She shouldn’t be here. She had told herself she would drive to the mansion in Lincoln Park just to see how long it took to get there from her ratty apartment on the Near West Side, knowing that tomorrow she would have to account for traffic as well.
But she had known, deep down, that she wanted to see the gala event of the season and imagine herself taking part, instead of standing on the sidelines, asking questions about the event—for, of all things, the Life and Style page (which her editor snidely called “the society page”).
She hated Life and Style work. But, she reminded herself, unlike her colleagues from Northwestern, she had gotten a paying job as a reporter at the Chicago Courier, one of the few remaining big dailies in the nation, and she’d been promised that she could keep the job if she outperformed every other new hire from that summer.
Outperforming meant taking the humiliating work along with the good stories. Not that any good stories had come her way yet. She was too young and too new.
She was covering stupid stuff—high-end engagement parties, routine political speeches, and (her least favorite) the county fair. Often, she was doing background for one of the “real” reporters, or helping them post their articles on the paper’s brand-new website.
She hadn’t expected this. She had awards and credentials. She had written for major newspapers (with the prodding help of her professors), and she had interned at one of the most prestigious papers in the country—for no money, of course. She’d actually had to pay the university tuition for the privilege of interning, because the position provided “experience” and “enhanced her résumé” while infusing her with more cynicism than a woman of twenty-four should probably have.
She sighed. She wished, just once, she had some money and respect. She knew that the very rich people waltzing inside that mansion weren’t the stuff of fairy tales, but she liked to imagine they were. The Rich—different from everyone else, if she were to believe F. Scott Fitzgerald. She liked to believe they not only had better clothes and more financial opportunities, but also perfect lives.
She’d never had a perfect life. She’d been so poor that she hadn’t known where her next meal would come from. Not a lot of Northwestern freshman had homeless parents and full scholarships. She’d kept that secret, even from her best friends at school.
College had been a luxury for her, and her experiences growing up had enabled her to survive that disastrous internship without going either hungry or bankrupt.
She’d even freelanced. That had made her so much more money than her stupid job was earning her right now. Maybe she should give up the steady paycheck and strike out on her own....
“Aren’t you cold?”
The male voice from behind her made her jump. Her heart rate increased a thousandfold, but she tried to pretend she wasn’t alarmed as she turned to see who spoke.
A tall, blond man stood behind her. He was about her age, with flawless skin—the type she would have killed for—just starting to pink up from the chill, a square jaw, and blue eyes so electric they seemed lit from within.
Men this handsome didn’t just lurk behind shrubbery. Particularly men this handsome who were also wearing a tux as if they’d been born to it.
The white scarf wrapped around his neck appeared to be his only concession to the weather. He had his hands in the pockets of his tux trousers, but he didn’t look cold.
She wondered if he was drunk.
“I feel like I should be offering you my parka,” she said. “Isn’t that the chivalrous thing to do?”
He shrugged one broad shoulder. “The chill feels good. It’s stuffy inside.”
“It’ll feel good for a few minutes,” she said. “And then you’re going to regret you ever stepped out here.”
“And regret that I joined you to spy on the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous?” He didn’t sound sarcastic, but in her mind, she could hear Robin Leach’s smarmy voice blaring the words. She hadn’t thought of that show since she was a kid. Even then, it had been a guilty pleasure.
Her cheeks heated. She’d been caught.
She decided not to lie. “It looks pretty in there.”
“Oh,” he said. “It is pretty, in a soulless, let’s-make-this-the-most-stunning-room-in-the-world sort of way.”
As if she knew what that was. She’d like to experience it, just once.
“You don’t like it,” she said, both as a question and a statement.
He shrugged again, his blue eyes looking past her. He was taller than she was. He could probably see inside so much better than she could.
“I’ve always liked that saying, ‘Home is where the heart is,’” he said.
Something about the way he spoke the cliché caught her ear. She’d been concentrating so hard on not looking startled by him that she hadn’t noticed, until now, that he had one of those indefinable European accents. An English-is-my-second-language-and-I-speak-it-better-than-you accent.
“You’d better go back inside before you freeze,” she said.
He smiled faintly and looked at the windows. Their light reflected in his magnificent eyes.
“I’m not sure I’m going back in,” he said.
She frowned. “Why not?”
He shrugged again. “I have a hunch,” he said softly, “I’m about to run away.”
2
RAINE’S BREATH CAUGHT. People usually weren’t that honest with her, especially when they had just met her. But she wasn’t even sure he meant that comment for her.
He was still looking inside the mansion, as if measuring each movement.
“Run away?” Raine asked. “From what?”
“The pretension,” he said, almost as if he wasn’t talking to her. “The expectations.”
Her inner reporter finally woke up. “What expectations?”
He blinked as if he were surprised that she was standing beside him. He smiled, faintly, dismissively, and the lost expression left his face.
