Miracle On 5th Avenue

“I could have you removed.”

“You could. But then I’d call your grandmother and tell her where you are. I’m sensing you don’t want me to do that, so I’m sure we can reach a compromise we can both live with.”

“You’re blackmailing me?” After a decade spent exploring the darker side of human nature nothing ever surprised him, but this did.

Her eyes were kind, her mouth lush and perfectly curved. On the outside she was gentle and sweet. Inside she was solid steel. The contrast might have intrigued him, but right now all it did was aggravate.

He was about to find a way of forcibly ejecting her when he noticed the volume of snow falling past the windows of his apartment.

The sight chilled him.

He walked to the window in silence and stared at the world outside, transformed and remodeled by layer upon layer of snow. The thick curtain of flakes veiled his view of Central Park.

Memories rose in dark, menacing clouds, their presence blackening everything. He was yanked back in time to a night exactly like this one.

The same deceptively harmless swirl of snow had proved as deadly a killer as any he’d written into his stories. The unexpected twist had made it all the more brutal.

Time was supposed to heal, but he knew he hadn’t healed. He didn’t know how to heal. His emotions were as raw and real as they’d been three years earlier. All he could do was cling on and survive. Get up, get dressed, get through another day. He wouldn’t have thought there was anything that could make it harder, but one thing did and that was the pressure he felt from other people to “move on.” The knowledge that he’d been unable to meet their expectations when it came to recovery added to his sense of failure.

He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, blocking out the images and the memory of the last time he’d seen Sallyanne alive. He wanted to be able to go back and think about the good times, but so far that hadn’t happened. Like a misbehaving computer, his mind had crashed and frozen on that one single moment he would have chosen to forget.

“I love snow, don’t you? It’s like being wrapped in a great big hug.” Her soft, dreamy voice cut through the nightmare playing out in his head and he opened his eyes, knowing that whatever his grandmother might have shared with this woman over cake and tea, she hadn’t shared all the details of his wife’s death.

Her innocent, optimistic comment grated on him, like sandpaper rubbed over raw skin.

“I hate snow.”

She stood by his side, gazing out of the window, and he turned to look at her, aware of the false intimacy created by their circumstances.

He wasn’t sure what he saw in her face. Wistfulness? Contentment? Either way it was obvious that she was as trusting of the weather as she was of people.

I’m a cup half-full sort of person.

Exasperation turned to resignation. He knew there was no decision to be made.

No matter how much he wanted to send her away, he couldn’t do it. Not with the blizzard currently engulfing Manhattan. No one else was going to die because of him.

“Decorate the apartment if you must. Tie bows on the stairs, hang mistletoe from the light fixtures. I don’t care.” He knew he was being ungracious, but he couldn’t help it. He felt trapped, cornered, even though she could hardly be held responsible for the weather. She probably thought he made Scrooge look like a man full of Christmas spirit. “I’m going to work. Do what the hell you like, but don’t disturb me.”

* * *

Eva felt about as welcome as a rat in a restaurant.

She stripped off her coat and carried her bags through to the kitchen. Everything shone and she stood for a moment admiring the blend of gleaming metal and smooth polished countertops. She’d been in enough kitchens to know that this one was custom-built and expensive.

“I may feel like a rat in a restaurant,” she muttered, “but at least it’s a beautiful restaurant.”

Keeping one eye on the door upstairs through which Lucas had vanished, she started to unload the food.

The refrigerator was huge. It was also mostly empty. He hadn’t prepared for the blizzard?

She stared at the empty shelves, comparing it with the fridge in her own apartment. That one was half the size and twice as full, brimming with vegetables and the result of her creative experiments in the kitchen. This one looked as if the person who owned the apartment hadn’t yet moved in.

Maybe he couldn’t be bothered to buy furnishings, but what had he been eating?

She pulled open the cabinets and found a few jars, a few tins and some pasta. And six unopened bottles of whiskey.

On the far side of the kitchen one entire wall had been given over to wine storage, row upon row of bottles with only the tops visible. The only time she’d ever seen so many bottles of wine in one place had been in a restaurant. It was eye-catching and decorative, but she had a feeling its purpose wasn’t to provide aesthetic appeal. Lucas Blade was either a collector or he was a big drinker.

No wonder his grandmother was concerned.

She was starting to have her own concerns, but mingled in with those concerns were other feelings. She paused and pressed her palm against her stomach, trying to subdue the butterflies. He was troubled and complicated. Not a man she should be looking twice at. Not that she was saving herself for Mr. Right, but at the very least she had to like someone and had to believe they liked her back.

She wasn’t sure what she thought about Lucas Blade. She felt sympathy for his situation, and she was certainly attracted to him, but as for whether she liked him—she needed more time before she could answer that. And he certainly didn’t seem to like her.

Reaching for more bags, she carried on unloading the food.

Why didn’t he just tell his family he was at home and didn’t want to be disturbed? Why concoct an elaborate story that he was in Vermont?

She stowed a box of eggs and glanced up the stairs where Lucas had vanished. In the brief moment before he’d turned his back on her, his face had been like thunder. She’d been sure he was about to forcibly eject her from the building, or at least find some legitimate way to get rid of her and reclaim his territory but something, and she had no idea what, had caused him to reverse his decision.

She’d expected to be on her own here for a couple of nights. A few hours ago she would have rejoiced in the prospect of company, but now she wasn’t so sure. There was something inexplicably lonely about being trapped in an apartment with someone who didn’t want you there.

Maybe she should have done as he’d ordered and left, but how could she possibly leave a person who was suffering as he was? She couldn’t, especially knowing that no one else was going to check on him. There was no way she could ever abandon another human being who was feeling that bad.

If something had happened to him she wouldn’t have been able to live with herself.

And then there was the matter of the job itself.

Paige was the one who had so far won most of the new business for their fledgling company. She was a dynamo who had worked tirelessly to get Urban Genie off the ground.

This was the first significant piece of business Eva had brought in and she didn’t want to lose it. Nor did she want to let her client down. And Mitzy had become more than a client. She was a friend.

Eva unpacked the rest of the bags, leaving only the ones that contained decorations for the tree.

Those could wait until the tree was delivered.

Trying to forget about Lucas, she pulled on her headphones and selected her favorite festive soundtrack from her playlist, reminding herself not to sing. She didn’t want to disturb him while he was writing.

Two minutes into the song, Paige called.

“How are you doing? Is it weird being in an empty apartment?”

Eva glanced upward to the silent space above her. “It’s not empty. He’s here.”

“Who is ‘he’? And I’m putting you on speaker. Frankie is gesturing to me.”

“Lucas Blade.” She explained the situation, leaving out mention of the police.