Wish Upon a Christmas Star

by Darlene Gardner

  “Caroline’s not blameless, that’s for sure,” Maria said. “Did you know she was Mike’s first girlfriend? He was shy growing up, without a lot of female friends. I’m certain she made the first move.”

  “Mike always seemed sure of himself to me.”

  “He was only fourteen when you and I were going out. As he got older, being the brother of a star athlete was hard on him.” She was referring to her other brother, Jack, who pitched briefly in the major leagues before he was sidelined by an injury. “Mike couldn’t keep up with Jack in either sports or schoolwork. After a while, he stopped trying.”

  “I’m sure Mike had other things going for him,” Logan said.

  “Oh, he did. He was a really good guitar player and he could fix anything,” she said. “But his self-esteem was already low by the time he started dating Caroline. Then it got lower.”

  “Getting a girlfriend usually has the opposite effect,” Logan remarked.

  “Caroline was a pretty terrible girlfriend. She was always bossing Mike around to get her way. She’d get him to do stuff like skip school to stand in line for concert tickets. Or blow off studying to take her to the movies. That kind of nonsense. His grades started to suffer and he’d have these blowout arguments with our parents. It was like living in a war zone.”

  Logan thought that was a strange statement. He’d heard that Maria had moved into an apartment in downtown Lexington with her husband as soon as they married. “But you didn’t live there, right?”

  She looked confused for a moment before she nodded. “Oh, right. But you know how close my family is. We know each other’s business. And, well, Caroline reminded me of Jerry.”

  “Because Jerry tried to boss you around, too?”

  “Exactly.”

  “It doesn’t sound like Mike resented that as much as you did.”

  “Caroline’s one of those women who use sex as a weapon,” Maria said. “Mike was obsessed with her and did whatever she told him to. She even got him into pot. She wasn’t hooked on it like Mike was, but when I caught him smoking, he told me he tried it the first time because she wanted to experiment.”

  “So far all I’ve heard is that Mike got mixed up with the wrong girl,” Logan said. “I still don’t see how you were to blame for him turning up in New York.”

  “I haven’t told you everything yet.” Maria started to take another drink of her whiskey and water and seemed surprised that she’d already finished it. “I couldn’t stand the way Caroline treated Mike. She’d blow him off, then he’d hear she’d been out with friends. When I found out she wanted him to wear a pink tux to homecoming, I lost it.”

  “I don’t get it,” Logan said. “Why would you care about something like that?”

  “It seems silly now, but in high school those things matter,” she said. “Mike was afraid the other kids would laugh at him. He wouldn’t tell Caroline how he felt, though. He never did. Not until I shamed him into sticking up for himself.”

  Logan sensed they were getting to the crux of the story. “I take it things didn’t go well?”

  “They couldn’t have gone worse. Mike confronted her about the pink tux in the cafeteria,” Maria said. “I heard later that Caroline erupted, calling him a loser and an embarrassment. She said she was sick of him, anyway, and there was another guy who’d take her to homecoming.”

  “Pretty tough stuff for a teenager in love to hear.”

  “Mike was so upset he ran out of the cafeteria and drove home. He sideswiped a car on the way,” she said. “I didn’t know about that when he came through the door, but I was surprised to see him home. I asked what was going on.”

  Logan was starting to get the impression that Maria had spent more time at her parents’ house than her own apartment. Maybe her marriage had been more troubled than she’d admitted.

  “Mike started shouting at me. He told me Caroline had broken up with him. He said it was my fault, that things were going fine before I butted in. I tried to tell him he was better off without her, but he wouldn’t listen. He stormed to his room, packed some things and drove off.” Maria wiped at her eyes and he noticed they were watery. “That was the last time I saw him.”

  Understanding dawned. Logan reached across the space between them and took her hand. It was cold to the touch. “Now I understand why it’s so hard for you to accept that Mike is dead.”

  “I want so badly for a second chance,” she said in a broken voice. “I need him to know I’m sorry and that I love him.”

  “I know you do.” Logan squeezed her hand gently. “But you’re a private investigator, Maria. You operate on facts, and you haven’t turned up any evidence that points to Mike being alive. You’ve got to put aside your emotions and listen to what your investigation is telling you.”

  She wiped at her eyes a second time. “I know.”

  “You have to go back to Lexington, Maria. Annalise can make excuses for you only for so long,” he continued. “You don’t want your mom and dad to get their hopes up that Mike might be alive, too, do you?”

  “I wanted to bring Mike home to them for the holidays,” she said. “That would be the best present I could give them.”

  “Your family’s gotten used to holidays without Mike, but they need to have you there with them,” Logan said. “Let me book a flight back to Lexington for you. I’ll even pay for it.”

  “No, thank you,” she said with a touch of her characteristic spirit. “I can book and pay for my own flight.”

  “Okay. But in the morning, we’ll drive to the airport together.”

  “I’ll probably be flying out of Miami.”

  “Then I’ll drive up there with you.”

  “No.” She blinked a few times, drying her eyes. “Not only do you need to get back to New York but I’ve never been good at goodbyes.”

  “Me, neither.” He thought about the terrible day she’d finally realized he had no intention of going to art school and moving in with her. No matter what he’d said, she wouldn’t let go of her pie-in-the-sky notion that all they needed was love.

  “Then this is goodbye,” she’d told him.

  She swallowed now. “It would be easier if we said our goodbyes right here.”

  “Tonight?” he asked. “Don’t you at least want to get together for breakfast tomorrow morning?”

  She shook her head.

  He felt moisture in his own eyes. Dropping her hand, he raised his fingers to her cheek and lightly traced her soft skin. He didn’t need to memorize her face. It was already burned into his brain.

  “Maria DiMarco,” he whispered, “I’m going to miss you.”

  Thinking this might be the last chance he’d ever have to kiss her, he pulled her to her feet and lowered his head. Slowly, so she’d have a chance to back away. Instead, she strained toward him, clasping his shoulders and accepting his kiss.

  Her lips clung to his. One of her hands snaked around his nape and she buried her fingers in the hair. She used to do that when they were teenagers. She’d make soft noises in the back of her throat, too, the way she was now.

  Logan didn’t need to coax her mouth open. She touched her tongue to the tip of his, then deepened the kiss herself. And then they were kissing in earnest, her body pressed so close to his that he could feel the soft outline of her breasts against his chest.

  He felt himself grow hard, not surprised that he was getting so turned on merely by a kiss. He’d experienced the same lightning-quick reaction years ago whe
never he took her in his arms. It had happened the other night, too. Her tongue teased his and he slanted his mouth to kiss her even more thoroughly. She rubbed against his erection, and he groaned.

  Soon kisses wouldn’t be enough. He’d had the willpower to put a halt to things the night before. He tried to stop now, lifting his mouth from hers, but she trailed kisses from the side of his mouth down his neck. He shivered.

  “I...can’t stop. Not tonight.” He could barely choke out the words. “You...have to.”

  She gazed up at him, her clear blue eyes steady on his. “I don’t want to stop. I want to make love to you.”

  Maria ran her hands over his back, keeping her body anchored to his. She sounded far more in control than he was.

  “Are you sure?” he rasped.

  “Very sure. I don’t want to keep wondering what it would be like to make love with you.”

  If he wasn’t having problems formulating sentences, he would have told her she wasn’t the only one who wondered. He’d been fantasizing about her for years.

  “I ask only one thing,” she said.

  His head was already lowering again, his mouth hovering above hers. He wanted to kiss her so badly he could barely restrain himself. “Name it.”

  “You can’t be here in the morning.”

  His knee-jerk reaction was to refuse, but was it really such an unreasonable request? Tomorrow they’d go their separate ways. Tonight was for satisfying their curiosity about what it would be like to spend a night in each other’s arms. Once they had, they could put the past behind them once and for all and get on with their separate futures.

  “Okay,” he said and closed his mouth over hers.

  CHAPTER NINE

  MAKING LOVE TO LOGAN wasn’t like Maria had thought it would be. It was infinitely better.

  He unbuttoned her blouse and unhooked her bra, his eyes darkening when her breasts spilled free. She felt her nipples harden even though he wasn’t touching her. She reached for the waistband of her skirt and shimmied out of the garment, reveling in the way his eyes seemed to drink in the sight of her.

  “You’re even lovelier than I thought you’d be,” he breathed.

  “I want to see you, too.” She stepped toward him and reached for the bottom of his shirt, helping him to pull it over his head. He looked different than he had as a teenager, his musculature more defined, but of course he was almost fifteen years older. She felt her lashes grow damp. So many years had passed.

  “Are you okay?” he asked gently, brushing a tear from beneath her eye.

  She nodded, swallowing back the emotion. “I’m more than okay.”

  She gently traced the discolored skin under his left eye, where he’d taken a punch for her. Then she lifted her mouth and kissed him, enjoying the feel of her bare breasts against the hair-sprinkled skin of his chest. It seemed as though she’d been waiting forever to be in his arms like this. No matter how deeply she kissed him, it wasn’t enough. She was plastered against him but longed to be closer.

  The feel of the mattress against the back of her legs came as a surprise. She hadn’t been aware he was moving them toward the bed. He lowered her gingerly, kissing her the entire time, until they were stretched out beside each other.

  She drew back slightly and undid the top button of his shorts. He lifted his hips and she helped him get rid of them and his underwear. He gathered her against him and her heart stuttered, then galloped.

  How had they been able to resist this when they were teenagers? Maria had been ultraconscious of teen pregnancy because of Annalise, but she also remembered thinking there was no rush, that she and Logan had all the time in the world. She never would have imagined she wouldn’t make love to him until she was thirty-two.

  She ran a hand from his broad shoulder to his hip, pulling him toward her, getting lost in his kiss. His hands seemed to be everywhere, stroking her breasts, smoothing over her stomach, tracing the outline of her hips and her bottom. His kisses went on and on, as though they really did have all the time in the world. Yet she’d waited fifteen years. She couldn’t wait any longer.

  “Now,” she said, reaching down and stroking him, guiding him toward her. “I want you now.”

  “We’ve got time,” he said, strain evident in his voice. “I want to make it good for you.”

  The other men she’d been with had been much more concerned with satisfying themselves than with gratifying her. She groaned.

  “Logan Collier,” she said, “if you don’t make love to me right now, I’ll have to hurt you.”

  He was laughing slightly when he slid inside her. She was wet and ready even though she couldn’t remember the last time she’d made love. Being with Logan drove thoughts of everybody but him from her mind. She marveled at how perfectly they fit together, how they seemed to anticipate each other’s needs as though they were longtime lovers.

  Far too soon, her inner contractions started. She closed her eyes, desperately wanting to prolong the experience, wanting for them to climax together. “It’s already happening.”

  “Not yet,” he said.

  He slowed down, instinctively knowing exactly how to prolong the pleasure. She opened her eyes, watching the strain on his face, knowing he was holding back because of her.

  “We can go faster,” she whispered against his mouth.

  “Oh, no.” He kept up his slow, sensual assault. “We only have one first time.”

  Tears pricked her eyes again, but now there was no sadness, only joy. He rolled onto his back and pulled her over so she was on top of him, changing the angle, then starting again, all in an effort to make the pleasure last. She lost all sense of time as he continued to prolong the delight, barely able to form any thoughts except that nothing had ever felt so right.

  “Please,” she finally said against his mouth, hardly knowing whether she was pleading for their lovemaking to continue or for her release.

  He picked up the rhythm and she matched his pace, clinging to him and breathing his name as sensations burst inside her. She saw colors reminiscent of those that had appeared in the Key West sky at sunset. Wave after wave of pleasure rolled through her, the aftershocks even more powerful than the initial release.

  “Maria,” he groaned, his climax following hers, sending more ripples through her body. When it was finally over, his arms tightened around her with their bodies still joined. Neither of them made a move.

  “I never imagined it would be like that,” she said, snuggling against him.

  “I did,” he said, and kissed her again.

  They made love one more time in the middle of the night. The lovemaking was as passionate but the tempo more frantic, as though they both realized time was running out on them. Maria fell into a deep, exhausted sleep with Logan’s arms still around her.

  She dreamed of shooting stars and Rollerblades under the Christmas tree and her brother Mike throwing back his head and laughing the way he used to when they were young. She woke up with the images imprinted on her brain. No, not images. Signs.

  She’d made the decision to leave Key West last night, when things had seemed darkest. Light spilled over her now, clarifying her thoughts and highlighting the folly of ignoring signs. If she didn’t reach for the sky, how could she expect a miracle?

  She couldn’t leave Key West. Not yet. Not when she hadn’t exhausted all her resources.

  She turned over to tell Logan of her decision, but his side of
the bed was empty. She inhaled sharply before remembering the promise she’d extracted from him, to not be there in the morning.

  Disappointment sliced through her, as sharp as any knife. She fortified herself against it. Of course it was for the best that Logan was gone. They’d said their goodbyes last night. Not only did his absence save her from another wrenching parting but she might make better progress on the case now that she didn’t have to deal with his skepticism. So why didn’t she feel glad?

  She pushed the hair from her face and stretched out on the sheets, feeling the slight soreness in her muscles. She could still feel the imprint of his body on hers. When she turned her head, she could smell his heady scent lingering on the pillows.

  She ran her hand over the side of the bed where he’d slept, finding the sheets cool to the touch. She sighed. If Logan hadn’t listened to her, they could be making love right now.

  Sitting up abruptly, she swung her legs off the bed and rose. She’d gone way too long without a man if a single night had her thinking like this.

  Annalise was right. Maria needed to date more. When she got back to Lexington, she could let her sister fix her up with that guy from church she was always telling her about.

  Everything inside Maria rebelled at the thought and she knew that she wouldn’t carry through, that no other man could be a replacement for Logan.

  On the way to the bathroom, she passed the spot where he had kissed her the night before. Before she could fully relive the moment, she crossed to the sink, turned on the faucet and deliberately splashed cold water on her face.

  She couldn’t think about Logan now. She needed to figure out the next step in her quest to find Mike.

  She hadn’t come up with anything by the time she got out of the shower. Her cell phone pealed when she’d barely dried off.

  “Logan,” she breathed.

  Wrapping herself in a towel, she rushed to the bedside table where she’d left the phone and picked it up.