He shrugged a third time.
“I take it they didn’t let you in because of their rather stringent dress code?” he said.
“They didn’t let me in because I wasn’t invited,” she said with a bit more bite than she expected. “Think of me as the Little Match Girl.”
“I should hope not,” he said. “She died at the end of that sadly misnamed Christmas story.”
Raine’s cheeks heated even more. She had forgotten the story’s details. She’d only remembered the little match girl of the title, standing on a street corner, watching everyone else go about their business and ignoring her.
“Look,” Raine said, “you have to get inside somewhere or you’ll be the one who dies of hypothermia. And I don’t have any matches to keep you warm.”
He smiled. This time, the smile was real. It lit up his face. “I have a hereditary tolerance for the cold.”
“And I have leaky boots,” Raine said. “I also have a car, if you would like to go back to your hotel and get a coat or more comfortable clothes or something.”
“I don’t….” He stopped himself, then nodded. “A car it is. We’ll stop somewhere to get you new boots and me something that makes me look like a twenty-first century creation instead of someone who stepped out of a Victorian Christmas party.”
She smiled for the first time. He did look like the leading man in one of those black-and-white sketches from the pages of ancient newspapers. The actual society pages, back when there was some kind of society to look down its nose at everyone else.
Now, their descendants just danced in their finery and never thought of the sad impoverished souls standing outside.
Too cynical, girl, she thought to herself. Don’t say that stuff out loud.
“I don’t need new boots,” she lied, “but I’ll drive you wherever you need to go.”
“‘Need,’” he repeated. “Fascinating concept when applied to escape.”
“I thought you said you were running away, not escaping.”
He looked
at her, then shrugged. He seemed to shrug a lot. She wondered if he had developed his rather eloquent shrug language to avoid saying what he really thought.
“I think I need to experience Chicago during the holiday season the way the people really experience it, not….” He waved his hand toward that mansion, as if she understood exactly what he meant.
She didn’t, not really. She wondered if the hand-waving gesture was like the shrug, something that allowed the listener to fill in the blanks so that the speaker was off the hook.
“And,” he added, “if your boots are leaking, you do need new ones.”
“Yeah, well,” she said. “Need and afford are two different things.”
He started, as if she had surprised him.
Her cheeks had grown so warm, she could probably qualify as her own heat source. He could put his hands on them and not need mittens. But she didn’t say that.
She’d probably said too much already.
“Seriously,” she said, “I’ll drive you where you want to go, but you have to tell me where that is.”
He nodded, then glanced over the shrubs. Then his gaze came back to hers. “I’d like to stop and buy presentable clothing. And I’d like to treat you to dinner.”
She almost said that there were places in the city where tuxes were considered appropriate attire. But she didn’t, because those places were so expensive she could pay half her bills with the cost of an entrée.
“You’re determined to get out of here, aren’t you?” she said. “I suppose your regular clothes are inside?”
It had taken her a few minutes to figure that out. Sometimes she was slow, but she eventually caught on.
He glanced at her, frowned just a little, and then smiled—that smooth, not-quite-there smile. “Um. Yes.”
She got the sense that he hadn’t quite lied to her, but he hadn’t told her the truth, either.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s go to the car.”
And, she thought, get this very strange evening underway.
3
SHE HAD PARKED almost two blocks away because she’d been worried that there would be a guardhouse or security or something.
She suspected that if she had gone past the shrubbery, she would have discovered how intense the security really was. She had initially thought she would show up on some security camera somewhere, and they would watch her, maybe send someone out to get rid of her.
But now that she’d met this guy—whom she really hadn’t met at all, just talked to—she was beginning to wonder if there was any security outside of the sculptured part of the lawn.
She trudged through the snow, past the other gigantic lawns and smaller mansions that lined this part of Lincoln Park. She’d parked just at the edge of this ridiculously expensive part of the city, where the less fabulously wealthy had condos or penthouse apartments instead of actual brick-and-stone buildings surrounded by perfectly coiffed snowdrifts.
The man walked beside her, head up, staring at the neighborhood as if he hadn’t seen it before. She wondered at herself. Usually, she didn’t pick up stray men and offer to take them somewhere in her car. Especially if she found them lurking in shrubbery.
Had she decided he was trustworthy because he wore a tuxedo or because he was the most handsome man she had ever met or because he just seemed honorable?
She had turned down dates with men she’d spent a lot of time with because she felt that she hadn’t known them. And now she was doing this.
Then she shrugged—at least mentally—and continued forward. If nothing else, she might be able to get background for the story she had to write for the Life and Style section.
She rounded a corner, and there it was—her faithful steed, the car she’d managed to purchase from her old college roommate, Verity. Raine had known it was a pity sale. Verity couldn’t believe anyone could survive without a car, and had wanted to give Raine the car when her parents gave her the next year’s model. But Raine couldn’t stomach a free car, no matter how nice the gesture. So she had given Verity half of her savings—all $500 of it.
