The lone bed in the room was occupied—by a beautiful blonde

Krista? Seth took a few steps forward, letting his eyes get used to the dark. The figure on the bed rolled over and moaned. One bare shoulder appeared, followed by a perky nipple.

Krista. What the hell was she doing in his cabin?

For a crazy instant Seth imagined her engineering the shared room to make her fantasy of sex with a stranger come true. Just as quickly he realized that was impossible.

So was he in her cabin by mistake? Did he have the wrong key? He certainly had the wrong bed!

This was nuts. Where could he go? He had no other key, it was midnight, the weather sucked and the office was deserted.

He was stuck.

This was completely…totally…entirely…

Hmm…interesting.

A red-blooded male and a hot-blooded female trapped in the middle of nowhere in the middle of a snowstorm in the middle of a dark cozy cabin.

Maybe Christmas had come early after all!

Dear Reader,

The inspiration for this book was the myth of Cupid and Psyche. Who can resist the idea of a woman who falls in love with a mysterious sexy stranger she meets only in the dark? Of course, Harlequin Blaze is the perfect place to detail that kind of introduction. Add in a WRONG BED scenario, and the heat is on.

I loved introducing shades of gray into my heroine Krista’s black-and-white life, and having her sensual energy seduce the hero out of his loner existence. Add in the magic of Christmas in a great town like Boston, and the story took off.

Wishing everyone the joys of the holiday season!

Isabel Sharpe

All I Want…
Isabel Sharpe

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Nancy Warren,

who has listened endlessly, advised wisely,

smacked me when I needed it

and been an unfailing, true friend

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

1

Tuesday, November 29

THE MINUTE AIMEE Wellington enters stage right in the new musical Sweatshock, all interest exits. Oh wait, no, hang on, not all interest! There’s the can’t look/must-look fascinated horror of watching a speeding train heading for a stalled busload of nuns and orphans.

Has this woman or anyone handling her ever heard of the following concepts: Voice lessons? Acting lessons? Clue lessons? Pinocchio was less wooden. Adelaide from Guys and Dolls less nasal. The Invisible Man had more stage presence.

Could they not find one actress in Boston who could carry a tune, read lines with something approaching natural delivery or look like she was part of the ensemble instead of a wiggly, sexual meme-me prop?

Oh, right, sorry, what was I thinking? It’s not about talent. With Aimee Wellington it’s never about talent. It’s about money. It’s about a chain of department stores that made her family fortune. It’s about a father’s decision to let her at that fortune way before she was mature enough to handle it. It’s about getting famous by being infamous.

What happened to getting the best cast possible? Is the public that celebrity-crazed?

A sad state of affairs. From my seat, watching Aimee’s two-expression acting and listening to her off-key whiny singing, I was very tempted to haul out a miniature dart gun and shoot her with a tranquilizer. Surely whomever they have understudying her would be less painful. Heck, put me on the stage!

And get real!

KRISTA MARLOW READ through her latest blog post again, crunching thoughtfully on natural-sea-salt potato chips she shouldn’t be crunching on, thoughtfully or not, if she wanted to keep her weight at a healthy level. She’d started by bringing a sensible serving size out in a little red plastic bowl, one of the ones she and her sister used to have backyard picnic lunches in as kids, which she wouldn’t let her mom throw away. But after three sensible serving sizes, she got tired of getting up and down—and even more tired of being sensible—so she brought the whole bag in and balanced it on the stack of papers and novels teetering on her desk.

Sometimes potato chips were necessary. This was one of those times.

Aimee Wellington drove Krista crazy. Not only because Krista’s sister, Lucy, who could sing, act and dance circles around Aimee, had also been up for the part of Bridget in Sweatshock after Krista had practically dragged her to the audition. But just on principle. There were too many image-created idiots ruling showbiz—voices electronically enhanced and pitch-corrected, bodies surgically altered to some artificial ideal of perfection. And don’t get her started on teenagers selling sex before they should be having it themselves.

Okay, so she sounded like someone’s grandmother. And yes, she’d lost her virginity in her teens. But she wasn’t out there pushing the experience on everyone else’s kids. It hurt to see talent such as her sister’s being wasted. To see her working a brainless office job, performing lounge gigs at night only a handful of white-hairs went to see, while no-talent prima-donna princesses rose to the top, like scum in a stockpot.

Krista’s personal pilgrimage was to chip away at glossy facades, to point out in her blogs, Internet articles and pieces for the Boston Sentinel or any print media she could sell to, how people were being fooled by so much crap, into thinking crap was good. Her editor kept hinting that a staff reviewer was retiring soon, but Krista wanted to be like an octopus, tentacles spreading her message in all directions.

Call her crazy, call her a visionary, call her obsessed, but she wanted to leave her mark. Start some movement back to quality and a more natural rhythm to people’s money-and-time-obsessed existences.

She’d started her own blogging Web site, Get Real, where she regularly skewered whatever artifice came to her attention. This new overpackaged, overprocessed gimmicky food product, that new undeserving star, this new over-the-top vacation destination which resembled a theme park more than a hotel. The Christmas holiday season had sparked a whole new crop of outrage over rampant commercialism, pressure to spend and compete, consumption-crazed children and ho ho ho, goodwill to all men, now get the hell out of my way before I ram you with my shopping cart.

Jeff Sites, a regular columnist at the Boston Sentinel, had mentioned her rants in one of his Local Life columns and her Web site hits had gone off the chart.

Happiness.

The more people who stopped and thought about what crap they were supporting with their hard-earned dollars, the more she hoped they’d vote with their wallets and demand quality. Or keep their wallets in their pockets, stay home and sing songs with their kids or play with the overload of stuff they already had. Leave the merchants and marketers scrambling for something else with real appeal.

Like good quality at affordable prices.

She posted the blog and peered, yawning, at the clock in the bottom right corner of her computer screen. Oops. Nearly midnight. She needed her beauty rest.

One glance around her one-bedroom walk-up and Krista sighed. And she needed cleaner surroundings.

She stood, stretching her shoulder and back muscles—always tight no matter how many relaxation techniques she tried—grabbed the bag of chips, folded the top and headed for her kitchen and the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. She always did them before bed. A new day required a clean, organized living space.

Okay, mostly organized. Primarily clean. Hygienic certainly.

Dishes done and a bottle of water grabbed from her squeaky refrigerator—which needed cleaning, sigh—she brushed her teeth and went into her bedroom, carpeted with the same icky brown-orange shag as the kitchen/living/dining room. Someday she’d own a fabulous place, maybe in Cambridge, maybe down by the harbor, with hardwood floors and woven wool rugs. When her popularity and message caught on. When she wrote her first book. When she got her first appearance on Oprah…

Oops. Live in the moment. She forgot.

She began her nightly routine by standing in mountain pose, tall and still in the fairly small space between her bed and the wall, and concentrated on clearing her mind, concentrated on the sensations in her body and the play of her muscles holding her up. Spine straight, chin parallel to the floor…

Next, she started the sun salute, breathe in, out, arms in prayer position; breathe in, reaching up, palms facing; breathe out, swan dive to a forward fold, bent at the waist, trying to get her face to touch her knees.

As if.

Breathe in, right leg back in a runner’s lunge….

Maybe she should do an article for a women’s magazine on the benefits of a daily yoga routine, couching it in humor, focusing on spiritual satisfaction as a way to reduce spending for things one didn’t need, not being preachy, just—

Mind clear, Krista.

Breathe in, breathe out. Her body followed the positions automatically. Breathe in, breathe out….

Tomorrow she would research the article she was proposing to Budget Travel magazine, about off-the-beaten-track, affordable holiday getaways. Romantic escapes from the pressures of the season. She could jot down a few ideas for the yoga article, too. And she needed to get going on one for Food & Wine about the country’s love affair with oversalting and artificial flavor. She was thinking about calling it “Chemical Attraction.”

Mind clear, Krista. Damn. She could never quite manage it.

Her phone rang and she gave up attempting inner peace and grabbed it. Only Lucy would call at this hour, home from her Tuesday night gig singing at Eddie’s.

“Hey, Krista.”

Krista frowned. Her younger sister didn’t exactly sound jubilant. But then, she’d been sort of a pale imitation of herself for a while. “Bad show tonight?”

“Not terrific. Usually it’s such a nice crowd. Tonight this drunk guy kept propositioning me during When I Fall In Love, and a few too many people acted as if I was a videotape in their living rooms and they were free to shout to each other whenever the mood hit.” She sounded close to tears.

Bingo. An article or blog about technology-saturated people’s newfound unfamiliarity with live entertainment and audience etiquette. Krista kept the phone to her ear and dragged off her sweats, letting the silence lag so her sister would fill it. Something else was really bothering Lucy. She knew the pitfalls of her business and had dealt with crowds much rougher than this one sounded.

“Then I got home and Link and I…we’re barely speaking.”

Krista cringed. Lincoln Baxter had been Lucy’s unofficial fiancé for four years. Krista was sorry, and maybe she was being overly judgmental, but if you really wanted to marry someone, why didn’t you do it? They’d been together six years, since their senior year at Tufts, and in Krista’s opinion, the shine was off and they’d do better finding someone new. Link hadn’t even managed to come up with a ring yet.

