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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.
Four (#ulink_4e0389fb-cab2-5daf-9a57-28790537c33e)
You are what you eat, so keep it sweet.
—Eva
Of all the rude, moody, irritable—
Eva stomped around the kitchen, hurt and upset. She’d been raised to consider what might lie beneath the surface of a person’s behavior. You didn’t have to be a psychologist to understand what was going on with Lucas, but still his words had stung.
She told herself that he was grieving. He was in pain. He was—
Cold. Distant. Intimidating. Formidable.
And obviously not a lover of herbal tea.
Her brief glimpse inside his study had shown her that the room was nothing like the rest of the apartment. It smelled of wood smoke and leather, and had both personality and warmth. A warmth that came from more than the flickering fire. Unlike the rest of his apartment, his office space had been furnished with loving care and attention. Two worn, deep leather sofas faced each other across a low table piled high with books. Not coffee-table books chosen as a design accent, but real books, thumbed at the corners and stacked haphazardly as if they’d only recently been read.
There had been a desk, she remembered, dominated by what appeared to be a very expensive computer, and there was also a laptop. The room was graced with the same soaring glass windows that enveloped the rest of the apartment, but the image that remained with her was of the bookshelves. They’d stretched from floor to ceiling and were packed with more books than she’d ever seen in her life outside a library. The covers didn’t match and leather-bound volumes were interspersed with the less durable paperbacks, the lines on their spines suggesting that they were well-read and well loved.
She was curious to know what Lucas Blade read when he wanted to escape from his own work and his own world. Did he read crime fiction or something different?
She’d had no opportunity to take a closer look. With a single glance and a few carefully chosen words, he’d made it clear that she was intruding on his space.
He didn’t want her here. She wasn’t welcome.
But before she’d turned away, she’d learned one other thing. Perhaps the most important thing of all. Whatever Lucas was doing in his office, it wasn’t writing.
The computer screen had been blank. Had it been smaller, she might not have noticed but as it was she’d managed to read two words—Chapter One.
There had been nothing else.