Verity, bless her, had signed a bill of sale, transferred the title, and said nothing. Then, anyway. She did later say (repeatedly) that Raine could borrow the money back at any time without interest or a payment schedule.
Some people, especially those who grew up in privilege, did not understand the importance of paying your own way.
But Verity’s generosity did mean that the car Raine led this man to wasn’t a total rust bucket. In fact, the car was only three years old and had more amenities than Raine’s apartment.
She wrapped her hand around the key fob but didn’t unlock the car. Even though she (weirdly) trusted this guy, she wasn’t going to unlock the car without a bit of information.
“Before I drive you wherever,” she said, “you have to do one thing.”
The man looked at her, tilting his head as if silently commanding her to continue. That communicating-without-talking thing that he did was both intriguing and irritating.
She wondered how that habit had developed.
“You have to tell me who you are,” she said.
He stopped and jerked slightly, as if she had hit him with a mild Taser shot. He glanced back in the direction they had come, as if weighing her question.
“I’m Raine Wilkins,” she said, and extended her mittened hand.
He relaxed visibly. He had apparently misunderstood her question. Had he thought she was asking for his résumé? His bank balance? His lineage?
He took her mitten in his bare hand. His skin hadn’t yet turned red with the cold. She could feel the firmness of his grip through the wool.
“I’m Niko,” he said, and that word had even more of an accent than anything else he had spoken. “N-N-North. Niko North.”
The stammer was a surprise. And again, she had the sense of not-quite-a-lie coming from him. Or maybe she was losing that sense of trust, just a little.
They didn’t really shake hands. They just held each other’s fingers and looked in each other’s eyes for a moment before she let go. Her heart started to flutter. She willed it to stop. That pitter-patter thing did not belong in this moment. She needed to keep her wits about her.
“And you’re not from Chicago,” she said.
“Is it that obvious?” he asked.
“I figured when you wanted to see how Chicago’s other half lived, you weren’t from the city. All the halves mingle here, whether we want to or not.” She stepped over a pile of snow a plow had pushed against the curb and used the fob to unlock the car.
It chirruped at her, a friendly sound that she often thought of as a Hello! Welcome back. She had never told anyone that either, not even Verity, who saw cars as possessions, not as sanctuaries (or possible places to live if things really got bad).
“I unlocked your side too,” she said to Niko.
He nodded, pulling the door open and sliding inside. She got in as well.
The interior smelled of leather and coffee. She kept the car, in Verity’s words, “disturbingly neat.” Raine had detailed it after she bought it, and she kept it clean and ready for any emergency. Except for the day’s coffee cup, which always sat in its little cup holder on the driver’s side, the car had no garbage in it at all.
“What sort of vehicle is this?” Niko asked, running his hand along the dashboard.
How to answer that? It was a Lexus, which Verity had thought too “old” for a woman in her twenties, so the next car she got was some kind of sports car. Verity’s father didn’t want to give a leased car to a twenty-something, so he bought Verity’s cars outright. Which meant Raine owned this thing, which had initially cost about $50,000 new. The insurance cost her more than the car had.
“Um,” Raine said, “it’s a sedan.”
She hoped she hadn’t insulted him. Guys usually wanted to know about car makes and models, but guys like that would ask a slightly different question, like, “What kind of Lexus is this?”
rather than what kind of “vehicle” it was.
“Hmm,” he said, touching the dash and then the leather seats. “It is astoundingly comfortable.”
As if sedans couldn’t be comfortable? Lexus’s couldn’t be comfortable? Cars couldn’t be comfortable?
She let out a small breath, and turned the ignition. The car hummed to life. He watched her every move as if he hadn’t seen anything like it before.
Maybe he watched everything like that, with a cool fascination that made it seem important.
And maybe she was overthinking this.
“You want clothes, right?”
He nodded.
She didn’t ask where he wanted to go to shop. He had said he wanted to go downtown, so she took that to mean the Magnificent Mile. After all, he had been inside a Lincoln Park mansion and he was wearing an expensive tux.
The traffic was pretty light. It took less than fifteen minutes to get to the parking garage closest to Bloomingdale’s. They didn’t talk much along the way. He asked a few questions about Lake Michigan in the winter, and she answered them with the surety of a tour guide.
He kept his face turned toward the passenger window, watching the scenery go by as if he had never noticed it before.
She had chosen Bloomingdale’s flagship store because she figured he could get everything he needed in a department store, and he wouldn’t have to be outside long. In spite of herself, she was worried about him.
They got out of the car. She led him to the entrance. She said, “Just look at the signage for the men’s department. I’ll wait for you on the ground level in the coffee bar.”
“You’re not coming with me?” he asked, sounding vaguely lost.
Santa Series: Three Stories of Magical Holiday Romance Page 19
