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“You were creeping around my apartment. And if I’d wanted to kill you, you’d be dead by now.”
“Is that supposed to be a comfort?” She rubbed her bruised ribs, reminding herself that however her imagination played with the facts, it hadn’t been a romantic encounter. Lucas Blade was looking at her with a hint of steel in his gaze. There was something about him that didn’t seem quite safe. “Do you assault everyone who enters you’re apartment?”
“Only those who enter uninvited.”
“I was invited! As you would have found out if you’d bothered to ask. And I would have thought a man with your expertise in crime would have been able to tell the difference between an innocent woman and a criminal.”
He gave her a speculative look. “Criminals aren’t always so easy to identify. They don’t come with a twirling moustache and a label. You think you can recognize a bad guy just by looking at them?”
“I’m pretty good at identifying ‘loser guy,’ and I definitely know ‘hot guy,’ so I’m confident ‘bad guy’ wouldn’t slide under my radar.”
“No?” He stepped closer to her. “The ‘bad guys’ live among us, blending in. Often it’s the person you’d least suspect. The cabdriver, the lawyer,” he paused before saying, “the doorman.”
Was he intentionally trying to scare her? “Your doorman, Albert, happens to be one of the nicest people I’ve ever met so if you’re trying to persuade me he has a criminal past I’m not going to believe you. In my experience most people are pretty decent.”
“You don’t watch the news?”
“The news presents only the bad side of humanity, Mr. Blade, and it does it on a global scale. It doesn’t report the millions of small, unreported acts of kindness that take place on a daily basis in communities. People help old ladies across the street, they bring their neighbors tea when they’re sick. You don’t hear about it because good news isn’t entertainment, even though it’s those deeds that hold society together. Bad news is a commodity and the media trade in that.”
“You really believe that?”
“Yes, and I don’t intend to apologize for preferring to focus on the positive. I’m a glass half-full sort of person. That’s not a crime. You see the bad in people, but I see the good. And I do believe there is good in most people.”
“We only ever see what a person chooses to show. You don’t know what they might be hiding under the surface.” His voice was deep, his dark eyes mesmerizing. “Maybe when that kind man has helped the little old lady across the street he goes home and searches indecent images on a laptop he keeps hidden under his bed. And the kind person who takes their neighbor tea might be an arsonist or a dangerous psychopath and his, or her, intention is to get a closer look at how and where their neighbor lives to assess access points and vulnerabilities. You never know, just by looking, what a person is hiding.”
Eva stared at him, unsettled by the image of the world he’d painted. It was as if someone had sprayed ugly graffiti over her clean vision of life. “You may look good on the outside, Mr. Blade, but inside you need a makeover. You have a dark, cynical, twisted mind.”
“Thank you.” The faintest of smiles touched the corners of his mouth. “The New York Times said the same thing when they reviewed my last book.”
“I didn’t intend it as a compliment, but I can see that maybe you need to be like that to be successful. Your job is to explore the dark side of humanity and that has twisted your thinking. Most people are simply what they seem,” she said firmly. “Take me as an example. Take a good, hard look at me. And now tell me, do I look like a murderer?”
Two
A frog is always a frog, never a prince in disguise.
—Frankie
Do I look like a murderer?
Lucas scanned her sweet, heart-shaped face. Her eyes were a dark blue and with those bouncing golden curls and the dimple in her cheek, she looked as harmless as a fluffy kitten.
Nothing like a murderer.
She’d be the warm, kindly nurse no one would ever imagine to be capable of killing her patients, or the sweet-natured kindergarten teacher whom people assumed would nurture the children in her care. She looked like the poster girl for health and vitality—she could advertise the juiciest orange juice, or the crunchiest salad.
A woman with a face and body like hers could evade suspicion for months or years.
His heart pounded and he felt the spark of creative energy that had eluded him for months flicker to life.
She eyed him cautiously. “Why are you staring? What have I said? I can assure you I’m not a murderer and frankly I can’t imagine why you’d think it for a moment. I don’t even kill spiders. I carry them to the nearest safe place, although if I’m honest I do usually use a glass and a piece of cardboard because I don’t like the way their legs feel on my skin.”
I don’t even kill spiders.
And neither would his murderer.
Just humans.
“That’s it.” He didn’t even realize he’d spoken. Without thinking, he walked up to her and slid his fingers into her hair. Blond, silky, it flowed through his fingers and framed her face with lustrous gold. Her hair alone would be enough to dazzle any man. Dazzle and distract him. He’d be dead before he knew what had happened.
“That’s what?” She sounded exasperated. “Mr. Blade?”
“You’re the one.”
His mind, roused from its soporific state, was racing ahead so fast it took him a moment to realize he still had his fingers in her hair.
How would it happen? How would she commit murder?
Could her hair be a weapon? Or a motif? Something she left at the crime scene?
No. She’d be caught within a week.
Maybe she changed her hair each time she committed murder.
Maybe she wore a wig.
“Mr. Blade!” Huge blue eyes were fixed on his face. “What do you mean, ‘I’m the one’? I’ve never committed a crime in my life if that’s what you’re implying.”
But she would. She would. “You’re perfect.”
Her cheeks turned from whipped cream to fondant pink. “P-perfect?”
She even blushed. A woman who could blush like that wouldn’t hurt a fly. Or would she? “Can you do that at will or is it just something that happens?”
“What?”
“Blushing.” He stroked his fingers across her smooth skin, exploring the silky texture. He wanted to know everything about her. He wanted to deconstruct her so that he could decide which traits to give to his character.
“I tend to blush when a man I’ve only known for a few minutes tells me I’m perfect. You’re right that first impressions can be wrong. If you’d asked me ten minutes ago I wouldn’t have said you were the friendliest person I’d ever met, but now I can see you were just being defensive. And that’s understandable if women break into your apartment to meet you.”
“What?” Her words finally penetrated his subconscious and his fantasy world melted away.
He’d been thinking aloud and she’d misinterpreted his words.
She thought he was interested in her.
And why wouldn’t she? She was most men’s idea of a fantasy woman, all soft curves and blond hair with a mouth as pink and tempting as sugar icing. There had been a time when he would have been interested himself, but that time seemed like an age away.
His wife had tamed that side of him. The wild, restless side that had driven him to rip through life taking what he wanted. But now she was gone and he had no one to please but himself, and invariably he didn’t even manage that.
Denied any sort of internal peace or personal satisfaction, he channeled all his emotions into his work. His writing came first. At his lowest point, it had saved him, which had made the fear that he might have lost it forever all the more acute.
But he hadn’t lost it. His gift had simply been lying dormant, waiting to be reawakened and this woman had done that.
The relief was profound.
It was like a drowning man discovering the life preserver he’d thought he’d lost bobbing in the water right next to him. He grabbed it and hung on, determined not to sink back down beneath the murky water.
His mind wouldn’t stop racing. Was that his murderer’s motivation? Had she lost someone and was intent on revenge? Or was she a psychopath with no conscience or emotion, someone incapable of empathy who used her looks as a trap?
If there had been a notebook and pen in hand he would have started scribbling right there. For the first time in months he felt an almost overwhelming urge and impatience to open his laptop. He wanted to sit down and write. He wanted to write and write until the book was finished. He could feel the idea growing inside him. His mind was like a dry riverbed after a flood, replenished, drenched with ideas.
Finally, finally, after months of waiting for inspiration, he’d found his murderer.
* * *
He thought she was perfect? His reaction was unexpected given everything she knew about his life. Over the many slices of cake she’d shared with his grandmother, she’d discovered that Lucas Blade had shown no interest in dating since he’d lost his wife three years ago, despite the repeated attempts by various women to engage his attention. His life was a shadowy mystery, a private wasteland of grief and hard work. He wrote, he participated in whatever international book tours were required of him, he spoke, he signed books. In between the forced public appearances, he shut himself away.
He displayed all the signs of a man who was going through the motions.
He’d deflected his grandmother’s less than subtle attempts to introduce him to suitable women, all of which made it all the more surprising that he was looking at her as if she was the answer to his dreams.
She wasn’t convinced he was the answer to hers, although there was no arguing that he was outrageously good-looking, in a rough, buyer-beware type of way.
Was it insane to be attracted to someone who had just proved he could crush her like a bug? Having already discovered his strength, it surprised her that he was capable of the gentleness he was showing now as he slowly stroked her face with skilled fingers. But it wasn’t his touch that turned her knees to water, it was the raw hunger she saw in his eyes.
“You really think I’m perfect?”
The hunger was replaced by caution. “You have perfect bone structure.”
Perfect bone structure?
She’d been told she had nice hair. She knew her figure was good. She would have added a few inches to her height if she’d had a choice, but apart from that there wasn’t much about herself she’d change. No one had ever mentioned her bones before.
He stared at her from every angle until Eva grew more and more uncomfortable.
Lucas Blade was a mega successful writer with an international reputation and a global audience of fans, but that didn’t change the fact that he was basically a stranger. A stranger surrounded by an aura of dangerous tension. He prowled, rather than walked. Glowered, rather than smiled. And right now he was studying her as if he was a predator and she was his next victim.
His words rang in her head. You never know, just by looking, what a person is hiding.
Despite her tendency to trust most people, if she’d seen him coming toward her on the street at night she would have leaped straight into a cab.
“Do you always stare at people?” She glanced toward the door, judging the distance, and he followed her gaze with a frown.
“I’ve made you uncomfortable. I apologize.” He stepped back, giving her space, and she forced herself to breathe deeply, reminding herself that he wasn’t really a stranger. She knew his grandmother well.
“This is the most unusual first meeting I’ve ever had. First you try to kill me—”
“I did not try to kill you. I was trying to incapacitate you.”
“Given the differences in our height and weight, that pretty much amounted to the same thing.”
She couldn’t stop thinking about the way his body had felt pressed against hers. When was the last time she’d been held like that? Felt the delicious hardness, the masculine strength, the feeling of safety—safety? He’d been attacking her! Holy crap, her mind was warped. It hadn’t been romantic. It had been self-defense. “I think you might have damaged me mentally. All that talk about people’s hidden dark sides has freaked me out a little. You’ve made me nervous. I’m going to be passing people in the street wondering what secrets they’re hiding.” And she wondered what secrets he was hiding behind that wickedly handsome face.
The gleam of mockery was back. “I thought you saw good in everyone.”
“I do, but now you’ve put doubt in my mind. Thanks to you I’m going to be looking over my shoulder all the way home.”
“A healthy dose of caution is a useful thing.”
“Maybe, but you’ve scared me.”
“Scaring people is my job.”
“No, your job is to write books that scare people, not scare them in person!” She rubbed her palm over the small of her back and saw the expression in his eyes change.
“Did I hurt you?”
“I landed awkwardly and your floor is hard.” She rolled her shoulders experimentally. “I’ll live.”
“Turn around and I’ll take a look at you.”
“Are you suggesting I remove my clothes and turn my back on you? I don’t think so. You’re not the sort of man a sensible woman would turn her back on, Mr. Blade. I’m trying not to imagine what might have happened if the police hadn’t arrived when they did. You would have shattered all my bones with one of your judo throws.”
“It was jujitsu.”
“Good to know. Your grandmother told me you’re an expert at several martial arts. She’ll be thrilled to know you’re putting that expertise to good use. I’ll be sure to mention it when I call her.”
His expression froze. “You won’t be calling my grandmother.”
“But—”
“If I’d wanted my grandmother to know I was here, I would have told her.”
“Why didn’t you?” It puzzled her. “She adores you. Why would you hide from her?”
“It’s more that I’m hiding from her uncontrollable urge to interfere and fix my life.”
“She does that because she loves you.” Eva felt a pang of envy. “She cares so much.”
“Maybe, but it doesn’t make it less exasperating.”
He dismissed family with the ease of someone who took it for granted. What wouldn’t she give to have someone interfere and try to fix her life? To call and check she was all right. To worry that she was working too hard and not eating properly.
She blinked rapidly.
She should probably leave. He didn’t want her here, did he? It was obvious that this wasn’t a man remotely interested in decorating for Christmas.
Now that the lights had been switched on, she was able to take a proper look around her. The apartment was beautiful, but the decor was impersonal. It felt more like an exclusive hotel than a home, as if someone had moved in and forgotten to add any personal touches.
The space was incredible but it had no soul. No character. There were no clues about the person who lived there. It was hard to believe anyone had ever sat on the sofas, or put glasses or cups down on the smooth glass table. The place seemed almost abandoned, as if Lucas had forgotten it existed.
She wanted to add flowers and cushions. She wanted to drop a few items of clothing around the place to soften it and make it seemed lived in.
Where had he been when she’d entered the apartment? Upstairs in one of the bedrooms? In his study?
For the first time since she’d been flattened underneath him, she took a serious look at his face and saw things she’d failed to notice the first time. She saw the shadows under his eyes that suggested he hadn’t slept for weeks. The lines of tension that bracketed his firm mouth.
She looked away and something else caught her eye. A sharp knife, the long blade gleaming under the lights. Had they been standing in the kitchen its presence wouldn’t have drawn a second glance, but they weren’t in the kitchen.
She stared at it uneasily.
There was something unsettling, almost menacing, about that knife.
She contemplated all the possible reasons he might have for leaving it lying on the table. Maybe he used it for opening the mail. Except that she’d already noticed a towering stack of unopened letters.
No matter how much she racked her brain, alternative suggestions eluded her.
The blade taunted her and unease turned to alarm. She wasn’t experienced at solving mysteries, but she could read clues as well as the next person. He had a knife in the living room and he was here alone, cut off from the outside world.
Christmas made some people desperate, didn’t it?
She glanced at the bare floors and walls. “Did you just move in?”
“I’ve lived here for three years.”
Three years. Had he been living here when his wife died? No. The place showed no sign of a woman’s hand, which meant he must have moved in immediately after his wife had died.
He’d been escaping. Running. And he was still running.
The place looked as if he’d jumped straight from that life into this one and brought nothing with him.
Her heart ached for him.
She tried telling herself his life was none of her business. She’d been employed to fix his apartment, not fix his life, and he’d made it clear how much he hated interference. The sensible thing was to leave right now, but if she left, he’d be alone and who knew what he might do? What if he picked up that knife? She was the only person who knew the truth. That Lucas Blade wasn’t on a writing retreat in Vermont. He was holed up here in his apartment, alone.
If he did something, she’d feel responsible. She’d always wonder if she could have stopped it. Made a difference.
Her gaze met the fierce black of his and she knew she wasn’t looking at a man who was dangerous. She was looking at a man who was desperate. Right on the edge. Holding it together by a thread.
Lucas Blade might write about horror, but she suspected that right now nothing matched the horror of his own life.
And there was no way she was leaving him alone.
Three
Look before you leap. Or carry a first aid kit.
—Lucas
Lucas had expected her to leave, but she was still standing there.
“I have work to do.” And he was desperate to get started. The characters were coming alive in his head, becoming people with flaws and qualities. He could hear dialogue and picture scenes. For the first time in far too long he couldn’t wait to sit down in front of his laptop. He wanted to escape into the fictional world that was waiting for him. It was like someone in chronic pain, contemplating a syringe full of morphine. He wanted to grab it and empty the barrel into his veins until the sweetness of oblivion numbed the agony that had been his constant companion for three years.
The only thing stopping him was the source of his inspiration who seemed stubbornly determined not to leave. He might have scared her, but apparently he hadn’t scared her enough to send her running for the door.
“Your grandmother gave me this job, so either I call her and explain, or I do the job she sent me here to do.”
If she called his grandmother, any hope of being left alone over the Christmas period would vanish. He’d be required to explain why he was in New York rather than Vermont and, most awkwardly of all, why he’d lied about it.
“Look around you.” He tried intimidation, his tone silky soft. “Do I look like a man who wants his apartment decorated for the holidays?”
“No, which is why your grandmother wanted me to do it. She doesn’t think you should be living like this. She’s worried about you. And frankly, having met you, so am I.”
“Why would you care how I’m living my life?”
“Everyone deserves a Christmas tree in their lives.”
“Only if you’re trying to punish them.”
“Punish? A Christmas tree is uplifting.”
“What is uplifting about a fake Christmas tree, which is essentially a petroleum-based product probably manufactured in a Chinese factory?”
“Fake? Who said anything about fake? I don’t do ‘fake,’ Mr. Blade. I don’t do fake Christmas trees, fake handbags, or fake orgasms.” Color streaked across her cheeks. “I didn’t mean to say that last one. It slipped out. But my point is nothing in my life is fake.” The words tumbled over each other and Lucas found himself struggling not to smile.
He didn’t think he’d ever met anyone so deliciously indiscreet.
“You’ve never faked an orgasm?”
“Could you forget I said that?”
He imagined her in bed, naked and uninhibited. Heat raced over his skin and his thoughts were explicit enough to make him uncomfortable. Since his wife’s death he’d had no shortage of offers, from sex to marriage, but had never once been tempted. It wasn’t just that he’d left his bad boy days in his past. It was more that he no longer had the taste for it. Every time he looked at a woman he saw the expression on Sallyanne’s face the last time he’d seen her alive.
But he was definitely attracted to Eva.
To take his mind off sex, he pondered on how someone of her build could murder a man twice her size.
“I’m a writer. Human behavior interests me.”
She interested him.
He told himself that his interest was professional, but part of him recognized that as a lie.
She let her hands drop. “We were talking about Christmas trees. Real Christmas trees, which smell and look beautiful.”
“And drop needles all over my floor.” He remembered the way she’d felt underneath him.
“If needles drop you clean them up.” She unbuttoned her coat. “It’s not hard.”
“I don’t have time. I have a book to finish and I need to be left in peace to do that. If you decorate my apartment, you’ll disturb me.” It wasn’t the noise that worried him, or the intrusion of having someone else in the apartment, it was her.
She made him feel something he didn’t want to feel.
Maybe it was because she was nothing like his wife. Sallyanne had been tall and willowy. In heels, she’d matched his height. Physically, Eva was as different from Sallyanne as it was possible for a woman to be. He knew instinctively that losing himself in Eva’s soft curves would be a whole new experience, with no flashbacks or reminders, but he knew that for a man like him to get involved with a woman like her would definitely be a crime, just not the sort he wrote about.
“You won’t even know I’m here.”
“You’re not the type of woman who blends into the background.”
“You don’t need to worry about me disturbing you,” she said quickly. “I understand that creative genius needs space to work. Also there’s the fact that I don’t find your company that thrilling, Mr. Blade.”
The kitten had claws. “Tell my grandmother you changed your mind about the job.”
“No. I’m being paid to decorate your apartment and stock your freezer in your absence. That’s what I intend to do.”
“I’m not absent.”
“Which is inconvenient for both of us, particularly as you’re not allowing me to disclose that fact to the person who gave me this job. I don’t like lying.”
He discovered that those soft blue eyes and mermaid-like hair concealed a woman with a stubborn streak a mile wide.
The thought that his grandmother might finally have met her match almost compensated for the irritation of failing to shift her from his apartment.
Almost, but not quite.
“Leave, and I’ll match whatever she’s paying you.”
“It’s not about the money, Mr. Blade. It’s about my professional reputation. I take pride in my work.”
“And what is your work, exactly? You’re a Christmas elf? You decorate the apartments of unsuspecting Scrooge-like individuals, thus intensifying their loathing of this time of year?” His sarcasm seemed to slide right off her.