Page 53 of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year
Ethan met her gaze through the glow of the emergency lights. “It’s a big deal.” Her smile didn’t just brighten her face. It transformed it, so he asked, “Hey. How’s that panic attack going?”
She made a sound that was part hiccup, part laugh. “Okay? Maybe? I think we might have cut it off at the pass.”
“Good,” he said just as the lights flickered on.
The elevator started to move, but Ethan wanted to go back to standing still because that was the first time in a long time that he had felt like moving forward.
“Thank you.” She looked away. She sounded sheepish.
“You’re very welcome...” He glanced back down at her security pass. Her fake name was a whisper on his lips. “Marcie.”
She smiled. He laughed. And all he could think as the doors slid open was that they’d known each other for less than five minutes and they already had an inside joke.
He could hear the sounds of the party. Glasses and chatter and Christmas music playing low, and Ethan knew he was supposed to be out there, meeting people and making connections and starting his next act, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that it had already begun, somewhere between the twenty-first and twenty-second floors.
“Hey, do you want to—”
“There you are!” It was like it happened in slowmotion—the way she turned at the sound of the voice. And smiled. And took off her other glove—herleftglove. It was like someone turned the volume down—on the party. On the world. Because Ethan didn’t hear a thing as he stood there, staring at the diamond on her left hand.
“I’m sorry,” she was saying even though the words were somehow muted. “I didn’t get your name. This is my husband, Colin.”
Husband.She had a husband.
And then the sound came back at ten times the volume, loud and almost violent in his ears as she asked, “Is Eleanor here?” There was so much hope in her voice, but the husband, Colin, just shook his head, bewildered.
“Who? How should I know? What did you do to your hair?”
Ethan had never seen someone shrink right in front of his eyes, but that’s what happened as her husband looked her up and down.
She tried to smooth her hair again. “It’s snowing, remember? You didn’t want to get your shoes wet so I parked the car?”
He’d made her park the car, then walk in heels in a blizzard.Her husband.
“They’re suede,” the asshole said, and then the anger Ethan was feeling turned to rage.
It was the first time he’d ever really felt like murdering someone, and right then—right there—he knew he’d found his true profession.
“Maggie!” an older woman called and he could feel her getting swallowed up by the party; she was being swept away.
And all Ethan could do was watch her go. And whisper, “Take care, Marcie.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
One Day Before Christmas
Ethan
On the morning of Christmas Eve, the sun broke clear and bright and far too late, but Ethan couldn’t bring himself to move. As a connoisseur of only-one-bed romance novels, he knew they were supposed to wake up tangled and twisted together, but Maggie was on the far side of the mattress, curled into a tiny ball. Like, even in her dreams, she wanted to take up as little space as possible, like she wasn’t even entitled to half of her own bed.
He wasn’t trying to be that creepy guy, watching her sleep. It would have been better for him in every way if he could put her out of his mind entirely. But he couldn’t. So he just crept into his own room and changed his clothes and brushed his teeth and three minutes later he was slouched in the chair by her fireplace, trying to guess how many favors he was going to owe his old man if he ever got to make the call he’d need to make.
“You’re still here.” She was nestled down in the blankets, and Ethan couldn’t even see her face. Just dark hair on white pillows, two pale hands reaching above her head and stretching like a cat. It was so freaking adorable it hurt.
Then Maggie poked her head out of the covers and stared at him.
“I’m not going anywhere.” He hated how much he meant it.
“Does that mean the bridge is still out?” she asked, because she had no idea he wasn’t talking about the roads.
