Alison Kent - Kiss & Tell

And now Teddy Eagleton wasn’t married. Miranda sighed. “Ravyn—Brenna’s an adult. She’s been on her own for a long time now. And she’s the one who’ll have to answer for the things she’s done.”

“Really? Because she hasn’t had to answer for much of anything yet.” Corinne returned to her end of the worktable and flipped through the rest of the sale tickets to make certain she’d completed the day’s most pressing orders. “And, unlike your ex, I wonder if she ever will.”

Miranda knew Corinne was talking about the money she’d sent her daughter for college expenses—four years’ worth of lab fees, textbooks, tuition for extra classes when Brenna had pretended to change her majors, as well as room and board. The money had been spent instead on funding her band.

Brenna had paid for equipment and instruments, a practice room, stage clothes and traveling, not even completing her first semester, and making Corinne feel like a fool—especially since Brenna had bribed her little sister Zoe to intercept mail sent by the university in Washington State in order to keep their mother from discovering the truth.

Miranda knew, too, that several times over the past six years—since Evermore’s first album had hit it big—Brenna had tried to pay back her mother the money she’d stolen, and that Corinne had refused it, wanting nothing to do with what she called her daughter’s ill-gotten gains.

It wasn’t hard for Miranda to understand Corinne’s feelings…except that it was. Brenna’s “unexpected needs” had depleted the girls’ college fund, and Corinne was now struggling to find what Zoe would require for the basics as a freshman next year. She was struggling, too, with trusting Zoe, who’d been just as culpable as Brenna.

“Will you have to testify at the retrial?”

Corinne’s question snapped Miranda out of her reverie and dropped her back into the pit of worry she’d been doing a fairly good job of steering clear of. “I don’t know. My attorney says there’s a good chance I will, but he’s doing all he can to keep it from happening. Trust me, if I have to fly into Baltimore, I’m going to fly out as fast as I can.”

“You know, I’m surprised there haven’t been more reporters snooping around, seeing how this is your family’s home.”

“You and me both.” Not that they’d have an easy time finding her; when she’d returned to Mistletoe, she’d legally taken her mother’s maiden name for her own—a protective measure she’d felt necessary at the time.

Corinne went on. “I figured the ones hungry enough for a statement would at least make the effort. Especially considering the scope of your ex’s crimes.”

A scope that had cost thousands of EMG employees their pensions and almost as many investors everything they’d owned. “Marshall was always a big believer in the grand scale. The more money, the more power, the more covers on Forbes the better.”

“Or at least he was a big believer until he was sentenced to all those big years. I guess that was one grand scale he never saw coming.” Corinne tore her copy of the next ticket from the order book and turned to study the shelf of vases, choosing an elegantly flared one of cut crystal. “You think the outcome will be any different this time?”

Miranda turned back to her laptop. Like her employee, she had work to do. “As far as him being guilty or innocent? No. But it better be different in that this time it sticks. I don’t want to look up every five years to find a reporter sticking a microphone and camera in my face.”

November…

MISTLETOE, COLORADO’S

THE INN AT SNOW FALLS

PRESENTS

CANDY CANE

APPEARING NIGHTLY IN

CLUB CRIMSON

IT WASN’T IN Caleb McGregor’s bag of reporter’s tricks to go after a story by drinking himself under anyone’s table, but here he was, at the Inn at Snow Falls’ Club Crimson, in the lovers’ resort of Mistletoe, Colorado, looking for clarity in the bottom of a glass.

Several glasses actually.

He knew better. Of course he knew better. But knowing better hadn’t kept him from recently making the biggest mistake of his life. Neither did it negate the fact that he’d found many an answer to an intriguing question when his nose—or his blood alcohol level—was where it didn’t belong.

Even when he was sober, his intuition rivaled that of the female population of Baltimore—the city he called his base of operations rather than home, home being a word with too much emotional resonance and Caleb not being a feelings kind of guy.

And that sixth sense had shifted into high gear the minute the lounge singer had taken the stage.

Unfortunately, the Scotch he’d downed had left him with a slippery grip on the instincts insisting he was sitting on top of a big fat scoop—one that might be as big and as fat as the exclusive he’d come here at Ravyn Black’s invitation to get.

Whether or not that was the case, one thing was certain.

Club Crimson lived up to its vivid name.

The Inn at Snow Falls’ nightclub was a kaleidoscope of reds, from the carpet splashed with sherry, claret and port-wine hues, to the padded bar and stools of scarlet, to the plush sofas and matching wing chairs in patterns of ruby and rose.

The decorative color scheme was not what Caleb found objectionable. After all, he’d yet to meet an Italian or Chinese restaurant he didn’t like. Hell, his favorite baseball team had red in its name and wore the color proudly when taking the field at Fenway.

But when the design of a club was calculated to evoke a romantic, sexy mood, and that evocation lacked even a hint of the subtle finesse that made sexy sexy, and the entire setup was set up in a town called Mistletoe, well…

Never let it be said that Caleb McGregor didn’t embrace his cynicism wholeheartedly.

And then, as if the ornamental bloodbath wasn’t enough, Club Crimson had gone so over the top in their efforts to promote romance as to hire a red-haired chanteuse and call her Candy Cane.

A textbook case of adding insult to injury. Or it would’ve been had she not manipulated the schmaltzy lyrics into telling a story with the skill of Scheherazade—and done so with a husky R & B style, and in a voice he swore he’d heard before but couldn’t for the drunken life of him place.

He was falling for it all—the words that seduced him, the costume that tempted him, the act as a whole that had him mentally panting like a randy teen. Or a full-grown man with more alcohol than reasoning skills at his disposal.

Considering the number of drinks he’d downed, the only part of this that came as a surprise was the fact that he was able to recognize the folly of his ways.

At least he’d had the good sense at the beginning of the evening to claim a back corner booth. He was out of the way, and in the perfect position to watch. And watch he did, closely, enjoying himself more than was wise.

She was a looker, Ms. Cane, though considering the pretense of the rest of this place, he doubted her assets were genuine. That didn’t stop him from having a good time ogling the plunging front of her cherry-colored gown.

He wasn’t sure how women did it—kept their tits from falling out of flesh-baring tops cut from their throats to their navels. Some, he knew, had little to fear, but not in this case. Whether Mother Nature or manufactured, she had a lot.

She was curvy, too, her cinched-in waist flaring into real hips instead of not flaring at all. He liked hips. He liked a woman with an ass. If he ran the world, women would be required by law to be more than a pair of breasts on an androgynous body.

He’d amend the Constitution if he had to, put a picture of Candy Cane next to one of Ravyn Black, the practically hermaphroditic singer for the emo band Evermore he’d come to Mistletoe to see, to illustrate the difference between ass and no ass.