Chasing Christmas Eve

by Jill Shalvis

  Spence came awake in slow, excruciating degrees. He was facedown, sprawled out in a bed that wasn’t his. Naked. And his aching head might or might not be attached to his shoulders. He couldn’t tell for sure.

  With a groan, he managed to lift his head—oh good, it was attached, then—and open one bleary eye. He was in Colbie’s bed.

  Alone.

  Well he deserved that, he supposed. And he had to say, he wasn’t fond of being the one left behind . . .

  No, wait a minute. He wasn’t completely alone after all. There was a weight on his calves. A moving weight. Something on four feet walked up his legs and back and put its wet nose to his ear.

  “Meow.”

  “Not the woman I was hoping for.” Rolling to his back and dislodging the unhappy cat—who glared at him—he stared up at the ceiling as the night came back to him in flashes. “This isn’t good.”

  Apparently coming to the same conclusion, Cinder jumped down off the bed and stalked off, tail straight up in the air, quivering with disapproval.

  Spence shook his head and tried to put the flashes of memories in order. Colbie, in his bed, blowing his mind, amongst other things . . .

  Then her mentioning that she wasn’t who he thought, and him completely overreacting. Playing poker. Having those evil shots. Winning everyone’s money including Elle’s and then ending up on Colbie’s doorstep, pockets heavy, heart heavy . . .

  Things got a little fuzzy after that.

  He was definitely alone in her apartment, as the place was completely empty of the vibrant, warm, sexy, fun energy that she always brought into a room with her.

  Somehow he managed to crawl out of bed and into her shower, though he groaned and bitched like an old man the whole time. Using her soap and shampoo was an exercise in torture because they smelled like her, which gave him a painful erection that told him whatever they’d done once he’d gotten into her bed last night . . . it hadn’t happened again this morning.

  After, he pulled on his jeans and prowled through the apartment. Still no Colbie.

  His phone rang and he looked hopefully at the screen, letting out a breath of disappointment at Joe’s name. “Talk,” he said.

  “Mornin’ to you too, sunshine.”

  When Spence didn’t say anything, Joe went on. “Okay, so you’re not caffeinated yet,” he said, and that’s when Spence started to clue in to the fact that Joe’s voice was missing its usual smartassery and good humor.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “This needs to be in person,” Joe said. “I’m at your office. Where are you?”

  “Two minutes,” Spence said and then made it upstairs in one.

  Joe took one look at him and shook his head. “You lost your shirt again?”

  Spence ignored this and strode directly toward the coffeepot that Trudy kept here due to his inability to work without caffeine.

  “Man, you’re spoiled rotten,” Joe said, working on his own cup. “This coffee is better than Archer’s, and Archer demands good coffee.”

  “What’s going on?” Spence asked him.

  “I don’t know. I think Trudy must fly to Colombia for this shit.”

  “I meant what don’t you want to tell me?” Spence asked with barely there patience.

  Joe flashed a grim smile. “I know. I’m stalling.”

  Spence stared at him. “Spit it out.”

  Joe sighed. Joe never sighed, so this wasn’t a good sign. “Okay,” he finally said. “But I need you to promise me that everything I’m about to tell you stays between us.”

  “Or?” Spence asked.

  “Or I’ll have to kill you.”

  Spence didn’t laugh, because he was pretty sure Joe wasn’t kidding. “Many have tried, no one’s succeeded,” he said. “But yeah, we’re in the cone of silence.”

  Joe paced around the office, looking more than a little edgy. Normally he was fun, at times hilariously inappropriate, and usually pretty easygoing when he wasn’t on the job. Today the easygoing was nowhere to be seen.

  “Joe, I’ve got a bitch of a hangover. Speed this up before I croak, cuz I’ll be worthless to you then.”

  “Okay, okay,” Joe said and turned to face him. “You know Elle asked me to dig into Colbie. And you said I should go ahead.”

  “I did,” Spence agreed. “After stalling as long as you could.”

  “Which I did. I was actually too busy to get to it. Until this morning.”

  Spence nodded. “Thanks.”

  Joe studied him for a few seconds. “That’s it? Thanks? You don’t want to know what I found?”

  Spence shook his head and then seriously regretted the move.

  “You already know,” Joe said. “You know what I found.”

  “I do.”

  “Pretty cool, right?” Joe asked with a good amount of genuine marvel. “And impressive.”

  It really was. Spence still couldn’t believe it, but he wasn’t surprised. Colbie was special. And also, it seemed, especially talented.

  “You knowing makes this a whole lot easier,” Joe said. “But you do realize that if I tell Elle what I’ve found, the whole beehive will know. And frankly, I think it should be Colbie’s decision what we tell anyone.”

