All I Want...

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.