“He spends every evening watching TV. I just wish he’d spend some of that time with me. He never comes to hear me sing anymore, not that I blame him, but it would be nice, and I’ve asked him to. He stays up until all hours, we almost never go to bed at the same time, and when we do…well, nothing happens.”

Krista winced and tossed her sweats on the chair next to her bed. She was getting the message. No sex, no intimacy. Might as well buy a male blow-up doll.

Hmm, maybe an article about artificial behaviors in men during courtship. Or make that artificial behaviors in women, too, so she wouldn’t go on record as a man hater. Since she was, in fact, definitely not one, though with the mostly off-again unsatisfying state of her love life she was starting to consider it.

“Lucy, I think it’s time to take a look at this relationship.”

“No, no.” The fear in Lucy’s voice made Krista’s heart sink. “It’s not that bad.”

“You can’t stay with him because you’re afraid of being alone.”

“He’s the man for me, Krista. I’ve known since the second I set eyes on him.”

Right. Krista fumbled for her pink flannel nightgown under her bed pillows. She believed in that love-at-first-sight stuff exactly not at all. Chemistry she believed in, instant attraction she believed in, but love took time. Love was what was left when infatuation finally got bored and took a hike. Love was what she saw in her parents’ eyes every time they looked at each other.

Okay, not every time. When Dad put off cleaning the garage too long or mom took three days to make a simple decision…

“Neither of you is the same person as in college.” She lifted her arms one at a time to slip the nightgown over her head, whipping the phone around the neckline and back to her ear. “People change. You grew apart.”

“We’re just in a rut right now. We need something. I don’t know what.”

“Counseling?”

“He won’t go.”

“Lucy, you really—”

“I gotta go, he’s coming to bed. Lunch Thursday?”

“Sure.” Krista hung up the phone and scrunched her face in a scowl. Her sister was incredibly sweet and incredibly talented and deserved to be riding the wave of love and stardom all the way to happy ever after. Instead she’d been upstaged by a bimbo and had shackled herself to a man indifferent to what made her so special. Loyalty, talent, intelligence, empathy, sex appeal, beauty, sparkle—well, she used to sparkle. Now she just glowed dully through mucky layers of disappointment.

Krista put in her earplugs and slid into bed. If Lucy had gotten the part in Sweatshock, she’d be in a position of power, and Krista would bet a million she’d have the strength to leave Link and find someone who deserved her. A new love that fit the dynamic, fabulous person she was now.

Just another grudge to hold against the inimitable—thank God—Aimee Wellington.

SETH WELLINGTON SAT sprawled in his favorite black leather chair, set near the giant living room window of his South Boston condo, whose view of the harbor reminded him daily there was more to the world than gray four-walled corporate boardrooms. A timely thought. He grimaced at the computer screen on his laptop, which showed the blog fellow board member Mary Stevens had sent him the link to. This Krista Marlow woman had a serious grudge against his stepsister, Aimee. He’d seen Sweatshock the previous week, and while Aimee would never be Renée Zellweger, neither was she as bad as this sarcastic, clearly unhappy person made her out to be.

Bad timing. As the interim CEO of Wellington Department Stores while his father recovered from a stroke, he’d spent his tenure trying to convince the board of directors to update the stores’ stodgy image. The trouble with inheriting a dinosaur—er, dynasty—that stretched back into the late nineteenth century was that, like the dinosaurs who went extinct rather than adapt, some members of the board seemed to want everything to stay the same as when Seth’s ancestor Oscar Wellington opened the first store near Copley Square in 1889.

Seth and Mary were the newest and, at thirty-six and thirty-nine respectively, by far the youngest board members. Over the last year-plus they’d fought long and hard for the changes, territory won, territory lost, two steps forward, one back. Finally their efforts would pay off, God willing, with the official reopening of the stores, December twenty-first. Of course he would rather have launched the new image before the most profitable time of the year, but the board had been a bigger problem than he’d anticipated and the contractors hadn’t shared his sense of urgency.

Aimee had been Seth’s choice for the stores’ new spokesperson. She’d done a great job in the hip, upbeat musical commercials that would begin airing in sync with the reopening. Given that Aimee was Aimee, her duties representing the stores publicly could be a dicier prospect. But she was family, the all-important connection so vital to Seth’s dad; she sported the Wellington name via Seth’s father’s remarriage. And her performing experience made her a natural in front of the cameras, where she’d get most of her exposure—literally, given her skimpy outfits. Aimee could bridge the gap between older loyal customers and new ones the stores hadn’t been attracting in large enough numbers no matter how up-to-date they kept their merchandise.

But Krista Marlow was making Aimee look more like a joke than Aimee did herself. The board members were not amused. They felt Krista’s potential for damage was minimal when her war had been waged locally, focusing on Aimee’s notorious shopping exploits and her enthusiastic if misguided obsession with performing and self-promotion. But with media attention surrounding the reopening and with commercials scheduled to air throughout New England, the board feared Krista’s biased opinions would reach a much wider audience and make a mockery of the new image they’d been against from the beginning.

Could Krista really do the stores any damage? In his view, most likely not. Ironically her rants might even help. No publicity was bad publicity, as the cliché went. But he had to admit, Krista’s vitriol rankled. Had to admit he took it personally, not only being Aimee’s stepbrother but also having invested so much of his life into the Wellington stores. Given that he hadn’t exactly volunteered for this CEO job, he’d be damned if his sweat and sacrifice led to failure of any kind.

His cell rang. He put the laptop aside, dug the phone out warily from his pocket, then relaxed and smiled at the number on the display. Mary. He’d been dodging board member calls for the last hour, not in the mood for more concerns now that they’d undoubtedly read Marlow’s latest attack on his stepsister. Tedious bunch. Ms. Marlow must be stopped before she ruins the Wellington name, blah, blah, blah.

Any wonder he’d rather be out experiencing the real world as he was meant to? After he’d graduated from business school, what was supposed to be a month-long traveling vacation had turned into two months, then six, then over a year, until his father’s poor health brought Seth back to the company he’d worked for since he was old enough to alphabetize.

Family was family, yes. Though at times family life felt more like being incarcerated at Alcatraz.

“Hi, Mary.”

“Did you get the link I sent you? I’ve gotten three calls already from board members squawking something fierce.”

“I got it.” He kept his voice from sounding too weary. “Looks like Ms. Marlow didn’t enjoy the show.”

“Ya think? If I hear ‘This could have serious consequences’ one more time, I’m going to book a ticket to Jamaica and drink rum until it’s all over. Want to come?”

He grinned. His affair with Mary had burned hot and briefly; instant attraction had been indulged, waned, and they’d settled into a fairly comfortable friendship. Occasionally they still got together, but they’d been successful keeping their personal lives off the company gossip sheet. She was the kind of woman he liked. Smart, sexy, discreet and, best of all, not clingy. She never took their relationship to be anything but what it was.

“Sounds like paradise right about now. How often have we reassured them the risk is minimal?”

“Too many times.”

He grabbed the back of his neck and tried to massage a dent in the knotted muscles, gazing out at the black expanse of ocean with longing. Jumping for people was the part of this job he hated most. “As much as I don’t want to get involved, with everything else we have to do, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to be seen taking steps, so these fine gentlemen can put a sock in it.”

And maybe they had the smallest point. He’d just as soon people didn’t keep tabs on the stores only to see if Aimee made an idiot of herself, which, given Aimee, was always a distinct possibility, though he’d decided she was worth the risk. But if people came to associate the stores with someone they didn’t respect, Seth would have to concede the Wellington image could suffer—and the board’s opinion of him would certainly tank. Yes, he wanted out of the CEO job, but he wanted out because his father was well enough to take over the company again, not because he’d run it into the ground.

“So you’re going to take her on?”

He sighed. “I’ll think of something. The bare minimum that will satisfy the board.”

“Ooooh.” Mary laughed, deep and sexy. “Should I scan the headlines tomorrow for news of Ms. Marlow dredged out of the Charles River wearing designer cement shoes?”

“I don’t think it will come to that.”

“Mmm, I hope not. I’d hate to lose you to jail time.”

He chuckled. “No chance of that. Thanks for letting me know about the blog, Mary.”

“You’re welcome. Call anytime you want to talk.” She used the husky tone that said “talk” wasn’t on her mind.

“I will. Good night.” He hung up, aware she’d been about to say more, feeling a twinge of guilt. But if he gave her an inch now, she’d grab for…seven. And he wasn’t in the mood for that kind of fun. Every ounce of his energy and concentration was necessary to make sure the revamping of the stores wasn’t going to be a colossal, extremely expensive and humiliating failure.

He swallowed the last tepid sip of after-dinner coffee and stood, bringing his favorite mug—one his mom bought him when he took her to Graceland, before she’d gotten too sick to travel—into his kitchen. He washed and dried it carefully and put it next to the coffeemaker, already sporting a new filter for the next morning’s brew. A quick wipe-down of the counters, and he filled a big glass with filtered water from his stainless refrigerator’s door dispenser.

After that, a check of the downstairs rooms to make sure they were tidy and locked up tight, then he went upstairs to his second-floor loft in the condo he’d bought even though he wouldn’t be staying long.

