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Claire turned to face her dead-on, her jaw hanging open. “Why didn’t I know this?”
Alyssa shrugged. “I was still dating Bob. It just happened, you know? And I felt terrible afterwards.”
“Details,” Claire demanded. “Right here. Right now.”
“Honestly, there’s not a lot to tell,” Alyssa said, feeling so under the microscope she was almost sorry she brought it up.
“The hell there isn’t. Start at the beginning.” She waved a hand. “Go on.”
Alyssa sighed, trapped. “The truth is, we went to high school together, so I’ve known him for ages.”
Claire’s brows lifted. “You went to school with Russell Starr?”
“I’m pretty sure his family actually endowed my scholarship.” Her gaze darted again to the Starr property, and she sighed. A family like that didn’t have to scramble for a paycheck or worry about making partner.
“Were you guys friends?”
Alyssa shook her head. “Not back then. He was a grade ahead, but he was every girl’s fantasy guy, you know? The guy in school that you’re certain would be absolutely perfect if only he’d notice you.”
“Well, duh. Starr family. How much more perfect can you get? But, hello? When are we getting to the kissing part? What happened? Tell me everything. He asked you out on a date?”
“Sort of. My car had a flat, and he drove me home.” She shrugged. “On the way, he suggested we stop for drinks.”
Alyssa still thought that was a key piece of information: they’d stopped at his suggestion.
The night had been fabulous, full of wine and laughter and even a few long, heated looks, and it had only gotten better when he’d delivered her straight to her door. She’d invited him in, but he’d declined. What he’d done instead was lean in, tell her he’d had a wonderful time, and kiss her oh-so-gently, but with a ton of promise. She’d felt the tingle all the way down to her toes as he’d walked away. And she’d stood like an idiot in front of her apartment door as he’d walked back to his car and driven away.
Bob had come over for breakfast the next morning, and Alyssa’s Cinderella delusions had evaporated. After all, Russell was a society-page regular, and at the time, she’d still been happily dating Bob. The drink had been a drink, and the kiss a sweet memory. Nothing more.
Still, she could fantasize. And regularly did, for that matter. Her thoughts drifting to what would have happened if he’d come inside for that kiss. Who knew where it might have led…?
She sighed, her breath clouding in the chilly night air.
“Wow,” Claire said. “Talk about the one that got away.”
Alyssa rolled her eyes. “I never had him in the first place,” she said. “He can’t get away if I never had him.”
“A fact about which I hope you are soundly kicking yourself. He kissed you good-night and you never even followed up? Called him again? Made any move to let him know you were interested?”
“I was with Bob,” Alyssa said, her voice small because she knew Claire was going to jump all over that.
“And you told him that?”
“Claire, I was dating him. We were serious. Or I thought we were. Yeah. I mentioned him.”
Now it was Claire’s turn to roll her eyes. “Never mention to a guy that you’re dating another guy. All guys need to be kept in the realm of possible until you’re married. That’s a simple fact of life.” Alyssa scowled, but Claire barreled on. “So what happened after you and Bob broke up? With Russell, I mean?”
“What happened? Nothing happened.”
“You didn’t call him? I mean, forget the whole legal-retainer stuff, but didn’t you at least call and ask him out for drinks?”
“No! Of course not.”
Claire shook her head as if Alyssa had utterly failed. “You know, if it wasn’t for Joe being an absolute prick and you being completely clueless, we could be double-dating tonight instead of escorting each other.”
Alyssa sighed, knowing that Claire was absolutely right.
She glanced around, taking in the dancing lights of the Highland Parks neighborhood. The children going from door to door singing Christmas carols. The couples strolling the neighborhood, their faces close as they shared kisses under mistletoe.
Romance was in the air tonight. It just wasn’t in the backseat of the carriage.
2
“DROP THE KNIFE.”
“I don’t think so.” Max Dalton held the small pocketknife steady as he stared down the barrel of Eli Whitacker’s Glock 9mm. Not exactly an ideal situation. He’d broken into the abandoned warehouse hoping to find a clue as to where Whitacker might have stashed the girl, but he’d never expected to find Whitacker himself.
Max never considered that he might not walk out of the warehouse at all. That things weren’t going exactly as planned was an understatement, to say the least.
“I said,” Eli repeated, “drop the knife.”
Max tried to calculate his odds, came up with a depressingly low probability of success, and let the blade clatter to the concrete floor.
“Good boy. And now if you’d be good enough to get down on your knees.”
“I don’t think so.”
Eli’s grin widened. “No problem. You can die just as well standing up.”
Eli’s finger moved, gently squeezing the triggerthat would, at any moment, fire a shot of lead into Max’s gut.
