A good friend is cheaper than therapy.
—Frankie
The following morning Lucas was downstairs before Eva was.
She finally emerged, holding tightly to the banister as she walked down the stairs, as if the slightest movement caused her pain. Judging from the look she sent in his direction she didn’t seem any more inclined to forgive him than she had the night before.
He took one look at her pale face and opened the drawer where he kept medicines. “Painkiller?” He held out the packet, but she ignored him.
“My head is perfectly fine. I’ve told you, I can hold my drink.”
He knew she was lying but she didn’t hang around for a discussion.
She walked away and came back moments later carrying her coat and hat.
“Where are you going?”
“Somewhere I can’t be tempted to do you physical harm. I don’t want to spend Christmas in jail.” She tugged the hat onto her head and fastened her coat. “Go and work. That’s what you care about, isn’t it?”
“It’s freezing and icy out there. You can’t go out.”
“I can look after myself.” She pulled on her gloves. “Don’t follow me.”
She stomped toward the door and slammed it behind her.
Lucas ran his hand over his face and swore softly.
Now what?
He returned to his study, hit a button on the keyboard to wake up the screen and once again scanned the section she’d read the night before. At the time he hadn’t been able to see why she was so upset, but now he realized that he was so involved in the story and his characters he hadn’t been able to read it the way she’d read it.
It was still in draft form of course, which meant that much of it would be edited later and cut or changed, but the way it stood he could see why she’d been upset.
Unfortunately for him, she’d read the passage where his heroine was cooking dinner for her latest victim.
Looking at it objectively, he could see how the words on the screen could have upset her.
Swearing under his breath, Lucas grabbed his own coat and took the elevator down to the ground floor.
Albert was behind the desk. He hadn’t even known his name was Albert until Eva had talked about him.
“If you’re looking for Eva, she left the building.”
One glance at Albert’s stony face told him that Eva’s inability to hide her feelings didn’t abandon her in moments of stress. “Did you see which direction she went in?”
Albert remained stone-faced. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
Which meant he knew, but he wasn’t telling.
“She’s upset,” Lucas said. “I want to talk to her.”
“Do you know who, or what, upset her?”
“I did.” Lucas knew he deserved the look Albert sent him. “Which is why I want to find her.”
“So you can upset her some more?”
“So I can try to fix it.” And it wasn’t until that moment he realized how badly he wanted to fix it. Yes, he was worried about her walking the icy streets on her own, but that wasn’t why he’d run out of his apartment.
“Eva is a very sensitive woman. She’s special.”
“I know.”
Albert paused, studying Lucas’s face as if looking for something. “She went to the park.”
“The park? You’re sure? She didn’t go shopping? It’s freezing out there and they’re promising more snow. Why would she go to the park?”
“She told me she was going to spend time with the only type of man who interested her.”
Lucas shook his head, confused. “Who?”
Albert gave him a pointed look. “A snowman.”
* * *
She should have been frozen, but it turned out humiliation was an effective thermal insulator. It heated her from the inside, and scalded her from the outside. She was a fool. A gullible, trusting fool. And as if that wasn’t bad enough she’d gone and spilled her feelings all over him. She could have played it cool and pretended to just be annoyed that he’d made her the murderer in his book, but over the past few days she’d lost the last of her barriers around him. Not only had she started to believe he might be interested in her, she’d actually told him as much.
So now he knew she’d read more into their relationship than was really there. And on top of that her head felt as if a rock band was having a party. She should have taken the painkiller.
“Eva?”
His voice came from behind her and her stomach dropped.
He’d followed her?
The only way to hide how embarrassed she was seemed to be to plant her face in her snowman.
“What are you doing here?”
She scooped more snow up with her gloves, but didn’t turn to look at him. How could there be so much heat in her face when it was freezing outside? “You can’t work without me there? You need some other intimate detail about me you can use in your book? Because if that’s what this is, don’t waste your time. You already know everything there is to know about me.” Oh God, if only that wasn’t true. Why couldn’t she have applied at least a tiny filter to the information that had poured out of her?