  “I agree.” But Spence understood Joe’s problem. He was in an untenable situation, as he worked for Archer, who was sleeping with Elle, among other things. “Colbie will be okay with Elle knowing. Elle can keep a secret when she wants to. And knowing the truth will make her understand Colbie’s secretive nature. Hell, it might even make her nicer, if not outright protective of Colbie.” He smiled grimly. “We all know she’s like a mama bear when it comes to anyone hurting those she cares about.”

  Joe nodded. “But I can probably buy you another few days.” His phone went off. He looked at the screen. “Gotta go.”

  And then Spence was alone. He stepped to the window, looking to the courtyard below, and felt something go tense inside him.

  A guy in a suit had Colbie by the arm and was steering her toward the street gate. She didn’t look happy about it, but it was fairly obvious that whoever he was, he and Colbie were more than a little familiar with each other.

  As if she could feel him the way he could always feel her, she glanced up and their gazes met. He lifted a hand but she didn’t acknowledge him, though he was positive she’d seen him because she stilled for a beat.

  Her eyes were hidden behind sunglasses but he knew her now and read her body language clear enough. Uncertain. Unhappy. Her clothes hid her luscious curves but it didn’t matter. He knew every inch of her by heart. Knew how she felt. Tasted. Knew what it was like to have her pressed against him with nothing between them, to be buried so deep inside her they were one, her limbs wrapped around him like she was afraid to let him go.

  So he also knew she didn’t want to be walking with this guy. Not that that stopped her, as after another heartbeat, she turned away and picked up their pace.

  Colbie was furious with Jackson for hunting her down. Not only had he tracked her phone, he’d also used her chief research source from the NYPD to do it.

  When he’d shown up at her door, she refused to make a scene. Instead, acutely aware that Spence was asleep in her bed, she’d gone with Jackson downstairs to find a place to talk in private. She’d figured the coffee shop would do it but Elle, Kylie, and Haley had been in there, so she’d quickly turned away. Jackson said he only wanted to talk, but she had a feeling he’d really rather fight, so she allowed him to guide her out of the courtyard because she didn’t want witnesses for this.

  The Pacific Pier Building was everything she loved. Interesting, quirky, cozy . . . a community within a community. But all those things also made it something she hadn’t realized until that very moment—basically, a very small town, complete with the small-town clichés.

  There were no secrets here.

  She and Jackson had nearly made it across the courtyard when she’d caught sight of Spence at what she was pretty sure
was his office window, watching them. It’d been impossible to read his expression from that distance and that was probably just as well. She rushed Jackson along. They crossed the street in silence and stepped into another coffee shop, one where she, thankfully, didn’t recognize another soul.

  “What can I get you?” Jackson asked, gesturing to the menu on the wall.

  She crossed her arms. “The reason why you’re here.”

  Apparently deciding that she wasn’t playing, he sighed. “Sit. I’ll be right back.”

  He returned with a hot Earl Grey tea and a banana nut muffin, both her favorites—which was not going to fix her mood. “What are you doing here, Jackson?”

  “At least sip the caffeine so I have a chance of surviving this meeting,” he said.

  She blew out a sigh and sipped her tea.

  “We were worried about you,” he said quietly. “Me. Your family. Janeen and Tracy.”

  “I sent you all daily texts assuring you that I was fine, that I’d come home by Christmas Eve. You had no right to go all Sherlock on me and hunt me down and just show up like this.”

  “No right?” he asked in disbelief. “Okay, forgetting everything else for a minute—including why you’re mad at me—you’re two months late on delivering a manuscript. Who do you think your publisher is hounding every day? Me, the agent!”

  “So that’s why you’re here?” she asked. “To see how your investment is paying off? To make sure I’m working? I told you, Jackson, God, for months and months I told you that I was in a bad place, that I needed a break. You kept saying it was okay for me to take one, that you agreed I needed to get away.”

  “I meant me,” Jackson said. “I agreed you needed to take a break from your feelings for me.”

  She stared at him and then let out a breath and leaned back in her chair. “Wow.”

  “Colbie—”

  “No, hold on. So you think this is about you?”

  “Are you going to tell me it’s not?”

  “H-E-double-hockey-sticks yes!”

  He sat back and shook his head. “Listen, I get that you’re butthurt about what you saw that night, and believe me, I’m sorry you saw it at all.”

  “But not that it happened,” she noted with far more calm than she felt.

  He looked away for a beat and then met her gaze again, his own deep and dark with regret. And temper. “Keeping this about business for a minute. You realize that you’re not the only one on the line here, right? This is my career too. And I’m expected to get you to interviews, signings, and other appearances to coincide with the movie release, Colbie—which is premiering in a week.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  “I don’t know, you tell me,” he said. “You’ve refused any appearances at all, saying you’d only do e-mail interviews and posts.”