He did the only thing he could do, even though it was futile and useless—he tried to dive to the left.
And as he did, his eardrums burst as a shot rang out. He flinched automatically, anticipating the pain of the bullet connecting with soft flesh.
But there was no pain. Just Eli standing there, a red stain spreading out on his chest, and a blood bubble forming at his mouth.
Eli fell to his knees, revealing the woman behind him, a gun held tight in her shaking hands.
Her.
Dark hair that fell in soft curves to brush against her shoulders. A square jaw and dancing green eyes. Long dancer’s legs that he could imagine wrapped tightly around him.
He saw her, and he wanted. Craved. Needed.
She was his fantasy. His inspiration. His complete and total distraction.
“Alyssa,” he heard himself whisper. “Alyssa, you’re alive.”
CHRISTOPHER HYDE stared at the computer screen, frowned, then methodically backspaced over the last bit of text he’d written, changing Alyssa to Alicia.
He shook his head. Still too close, what with the letter A. He backspaced again, and suddenly the femme fatale’s name in his second Max Dalton novel became Natalia.
Better.
Better still if he would go in and change the description, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do that. Maybe once the whole book was finished he’d change her hair from black to red. Right now, though, he could only see the girl in his imagination. Alyssa-called-Natalia.
And, yeah, she was the girl of his dreams.
He’d started writing the Max Dalton series before he’d met Alyssa. The character had been in his head for years—an obscenely wealthy freelance operative who traveled the world on assignment for the highest bidder. Max had Chris’s own wanderlust, and although Chris had never rescued a child kidnapped by terrorists or scaled a mountain range trying to find ancient artifacts before the bad guys located them, he poured his own fantasies into the character. His childhood had been staid, boring. He’d seen nothing other than his small Texas hometown, population 712, until he was twenty years old. But he’d read every National Geographic that came in the mail cover to cover, and he’d fantasized about seeing those places himself. About having adventures all over the world.
His journalism degree had been his ticket out, and now he earned his keep by traveling the globe and writing about it for tourists. And with any luck, one day he’d supplement that income with royalties from the Max Dalton novels he was currently trying to sell.
He’d landed an agent with the first book, and she was about to begin pitching it to publishers. The entire process was nerve-wracking, and he was trying to bury the nervousness by burying himself in the second Max Dalton adventure. An adventure in which Max teamed up with another operative—a female—who may or may not be an ally, and who was most definitely a lover.
And who in his head was all Alyssa.
Chris still remembered the day she’d moved in. She’d been trying to drag a battered, butt-ugly recliner from her rental truck to her apartment. He’d offered either to help her carry it or torch it, her choice. She’d gawked at him for a long second, and at first he’d feared he’d gone too far. Then she’d collapsed into the recliner, bent over with peals of laughter. The chair was a gift from her father, she’d said. “He has terrible taste, and he never should have spent the money on the damn thing, but I love him.” She shrugged. “So it’ll get a place of honor in the living room.”
The next day, she’d knocked on his door, and invited him over to see how she’d “done up that hideous chair.” He’d walked inside, then breathed deeply of the smell of cinnamon and cloves that seemed to fill her apartment, a scent that now belonged entirely to Alyssa, prompting delicious thoughts of her at random times and locations. Especially now, during the holiday season.
As for the chair, it was tucked into a corner next to an absolutely hideous gold-plated floor lamp decorated with flying cupids. She’d hung a velvet painting of dogs playing poker behind the chair, and set off the entire area with a small gold shag rug that looked like a reject from an Austin Powers movie set. The corner was in utter contrast to the rest of the living room, with its soft lines and feminine colors.
“I’m calling it the corner of testosterone,” she said, and he could see her lips twitch with suppressed laughter.
“I think my testosterone is offended,” he’d said dryly. She’d stared for a moment, and then her laugh had burst forth. “Seriously, though, I like it.”
And that combination—that subtly sexy girl who was willing to be a little bit silly because she loved her dad—completely swept Chris off his feet.
Not that he’d told Alyssa that. Alyssa knew he was alive, of course, but she thought of him as a friend, not a flesh-and-blood man. A sad state of affairs for which he had no one to blame but himself.
At first, she’d been dating some guy—Bob, Bill, something—who had never been good enough for Alyssa. And Chris didn’t put the moves on attached women, no matter how sexy they were.
But even when that happy day had come and she’d kicked Bob to the curb, Chris still hadn’t made a move. Hadn’t even hinted how he felt.
She’d come to him, told him about the breakup, and suggested they watch something fast-paced and mindless on his big-screen television.