There was a scrunching of snow and his boots came into view.
“I can see you’re still angry—”
“You’re right, I’m angry and it takes a lot to make me angry, in case you haven’t worked that out in those sessions where you pretended to be interested in me. When you told me I shouldn’t trust people and should look deeper, I didn’t realize you were warning me about yourself.”
“Come back to the apartment and we can talk about this in the warmth.”
“I’m happy here. I’m hoping the weather might cool me down.” She stabbed the carrot hard into the snowman’s face and then felt Lucas’s arm brush against hers as he dropped to his haunches next to her.
“I am interested in you, Eva. And I like you. You weren’t wrong about that.”
“I suppose your character goes around threatening to fillet men if they don’t help her use up her condom by the expiration date.”
“Nothing about the night we spent together has gone into the book.” He sounded calm and for some reason that made her even angrier.
“I’m sorry you didn’t get anything useful from it.”
“That night was special, and private, and had nothing to do with research.” The carrot fell out of the snowman’s nose and Lucas picked it up and pushed it back into the softly packed snow. “You need eyes.”
“I have eyes. I don’t always use them, that’s all.”
“I was talking about the snowman.”
“Oh.” She wished he wasn’t so close to her. The jut of his knee brushed against her leg and the width of his shoulders blocked out some of the icy wind. “You need to move. You’re blocking my pile of snow.”
He shifted enough to give her access and she leaned across and scooped another handful, packing it down against the snowman’s rounded body.
“I wasn’t trying to make a fool of you. You knew you were the inspiration behind a character.”
“You didn’t tell me which character.”
“Which part of this has upset you most? Discovering you’re the inspiration behind my murderer who, by the way, is nothing like you, or the fact that you think all that time we spent talking was just so that I could find information to use in my book?”
“I’m equally upset by both parts.”
His breath clouded the freezing air. “How can I fix it?”
“You can’t. It’s up to me to make sure I don’t tell you anything else you can use against me.”
“You only read one page, Ev. If you read the whole thing you wouldn’t recognize yourself.”
“Only my closest friends call me Ev.”
“I would have thought what we’ve shared gave me that right.”
The reminder made her cheeks burn. “No, because it wasn’t real.”
He swore under his breath. “How much more damn real could it get? You know it was real.”
“How am I supposed to know?”
“What do your instincts tell you?”
“Thanks to you, I no longer trust my instincts. Turns out I’m a bad judge of character.”
He inhaled deeply. “I haven’t been to bed with a woman since Sallyanne. I haven’t wanted to. That has to tell you something. And it had nothing to do with the book. Read it, and you’ll see that you’re wrong.”
“You don’t let anyone read your work before it is finished.”
“Normally that’s true, but if that’s what it takes to convince you that this character is not you, then I’m willing to make an exception. We’ll go back right now and you can read every damn word.”
She thought about the number of people, including Frankie, who would do anything to be given an early glimpse of his book. “No,” she said, “but the fact that you offered means a lot.”
“Why don’t you want to read it?”
“Because the bit I read is likely to give me bad dreams. I can’t imagine what the rest of it would do.”
He gave a soft laugh. “Come back to the apartment, Eva.”
“I haven’t finished building my snowman. And I never walk away from a man until I’ve finished with him.” And she didn’t trust herself to go back with Lucas yet. She wasn’t quite ready to forgive him.
“Then I’ll help you finish him.”
* * *
Lucas hadn’t built a snowman since he was a kid living in Upstate New York with his parents. “I’m not even sure I know how to do this.” But he was willing to do pretty much anything to fix the problem he’d created.
She rocked back on her heels. “You’re telling me you’ve never built a snowman?”
“Once or twice, but my brother and I were more into destruction than construction. We had plenty of fights involving snow, but normally the only thing we created was mayhem.”
