Chasing Christmas Eve Jill Shalvis Read Online
Prologue
#OhPluckIt
Colbie Albright stood in the crowded LaGuardia Drome staring up at the flight deviation board. Her chest was tight and her throat felt similar it was closing in.
Classic anxiety, she told herself. Just exhale right through it.
Non that her body listened to her encephalon. Her trunk rarely listened to expert sense.
In any example, it was December 1 and people were rushing all effectually her like chickens without their heads, while she stood even so trying to effigy out her option of destination. Her only requirements were warm and tropical. An exotic beach would fit the pecker perfectly.
Aruba.
Jamaica.
Oooh, I wanna take you . . .
Cracking, and now the Beach Boys song was stuck in her caput. Doing her best to shake it off, she eyed the board over again. So many choices for a twenty-eight-year-onetime runaway with a packed bag and no regrets.
From inside her purse her phone vibrated and she grimaced. Okay, so there were regrets. Buckets of them that made her suitcase feel like a yard pounds and sucked the air from her lungs, but she refused to allow herself turn tail and go back.
She was doing this.
Merely even as she thought it, the lath changed and a bunch of the flights—all the southbound ones—blinked off and came dorsum on . . . showing equally delayed or cancelled.
"A surprise late season hurricane," someone said in disgust next to her. "Of course."
Okay, so she wasn't going south. There was a flight to Toronto in 20 minutes simply Toronto was the opposite of warm and tropical, and plus it wouldn't give her plenty time to catch some breakfast. Apparently running away really ramped up a girl'south appetite . . .
That's when her gaze locked on a flight leaving for San Francisco in an 60 minutes. Huh. California, the country of celebrities, avocados, surfer dudes. She'd never really had a chance to relish whatsoever of those things. In fact, LaGuardia was the furthest she'd been from home in three years. But hey, there was a starting time time for everything, right?
Right.
She nodded, psyching herself upward for this. Afterward years of taking intendance of her family and working herself half to death, she deserved this. She needed this.
And then . . . San Francisco or bosom.
It would piece of work, she assured herself. Getting away would allow her to observe her muse once again, her love for the writing. And then, convinced, she strode to the ticket counter.
15 minutes later, she hit the very long, very slow-moving security line. Surrounded by people complaining near the expect, she was in the process of removing her laptop, her sweater, her shoes, her watch, and her bracelet and was patting herself downwardly to make sure she'd gotten everything out of her pockets when a TSA agent pulled her aside.
"Oh," she said, "I'k not carrying any liquids over three ounces."
The guy shrugged. "Random female," he said. "That your bag?"
"Yes." This was what she got for ownership a last-minute one-way ticket and she bit her lower lip as the amanuensis started to get through her things. She favored layers, particularly tees and sweaters with loose skirts or yoga pants—even though she'd never been to a yoga class in her life. He pawed through everything, pausing at the sight of her bunny slippers—which, hey, totally completed her favorite writing compatible.
"My iii-year-old child has these," he said and and then kept going, alternately looking upward at the 10-ray monitor and down at her bag, clearly seeking something specific. He moved bated a lightweight jersey dress and she grimaced as some lacy, silky things were exposed. Possibly her dress were nothing special only she did have a affair about what she wore beneath them, her i concession to feeling sexy in this crazy life she'd built where she didn't have fourth dimension to actually be sexy . . .
Luckily for his health, the agent'southward stoic expression never changed. No doubt he'd seen information technology all and couldn't care less every bit he dug past her favorite peach lace bra-and-panty set, a box of tampons, and . . .
"Ah," he said, belongings upward an apple.
"Are apples a problem?" Colbie asked.
"They sometimes look weird on the screen."
"No weirdness here," she said. "Just a forenoon snack. It's not even poisonous." She added a harmless smile.
He didn't return it, because he was staring at some papers she'd newspaper-clipped and shoved in her purse to read on the plane. "How to murder people by poison without detection," he read aloud.
The woman behind Colbie gasped in horror.
"Okay," Colbie said, pointing to them. "That'due south not what it looks like."
The woman behind her, cradling a leopard-print true cat carrier, had turned and was frantically whispering to the people behind her.
"Actually," Colbie said. "Information technology'due south a funny story, actually."
Merely the TSA guy was flipping through her notes, not fifty-fifty remotely interested in her funny story. He didn't demand to read aloud what he was looking at, considering she knew exactly what was there—other Google searches, such as how to get abroad with murder using a variety of different everyday products that weren't considered weapons. "It's research," she said to the room.
"Yes, that's probably what I'd say too," a guy said from somewhere behind her.
Colbie didn't look back; she just kept her gaze on the TSA amanuensis, trying to look nonthreatening as she said something she rarely if ever said aloud. "I'm a writer."
"Uh-huh." He pulled out his radio now with an ominous "Female agent, please."
"Oh, pluck it!" she snapped.
The agent narrowed his gaze. "What's that supposed to hateful?"
"Nil bad," she said. "That's the point. See, nosotros've got this swear jar at home, which means I've gone broke swearing, so I say other stuff instead of bad words. Stuff that sounds like bad words but isn't. I don't lose any money that manner, and—" She broke off because he didn't appear impressed. "Look, never mind that," she said. "Just believe me, I'one thousand non a problem. You lot saw the bunny slippers, right?"
"Ma'am," he said, pulling her bag aside. "I'm going to demand yous to come with me."
"No, really! If you look in my pocketbook, yous'll see it's filled with scraps of paper, napkins, whatever, all with handwritten notes on them. I write notes for my books all the time. Plot points. Characterization stuff. Simply little things, really. For case . . ." She looked around and gestured to the woman behind her. " 'Crazy true cat lady with a leopard-print cat carrier—' "
"Hey," the crazy cat lady with the leopard-print true cat carrier said.
Colbie ignored her. "—or 'friendly, sweet, kind TSA agent with a centre of gold . . .' " she said, and added a flirty, hopefully innocent-looking smiling. "I use the notes in my books. Information technology adds colour and center to the story and all that."
The agent's eyes were still suspicious, simply at least he opened her purse to bank check her story. And just as she'd said, information technology was filled with what probably looked like trash but were in fact piddling treasures to be revisited and added to her manuscript.
"What do you lot write?" he asked, unraveling a pocket-size square bar napkin and staring at the words she'd scribbled on it: Icicle—the perfect weapon. It melts and vanishes!
The agent lifted his gaze and leveled information technology on her.
"Cheese and rice!" she exclaimed and drew a deep, calming breath. Information technology didn't help. "Okay, listen," she said. "Information technology'south not what it looks like. I write young adult action-adventure. Postapocalyptic world." She was hoping to non have to go further than that, merely the expression on his face told her she was on borrowed fourth dimension. "The characters are teenagers with powers they acquired in the radioactive war," she added.
"And these teenagers, they . . . kill people?"
"No," she said. "Simply the bad guys exercise. And it'southward fiction. Y'all know, made-upwards stuff." She pointed to her encephalon and shook her head, similar, Come across? Harmless. "And so actually, all this is for naught. Information technology'due south not like I've got a bomb in my purse or annihilation."
In retrospect, she probably shouldn't have mentioned the word flop. She missed her flight and most the next one, instead condign intimate, very intimate, with a pair of female person TSA agents.
She besides missed breakfast.
And lunch.
And the nap she'd been counting on since she hadn't slept more a few hours in so long she couldn't think what a good night's sleep felt like.
Not exactly an auspicious beginning to her holiday from life, only hopefully all her trouble was backside her now and the balance of the trip would exist perfect.
A girl could dream anyway . . .
Eight hours later, she pressed her face to the window of her plane every bit it banked and came in for a landing at SFO International. They'd been diverted twice for also much air traffic, which turned out to exist a blessing considering they came in from the north, giving her a view of the Golden Gate Span glowing red in the belatedly afternoon sun. The bay was a gorgeous sparkling blue, all of it looking similar a postcard, and something in her tight chest loosened. It seemed like the entire world was laid out in front of her and she brought a hand upward to the window every bit if she could actually impact the sight.
This, she told herself. This was exactly what the doctor had ordered—if she'd actually gone to a doctor for her feet and crippling writer'south block. Hither she would find herself, and so that by the time she went dorsum domicile in three weeks for Christmas Eve, she'd be happy over again.
She was sure of information technology.
Affiliate 1
#SonOfABeanbagChair
"Spencer Baldwin?" an unfamiliar female person vocalism asked.
Shit. Anyone who used his full name was most definitely non someone he wanted to speak with. Later the past few months, he knew better than to answer his telephone without looking at the screen, but with both hands busy directing a drone around the room, he'd answered on phonation command without thinking virtually it.
"Wrong number," he said, the drone hovering with perfect precision—and engineering—above his head. So, to prevent a repeat call while he was working, he took one mitt off the controls and chucked his phone out the loftier, narrow window of the basement.
Which felt corking.
Directing the drone to continue hovering, he moved to the far wall of the huge basement below the Pacific Pier Building and climbed the iii-foot ladder that was confronting the window for only this sort of state of affairs.
Yep. His jail cell phone had landed directly in the fountain in the center of the courtyard. "Three points," he murmured just as the elevator doors opened and Elle entered.
"Are you kidding me?" she asked in a tone that simply she could get abroad with and non die. "You killed some other ane? Why don't you just stop answering to the damn reporters—wouldn't that be easier?"
He turned his attending back to his drone, impressed with the changes he'd made in the flying software. "Am I paying you to bowwow at me?" he asked mildly.
"Every bit a matter of fact, aye," she said. "Yous're actually paying me a hell of a lot of money to bowwow at y'all. Why don't I just change your telephone number once more?"
"He tin't," Joe said from the other side of the room. He wore just a pair of knit boxers and stood in front end of one of the three commercial-grade washer-dryers, waiting for his apparel. "Me and the guys similar it when he gets all the union proposals."
"You mean you like the nudie pics that come with the proposals," Elle said.
"They send him presents sometimes too," Joe said. "Junk nutrient and panties. That'south always fun."
Elle rolled her eyes. "Why are you in merely your underwear?"
Joe was an IT wizard who worked at Hunt Investigations two floors upwardly. He was second in charge there, a primary finder and fixer of . . . well, simply about annihilation, and fairly badass while he was at it. And although Elle terrified almost everyone on the planet, Joe just grinned at her. "Had a piddling tussle before on the job," he said. "Spence let me in down here to use the machines."
Elle was not impressed. "If by tussle y'all mean a takedown went bad and you got blood all over yourself once more, y'all best not be using those machines."
"Hey, at least it'due south not my blood. And I'm fine, cheers for asking."
Elle went hands on hips. She managed this building for the possessor, who happened to be Spence—and she often mistook her job for actual globe domination, trying to run his personal life as well.
Just Spence had nixed his personal life a long fourth dimension ago. It was the Baldwin expletive. He could be successful in his business life or his personal life—choice one—but not both. Since he objected on a very base level to going back to abject poverty, he'd long ago decided business concern was a safer bet than honey.
Although, to exist honest, he'd fabricated a few forays into attempting both and had failed spectacularly.
"Oh, and did you hear that Spence hither is rumored to be one of the tiptop 10 nominees for San Francisco'due south most eligible available?" Joe asked Elle, giving a snort as if this was hysterical.
Spence leaned forward and banged his head confronting the wall a few times.
"Don't bother," Elle said. "Your caput's harder than the concrete. And yeah," she told Joe. "I know. I figure that'due south part of the reason he just threw his phone out the window?"
"I could just scare everyone off your donkey for you," Joe said to Spence.
He was kidding. Probably. And actually, Spence was more than a lilliputian tempted. This mess was his own fault, for trusting someone he shouldn't have. As a result, the printing had been having a field twenty-four hour period with his success in a very large way, threatening his privacy and too his sanity.
Just thinking virtually the "nearly eligible bachelor" thing had him groaning.
"Mind," Elle said more kindly now. "Get have a pause, okay? Then you can come up back and close out the world and work."
Information technology was a well-known fact that Spence's power to hyper-focus and ignore everything around him was both a force and a giant flaw. Great asset for an engineer/inventor, not so great for annihilation else, like, say, relationships. But truthfully, he was hungry, then a pause sounded expert. He headed toward the elevator.
"Uh," Elle said, gesturing to his dress. "You might want to . . ."
"What?" he asked, looking down at himself. So he hadn't shaved in a few days—so what? And okay, maybe he lived out of his dryer, grabbing make clean simply wrinkled clothes from there in the mornings when he got dressed. Whatever. There were worse things. "Joe'due south in his underwear."
"Hey, at least I was wearing some today," Joe said.
Elle took in the guy's nearly naked form, conspicuously affectionate the view in spite of her being very much taken in the relationship department by Joe's boss Archer Hunt. She finally shook it off and turned dorsum to Spence. "You know damn well when you walk across the courtyard talking to yourself, hair continuing up cheers to your fingers, all stubbly considering you forgot to shave, and those black-rimmed glasses slipping downward your annoyingly perfect nose, women come out of the woodwork."
"They do?" Joe asked.
"It's the hot geek await," Elle said.
"Huh." Joe rubbed his jaw, where he too had stubble. "Maybe I should try that one-time."
"No," Elle said. "You lot can't pull off hot geek. Your looks say sexy badass, not geek, which apparently is like a siren phone call to crazy women everywhere."
Joe looked pleased. "I'thou okay with that."
Elle ignored this and looked at Spence. "After your last romantic fiasco, you lot vowed to take a pause, remember? So all I'm maxim is that you might want to change up your look."
"How?"
"I don't know," she said. "Slouch. Go a beer gut. Fart. Whatever it is that guys do to organically plough u.s. off."
"Wait,"
Joe said. "You gave upwards sex later Clarissa dumped you, what, two years ago now? Similar, willingly?"
"Something you should try sometime," Elle said to him.
"Woman, bite your tongue."
"No, actually," she said. "How do you lot even keep all their names direct?"
"Easy," Joe said with a grinning. "If I forget their name, I just take them to Starbucks in the morning time and expect until the barista asks their proper noun for their loving cup."
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