He couldn’t say no, of course, and though she’d seemed fascinated by the car chases and explosions, he’d spent the movie wondering how to tell the woman who’d become one of his best friends that he’d fallen hard and fast for her. And then, when the movie had ended, she’d smiled at him with sad eyes and reached for his hands. There’d been a window of opportunity right then. A single short window during which he could have done what Max Dalton would have so smoothly done—leaned in and kissed her. Told her in no uncertain terms that he wanted to be more than friends.
But while Chris might write Max Dalton, that didn’t mean he walked the walk. Especially not where women were concerned. A sad reality that was cemented when she’d said, “Thanks for letting me hang out with you. I really need a solid friend right now.”
He’d swallowed. Her words had felt much the way he imagined a knife to the heart felt like. Sharp and painful and totally deadly.
He knew then he had no chance with this woman. Not as a rebound guy. Not as anything.
It was, he’d thought, one hell of a crappy wake-up call.
Still, he needed to do something. More and more, she was on his mind. Creeping into his dreams. Into his books. Hell, Max Dalton was not a one-woman kind of guy. He got in, he got out, he did the job, and he blew shit up. He didn’t turn all gooey for a girl.
Except lately, he did. And Chris had a feeling that unless he got Alyssa out of his system, Max Dalton was going to turn into a one-woman man, and then where would Chris be? Probably writing a romance novel instead of the second testosterone-laden spy thriller he’d told his agent was in the works.
Max Dalton wouldn’t let thoughts of a woman torment him like that. He’d just sidle up to her, whisper in her ear and take her to bed.
A nice fantasy, but that’s all it was. A fantasy.
Chris wanted more. Warmth and reality and lazing around in bed with the paper on Sunday morning. Shoving jeans and T-shirts into backpacks and taking off for Paris on the spur of the moment. Hiking along a beach at sunset, especially a white-sand beach in some exotic location.
And damned if he didn’t want that with Alyssa.
Frustrated with himself, Chris got up from his desk and stretched, his eyes wandering to his door as he did so. He needed to get his ass in gear and start packing. He had to catch a flight first thing in the morning.
The phone rang, and though he considered ignoring it, he knew he had to answer. Technically, he was already on assignment, and if it was Greg, his editor at Tourist and Travel, then Chris really did have to take the call.
Caller ID showed only a New York area code, and he snatched it up, expecting Greg and instead hearing the harsh, cigarette-soaked voice of Lilian Ashbury, the powerhouse agent Chris still couldn’t believe he’d landed.
“How fast can you finish the second Max Dalton book and get me an outline for the third?” she asked without preamble.
“Happy holidays to you, too, Lil.”
“Bah humbug. It’s slush and ice up here, not a damn thing to be happy about.”
“Is that why you’re working on a Saturday?”
“I’m tireless in my efforts to represent you,” she said, deadpan. “I had lunch with Roger Eckhard,” she said, referring to a senior editor at Main Street Books, Chris’s dream publisher. “I pitched him the book, and he loves the concept. He’s leaving on the fifth to start the New Year with two weeks in Italy, and I want him to take both manuscripts and an outline for the third with him. We want him looking at this series like a franchise, and you as the next Ian Fleming. If he does, I think we can expect the kind of offer that will make you a very happy man.”
“I—”
“Just say ‘Thank you, Lil.’ And ‘No problem, Lil.’”
“No problem, Lil,” he said, fighting a grin. He’d make it work. No sense telling his agent that the proximity of his next door neighbor was keeping his head in a decidedly un-Max-like mode. But that was okay. Because he was about to go spend a week in New Mexico in a flashy, splashy resort. He’d shift between writing the article for Tourist and Travel and writing pages of Max Dalton’s next installment. He’d hole himself up in his hotel room, crank out the pages, and produce some fabulous shit.
With over six hundred miles between him and Alyssa, how hard could it be?
3
“GEORGE BAILEY, I’LL love you ’til the day I die.”
“Awww.” Alyssa sank down into her overstuffed sofa and dabbed her eyes with a tissue.
Claire tossed a handful of popcorn at her. “The movie’s barely even started.”
“I know,” Alyssa said with a sniffle. “But I know what’s going to happen.” She sniffed again, then blew her nose. “It just gets me every time.
“And the alcohol’s probably not helping.”
“You’re the one who insisted on peppermint schnapps and hot chocolate.”
Alyssa couldn’t argue with that. And, hey, the libations had done their job. They’d both come home from the carriage ride in a funk. The original plan had been to pick out a handful of the many invitations they’d both received and go party-hopping, hoping they’d slide gracefully into the holiday spirit.
