Chasing Christmas Eve

  shitty hand that life had dealt him.

  And he’d do it again if he had to.

  The bathroom door opened, and even better than his fantasy, Colbie emerged from a cloud of steam, her willowy body wrapped in one of his towels, her exposed skin gleaming and dewy damp. Her hair had been piled on top of her head, but wavy strands had escaped, clinging to her neck and shoulders.

  He couldn’t tear his gaze off of her. There was just something so uncalculated about her, so . . . natural and easy. She was like a beacon to him, which was both crazy and more than a little terrifying.

  Clearly not seeing him against the wall, she moved with an effortless grace to the suitcase she’d left at the door. Bending low enough to give him a near heart attack, she rifled through her things, mumbling to herself that she should’ve researched more about how to be a normal person instead of how to kill someone with an everyday object.

  “Do you kill a lot of people, then?” Spence asked.

  “Motherforker!” she said with a startled squeak of surprise, whirling to face him, almost losing her grip on the towel.

  Five days a week, Spence worked out hard in this gym. Mostly to outrun his demons, but the upside was he could run miles without losing his breath. But he lost his breath now.

  And that wasn’t his body’s only reaction.

  Chapter 4

  #ShiitakeMushrooms

  At the unexpected sight of Spence, Colbie startled hard. How was it that he was the one who needed glasses and yet she’d not seen him standing against the window? “No, I don’t kill a lot of people,” she said cautiously because she was wearing only a towel in front of a strange man. “But I’m happy to make an exception.”

  He laughed, a rough rumble that was more than a little contagious but she controlled herself because, hello, she was once again dripping wet before the man who seemed to make her knees forget to hold her up.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said and pushed off the wall to come close.

  She froze, but he held up his hands like, I come in peace, and crouched at her feet to scoop up the clothes she hadn’t realized she’d dropped.

  Leggings, a long forgiving tee, and the peach silk bra-and-panty set that hadn’t gotten so much as a blink from the TSA guy.

  But it got one out of Spence. He also swallowed hard as she snatched them back from him.

  “Hold on,” he said and caught her arm, pulling it toward him to look at her bleeding elbow.

  “Sit,” he said and gently pushed her down to a weight bench. He vanished into the bathroom and came back out with a first aid kit.

  It took him less than two minutes to clean and bandage the scrape. Then, easily balanced at her side on the balls of his feet, he did the same for both her knees, which she hadn’t noticed were also scraped up.

  “You must’ve hit the brick coping as you fell in the fountain,” he said and let his thumb slide over the skin just above one bandaged knee.

  She shivered, and not from the cold either. “Not going to kiss it better?” she heard herself ask before biting her tongue for running away with her good sense.

  She’d raised her younger twin brothers. Scrappy, roughhouse wild animals, the both of them, so there’d been plenty of injuries she’d kissed over the years.

  But no one had ever kissed hers. Not surprising, since most of her injuries tended to be on the inside, where they didn’t show. Still, she was horrified she’d said anything at all. “I didn’t mean—” She broke off, frozen like a deer in the headlights as Spence slowly lowered his head, brushing his lips over the Band-Aid on her elbow, then her knees.

  When he lifted his head, he pushed his glasses higher on his nose, those whiskey eyes warm and amused behind his lenses. “Better?”

  Shockingly better. Since she didn’t quite trust her voice at the moment, she gave a jerky nod and took her clothes back into the bathroom. She shut the door and then leaned against it, letting out a slow, deliberate breath. Holy cow, she was out of her league. He was somehow both cute and hot, and those glasses . . .

  He hadn’t touched her other than the first aid and then those sweet kisses on her scrapes—which she’d asked for—and yet she felt more trembly than she had when she’d been freezing.

  Clearly she’d gone too long without a social orgasm.

  She dressed quickly and glanced at herself in the bathroom. In spite of herself, she looked . . . well, flushed. And her eyes were sparkling. And something else—she was smiling. What was wrong with her? She’d had a very long day but still she felt . . . invigorated.

  From the other side of the door came a single knock. An alpha man sort of knock, one that suggested curiosity and a slight impatience. “Almost ready?”

  “For what?” she asked, still staring at herself in the mirror.

  “First aid, take two.”

  Oh boy. She stepped out of the bathroom. “Listen, I think maybe I gave you the wrong idea—” She broke off because Spence was at the door to the gym now, holding it open for her.

  “Leave your stuff except for your phone,” he said. “We’ll come back for it.”

  You wanted adventure, she reminded herself. And if they were leaving here, it meant he didn’t have nefarious intentions. At least not at the moment.

  She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed.

