexile.”
He watched as she rinsed bell peppers. “What did my grandmother tell you about me?”
“I know you hate cucumber, love spicy food and prefer your steak rare. It’s important that I know your preferences.”
Right now his preference would be to have her naked and on top.
Her skin was smooth and creamy, like silk, he thought, and then dismissed the comparison as clichéd. He was a writer. He should be able to come up with something better than that. Her cheeks were flushed but he had a feeling that was the heat of the oven rather than makeup. He would have sworn she wasn’t wearing makeup, but then recalled a conversation with Sallyanne where she’d mocked him for telling her how much he liked her without makeup. She’d told him in a tone loaded with amusement, that achieving the “no makeup” look had taken her forty-five minutes.
He wondered how long it had taken Eva to make herself look that wholesome and innocent.
“Show me the menus.” He held out his hand and she handed over the pages she’d been working from. He scanned them quickly. “Chicken pot pie? I haven’t eaten that since I was twelve.”
“And when you taste mine, you’ll be wondering why. It’s the ultimate comfort food.”
“It reminds me of school.”
“Mine won’t remind you of school. Mine will give your taste buds an orgasm.”
“You seem fixated on orgasms.”
“That’s what happens when you don’t get something.” She took the menus from him. “It’s the reasons diets don’t work. The more you deny yourself, the more you crave the very thing you’re cutting out. And before you say anything, of course I know I can give myself an orgasm, but there are some tasks I prefer to delegate.”
“So you’re on a sex diet?”
“It feels that way. Not self-imposed, I might add. I just haven’t met any decent guys lately, but all that is going to change.”
“It is?”
“Definitely.” She diced the peppers. “It’s Christmas. I’m going to get out and meet people. Party, party, party.”
“Where are these parties?”
“My friends have invited me along to a few.”
“You don’t sound enthusiastic.”
She put the knife down. “Honestly? It feels a little… awkward. Like online dating. I don’t really want to be fixed up. It’s like social media. You only get to see someone’s best side.”
“So you admit that people aren’t always as they seem.”
“You make it sound sinister, like a great big cover-up, but on social media it’s just people trying to present the best of who they are.”
“And you then ask yourself what the worst part is.”
“Everyone has flaws,” she said mildly. “It wouldn’t be realistic to expect a person to be perfect, would it?”
“What are your flaws?” It would be like one of those interview questions, he thought, where the candidate was asked to name a weakness and they went with the classic “I work too hard” or “I care too much.” No one voluntarily revealed their real flaws to strangers.
“I’m horribly untidy, apart from in the kitchen. I drop things where I stand and then I lose things and make an even bigger mess trying to find them. I’m truly terrible in the mornings and I’m generally a bit cowardly,” she admitted. “I’m not good with scary stuff—blood, gore, menacing threats, things that go bump in the night.”
He absorbed that, filing away the details. “I would have said your flaw was being too trusting.”
“I don’t see that as a flaw.” She rinsed the knife. “It’s hard to get close to people and have fulfilling friendships if you always suspect people are hiding things from you. That’s probably your biggest flaw, isn’t it? Not trusting enough.”
“I would have said that’s one of my good qualities. So when you tried online dating, what did you write on your dating profile?”
“I didn’t write desperate, trusting blonde seeks wild sex, if that’s what you’re asking.” She opened the oven and gave the tray of tomatoes a little shake. “In the end online dating didn’t work for me. I need to be able to see someone in person to know if they’re okay. I have good instincts. And although it’s a perfectly valid way to meet people, especially in today’s busy world, I would prefer to meet someone organically.”
“You want an organic orgasm?”
She laughed. “That’s the goal. And everyone needs a goal, don’t you think? It’s fine. I’m not going to meet anyone if I hide away inside my apartment, so I’m determined to get out. That’s the first step. I want to go on a few dates.”
“So you don’t want to go straight for the orgasm and cut out the in-between stage?”
“No.” She closed the oven. “I can’t go to bed with someone I don’t know. I’ve never had a one-night stand. For me, sex is tied up with caring about someone.”
“You don’t hold much back, do you?”
“No. I’m not what you might call a mystery. I’m pretty much an open book—Jake says I’m an audio book, because everything I’m thinking comes out of my mouth.”
The description made him smile. “Who is Jake?”
“Paige’s fiancé. And now that’s enough questions about me. What’s your favorite food of all time?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Everyone has a favorite food. Either something that is delicious, or something that’s associated with a wonderful happy memory. What were your favorites when you were a child? Something that takes you right back there and brings back all the warm feelings.”
He thought back to family gatherings and his travels through Europe. “I enjoy good cheese. Particularly with the right wine. It was one of the benefits of my French book tour.”
“Is that where you bought all that wine?”