He strode into his bedroom, undressed and retrieved the top paperback from a neat stack under his night table. The latest Harlan Coben thriller. He needed some distraction, somewhere to go that was under control, precise, unpolluted by the wandering vagaries of real human existence.

Ten minutes later he gave up the pretense at reading. Even page-turning excitement couldn’t distract him from his growing irritation.

He turned off his light and drew up the blankets. Lay, hands folded behind his head, staring at the dotted stripes of light on his ceiling from the punched holes and chinks in his blinds. He didn’t have time for worrying about one woman’s opinion.

And yet something about Krista Marlow’s disrespect toward Aimee bordered on illogical. Something about it was too…personal. Yeah, she was funny as hell, spirited and right-on in a lot of what she said. After her first post about Aimee, he’d started checking in occasionally and had been interested by most of what she had to say.

Then a couple of months ago, after Aimee’s joke of a self-produced CD came out, around the time she landed the part in Sweatshock, the attacks on Aimee became more frequent and more cutting.

He frowned and shifted between the sheets. Admittedly he was curious.

Tomorrow he’d try to find out more about Marlow, something reassuring to report to the board. Maybe tell them he’d ask her to ease up. Worth a try. With Wellington Stores’ grand reopening on the horizon, he needed the board one hundred percent behind him. Even a small glitch was more of a glitch than he wanted.

Because the sooner he could turn the company around, the sooner he could hand the running of it back to his father, and leave again.

LUCY MARLOW SLIPPED out of the bed she shared with Link in their beautiful Cambridge condo and tiptoed out of the room. Three in the morning and she hadn’t even managed to close her eyes. Insomnia wasn’t new to her, but lately she’d been bursting into tears for no apparent reason, and she couldn’t stay in bed and cry. Link would waken, he’d want to know what was wrong. And how often could she say “nothing” or “I don’t know” without him rolling his eyes as men had been rolling their eyes at those answers for centuries, maybe millennia?

She went into their living room, chilly with the heat turned down at night, and curled up on the window seat, looking out at the parked cars on Garden Street. This time of year was always tough, when the calendar said ho ho ho, merry merry, happy happy, and somehow her mood and stress levels never quite made it there. Gifts to buy for Link, for Mom and Dad, for Krista, for Link’s relatives, her relatives, friends, coworkers. She made it harder on herself, she knew that, and Link was always telling her as if he thought she didn’t. Having to find the perfect presents, having to decorate the house, having to make cookies and volunteer and organize the office party…

An old Volkswagen van putted by, like the relic her parents had when she was very young. That seemed to be enough to trigger the insane tears that were her all-too-regular visitors these days.

Was this simple unhappiness? She didn’t feel unhappy, necessarily. She had a lovely home in a beautiful city. She was engaged to a man she loved, though he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get married or buy her a ring.

They weren’t ready for children, Link said, and what difference did a piece of paper make in how they felt about each other?

Logically? Intellectually? No difference.

But emotionally…

Well, women were the emotional ones, weren’t they. He’d marry her if she insisted, she knew that. But she couldn’t bring herself to insist. She didn’t ever want to be standing up at an altar without being one hundred percent sure the man next to her would rather be there than anywhere else in the world. Marriage should be entered into gladly and with light hearts.

These days her heart was about as light as a brick.

The beautiful, sad tears turned to fairly unattractive sobs she fought hard to keep as silent as possible. Link slept like a rock, but you never knew.

Everything else about her life was going fine. She had a nice job as an administrative assistant in a law firm downtown. She’d chosen the work deliberately, to keep her mind and energies fresh for performing, though these days she’d made friends with her limitations there. Lucy’s natural reserve was her enemy on stage—people like Aimee would always get ahead. While Krista would cheerfully disembowel the poor woman, Lucy understood the casting decision.

In retrospect, she’d taken the audition more to please Krista than herself anyway. Krista had enough ambition to spare for everyone. Lucy was a creature of habit, of routine. Unlike her sister, she wasn’t comfortable or happy constantly searching for new heights to scale.

What was really important to her? Family, friends and Link. Not in that order of course. She had a close family, a lot of friends locally. The people in the law firm were wonderful and kind. Her boss, Alexis, was fair and pleasant. One of the lawyers, Josh, had even been flirting with her lately, and that was harmless fun.

A thrill ran through her and she curled the fingers of her left hand, feeling the missing ring keenly tonight. Josh knew about Link, he knew about their so-called engagement, but he kept coming around, and lately she hadn’t done enough to discourage him. A ring would make her feel more taken, show the world she belonged to Link in a way she wasn’t sure the world knew right now. And maybe not her either.

Because she was taken. Thoroughly. Just because Josh turned her insides over and around and upside down when he smiled at her…

She spun suddenly to face the room. So? Plenty of happily married—or involved—people developed crushes which had no significance and faded. She’d had them, too, once or twice in the years she and Link had been together.

The intensity of this one stemmed from it hitting when she was particularly vulnerable. When she and Link were having a particularly bad time. When she was not at all sure why or how to go about fixing whatever had gone wrong. Relationships inevitably encountered rough patches, but this one seemed…ominous. Lately she’d been wondering how much longer she could go on without listening to the doubting voices in her head, without looking at the discouraging signs along the way.

Tonight she’d come home from singing at Eddie’s to find the dinner dishes still stacked in the sink, Link sprawled in front of the TV. She’d gone to him, kissed him, he’d mumbled a question about how the show had gone, and had barely noticed her response. Then she’d gone into the kitchen, cleaned up, made her lunch for the next day, hearing the canned laugh track mingle with Link’s occasional laughter, louder than his usual. It was hard not to feel as though he was rubbing it in that he was enjoying himself while she slaved.

But she couldn’t think that way. Link worked hard, too—most architects did, long hours and often late—and she wanted him to have his wind-down time, his leisure.

She just wanted him to need her with him enough so that maybe one day he’d turn off the TV and come in and help her. Really talk to her and really listen. The way he used to.

But those things she had no control over. She wanted him, but she couldn’t make him want her.

Lucy sighed and pulled her feet up on the window seat, arms around her knees. Big sister Krista would tell her to get therapy or go on antidepressants or kick herself out of it.

Krista would tell her to leave Link and start a relationship with Josh.

Krista had never been in love. Though what Lucy called love, Krista called codependency—or had once in a particularly bitter argument in the ongoing series of arguments they’d been having about Lucy’s relationship.

Everything in Krista’s life was crystal clear, black or white, right or wrong. She knew unswervingly how everyone around her was supposed to behave in every situation she and everyone else found themselves in.

Sometimes Lucy thought nothing would make her happier than for Krista to fall passionately, inextricably in love in a situation so complicated and hopeless that her world would turn upside down and she’d be reduced to angsting uncertainly over every aspect of her existence for hours at a time.

But then, that wasn’t particularly sisterly or charitable of her, was it.

Mom would say she was going through a stage, that love was hard and life had its yin and yang and she needed to buckle down and chin up and get through it.

Dad would chuck her under the chin and wish fervently that his little girl would be happy, then go back to watching the Celtics.

Link would look at her like why was she making such a big deal out of everything? With the implied “again” at the end. Life is beautiful, he’d say. You wake up, you do stuff you enjoy, you go to bed.

Wake up. Do stuff. Go to bed. Every day. Yes, but there used to be more magic, even in that.

The tears slowed; she sniffed and wiped them away with the back of her hand.

A slight sound made her jump; she turned to see Link, bed-ruffled, puzzled, half-asleep, swaying in the doorway, his tall, beautifully muscled body illuminated by the white light from the street behind her.

“Lucy.” He frowned and peered at her across the room. “Why’d you get out of bed?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

He squinted and took a step toward her. “Are you crying?”

She hesitated. If she said no, she’d be lying. If she said yes, she’d have to explain.

“Sort of.”

“What do you mean sort of?” The irritation was starting in his voice already. It seemed to be his regular tone of communication these days. “Are you crying or not?”

“I was.”

“Why?”

“Go back to bed, Link. I’ll be fine.”

“Why are you crying?”

“It’s nothing.”

He made a sound of exasperation. “You’re sitting here crying in the middle of the night in the dark for no reason.”

“Yes.” She barely got the word out for the hot, miserable weight in her chest.

He put his hands on his hips, glaring at her. Opened his mouth to say something, then lifted one hand and let it slap on his flannel-covered thigh. “Fine. No reason. Good night.”

He walked out of the room, stumbled and swore. She heard the headboard bounce against the wall as he flung himself into their bed. He’d sleep badly now and blame it on her. Wake up in a bad mood and they’d eat the breakfast she prepared in a silence that was starting to become horribly familiar.

Lucy hugged her knees close to her chest, rested her chin on top of them and let the tears flow again.

She loved Link. Loved him with all her heart and had since they’d first met in college—six years ago at the beginning of their senior year—and begun dating within a week.

But something wasn’t working. She didn’t know what it was or when it had happened or even how to identify it so she could begin to fix it.

And she was terribly, deathly afraid it would end up tearing them apart.