“This is the first time you’ve mentioned your brother.” She gathered another heap of snow and patted it into her snowman. “You’re not close?”
It was a relief that she was willing to talk about something other than her role in his book.
“We’re close enough. But we’re both busy. He’s a banker.”
“I know. Mitzy told me. I met him once and gave him our business card.”
It was news to him. “Urban Genie does work for my brother?”
“No. I was going to contact him, but then we had an explosion of work and I didn’t need to. But it was kind of your grandmother to give me his card.”
“I went to see her.”
“You did? When?”
“Before I visited your offices. I tried to get her to give me your home address. She wouldn’t.”
“So now she knows you weren’t in Vermont.”
How honest should he be? He weighed up his options and decided he didn’t want to risk any more misunderstandings. “She always knew I wasn’t in Vermont, Eva.”
“But—” She stopped patting the snow and looked at him. “That would mean she lied to me.”
“I love my grandmother, but she’s not above telling a lie when she thinks it might benefit someone close to her.”
“Well—” Eva sat down on the snow with a soft thump. “The crafty—”
“Yes.”
“And now I suppose you think that proves that I knew all along.”
“I know you didn’t. What I think,” he said, “is that my grandmother genuinely loves you.” And it wasn’t hard to see why.
“I love her back.”
“My grandmother has two sons, and two grandsons. She has always yearned for female company.”
“Your mom?”
“My parents live in Upstate New York in the house where I grew up. They travel a lot. My brother and I are the ones who live closest and neither of us is great at visiting. We should do it more. She thinks you and I would be good for each other.”
Eva smacked another lump of snow into her snowman, harder this time. “She was wrong about that.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
It was his job to use words to manipulate people’s emotions. He knew how to create anticipation, excitement and sheer terror. But he had no idea how to handle this situation. All he knew was that when Eva had walked out, his apartment had once again become dark and soulless. She’d taken the sunshine with her, and he missed it. “You weren’t the only one who spilled secrets, Eva. I did, too. What we shared had nothing to do with my book. It had nothing to do with information gathering. It was about intimacy.” It was hard for him to admit it, but he knew it was true. There was something about the warmth of her that encouraged confidences.
“Sex, you mean.”
“We both had clothes on when we spilled our secrets, and I spilled more than you. There is plenty you could do with that information if you wanted to.”
Her eyes grew fierce. “I would never do that.”
“I know. And that’s my point. I trust you, and I’m asking you to trust me. I’m creating a character, that’s all. Does she have some of your adorable traits? Yes. But it’s those traits that will make her appealing to the reader.”
She was silent for a moment. “You think I have adorable traits? You’re not just saying that to stop me knocking you unconscious with the carrot?”
“I’m not just saying that.”
“She’s a murderer.”
“She’s human. Characters in books are more believable if they’re not black-and-white. The all-good person is boring to read about and the all-bad person makes readers roll their eyes because the truth is there is good and bad in all of us and it’s what brings out the good and the bad that makes for interesting reading.”
“Are you saying my character used to be a good person?”
“She’s a psychopath, but she also shows slight narcissistic tendencies and traces of mixed personality disorder. With a different upbringing and early life experience it’s possible she might have turned out differently, but everything that happened to her fed into that side of her personality.”
“Poor her.”
It was a typical Eva remark and it made him smile. “She’s fictional. That’s the great thing about writing, you can create the character that interests you. Books are so much more interesting when the characters are complex. There will be elements of her that readers will sympathize with. She had a rough start in life. They will be shocked by what she does, but a tiny part of them will wonder whether those guys deserved it.”
“Do you think you’ll finish the manuscript in time?”
“I don’t know. Are you going to come back with me?
“If it’s going well, you don’t need me anymore.”
“I need you.” He’d woken that morning and realized that the freezing fog that infected his brain at this time of year had lifted, burned away by the brightness of Eva’s smile and the warmth of her personality. He didn’t know what would happen if she left, but he didn’t want to sink back into the agonizing darkness. There was something about her that nourished his starved soul. Something that had nothing to do with her abilities in the kitchen.
“You need me for your book.”
“I need you.” This time he said the words slowly and succinctly, and she stopped building the snowman and gave him a long look. He knew she was deciding whether or not he could be trusted and he had no idea whether he’d passed her test.
He wanted to grab her, cup her rosy cheeks in his hands and kiss her mouth until she could no longer remember her name.
“I need twigs for arms and then I’m done.” She stood up and brushed snow from her coat. “Guard our snowman, I’ll be back in a minute.”
He watched as she picked her way along the snowy path toward the trees.
The park was surprisingly quiet. Although the blizzard had passed, only a few hardy dog-walkers and photographers had ventured out.
He was musing whether he could afford to take the evening off and take Eva out to dinner when he heard her call out his name. There was a note of urgency and panic in her voice that brought him to his feet in an instant.
“Eva?” For a moment all he could see were trees, and then he caught sight of her coat. She was on the ground and there was blood on her hands. His stomach lurched and for a moment he thought she’d hurt herself, but then he saw something move in her arms.
“What the hell is that?”
“A puppy. It was in a bag on the ground. I saw it move.” Her voice was thick with tears and anger. “Someone must have dumped him here. He’s hurt, Lucas. His legs are tangled up in the bag and he’s so cold. Who would do something like this? What do we do?”
Lucas dropped to his haunches next to her, flooded with relief that the blood wasn’t hers. His hands were shaking so badly it took him a minute to formulate his thoughts.
The puppy was gazing up at Eva with huge eyes, as if he knew she was his last hope.
“Hold him still.” Lucas tried to slide his fingers between the twisted plastic and the dog’s leg. “He’s been struggling. His leg is tangled.”
“Of course he’s been struggling. If someone had left you in a bag in a storm, you’d be struggling, too.” She stroked the dog, crooning softly. “Your Uncle Lucas is going to get you out of this.”
“Uncle Lucas” had no idea what he was going to do with the dog, but one glance at Eva’s expression told him he’d better do something, and fast.
“We need to get him to a vet.” He already had his phone in his hand but she shook her head.
“I know someone. Can you hold him while I make a call? He’s filthy, though. He’ll probably ruin your coat.”
Lucas looked from Eva’s huge eyes to the thin, shivering dog. “Coats can be cleaned.”
“Good answer.” Carefully, she deposited the freezing, trembling dog into his arms and tugged out her phone. “Fliss? It’s Eva. I have a crisis.” She outlined what had happened to the person on the other end of the phone and then ended the call. “Fliss says there is a brilliant vet directly across the park. We can take it in turns to carry him.”
“He doesn’t weigh much. Who is Fliss?”
“She and her sister run The Bark Rangers. They provide dog-walking all down the East Side of Manhattan. We often use them. And Harriet volunteers at the animal shelter and sometimes fosters.”
The name was familiar, but he couldn’t think why. “You think she’ll foster this one?”
“I don’t know. Fliss says she’s looking after a litter of puppies at the moment, so maybe not. If she can’t, then I’ll keep him until we can find him a good home.”
Looking at her Lucas knew that she would, no matter what the inconvenience to her.
“Where are you going to keep him?”
“Are you worried about your pristine apartment? Because don’t be. I’ll take him home to mine.”
“My apartment hasn’t been pristine since the day you moved in.”
“You’re talking about the Christmas tree?”
“Your belongings have a habit of straying into every corner. By the way, if you’re looking for your scarf, I found it in my study yesterday.”
“The green one? I’ve been looking everywhere for that!” She started taking off her coat and he reached out and stopped her.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to wrap my coat around him to give him extra warmth.”
“It’s not going to help him if you die of hypothermia.” Lucas unbuttoned his own coat and tucked the puppy inside. Immediately he felt the chill of its damp body soak through his sweater. “Let’s go.”
“So now you’ve ruined your cashmere coat and your cashmere sweater.” Eva peered anxiously at the puppy to check he could breathe. “Is this your way of making it up to me?”
“No. I have other ideas for that but we’ll talk about those later.”
* * *
The vet had already been called by Fliss and saw them immediately.
“Dogs can get frostbite, just like humans.” He examined the puppy thoroughly and the dog started to whimper. “This guy survived because he was left by the tree, which provided at least some shelter.”
“What about the blood?”
“He has a small cut. There was probably something with a sharp edge under the snow. Twig? Stone?” The vet gave him some shots and then glanced up as a young woman burst into the room. Her coat was open and she was wearing a bright red scarf around her neck. Her hair was silver blond and caught back in a ponytail. It was obvious from the vet’s relaxed smile that he knew her. “Hi, Harry. How’s Fliss? Did she get over the flu? She sounded better on the phone.”
“She’s good, thanks. Sends her love and wanted me to tell you that Midas is doing really well since his operation. She’s bringing him back for a checkup next week. How is this little guy doing?” She smiled briefly at Eva but then turned her attention back to the dog. “Fliss told me about your call so I thought I’d come down and see if I could help. Aren’t you a cutie…” She stroked the puppy’s ears gently and he instantly stopped yowling and pushed his nose into her hand. “You poor baby. You’re safe now. It’s lucky Eva found you. What were you doing in the park, Ev?”
“I was building a snowman.”
“No, I mean why aren’t you in Brooklyn? I assumed you’d be going crazy organizing Christmas events.” Harry kept her hand on the puppy’s head, reassuring him as the vet finished his examination.
“I’m working around here for a couple of weeks. Cooking, helping with Christmas preparations, that kind of thing. This is Lucas. Lucas, this is Harriet Knight. She is one half of The Bark Rangers.”
“The Bark Rangers?” He remembered where he’d heard the name before. “You’ve helped my grandmother out a few times.”
Harry unwrapped her scarf from her neck with her free hand. “We have?”
“Mary Blade.”
Harriet’s eyes widened. “You’re the Lucas? Lucas Blade, the crime writer? Fliss is going to be so mad that she didn’t come down here with me. She has all your books. She loves your work. She and Frankie are rabid fans.” She smiled at the vet. “Probably shouldn’t use that phrase here, should I?”
“Lucas Blade?” The vet glanced up briefly, surprise on his face. “I’m a fan, too.”
Harriet was still stroking the dog’s ears. “If I’d known, I could have bought a book for you to sign. I have no idea what to get Fliss for Christmas. She’s impossible to buy for. That would have been perfect.”
Lucas caught Eva’s gaze. “I’ll sign a book for you,” he said. “I assume Eva has your address?”
“She does. You’d seriously do that? Thank you. That’s so generous.” Harriet held the dog while the vet finished his examination. “Well?”
The vet checked the dog’s ears. “I don’t think he had been in the park for long. A few hours at most, I’d guess.”
Harriet smoothed the puppy’s head. “I’m going to take you home and give you a lovely warm bed, and tomorrow I’ll contact the animal adoption center.”
“You’ll take him?” Eva looked doubtful. “Fliss said you were already fostering puppies.”
“I am, but Fliss is home recovering from the flu so she can help me. And anyone who spent the night out in the park last night deserves some home comforts. I can tell you, too, that this little guy will be rehomed fast. He’s adorable.”
Lucas watched as Eva stroked the puppy’s head. The yearning look in her eyes tugged at something deep inside him.
After all the conversations they’d shared, he knew that the death of her grandmother had left a deep void in her life. She was looking for a way to fill it. She wanted love because she thought love was something beautiful and simple.
He knew better. Love was messy and complicated and full of pain. It had sharp edges and a dark side and he wanted nothing to do with it ever again. Which was why he hadn’t touched her since that first night. He knew now that she was vulnerable and lonely. It would be too easy for her to fall for him, and he wasn’t going to do that to her.