“Some of it. Some of it I’ve been collecting for a while.”
“Do you actually drink any it?”
“Of course, although some bottles are valuable. I’m saving them for a special occasion.”
“If I had good wine, I’d drink it. But then I guess you’d say I’m more of a ‘live for the moment’ kind of girl.” She pushed her hair out of her eyes and he tried not to think about which moment he’d like to live in with her right now.
“The soufflé you made last night was good.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.” She picked up her pen and scribbled on the pages in front of her. “I’m trying to decide what to make tonight. Any requests?”
“You choose. Which cookbooks do you use? Or do you rely on the internet?”
“Neither. I use my grandmother’s recipes, or I make them up.” She must have seen something in his face because she smiled. “Relax. I’m not making anything for you I haven’t made a hundred times already. You’re not a guinea pig and I’m not going to poison you. Have you ever written that in one of your books? A killer who poisoned his victims?”
He wondered why she thought the killer had to be a man.
“No, but it’s something I’m considering.”
“How do you decide on the crime?”
“It comes from the personality and motivation of the killer. Jack the Ripper was good with knives, which was what led people to speculate that he might have been a surgeon.”
She returned to her cooking. “No wonder you have trouble sleeping at night. You spend your entire working day thinking about horrible things.”
“I find them more interesting than horrible.” He watched, transfixed, as she sliced some garlic, drizzled oil and added a pinch of salt. She was astonishingly skilled with a blade. “Who taught you to use a knife?”
“Not Jack the Ripper.” She threw him an amused look. “My grandmother, and then I worked in a few kitchens straight out of college. It’s a skill you develop pretty fast unless you want to lose a finger.” She scattered the ingredients over a baking tray and slid it into the oven alongside the other tray. Strands of hair wafted down over her face and she pursed her lips into a round O and blew them away gently as if she was blowing out candles on a birthday cake.
“What are you making?”
“I’m roasting tomatoes and peppers, which I’ll then turn into soup. When you’re busy, you can take a portion out of the freezer, add a chunk of crusty bread and have something nutritious in less time than it takes you to open a whiskey bottle.” She gave him a pointed look that he chose to ignore.
He decided that the creative process behind cooking was not so different from his writing. She started with an idea, added a bit of this and that, adjusted it according to instinct and then served up something intended ultimately to please.
“Now, for breakfast would you like my special eggs Benedict or buttermilk pancakes?”
He was about to tell her once again that he didn’t eat breakfast but the sound of pancakes was too good to turn down. They took him right back to his childhood and family holidays spent in Vermont.
“Do the pancakes come with a side of bacon?”
“They could, if that’s what you’d like.”
“It is.” It was the first time anyone had used the kitchen, and she’d used every available inch. The counters were piled high with glossy fruits and vegetables. It looked haphazard, but he had a feeling it wasn’t. “Do you always sing when you cook?”
“Singing is good for the mood. So is walking, but it doesn’t look as if the weather is going to let me do that anytime soon.” She put bacon in the frying pan and made pancake batter without weighing anything or consulting a recipe. “I might go for a stroll later if it eases.”
The relaxed atmosphere vanished. “You’re not leaving the apartment in this storm. They’ve canceled bus services, announced a ban on driving and shut down the subways. The bridges and tunnels are shut and there are no flights leaving from any airport.”
“I don’t want to fly, drive or use the bus. Just walk.”
“Have you even looked through the window today?” He stood up, found the remote control and flicked on the TV that was concealed in the living room.
The news channels were dominated by the blizzard as the news anchor warned everyone, in serious tones, to stay indoors. “The storm has flooded low-lying beaches, brought down trees and power lines leaving thousands without electricity…”
“Oh, those poor people.” There was distress in her voice and Lucas flicked off the TV.
“Are you convinced?”
“Yes.” She returned to her cooking. She whisked the batter and poured it into the hot pan, waiting while the surface bubbled.
After a few moments she flipped the pancake, timing it perfectly.
Finally she slid it onto a plate, added the bacon and handed it to him along with a bottle of maple syrup. The color reminded him of whiskey.
The pancakes were soft, golden and delicious, the sweet drizzle of warm maple syrup a contrast to the crispy perfection of the bacon.
He took a mouthful. “You asked me about my favorite food. This is my favorite food.”
“You said you didn’t have a favorite food.”
“Now I do.” He cleared his plate, wondering why he was suddenly so hungry when for so long he hadn’t cared what he ate. “So you seem to spend plenty of time with my grandmother. Why not spend that time with your own?”
For the first time since he’d hauled her off the floor of his apartment, his words were met with silence.
“Eva? Why not just spend more time with your own grandmother?”
“Because she’s dead.” Her voice thickened and without warning tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks.