Chasing Christmas Eve Read online

  “Don’t you?” He dunked a piece of fried zucchini into ranch sauce until it was more ranch than zucchini and then popped it into his mouth. When he’d chewed and swallowed, he flashed her a smile. “You know me, right? And I’m an open book.”

  That made her laugh. Spence Baldwin was good-looking, smart, and funny, and he had good taste in friends and food, but he wasn’t an open book, not by any stretch of the imagination—and her imagination was good, very good. He had secrets in his eyes, secrets that haunted him.

  And so do you . . .

  “I can tell you all sorts of things about this city,” he said.

  “Such as?”

  “Such as it’s seven by seven miles perched on a peninsula of forty-three hills.”

  “Wow,” she said. “You’re right. I didn’t know that.”

  “I had a crush on Mrs. Stein, my fourth-grade teacher. I used to memorize all the geography facts to please her.”

  She laughed.

  “All better?” he asked.

  She looked down and saw the mountain of bare chicken bones on her plate and had to laugh. “I was starving.”

  Spence nudged the zucchini her way and she bit her lip, torn. On the one hand, she was full. On the other, the zucchini looked amazing. She blew out a sigh and ate one. “Oh. My. God.”

  “Right?”

  “Shh.” She took another while he laughed. And then another. When she finally leaned back, Spence was smiling at her.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Cute.”

  She resisted squirming in her chair because she hadn’t straightened her hair or reapplied makeup, and she knew what she looked like.

  Harried.

  Tired.

  Overworked.

  Stressed.

  And definitely not cute. “Thanks for feeding me. And for the ice and rice.” She slipped off the stool. “But I’ve gotta go.”

  “Where to?”

  To get her life together . . . “I still need to find a place to stay.”

  “How about right here?”

  Chapter 5

  #SonOfANutcracker

  Colbie had just taken a sip of water when Spence said those words.

  “How about right here . . .”

  As a result, her sip of water got sucked into the wrong pipe and she choked and very nearly snorted water out her nose. This would’ve been no surprise at all to anyone who knew her, but she was really trying to be mysterious here.

  And sexy, a voice inside her head said. Admit it—you want him to think you’re mysterious and sexy.

  He handed her a napkin.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, cleaning herself up. “But I can’t stay with you. I’m not . . .” She shook her head. “I’m not interested in any sort of relationship. I’m only going to be here until Christmas Eve, so I really have no business starting something. I mean, not that you’re not . . . well, really nice to look at, but—”

  “There’s a studio apartment on the third floor,” he said, looking amused. “Furnished. Available. Elle’s getting a key to show it to you.”

  “Oh.” She felt her face flame. Wow, she was such an idiot. A socially inept idiot, which was yet another reason on her long list of reasons for running away for the month. She had no skills for navigating these kinds of waters, none. She needed a GPS for her life. Was there an app for that? Someone needed to invent that and pronto.

  He was smiling outright now. “You done with your panic attack?”

  She blew out a breath. “Yes.” She shook her head at the both of them. “And while it’s very kind of you to ask Elle to get me a place, I don’t want to impose.”

  “No imposition,” he said. “The apartment’s empty.”

  She bit her lower lip and studied him.

  He smiled. “It’s sad when it’s empty.”

  She burst out laughing and it felt so foreign that she laughed some more. Maybe, she thought, maybe today, even with the rough beginning, was supposed to happen. Maybe being here, right here, was exactly what she needed to get back on track. “Why would you help a perfect stranger?”

  “We’re not strangers,” he said. “We went swimming in the fountain together.”

  “But I don’t even know what you do for a living,” she said just as Finn came back to top off their drinks again.

  Finn slid a look at Spence like he was really curious about how Spence would respond to this.

  Spence didn’t respond.

  Colbie tried Finn. “Want to tell me why your friend is so mysterious about his job?”

  “No can do,” Finn said, but he said it very nicely.

  She eyed Spence again. “How about if we play Twenty Questions.”

  “Sure,” he said agreeably.

  “If I get close, are you going to admit it?”

  He just smiled.

  “Never mind,” she said. “It won’t matter, because I’m good enough to be able to tell if you’re lying.”

  Finn snorted. “I like you. I like you a lot, so I feel like I’ve got to tell you this . . .” He leaned in as if imparting a state secret. “There’s a bimonthly poker game that goes on in the basement. It’s highly competitive. And Mr. Poker-Face here almost never loses. Our boy’s got some serious game.”

  “Elle used to win every time,” Spence said casually. “But that was before they let me join in. Now the two of us aren’t allowed to play on the same night.”

  “Because they’re both asshole losers,” Finn said.

  “Hey,” Spence said. “Don’t sugarcoat it or anything.”

  “I don’t sugarcoat. I’m not Willy Wonka.” And then he moved off to serve other customers.

  Colbie looked at Spence, who seemed like the very picture of laid-back and easygoing and not even close to anything like fiercely intense or competitive. “So you play poker,” she said, “which means you’re a thrill chaser. What else? Do you play any dangerous sports?”

  “Yeah. Sometimes I disagree with Elle.”

  Colbie laughed. “You don’t like to lose?”

  “I don’t know,” he said modestly. “Because I never do.”

  Oh boy. “Are you a lawyer?”

  It was his turn to laugh. “No.”

  She looked at his hands, taking them in hers, turning them over, running a finger along his work-roughened palms. “Are you a builder?”

  He stared at her for a long beat. “No. But you’re getting warmer.”

  She blew out a breath and studied his clothes. Sexy-guy jeans. An expensive-looking, perfectly fitted black button-down in a material that made her fingers ache to touch. It was opened over a T-shirt that had a series of math equations on it. Or maybe physics. “College professor?”

  “No.”

  He had Oakley aviator sunglasses on top of his head and his regular glasses on his face, making her smile. His hair was windblown and still in need of a cut, but clearly his last one had been excellent. “You do work though,” she said. “Right?”

  Again something flickered in his gaze. “One hundred percent.”

  “All the time, actually,” Finn offered on another pass-by.

  “Porn star?” she asked.

  Spence grinned. “Ah, man. You recognized me.”

  She had to laugh. “You’re a hard man to read.”

  “Tell us something we don’t know,” Elle said, slipping onto the stool next to Spence. She handed him a key. “The spare to the third-floor apartment.”

  Colbie found it odd that Elle gave the key to Spence. What did he have to do with the rentals if she was the building’s general manager?

  “Let’s go see the apartment,” Spence said, standing, dropping some cash onto the bar.

  “Oh,” Colbie said, opening her purse, shoving aside some notes to look for her wallet. “Let me—”

  Spence put a big warm hand over hers. “I’ve got it.”

  “I appreciate it,” she said. “But I have this thing.” She met his gaze. “I don’t let men pay for my food, because
then . . .” She broke off and shook her head. Because then they thought she owed them. Maybe that had been just Jackson, but the memory of how badly she’d misread that situation was sobering and she intended to stand by her resolve.

  “Because then . . .?” Spence pressed.

  “I just don’t like to owe anyone.”

  “Okay, how about this,” he said. “Since you’re going to be around for a few weeks, you can get the next round of chicken wings and zucchini chips. Can you handle that?”

  She considered it. Surely she could find him during her three-week stay and make sure she repaid the favor by feeding him at least once. “I suppose so, yes.”

  He smiled at her.

  Elle, looking annoyed, led the way, her heels clicking, clicking, clicking as they walked back through the courtyard, which was so cute and charming that Colbie couldn’t wait to grab her laptop and sit on one of the wrought-iron benches and write, a thought that had her heart pumping.

  She wanted to write! That was a good sign.

  “It’s a studio,” Elle warned her on the third floor, just outside the front door. “So it’s small.”

  “Small is fine,” Colbie said. “Thank you so much.”

  Before Elle could unlock the door, an old woman poked her head out of the apartment across the way. “What’s going on out here?” she wanted to know.

  Elle waved at her. “Hi, Mrs. Winslow. We’re just showing the apartment to a possible new tenant, that’s all.”

  Mrs. Winslow cupped a hand to her ear. “What’s that?”

  Elle raised her voice. “You might be getting a new neighbor!”

  “ ’Bout time. Is he a young hottie?”

  “Well . . .” Elle looked like maybe she was trying to hold back a smile.

  “It’s okay if he isn’t young. A silver-fox hottie would probably be just as good. I guess age don’t matter too much, as long as he’s still got what it takes.” She looked Spence up and down. “Is it you, Spencie? Because I could totally handle you.”

  To his credit, Spence just smiled. “You think so?”

  “I know so,” Mrs. Winslow said smugly and then ruined it by hiccuping and giving them all a whiff of whiskey.

  Spence looked pained. “Do you remember what we said about alcohol?”

  “Yes.” She beamed. “That the Jack mixes with everything but good decisions. Don’t worry though—I never mix the two.”

  Elle snorted and opened the door. “Take care, Mrs. Winslow.”

  When they were inside with the door shut, Elle shook her head at Spence. “You shouldn’t encourage her.”

  “She’s still mourning.”

  “I know. And I also know that you’re bringing her food and taking care of her. It’d be incredibly sweet if I didn’t also know you were the one who got her ‘the Jack.’ ”

  “It was what her husband used to drink,” he said. “She’s having a hard time. So I bring her stuff.”

  Okay, so the guy saved people from the fountains and old ladies from grief. He seemed too good to be true, which—in Colbie’s experience—meant he wasn’t to be trusted. She needed to remember that when he looked at her with those startlingly clear eyes.

  Shaking that off, she took in the place. It was small but also . . . cozy. The furniture was sparse but nice. Really nice. The bed looked brand-new, and sitting on top of the mattress was an unopened set of good-quality sheets and a pair of down pillows. A bar-top counter divided the kitchen from the living area, and there was a dumbwaiter that fascinated her and . . .

  A black cat.

  “That’s the cat who spooked Daisy Duke into charging Colbie,” Spence said. “It must’ve come up on the fire escape.” He headed to the opened kitchen window to check it out. “Do you know who it belongs to, Elle?”

  “No. I’ve never seen it before.”

  “I’ll get it and take it outside—” Spence broke off when he turned back around and found Colbie holding the cat.

  “It’s a she,” she said, hugging the poor thing. “And she’s so thin and gangly that I think she’s just a teenager.”

  Elle shook her head. “Don’t worry. She’s not your responsibility—”

  “Oh, she’s totally welcome to share the place with me,” Colbie said and, still holding the cat, walked across the floor.

  Her floor.

  She looked out the window and took in the view. God, the view. She couldn’t wait to get out there, to listen to tidbits of conversation as people walked by, letting it all stoke the flames of her imagination as she wrote.

  It was such an ache that she nuzzled the cat to hide the fact that her eyes were burning with relief.

  She really had done the right thing by coming here.

  “So what do you think?” Elle asked.

  “Are you kidding? I love it. I’ll take it.” Colbie took a peek in the bathroom. Catching a glimpse of herself and the black cat in the mirror, she smiled.

  The cat stared at her, not unfriendly but not exactly ready to be besties either. “It’s okay,” Colbie told her. “I’ll grow on you.” She moved to leave the bathroom but stopped when she heard Elle talking.

  “She didn’t even ask how much.”

  “So?” Spence asked.

  “So, you don’t think that’s . . . weird?”

  Colbie—and the cat—walked into the room and looked at Elle. “How much?”

  Elle had the good grace to grimace. “Okay, maybe I’m a little overprotective.”

  “I get it,” Colbie said. “I’m the same. So really . . . how much? And do you want me to fill out an application?”

  “Yes.” Elle pulled an app from her purse and named the price.

  Colbie nodded. “I’ll fill this out and bring it to you with the cash for the month’s rent right away.”

  “It’s getting late. In the morning will be fine,” Elle said. “And you don’t need to pay in cash. You can pay through an app or with a check.”

  Colbie wasn’t ready for her world to track her. She’d brought cash. “Is cash a problem?”

  Elle slid Spence a look, sighed, and shook her head. “No problem.”

  Chapter 6

  #SonOfACheez-It