He didn’t allow himself to think about the risk that he might fall for her.
He wondered if she was going to suggest keeping the puppy, but instead she smiled at Harriet.
“Thank you for coming, and for taking him.”
“Thank you for all the business you’ve put our way. We’ve had our best year ever. We’ve had to take on more dog-walkers. We’re covering the entire East Side now.”
“Paige told me.”
Lucas noticed that Eva was shivering. “You’re cold, Eva. You need a hot shower.”
Harriet looked concerned. “You do look cold. Go. I’ll finish up here.”
Lucas settled the bill and bundled Eva into a cab.
She put up a feeble resistance. “I might still be angry with you.”
He almost smiled at the “might.” “You’re not sure?” Luckily for him, she wasn’t a woman who could be angry with anyone, or anything, for long.
“You came after me, instead of locking yourself in your study. You prioritized a wet, wriggling puppy over expensive cashmere. That won you points. As did building a snowman.”
“While you’re working out whether you’re still mad or not, I’ll warm you up.” He pulled her against him. “You’re shivering as badly as that puppy.”
“We could have walked. Your apartment is only steps away.”
“Enough steps for you to get hypothermia.”
“Can I ask you something? If going to bed with me had nothing to do with the book, why did you do it?”
It was a question he’d asked himself. “Because my self-control isn’t as impressive as I thought it was.”
“Your self-control has been just fine since.”
“I’ve been working on it, for both our sakes. Your teeth are chattering.” He rubbed his hands over her arms. “Tell me how you met Harriet.”
“You’re changing the subject?”
“Yes. I don’t care what we talk about as long as it’s not sex.”
“Because you do, in fact, want to have sex with me again.” She peeped up at him. “That’s interesting.”
“Eva—”
“Harry and Fliss are twins, and their brother is a friend of Matt’s. When Daniel found out that we’d lost our jobs and were setting up on our own, he thought we might want to offer dog-walking as part of our concierge services. To begin with we had no business, but it has grown, and they’ve grown with us. You’d be surprised how many people in Manhattan own dogs. Fliss is the business brain, but Harry has a special gift with animals. Thank you for offering to sign a book. It was good of you to do that for her.”
“I didn’t do it for her. I did it for you. I’m trying to get back into your good books, remember? So far it’s cost me near-frostbite and a cashmere coat.”
“Why do you want to be in my good books?”
“Because if you walk out on me I can’t write, and I don’t get to eat delicious food.” He wasn’t ready to consider that it might be more than that. He felt the softness of her hair brush against his chin. She smelled of sunshine and summer fruits. “I thought you were going to ask if you could keep that puppy.”
“I almost did, but my practical side took over. There are days when I hate my practical side.” She sounded despondent and he eased her away from him so that he could see her expression.
“Did you want him that much?”
“A dog loves you unconditionally. And now you’re going to tell me that’s my fairy-tale view and that the puppy would probably savage me when it grows up.”
He leaned forward to pay the cabdriver. “I think any dog living with you would be lucky.”
And any man.
They rode the elevator to the top floor and he kept his arms wrapped around her. He told himself he was holding her because he wanted to warm her up, but he knew he was lying to himself. He was holding her because it felt good and he was in no hurry to let her go.
She leaned her head against his chest. “I’m still mad at you for making me a murderer.”
“You don’t sound mad.”
“What? This is my angry voice.”
“I think your angry voice might need work. Or you could just stop being angry.” He wondered if she’d ever been able to be mad with anyone for more than five minutes. “If it helps, I’ll be groveling for days.”
“What form does groveling take?”
“Whatever works. If you want a favor, now would be the perfect time to ask. You want to sacrifice another bottle of my ridiculously expensive wine? No problem.”
There was a pause and then she looked up at him. “Sex,” she said simply. “I want you to take me to bed and give me another orgasm.”