  As if maybe he could read her mind, his lips quirked in a barely there smile as he led her back down to the ground floor. Night had fallen as they walked through thick fog across the beautifully lit cobblestoned courtyard. Past a coffee shop, pet shop, tattoo parlor, furniture shop, and straight into a pub named O’Riley’s.

  The place was cute. The tables were made from whiskey barrels and the bar itself had been crafted out of what looked like repurposed longhouse-style doors. The hanging brass lantern lights and stained glass fixtures, along with the horse-chewed old-fence baseboards, finished the look that said antique charm and cozy, friendly warmth.

  She immediately felt right at home. Music drifted from invisible speakers, casting a jovial mood, but not so loud as to make conversation difficult. Spence had her by the hand and tugged her through a surprisingly large crowd straight to the bar, where at the far right were two open barstools.

  Spence nodded to the guy behind the bar as they took a seat.

  “Good timing,” the guy said. “Archer’s in the back being Archer. I need you to go kick his ass in pool to put him in his place.”

  Clearly there was a familiarity between these two, an ease and connection that spoke of either brothers or a longtime friendship.

  “Later,” Spence told him. “I need my usual, with two sides: a bag of ice and another of uncooked rice.”

  The guy, good-looking and wearing a T-shirt that read I Am O’Riley, smirked. “You threw your phone out the window again, didn’t you?”

  Spence ignored this, gesturing to Colbie. “Colbie, this is Finn O’Riley.”

  Finn smiled. “Nice to meet you.”

  “She’s in the city for the first time,” Spence said. “And thanks to me, Daisy Duke dumped her in the fountain. We need food to refuel, ice for her elbow, and rice for her phone to hopefully redeem us in her eyes.”

  “Tall order,” Finn said and pulled out his vibrating phone to read a text. “Huh,” he said and gave Spence a funny look. “So, uh, there’s a 9–1–1.”

  Spence shook his head. “Let me guess. Elle.”

  Finn nodded. “Wants me to rescue you.”

  Colbie tried not to take umbrage at that and failed, but Spence just laughed.

  “Tell her she needs to get a grip,” he said.

  “Do I look crazy?” Finn asked and slid his phone into his pocket. “Besides, we both know she’s paranoid for you for good reason after all that media crap.”

  Spence lifted a shoulder but didn’t comment.

  “Food, ice, and rice, coming up,” Finn said and vanished into the back.

  Colbie looked at Spence. “Are you sure you’re not in a r
elationship with Elle?”

  “No, I’m in a relationship with bad judgment.” He pointed to the other side of the room. “See that guy through the back doors playing pool like he was born to it?”

  Colbie turned and looked. The man leaning over the pool table lining up his shot was . . . holy moly hot.

  “That’s Archer Hunt,” Spence said. “Elle’s his. But more importantly, he’s 100 percent all hers. They’re both crazy, but they make it work.” He lifted her arm and again eyed her elbow. “Still swelling.” He gently probed at it.

  “It’s not broken,” she said.

  “How do you know?”

  It was more of a hope than actual knowledge, so she pulled away just as Finn came back. He tossed two baggies at Spence, who caught them in midair and offered her the one holding the raw rice. “Put your phone in here,” he said. “Ziplock it. The rice will draw the moisture out of your phone and, with any luck, it’ll still work a few hours from now.”

  Colbie had heard of the trick but she still hesitated.

  Spence met her gaze, his eyes warm but curious. “Problem?”

  “Would you think I was an awful person if I secretly hope my phone’s broken forever?”

  He gave a wry laugh that told her more than words could how very much he sympathized with her. “You’re talking to the guy who earlier today threw his phone out the window,” he said.

  “So . . . we both fantasize about going phoneless?”

  His smile said he fantasized about other things as well, and her body did that inner quiver thing again. She slipped her phone inside the baggie and then dropped it all back into her purse.

  “Next,” Spence said and pressed the ice bag to her elbow.

  Finn came back with a huge platter of chicken wings and deep-fried zucchini. Colbie eyed the platter and then Spence’s extremely fit body with disbelief.

  He shrugged. “That’s what the gym’s for.”

  Colbie couldn’t even look at a French fry without gaining weight, but her stomach growled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since the sad pack of three whole peanuts on the plane.

  They dove into the food and she asked one of the questions that were killing her. “Tell me about this amazing building.”

  “It is pretty amazing, isn’t it?” He smiled. “The fountain actually came first. The building was built around it back in the mid-1800s, when Cow Hollow was still actually filled with cows.”

  “Wow. Really?” Hard to imagine San Francisco as anything but the incredibly hilly, unique, busy but somehow also laid-back, quirky city it seemed to be.

  “This building was a compound for one of the biggest ranching families in the state at the time,” Spence said.

  “When did the infamous legend come into play?” she asked. “The one where if you wish for true love, you’ll find it.”

  He looked both pained and amused. “Shortly after. Some idiot made a wish and got lucky. Most of the businesses in the building perpetuate the legend because it makes good press and brings in foot traffic.”

  “But you don’t believe,” she said.

  Finn was back, refilling their drinks, and spoke for Spence. “It’s more like he can’t help but believe and he’s terrified.” He grinned when Spence shot him a dry look.

  “Explain,” Colbie said.

  Finn was happy to. “Not one but three of us owe our love lives to that fountain. So Spence’s been giving it a wide berth.”

  “Because . . .” she eyeballed Spence “. . . he doesn’t want to be happy?”

  Finn snorted and moved on.

  “He thinks he’s funny,” was all Spence would say on that. He studied her over their tray of food. “So what’s your three-week plan while you’re here besides writing?”

  “Rest,” she said. “Eat. Be a tourist. I made a list of things I want to do.”

  “Let’s see it.”

  She hesitated, wishing she hadn’t said anything, because there were some really embarrassing things on that list . . .

  “I won’t laugh,” he said.

  She grimaced. “Yeah, I’d need that in writing first.”

  He produced a pen from his pocket and grabbed her cocktail napkin. “I, Spencer Baldwin, hereby solemnly promise not to laugh at your to-do list,” he said as he wrote and signed the napkin. He pushed it toward her. “There. A binding contract.”

  She opened her purse to locate the list and had to paw through a bunch of her various notes to do so.

  “How do you ever find anything?” Spence asked, not with any censure at all but with actual genuine fascination.

  She shrugged. “My purse gets sad when it’s all neat and organized.” She finally got a hand on her list. The first eight items were places she wanted to see in San Francisco. Number nine was learn how to drive, something she’d not been able to do in New York. Nothing all that embarrassing. But number ten. Number ten took the cake. She grabbed his pen to scratch it off before giving him the list, but he put his hand over hers.

  “I promised not to laugh, remember? And I don’t break promises, Colbie.”

  “Ever?”

  There was a rather fierce light in his eyes. “Not anymore.”

  That was interesting enough that she let him pull the list from her fingers. She knew the exact moment he got to number ten because he had to fight a smile when he lifted his gaze to hers.

  “Ten’s my favorite,” he said and read it aloud—like she didn’t know what she’d written. “A wild, passionate, up-against-the-wall, forget-my-name love affair that makes me weak in the knees when I think about it—but only a very short wild, passionate, up-against-the-wall, forget-my-name love affair because . . .” he paused, probably to control himself, before continuing “. . . I don’t have the time or stamina to maintain that level of sexual activity, much less a relationship.”

  She moaned and closed her eyes.

  “Pretty detailed,” he said, running a hand over his deliciously scruffy jaw to hide the smile she knew he was fighting.

  “I told you!” She snatched back the list. “Shit.”

  “Thought you didn’t swear.”

  “I don’t,” she said, “but that’s a body function, so it doesn’t really count as a swear word.” She sighed.

  Not Spence. He out-and-out laughed, tipping his head back to do it, and it was such a nice sight that she had to crack up too. “You promised not to laugh,” she reminded him.

  “I’m not laughing at your list, so it doesn’t count. My grandma used to swear by saying ‘Shiitake mushrooms!’ That was her favorite.”

  When he spoke with good humor, or actually whenever he spoke in general, his voice sounded like sex personified and it had her wriggling in her seat, no longer embarrassed but something entirely new now.

  She blamed the combo of that sexy stubble with the glasses.

  “I like your list,” he said. “But you could do even better.”

  She felt some of her bones liquefy. “I’m going to assume you’re talking about items one through eight.”

  He just smiled.

  Okay, so she was going to pretend he was talking about one through eight. “I got some of those things from Googling what’s a must-see in SF,” she said. “If you can’t trust Google, who can you trust?”

  “Google isn’t always the best avenue of research.”

  “No?” she asked, feeling a little defensive at that because number ten was still ringing in her head. And also because, well, her pride was injured. Research was her thing. Living in front of her computer had been how she’d built the crazy world that existed in Storm Fever, the series penned by her alter ego, CE Crown. “I suppose you’re going to tell me what is the best avenue of research,” she said.

  “You gotta stretch yourself. You could question the people who actually live here, experiencing the city through them.”

  “But I don’t know people who live here,” she pointed out.