  “That’s not so rare, you know. Writers write. Let the actors push the movie. No one needs to see or hear the bumbling author of the books that the movie is based on. What you’re not getting and not hearing is that I was in real trouble. I couldn’t write a damn chapter, much less a whole book.”

  His expression softened and he reached across the table to cover her hand with his. “See, that’s why you shouldn’t be all the way across the country from your support team. Too many outside stressors.”

  “The stressors came from my support team,” she said. “All I asked for was a few weeks away. I just wanted, needed, things to go back to where it all started for me, okay? To before I was too stressed to be creative.” She stood. “Coming here to San Francisco was the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. And actually, it’s the only thing I’ve done for myself in . . . well, ever. I just needed to go back to being that writer who was in love with writing, instead of my stomach churning in knots with tension and dread every time I turned on my laptop or got an e-mail requesting another live interview.”

  Jackson stood and grabbed her hand before she could walk away. “Look, I know it’s been a whirlwind—”

  “No, you’re not hearing me. You don’t understand—”

  “Then help me understand,” he said. “You walked away from everything when you left, not just your work. You have responsibilities, Colbie, and—”

  “Wait, are you kidding me?” she asked, tugging her hand free as anger spiked hard and hot inside her.

  “Your mom called,” he said. “She wants to get the house ready for Christmas but doesn’t know how to do that without you. And Kent didn’t want to tell you, but he banged up his car for the third time and needs to know whether he should notify the insurance, or do you want to pay for it and avoid a claim? Oh, and Janeen and Tracy are on pins and needles wondering about their usual Christmas bonus but don’t want to ask you directly.”

  No. Hell no was he doing this here, now, bringing guilt into her secret getaway. “I’ll deal with it,” she said. “All of it. Go home, Jackson.”

  “And what about us?” he asked. “You going to put us on hold to deal with later too? I used to be more important to you than that.”

  She whipped back and pointed at him. “There is no us, not like that. And even if there was, how dare you try to use our past like that, reminding me how I felt about you as if maybe it would turn me back into that sweet, quiet yes-girl. The one who was so excited about her career under your care that she’d do whatever you ask of her. Because she’s not here anymore, Jackson. You don’t run my private life or get to lecture me on what you think are my responsibilities. You lost all those privileges after you—” She broke off and shook her head. “You know what? Never mind. Because this isn’t about you. None of this is about you.”

  “The hell it isn’t,” he said. “It’s about what happened between you and me.”

  “Oh, you mean when you led me on, letting me think that you liked me too?”

  “You had a crush,” he said. “We both knew that’s all it was.”

  “No,” she said. “We didn’t.”

  He sighed and scrubbed a hand down his face. “Look, okay, yes. Yes, I knew you had a crush on me, and yes, I let it go on too long. I thought you needed the crush to write.”

  She gaped at him. “And the reason for sleeping with me for three whole months?”

  His face softened. “Maybe I had my own little crush for a while.”

  “Stop.” She closed her eyes. “You weren’t sleeping with just me.”

  “Wrong,” he said. “I absolutely was sleeping with just you. Until you decided you wanted a break. You wanted to spend time apart. Your idea, Colbie.”

  “Yes, you’re right, it’d been my idea. I meant a few days, Jackson. I was trying to get into my book and you were being insane with demands on my time. I needed a break. I buried myself in work for, what, four days? And then came to your office to explain why I needed the rest of the week, only to find you bending your co-agent over your desk. Not a good angle for either of you, I might add.”

  He shoved a hand through his hair. “You and I were on a break.”

  “Oh my God,” she said. “You sound like an old Friends episode.” She shook her head. “Look, forget about you and me. Forget about trying to guilt me back to New York. I’ll come back when I said I would.” She turned to walk away and bounced off a hard chest.

  Spence’s.

  He caught her and kept her from falling. “Hey,” he said, his eyes on Jackson. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” she said and started to move around Spence, but Jackson said her name again and she looked back.

  His expression was suspicious. “Who’s this?”

  “Get on a plane, Jackson,” she said. “We’ll talk when I’m back.”

  “Is he your get-even-with-Jackson guy?”

  Colbie wished her tea wasn’t so hot so she could toss it right into his smug face. “Goodbye, Jackson,” she said and started out.

  “Colbie, wait.”

  She didn’t and she heard him swear and kick a chair out of his way to get to her. But when he didn’
t grab for her, she looked back.

  Spence had stepped into his path, looking like a superhero in glasses.

  Jackson slid his gaze to Colbie. “Seriously?”

  “If you tell anyone where I am,” she said, “I’ll start tacking on extra weeks to my vacation.” She grabbed Spence’s hand and tugged.

  Spence held his ground for an extra-long beat, his gaze still