2

SETH SWAGGERED INTO the offices of the Boston Sentinel, sunglasses on, Red Sox cap pulled firmly onto his head. A tiny gold hoop hung off his left ear, and his knees had felt the December breeze through the holes in his jeans. The hood of his sweatshirt bounced against his upper back as he walked. He had a major ’tude going. And he who had expected to be seething with resentment over this utter waste of his time…was having a ball.

Not a soul would recognize him as Seth Wellington IV, heir to the vast Wellington fortune, CEO of the very respectable company. He hadn’t done anything like this in almost two years. Not since his traveling days, when he’d experimented with different personalities in different towns, tried them on to see how people reacted.

Er, okay, mostly to see how women reacted.

He approached the receptionist, a young perky blonde, and leaned his forearms on her desk, wishing he could whip off his sunglasses and make eye contact but not daring to reveal that much of his face. “Hey, how you doing today?”

“I’m fine, thank you.” She held herself formally, but a tiny smile was trying to curve her lips. “Can I help you?”

“Sure, yeah. I’m Bobby Darwin, old classmate of Krista. Is she here?”

“Krista…”

“Yeah.” He grinned at her. “Marlow.”

“She was in this morning. You just missed her.”

“Damn.” He slapped the desk and straightened, hands on his hips, shaking his head. “Missed her at home, now here. You know where she went?”

“She said she was going to lunch.”

“Yeah?” He opened his eyes wide, looking appalled. “And she didn’t invite you?”

The receptionist giggled, blushing peaches and cream. “No.”

He leaned forward again. What he wouldn’t give to be twenty-two again and free to charm this one into a date. “What’s your name?”

“Charlisse.”

“Well, let me ask you this, Charlisse. You know where she was heading? I’d kinda like to surprise her, you know? We’ve known each other, whoa—” he shook his head as if he couldn’t believe how many years had gone by “—long time. I’m in town, thought I’d look her up and surprise her, but I keep just missing her. What’s up with that?”

Charlisse giggled, clearly warming to him. “I don’t know. Bad karma maybe.”

“Exactly.” He let the silence go a beat too long. “So Charlisse, can you do something for me?”

“What?” She tilted her head and looked at him coyly.

“Well…” He turned right and left, as if checking for eavesdroppers, then leaned on her desk again. “Can you turn that bad karma around and tell me where she went?”

“Um…” Charlisse frowned and her pink, edible mouth twisted.

“I’m not a creep. I swear.” He stood up and crossed himself. “I’m a good Catholic boy, schooled by nuns.”

Charlisse giggled, reminding him of Aimee. “Well, if I was going to tell you, I think I’d tell you she has a lunch date with her sister at Thai Banquet around the corner from Symphony Hall.”

“Fabulous. You are beautiful, Charlisse, thanks.” He backed away a few steps, then stopped and spread out his hands. “If I had roses, I’d give you some.”

“You’re welcome.” She giggled again and reached for the ringing phone.

He waved, strode back down the hall and stepped out into the chill, breath frosting, adrenaline pumping. That was serious fun. He’d found some information about Marlow this morning on the Internet, including that she’d gone to Framingham High School. He got the name Bobby Darwin from one of those online find-your-classmate sites. Who knew what Bobby Darwin looked like now or where he was or whether she knew him in high school. It didn’t matter. Even if she was still best friends with him and figured out Seth was an imposter when Charlisse mentioned him, he’d be long gone, back into his Prada and paperwork, back inhabiting his father’s office.

Around the corner from the Sentinel, Frank, his driver, pulled the car up to the curb. Seth wasn’t wild about the idea of a chauffeur, even less about being driven in a 1988 Lincoln Town Car, but Frank had been in his father’s employ for twenty years and would be able to retire in three. Seth didn’t have the heart to fire him. Frank loved the car, and with the traffic in downtown Boston, a vehicle Seth didn’t have to find a parking space for was a godsend.

From the backseat he directed Frank to Thai Banquet, took off the hat, sweatshirt and earring and changed into wool suit pants, perfectly polished shoes and his lightly starched white shirt, feeling his giddy excitement shutting down further with each button. A respectable businessman once again. Damned depressing.

The car pulled up opposite the Thai restaurant, known for inventive curries and fabulous noodle dishes. One thing he could say about Krista, she knew her Thai food. The place was one of his favorites.

He thanked Frank and emerged into the street, stepped up on the sidewalk and strode to the restaurant front door, decorated with green and red blinking lights for the season. What new information could he discover about Ms. Marlow beyond the basic résumé stuff? Ohio Wesleyan University as a journalism major. Links to articles she’d written. But nothing that explained why she was targeting his stepsister.

If she was eating with her sister, chances were he’d hit the jackpot. Women close to each other couldn’t help spilling every bit of their souls at every meeting. Exhausting to his way of thinking. His local friendships were pretty basic “guy” friendships, not that he’d been in touch with many of them since he’d been back in town. How ’bout them Red Sox? and How’s the golf game? and Angelina Jolie…whoa. He liked them that way. His soul belonged to himself—he saw no reason to empty it onto other people at regular intervals.

Inside the restaurant, inhaling the blissful scents of curry and galangal and lemongrass, he discovered another stroke of luck—Ms. Marlow was eating late and the regular lunch crowd had thinned, leaving him a better shot at sitting close by. He kept on his sunglasses and smiled at Panjai, the hostess, while scanning the diners. Now if Krista would just do him the favor of looking exactly like the fairly plain, gawky high school photo he’d found online….

Uh…no.

Blond and blue-eyed hadn’t changed, but plain and gawky had fled. She now sported one of those wispy, flippy hairstyles that made her look elfin and very, very appealing.

Krista Marlow was not what he’d expected. She was sexy as hell.

She laughed at something her sister said and her face came even more alive with energy and radiance.

Wow.

She was tiny, slender, and dressed fashionably in a black-and-white sweater with pink accents. He’d expected a butch Amazon with a dour expression, dragging on a cigarette and pontificating in a growly voice about how no one deserved to live but her and those select few who could make her life easier.

He requested the booth next to the sisters, keeping his face averted as he passed. From his seat directly behind Krista he’d be able to eavesdrop shamelessly. A peek before he sat told him they’d just been served their entreés, so he’d have some time to listen, though he needed to be back in his office by three for a conference call with the new head buyer he’d hired. Which sounded a lot less fun than what he was doing right now.

Because it was.

Marasri came by to take his order, a round, matronly woman he particularly liked who got her job done with remarkable efficiency for someone who seemed never to move quickly. She filled his water glass and winked. “You ready? You don’t need to look at the menu, I know.”

“I’ll have the chef special soup and green curry chicken, please.”

“No Singha?”

He grinned and shook his head. “No beer today. I have to get back to work.”

“Ah, you work too hard.” She shook her head disapprovingly. “You need to play more.”

He shrugged. If she only knew. “Who has time?”

Marasri gave him a you’ll-never-learn look and ambled off to put in his order. Seth leaned back, ready to listen to whatever his stepsister’s thorn chose to say. With any luck, the conversation would turn to Aimee, and he’d get some idea where the extra dose of bitterness and sarcasm Krista reserved for her came from.

But even if the conversation stayed on other topics, he had to admit he was just plain curious about her. After reading her blogs and some of her articles, this Krista Marlow person intrigued him.

Probably more than he wanted her to.

“SO.” LUCY FORKED UP a pineapple chunk from her yellow curry shrimp and tasted it gingerly. “What’s next for you workwise?”

“Oh, let’s see…” Krista glanced up as a thirty-something man in a business suit walked past and took a seat in the booth behind her. Unfortunately she didn’t get much of a look, but he gave the impression of being attractive.

She turned her attention back to Lucy’s question, digging into her pad thai noodles, wondering when she could safely change the subject to Link and the need, in her opinion, for him to be extracted from Lucy’s life. “Travel, actually. I’m doing a story about affordable off-the-beaten-track romantic getaways for couples wanting to escape holiday pressures. Maybe you and Link…”

Lucy was already shaking her head. “He’d say it sounded remote and chilly.”

Krista shrugged, thinking she could say the same about Link lately. “People shouldn’t have to suffer through all this holiday stress. Christmas should be about love—family love, romantic love, religious love. Love and traditions, like our family’s, caroling and candelabra lighting and making Christmas Eve dinner together. Anything but buy, buy, buy and then buy more and, while you’re at it, buy again…”

She stopped when Lucy’s eyes glazed over. Okay, so she preached her version of the gospel too often. “Anyway, I leave tomorrow for Maine. A place called Pine Tree Inn, way past Skowhegan.”

“Which is…?”

“On the road to nowhere. That’s the point. Get this—forty-five dollars a night.”

“And all the moose you can eat?”

Krista laughed and fluttered her eyelashes. “It sounds sooo romantic, no?”

“Alone?”

“Yeah, there is that.” She sighed. Unfortunately alone was more familiar to her than involved. “I’ve decided to think of it as research for my next fling.”

“The word is re-la-tion-ship.” Lucy enunciated as if she was teaching a two-year-old something new. “Can you say that?”

“Ree-lay-shin…something.” She shrugged helplessly. “I got the ‘lay’ part.”

Lucy rolled her eyes, barely suppressing a smile. “Ha. Ha.”

Krista grinned. She enjoyed playing the role of the great sexual predator. They both knew better, and it made Lucy smile, which Krista desperately wanted her to do more often. “And so, Ms. Lucy, speaking of ree-lay-mumble-mumbles…”

“Oh no.”

“Come on, you knew I was going to ask. What’s up with Lincoln?”

Lucy’s beautiful face shut down and Krista wanted to put down her fork, reach across the table and shake some sense into her could-have-been-a-model, should-be-a-star sister. Fact one: Lucy was miserable with Link. Fact two: Lucy was miserable with Link. And it’s…fact three! He’s outta there! The relationship is retired!

“Things are bad. I don’t know what to do.”

“Get out?”

Her eyes grew defensive. “Krista…”

“Lucy…”

Lucy sighed and chewed a tiny bite of shrimp as if it was enough for a whole meal.

“I know, I know.” Krista waved her sister off. “You hate me saying that. But it seems obvious to me that—”

“Of course it seems obvious to you.” She gestured with her shrimp-impaled fork. “Everything seems obvious to you. The fact is, I love this man.”

“And…?” Krista looked at her blankly. “To quote Tina Turner, what’s love got to do with it? He makes you unhappy. You aren’t enjoying your day job, your performing career is stalled, you look tired and defeated…. Hello? What’s wrong with this picture?”

“You don’t understand.”

Krista leaned forward on her elbows. “Try me.”

“He is The One.”

“The one what? The one guy you’ve ever dated seriously?”

“The One. The love of my life.”

Krista let out a growl of exasperation. “Lucy, the issue is not whether you love him or not. The issue is that you’re not good for each other anymore.”

“We are.” She tightened her lips, looking exactly as stubborn and scared as she had at ten when Krista had talked her out of a ladder-climbing dare she’d accepted from a neighbor kid. “We’ve just lost our way right now.”

“Can I be totally brutally honest here?”

Lucy’s expression turned incredulous. “Like you’re ever not?”

“Point taken.” She lifted her hands in surrender. “You’re clinging to the past, to this ideal of Link that no longer exists, to this dream of marrying him and having babies and—”

“It’s not a dream.” Lucy’s voice broke. “I am going to marry him and I am—”

“When?”

“When he’s—when we’re ready.” She folded her arms across her chest and sank against the back of the booth.

“Think you’ll get a ring at Christmas this year?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you’re hoping?”

Lucy gave a small sad shrug. “It’s all I want.”

“Jeez, Lucy.” Krista stared miserably at her sister. Didn’t she hear what she sounded like? Was the person being stifled by a crappy relationship always the last to know? Or at least to admit it? “I’m watching the Titanic head for the iceberg here. You marry this guy, your shot at a lifeboat is gone. You think a ceremony is going to fix your problems?”

“No.” Lucy lifted her chin and met Krista’s eye defiantly. “But what we have is forever.”

“That’s a line from some sappy movie on the Lifetime Channel.” She forced herself to lower and gentle her voice. “This is reality we’re dealing with here. Or trying to.”

“You don’t understand. You’ve never been in love.”

“I—” She snapped her mouth shut. Kaboom. There it was. The horrible, tremendous truth. Lust, oh yes, infatuation, sure, sometimes pretty strong. But love? Nope. Emphatically not. When her relationships ended, she was over it in a week, sometimes two. And she wasn’t quite sure why.

She took a deep breath. “Okay, you’re right. I haven’t been. Not for real.”

“Because you always fall for creeps.”

Another deep breath. “But, I—”

“Bad boys who excite you for about twenty minutes until they ejaculate and run.”

“Lucy…”

“Am I wrong?”

Krista wrinkled her nose. “Exaggerating maybe. But how about we get back to you?”

“I’d rather stay on this subject.”

“Of my miserable failings? No way. We’re talking about you and how it’s not happening with you guys anymore.”

“Relationships are work.” Lucy stared at Krista pointedly. “If you’d had one that lasted more than the first thrilling months, you’d know.”

Ouch. Okay, fair enough. But none of that took away from the fact that Lucy was unhappy and Krista hated seeing her that way. Working on relationships was one thing. Staying when there was nothing left to stay for was another.

She reached across the table to touch her sister’s hand. “Answer this. Deep down, don’t you really think it’s over?”

Lucy’s shoulders hunched. She dropped her eyes. “Link is a good person. I love him.”

“Avoiding the ques-tion.” Krista sang the words, but gently.

“We’re…definitely in a bad place.”

“Yes or no, Luce?”

“Kris….” She took a deep breath and blew it out. “Okay. I don’t know how we can get past what’s happening.”

“Now we’re getting some—”

“But I know we can if I can just figure it out.”

Krista resisted rolling her eyes. But okay, she’d pushed plenty hard enough. Her runaway mouth had done its thing again. Like an alcoholic or a depressed person, Lucy had to get to that place of wanting to change by herself. All Krista could do was nudge occasionally—hard enough to get Lucy thinking but not so hard Lucy panicked and cleaved unto Link like mortar unto brick. “Okay. I’m done meddling. I’m sorry. I just want you to be happy.”

“I know. I will be when we work this out.” Lucy lowered her tensed shoulders and shook her head, forcing a cheerful expression. “You, on the other hand, are hopeless.”

“Me?” Krista blinked innocently.

“Because you can’t look past a hot body.”

“Mmm, no.”

“Or a cocky attitude.”

“Ooh, you got that so right.”

“Or the huge initial adrenaline rush of lust.”

“Hit me, baby, one more time.”

Lucy laughed and Krista grinned in response, wishing the subject of Link could put that smile on her face.

“See? Hopeless!”

“But at least I’m still out there trying for what I really want. If it doesn’t show up soon, I’m happy playing for a few more years.”

“Happy? Was that not you grumbling and moaning into your noodles two months ago when Robby stopped calling?”

“Oh. Yes.” Krista heaved a wistful sigh. “Robby the Wonder Dick.”

“Mmph.” Lucy slammed down her water glass and covered her mouth to swallow carefully. “Krista.”

“Yes?”

“Someone might hear you.”

“Who’s going to hear me? And even if they did I’m sure they’d be happy for me. Getting skillfully laid is a very good thing.”

“Shhh.” Lucy glanced around, beet-red.

Krista took pity on her. “No one is listening. And you know I go into every relationship hoping I’ll get it right this time. You’re just too fun to tease.”

“Like when you told me I was adopted because my skin smelled wrong?”

“Ha! What about when you told Mom I was planning to throw red socks into a white load of wash and I wasn’t?”

“Who added Shep’s kibble to my party snack mix for Home Ec?”

“Who squirted disappearing ink on my white prom dress the second my date rang the doorbell?”

“Truce!” Lucy held up her little finger, crooked. Krista did the same. They locked pinkies and grinned.

“I just want everything to work out for you.” Krista disengaged her pinkie and squeezed Lucy’s hand.

“I know.” Lucy looked dejectedly down at her barely touched curry. “I’ll think of something.”

“Well, in the meantime, eat. You’re losing weight—and you have none to lose.” Krista picked up her fork and shoveled in some more pad thai. She, on the other hand, could still eat heartily while being carried off by a tornado.

Lucy glanced up at Krista, then back down at her plate. She pushed her food around again with intense concentration it didn’t deserve. “Um…Krista?”

Krista put down her fork. Uh-oh. This was going to be something big. “Yeah, hon?”

“I need to tell you something.”

“I’m listening.”

“There’s this guy at my office….” A blush bloomed on Lucy’s cheek.

Krista’s eyes shot wide. “Omigod! Tell me. What’s happening? He’s into you? You’re into him?”

Lucy kept her eyes down, but her cheeks were rapidly leaving pink behind in favor of red. “I guess…yeah. I’m so confused. It’s…I’m so confused.”

“Well, so what’s happening?” Krista tried to sound calm, but she wanted to give herself a huge high-five. Yes! A possible escape route from being trapped in Lincoln hell! “Has he asked you out?”

“Yes. I can’t go, of course. But he…I mean, he sort of makes me—”

“Ooooh. He does?”

Lucy jerked her head up, frowning. “You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”

“Hot. Crazy. Ready to tear your clothes off at the merest glance from his endless, fathomless, fire-starting eyes.”

“Yeah.” Lucy whispered the word and a big fat tear slipped out of her eye. “That.”

Krista’s heart melted. “Oh, honey, don’t cry. This is not bad. This is…wonderful. I mean—wait. Sheesh, what am I saying? Complicated is what it is.”

“I know. I know.” Lucy pressed her napkin to the corner of her eye. “This morning he asked me if I wanted to have a drink with him after work.”

“And?”

“I said no. Of course I said no.”

“But…you wanted to say yes?”

A tearful nod.

“Oh, boy.” Krista took a deep breath, torn between sympathy and excitement that this might be the shove Lucy needed to move on to greener pastures. From there maybe onto the stage or screen where she belonged, where she’d make “stars” like Aimee into more of a parody than they made themselves.

“You know, Lucy, this might be a sign. I know I’m not in a position to give expert advice on anyone’s love life. But if a man affects you that strongly…and considering that your relationship with Link has stalled out…Well, when someone makes you that crazy, I think you need to go with it.”

“But I barely know him.”

“You gotta start somewhere.” She searched her brain for more arguments. Something had to click with Lucy. “You must be curious about him, aren’t you?”

Another nod.

“I’m not suggesting cheating, just a drink—to see how it feels.”

“But, Kris, this attraction is based on nothing. Link is real, I know him inside out. Josh is hormones and fantasy.”

“So what’s wrong with fantasy? When else are you going to get the chance to indulge one? You’re always so damn sensible.” Krista leaned forward. “You want to know my deepest, darkest, craziest fantasy?”

A piece of silverware clattered from the booth behind her.

“What?”

“Seeing someone that makes me that hot…and just going for it. Right then. Not even saying anything.” She watched her sister’s face brighten and she cheered silently. “Not worrying about a single consequence. Totally animal. Totally wild.”

“But that’s so dangerous, I mean it’s…nuts.” She breathed out a laugh, as if the idea was ludicrous, which of course it was…but exciting.

“Of course it’s nuts. That’s why it’s only a fantasy. But Luce, you can have that fantasy with this guy, only in a safer context because you already know he’s not a psycho.” She put as much earnestness into her eyes as she could, willing Lucy to drop the safe habit and fling herself out there. This was Lucy’s chance to escape.

“I couldn’t do that to Link.”

Krista clenched her teeth. “Have a drink with Josh, that’s all I’m suggesting. If something is meant to be between you, the attraction will only get stronger. If not, you’ll be able to get out with no guilt and no hard feelings.”

Lucy shook her head. “I couldn’t go behind Link’s back.”

“Then tell him.” Krista kept her frustration hidden. “You’re going to have a drink with a coworker, that’s not immoral. Link doesn’t own you.”

Lucy bit her lip, picked up her fork and pushed a shrimp around on her plate. “I’ll think about it.”

“Good.” Yes! Wow! She’d think about it! Progress. “And while you’re there, do me a favor, okay?”

“Oh, jeez, I can’t wait to hear this. What, don’t wear panties and flash him?”

“Oooh, good one.” Krista nodded approvingly. “No. Ask him if he has a brother.”

“Why?”

“’Cause I’m seriously needing some action.”

Another clatter came from the booth behind them. Its occupant leaped up. A waitress hurried over with a towel, ostensibly to mop up a spill.

Oops. Clumsy.

Krista was about to turn back to her meal when something…no, that was crazy. But yes, something…made her crane around farther for a glimpse of the man’s face at the same time his eyes made the trip to visit hers.

Eureka.

Tall, not dark but handsome, yessss, and the kind of kapow chemistry that didn’t happen very often but always, in her experience, promised something good. And did he look familiar? Maybe. Not quite. Most likely looked like someone else she knew.

Happiness.

“Water jump out of your glass?” She smiled and checked discreetly for a ring, hoping, when she found none, that her eyes were broadcasting the invitation she wanted them to be and that he’d respond. Because quite frankly all this talk of fantasy and thrills and the excitement of someone new had put her in the mood for her own adventure. Not to mention that she’d spend the next few days researching romantic holiday getaways without so much as the hint of a romance in her own life.

So how ’bout it, sailor?

Her sailor gave her a tight smile, threw a few bills on his table and walked past, then out of the restaurant, clearly destined for other, much luckier, ports than hers.

But she couldn’t shake the strange feeling that either she’d seen that man before…or that she’d see him someday again. Soon.

3

“YOU WHAT?” SETH ROSE out of his office chair, phone to his ear, trying to tell himself he hadn’t just heard what he’d heard from the lips of his stepsister. “You what?”

“I told you.” Aimee used her snippiest pouty voice, which meant she knew she’d screwed up big-time, but rather than admit it, she’d cement herself into her own version of what was right, and not even the jackhammer of logic could cut her out of it. “I sent Juice after Krista Marlow, to the hotel you said she was going to in Maine.”

“I told you that so you’d relax knowing she was out of your hair for a few days. Not so you’d send your bodyguard to beat her up.” He slumped back into his father’s chair. Giuseppe “Juice” Viegro—hired by Aimee a year ago after a creepy middle-aged man decided she’d been put on Earth to earn his love—could intimidate a sumo wrestler.

“You saw what she wrote about me. She thinks I’m some no-talent moron. Well, I’m not taking it anymore. She needs to understand what she writes about me hurts. And if Juice can intimidate her a little in the process, then I say good! She deserves it.”

“Aimee.” He used his patient-yet-threatening big-brother voice. “Does the word harassment mean anything to you?”

“Whadya think she’s doing to me?”

“It’s her job to write articles.” He closed his eyes, shutting out the portrait of his father on the dark wood wall, holding the Wellington crest as if he was lord of the manor.

“Well, it’s Juice’s job to protect me and that’s what he’s doing.”

“How is he protecting you in Maine?” Seth opened his eyes and turned his back on the portrait. His father and stepmother had raised Aimee to be this way; Seth shouldn’t have to play cleanup.

“He’s the only one I trust. He won’t hurt her, he’ll just talk to her and make her see it my way.”

“Why not pay her a nice threatening visit closer to home?”

“Juice’s family is in Maine. He volunteered when he saw how upset I was. I thought it was sweet of him.”

“Sweet of him?” He clamped his lips together so he wouldn’t say the word that came to mind instead of sweet. Juice might be enormous and terrifying, but he obviously fit just fine around Aimee’s little finger. “Call him off, Aimee. Now. If he so much as touches her, even just to scare her, we could have a lawsuit on our hands so big it would—”

“I’m not calling him off. You’ve done nothing. It’s up to me now.”

“Aimee.”

“No.” She hung up the phone, a toddler throwing a toy, a preteen stamping her foot.

Seth roared so loudly his grandmotherly and extremely efficient secretary, Sheila Bradstone, came to the door and asked him if he was all right. He blinked at her, undoubtedly bright red with fury, clutching his cell phone as if he’d like to hurl it through his corner-office window, kept frighteningly clean by the nightly janitorial crew.

“Fine.” He managed a clenched-teeth smile. “Just a tad frustrated. Anything I can do for you?”

“Now that you mention it, I’m ordering Christmas gifts for the board members and wondered if you wanted me to take care of your family gifts again this year.”

He resisted groaning. Since his mom had died and the warm traditions of his childhood died with her, holidays had become just another pain-in-the-ass obligation. “Sure, thanks. Whatever I got them is fine again. In a different color or something. Use your judgment.”

She gave him a maternal look of concern. “Aimee causing trouble again?”

“What else?”

Sheila shook her gray head and tsk-tsked sympathetically. She’d lived through the battles Seth had getting Aimee to agree to be spokesperson for Wellington in the first place. “If she’d been my daughter…”

Seth laughed, albeit grimly, at the mental picture of Sheila taking a belt to Aimee’s backside. His stepmother had no time for discipline, too busy spending Wellington money as fast as his financially conservative father let her get her hands on it. “I wish she had been your daughter. Then I wouldn’t be at risk of developing ulcers.”

“If you’ll excuse me…” Sheila hesitated, frowning slightly. Which could only mean she had some opinion she was pretty sure he wasn’t going to like.

“Yes?”

“Behavior like Aimee’s is often a cry for attention.”

“Attention?” He shook his head in disbelief. “She doesn’t get enough attention from fans and her bodyguard and the press and hangers-on and—”

“Not from her family.”

He sighed. Possible. But Seth was only a stepbrother, and he and Aimee had never been close. In addition, he had no time for nurturing a spoiled twenty-one-year-old kid. That was his father’s job and his stepmother’s—if they’d ever care to do it.

“You could be right. But if I haul out the mop and bucket every time she makes a mess, how is she going to learn to clean it up herself?”

Except this time there were others who didn’t deserve to be soiled. Like Krista, in spite of what Aimee saw as justifiable provocation. And the Wellington stores. And him.

“Also a good point.” Sheila clucked sympathetically and withdrew. One of the things he liked so much about her. She said her piece and shut up. A lot of women could learn from her example. Like Aimee. And Krista.

He briefly replayed the punch of attraction he felt when their eyes met at Thai Banquet, after he’d knocked over his water like a complete ass. But what man could hear an attractive woman admit to needing sex and remain unmoved? Smart, passionate and sexually open, with an invitation in her eyes that still haunted him—Krista had definitely made an impression, about as far from the one he’d expected as she could get.

Which was why he’d hightailed it out of the restaurant before he did something stupider than spilling his water, like stopping to chat her up. Once she found out he was Seth Wellington, the invitation would be to his own hanging.

So. He glanced at his watch. He had a meeting in half an hour with his hostile, old-fashioned board and George, the head buyer, brilliant at what he did but about as far out of the closet as they came, which meant an hour and a half of exhausting damage control and diplomacy for Seth, similar to what he’d gone through when he’d fired the company’s stodgy advertising agency and brought in a fresh, young batch of talent.

On top of that, Aimee in her infinite generosity, had handed him a situation more potentially damaging than any of Krista’s posts ever had been, one for which no immediate solution came to mind.

So. Start with the facts.

One: Giuseppi “Juice” Viegro was at this moment pursuing Ms. Krista Marlow up to the Pine Tree Inn, two states away, where Seth Wellington had been idiotic enough to mention to Aimee she was planning a visit.

Two: The only person who could call off Juice was Aimee, who apparently had no intention of doing so.

Three: Aimee’s tantrums lasted approximately two days to a week, after which time she could generally be coaxed back into her usual cheerful borderline sanity.

Four: He did not have two days to a week.

Five: The police might be able to stop Juice, but not without risking unpleasant publicity, and he had no favors to call in with any law enforcement in Maine.

Six: He was screwed.

Less than three weeks to the grand opening, featuring commercials starring Aimee’s lovely brunette head, and she was trying her hardest to cause him a premature heart attack.

Possible solution: Leave it alone, hope for the best and assume the worst wouldn’t happen.

But…there was the image of Juice’s huge build threatening Krista Marlow’s tiny body, which brought on a surprising rush of outrage and protectiveness.

No way. He glanced at his watch and eyed the threatening sky to the west. Snow predicted for the evening, the first big storm of the season, sixty percent chance, too much to risk.

But…there were those vibrant blue eyes meeting his at Thai Banquet, the shock of his own powerful attraction reflected in equal measure. And the fun he’d had today when he threw off the CEO mantle and let himself play the casual charmer, free of the mold he’d been encased in for far too long.

Ridiculous. He had too little time as it was to prepare for the upcoming meeting, let alone keep on top of running the rest of the company.

But…he had nothing scheduled after the meeting, and it being Friday, he had some leeway with his schedule this weekend.

Come on, what was he thinking? He’d get hold of Juice’s family and convince someone to let Seth have access to the gentle giant’s cell phone number.

Twenty minutes later, after having his every turn blocked, he admitted it wouldn’t be that easy. He’d done what he could.

But…Krista Marlow was alone in a hotel room in a lodge somewhere in the wilds of Maine, desperately in need of sex, harboring a fantasy of having it anonymously within minutes of meeting a stranger she was attracted to.

Someone please stop him thinking what he was thinking.

He could stay here and pretend none of it was happening, leave Aimee to clean up her own mess, as he felt she should.

Or…

He could go after Juice…and maybe Krista…himself.

“HOW ABOUT THAT DRINK?”

Lucy nearly dropped the file she was about to put away. “Oh. Josh. Hi.”

She made herself look nonchalantly into his dark eyes and told her heart to calm the hell down. New toy. Shiny toy. Not better than what she had at home, just different.

“Did you forget?”

She made herself laugh, mind racing. Forget the possibility of going out with him? Uh, no. But she couldn’t do this. Could she? Was she going to do this? Krista would say she had to.

“No, I didn’t forget.”

He sat on the edge of her desk and tipped his head, watching her. His eyes were so, so dark. “And…do you want to go?”

Yes. God, yes. With a sudden force that shocked the hell out of her, she wanted to.

“My boyfriend. Link. I don’t think he’d…” She gestured stupidly back and forth between herself and Josh.

“This isn’t about Link.”

She flashed him a warning glance and he put up both hands in surrender. He had nice hands, narrower than Link’s and with longer fingers. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m a nice guy. I’m not out to make you do anything you don’t want to. And I’m not trying to bust anything up, especially if he makes you happy.”

Her head started spinning. She took her time tucking the holiday party file back in its place in her desk drawer, wishing he hadn’t phrased it quite that way. Especially if he makes you happy. “Thank you.”

“But unless I’m wrong here, and you can feel free to tell me if I am…”

His silence made her look up again. Her stomach-flipping reaction to his obvious concern made her wish she hadn’t. “Yes?”

“You don’t strike me as happy.”

She bent her head, closed the drawer. “Things are…tough right now.”

Oh, good one, Lucy. Open the door and invite a man you’re madly attracted to right into your vulnerability and confusion. Call her the queen of earnestly blundering into stupid situations. Too much honesty was not a good thing. Especially around someone she had no real relationship with.

“I’m a good listener.” He smiled. Even his teeth were perfect. He looked like a movie star, like a rougher, more masculine version of Orlando Bloom but with that same slender, dark-curled, dreamy perfection. “And I’m good at meaningless chatter if you don’t feel like talking about anything intense.”

“Why do you want to go out with me?”

He gave a little shake of his head as if he couldn’t believe she’d ask such a question. “Because I like you. I don’t get to talk to you much at work. You’re always so serious and I have a feeling there’s a lot more to you than this. A lot more.”

Whoa. His voice had dropped to a husky, seductive murmur on the last three words. She could barely breathe from the excitement of a man so intrigued by her. This was getting very, very dangerous.

Link. She loved Link. This guy was cotton-candy fluff and Link was the salt of her earth.

“Link and I are—”

“This has nothing to do with you and Link. I’m after friendship.” He looked pained for a second, then slid off her desk and crossed to the empty couch where people sat waiting to see her boss, Alexis. “Okay, maybe that’s bullshit. Maybe I just want it to be true because it would be easier. But if friendship is all you have to offer me, I’ll take it, Lucy.”

Her name came off his tongue, traveled across the room and sounded like the best thing she’d ever heard.

“I don’t know what to say.”

He turned and met her eyes, grinned, slow and lazy and sexier than was good for her sanity. “That’s better than no.”

She cleared her throat. Link was home waiting for her. There was no way she could do this to him. “I’m afraid no is all I can say right now.”

“Right now?” He crossed the room back to her and she dropped her eyes, unable to take the hope in his.

She should say or ever. She needed to say it. She had to say it. Or she’d open up such a Pandora’s box she’d never be safe again. Never again feel the world belonged only to Link and her. If she let this man in…

God, she wanted to.

“Maybe…a drink would be okay. Sometime.”

“Not today?”

“No. I can’t. I have to—” She looked at her watch, trying to think of something besides get home to Link and cook his dinner, because that made her sound so dull and slavish. “Go. Somewhere.”

Yeah, quick thinking, Lucy. She was no good at lying. She’d be no good at cheating.

“Okay.” He smiled and touched her shoulder the way a friend might, just a gentle tap. Only it didn’t affect her the way a friend’s touch would. “I’m really looking forward to ‘sometime.’”

She watched him walk away, his smooth, graceful stride so different from Link’s powerful, lumbering step, and sank back into her chair, cheeks on fire. What had she done?

And what was she going to do with the terrible fear that he wasn’t looking forward to “sometime” even half as much as she was?

KRISTA PEERED THROUGH her snow-shrunk windshield, wipers clearing the white fluff away as fast as it could fall. And it was falling fast. Good thing she’d gotten restless and left earlier than she’d planned this afternoon. She was a few miles from the inn and the snow had only been falling for an hour or so, but the radio report indicated travel conditions were going to get worse as the evening wore on.

At least the drive had been lovely. She’d been to Maine quite a few times but never stopped being amazed at the change from the New Hampshire border, across the Piscataqua River, into the peace and green of the appropriately nicknamed Pine Tree State. This time she’d traveled farther north than the usual coastal hotels and shopping meccas. She’d left 95 at Route 201, the Old Canada Road National Scenic Byway, and headed northwest to Skowhegan. Then past. Then after forever, she’d turned onto what was a fairly unpromising-looking little track, which Betty Robinson, the Pine Tree Inn owner, had cheerfully assured her was not going to seem right but was.

If she said so.

Certainly no problems with traffic. Maine was not jammed this time of year as it could be in summer. Ideal for what Krista was after. Off-the-beaten-track romantic holiday getaways.

So far she could see how this could be very romantic. Closer to Skowhegan there had been other choices, one inn in particular had caught her eye online while planning this trip—king-size beds and fireplaces in every room. But she was determined to stay away from the usual destinations, so here she was, miles from a town of any size, bumping through the snow to the Pine Tree Inn, frankly unsure of what to expect….

And wishing she wasn’t alone. Thinking—for no good reason and in spite of having told herself a thousand times to stop—of a pair of hazel eyes recently sighted in a Thai restaurant and wishing they were along for the ride. Then this visit could have been the romantic launch to a new adventure, which maybe this time would have worked out forever.

Or at least longer than a-few-to-several weeks.

Total attraction. Unbelievable attraction. Nearly unbearable attraction.

Wistful sigh.

Had he responded to her amazing charms and inviting smile by walking forward, grabbing her arms, hoisting her to her feet, gazing into her eyes while breath swelled his manly chest and declared he’d never felt such a pull to any woman before and would she please accompany him to the nearest spot where they could get comfortable and privately and immediately naked or he’d go mad from wanting?

Um. No.

He’d missed most of her inviting smile and obviously had no problem dismissing her amazing charms, because after that breath-stealing connection, he couldn’t get away from her fast enough.

Not that it was necessarily about her. Maybe he really was in a crazed hurry to leave, and maybe he regretted walking away from what might have been as much as she regretted him walking.

But then maybe Lucy was right, and Krista was too into the hot bod and the hot chemistry and maybe she should start dating men she wasn’t that attracted to. Men she could feel so-so about while insisting she was in love, hanging on year in and out, after anything they had in common had long since fled screaming from the boredom. Just like Lucy.

Good idea!

Not.

She’d a thousand times rather suffer through one passionate relationship after another exploding into shrapnel than hang on to the safe but mediocre for fear of being alone.

Though just once she’d really like to get it right, without the explosion, at least not so damn soon after the fun started.

Another mile through ever-thickening snow and the road widened into an empty parking area—was she the only guest here?—with tiny cabins barely visible through the white whirl, the closest with a red Office sign hanging beside the door and Christmas lights glowing blurry green along the eaves.

Krista parked and uncramped her fingers from the wheel, stretched and rolled her shoulders. She’d made it. And with the fat flakes falling as fast as possible, not a moment too soon.

Door open, she stepped into the crunching snow, already accumulated to over an inch, and pulled out her overnight bag, glad she’d worn boots just in case. A mug of hot decaf would taste fabulous right now, and she looked forward to a chat with the owners about annual holiday events in the surrounding area, to flesh out her article.

Unfortunately chatting would have to be done another time. A black-and-white Closed sign hung in the office window under an envelope with her name on it taped to the glass and another one above it that read “Smith.” Great. Not only was she the only guest, the place was entirely deserted of staff, too. Who knew if this Smith person would even show up, considering the weather.

Hmm.

She did a slow three-sixty, taking in the darkening sky, the wind picking up.

Romantic? Or creepy?

For a second, the idea of driving back into Skowhegan appealed. Until she realized she’d have to drive through worsening snow, which could become not only an annoyance but a serious hazard on unfamiliar roads. And she’d have wasted the chance to write this article, which could become a humor piece if need be: Romantic-Getaways Author Becomes Stephen King Heroine.

Only, in case the fates were feeling tempted, she was kidding about the horror stuff.

Kidding.

She shivered, grabbed the envelope and ripped it open. Two keys—thank goodness they’d honored that request. She’d locked herself out of too many hotel rooms to count and asked for an extra as a matter of routine now. On each key ring hung a small, rough wooden circle, the cross-section of a tree branch with distinctive white birch bark still clinging in places. The circles had the cabin numbers burned into them. She peered at the first. Cabin six. Frowned at the second. Unless she was mistaken, the other key had a nine on it, though it was hard to tell, the way the wooden disks spun. Someone must have picked them up in a hurry, not realizing one was upside down.

Nice. Though considering the weather, no chance of her coming outside to get locked out in the first place. Not as if there was a lot of nightlife in the area to be explored…except maybe animal.

Krista glanced around nervously through the white at more white-covered shapes. Trying to feel like a brave adventuress instead of a city girl tossed to the wolves, she made her way to cabin six and tried both keys. The six key worked, the nine definitely didn’t. Oh, well. She was only here one night then, weather permitting, on to a B and B in Jackman tomorrow. Having only one working key wasn’t going to be a problem.

She pushed inside and flipped on the light, relieved to be out of the snow but surprised not to be enveloped in a rush of warm air. Maybe they left the cabins unheated until the guests arrived to save fuel? Understandable, but chilling. As was the total silence. She prowled around, hyperconscious of every bump, swish and creak of her steps, taking in the cold-but-cozy feel of the place—a bit too log cabin and geometric Native American for her taste, but then if a lot of their guests were hunters, she couldn’t exactly expect floral and froufrou.

There was a gas fireplace on the right, at the foot of the king-size bed. On a table to the left sat a potted miniature Christmas tree, three wrapped fresh-looking blueberry muffins, boxes of cold cereal and—thank goodness—a coffeepot with several packs of good coffee and tiny tubs of half-and-half. A mini refrigerator held glass bottles of premium orange juice and single-serving cartons of milk. The spotless bathroom had a large tub and a small basket with shampoo, conditioner and lotion.

Not half bad for less than fifty dollars a night. Very nice, in fact.

But unless she had less than the sense she was born with, no thermostat. No heating unit against the wall. So the fireplace must be it. How cozy. And romantic! She swooped over to it and searched for the controls. Exactly the warming touch the room needed, figuratively and literally.

Except, after a good half hour of frustrated attempts, finally using the last match in the box she’d dug out of her purse, she couldn’t get the damn thing to work. As far as she could tell, no gas was flowing at all.

She picked up the room phone and left a message with the office, though chances were with the storm raging, no one would be making the rounds tonight.

Irritation.

Thank God it was in the thirties and not single digits. She’d brought her new warm flannel nightgown instead of the one washed thin, and in a king bed the blankets could be doubled over onto one side. For internal heat, the coffeemaker could make decaf, and she always had herbal-tea packets in her purse.

She’d be okay. This would be an adventure, in fact. Right? Her article would be funny and charming. Single woman’s attempt to stay warm on lonely night in romantic cabin.

Very lonely.

She changed into her nightgown and brushed her teeth, starting to shiver. Except for the occasional wind gust or creaking branch, the silence was absolute—that particular dead silence of a snowy evening. Even cities grew quiet, muffled, when the lovely white blanket dropped. Though here, instead of cars picking their way cautiously through the snow, she could all too easily picture moose and bear nosing around the cabin in the darkness.

Gulp. Good thing she slept with earplugs or she’d imagine the great beasts pawing and snuffling to get in no matter what she heard.

Of course, bears and moose sounded pretty tame once you started imagining forest-dwelling psychos investigating apparently deserted hotels. Drunk. High. Armed.

Not going to think about that.

Not.

She slid into bed, unwilling to stay out in the chill long enough to do her Yoga routine—it was hard to relax when your teeth were chattering. The sheets were icy at first, but gradually her body heat and the huge pile of blankets started a slow, lovely thaw, which changed the icebox into a deliciously warm cocoon. Better with company, but mmm, nice. Maybe she’d start turning off the radiators in her apartment at night, too. Maybe that article would come out just fine.

She yawned and blinked a few times, then closed her eyes, trying to clear her mind, fill it with peace and calm and warm golden light instead of pImages** of the vast woods around her and things that go bump in the night and the fact that no one could hear her scream.

Mostly she’d keep at bay the fact that during this off-the-beaten-track romantic getaway research trip, she had absolutely no hope of romance.

4

HE SHOULD BE FURIOUS.

Seth Wellington IV should be ragingly furious. He should be railing at Aimee, cursing Juice, hauling out his cell to hurl orders at his secretary, Sheila, and generally making life miserable for as many people as possible, which was what pissed-off CEOs were best at.

Most of all he should be annoyed at himself for wasting time going on this ridiculous wild-goose chase into the middle of absolutely freaking nowhere in a blinding snowstorm when he had about a million other things he should be doing.

Instead he was loving it. The perfect errand for a man who must be every kind of fool to be on it.

The second he’d crossed the bridge into Maine, leaving behind beautiful but industrial Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and entered the vast peaceful expanse of pine forest, he’d known he’d been away too damn long. Maine never failed to feed his soul. And judging from the way he’d rolled down his windows and gleefully gulped familiar lungfuls of the cold, damp, pine-scented air, his soul had been starving.

That it was insanity to go on this trip he didn’t question. That he felt saner than he had in way too long was something that needed closer inspection….

When he wasn’t trying so hard to stay on the road.

Krista hadn’t been kidding about the off-the-beaten-track part. He’d been to Skowhegan before, to the state fair, but not beyond the town. His travels in Maine had been primarily coastal. He’d stayed way up the coast near the Canadian border a whole summer, longer than he’d stayed anywhere else on his trip. The life, the smells, the atmosphere, the old man he’d gotten to know better than anyone during his year-plus of travel, all had found a place in his heart and all had been nearly forgotten until his return today.

But, of course, this time he was, as always, operating on short notice and a tight schedule. The whole way from Boston he’d kept an eye out for Juice’s hideously over-detailed red Camaro and come up empty—not that he thought it likely he’d find that needle in this highway haystack. Seth had called Aimee several time to see if she’d heard anything, but Her Poutiness refused to take his call.

And Sheila wondered why he didn’t like dealing with his stepsister any more than he had to?

He found a gap in the woods that fit the description of the road the inn owners told him to look for and took the turn slowly, following the flat white track through the trees, which theoretically would lead him to the Pine Tree Inn. He damn well hoped so. The gas in his car would get him back to Skowhegan to fill up in the morning but not a hell of a lot farther. He couldn’t afford to be wandering lost in the Maine woods.

The thought startled him. Since when? Years back he would have relished such an adventure. If he’d run out of gas, he would have slept in his car or found a way to make a shelter and find food, thrilled at being so directly in touch with basic survival instincts. Times like that brought a man closer to the essence of being human.

Hint: It had nothing to do with corporate merchandising.

So he’d grown soft again.

Well that was life. When you were sure fate would lead in the direction you needed to go to learn the most, it took a sharp U-turn and taught you something else. This trip tonight had made him realize all the more how far he’d strayed from the person he thought he’d become. Chasing after Aimee’s screwup had already managed to be a lot more worthwhile than he’d expected—and there was still more to come.

Though he really didn’t want to arrive at the inn and find Juice there causing Krista any trouble. Unfortunately since Juice had a head start on both Seth and the snow, that was the most likely scenario. Then what? At worst, confrontation or hostility from Juice. Confrontation and hostility from Krista was probably given, but he had more confidence in his ability to handle her. Seth was no wimp, but Juice was…enormous. And as a bodyguard, probably trained in violent confrontation. Comforting thought.

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