Page 36 of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year

“Oh, Ethan, if you were an Eleanor Ashley fan, you’d already know the answer to that question. But you’re not, Mr. Leather Jacket Guy, so it doesn’t matter.”

“It matters because either an eighty-one-year-old woman is lost and possibly injured, or she’s not.” Darn him and his perfectly reasonable point.“Margaret—”

“Of course it’s a test!” She couldn’t believe she had to say it. She couldn’t believe he didn’t know. “The greatest mystery writer the world has ever known disappeared out of a locked room two days before Christmas. Of course it’s a test!”

“Why?” The word was flat and even, but there was tension in it, like a bowstring drawn tight and ready to fire.

“Because she’s retiring.” It didn’t matter that it was just a guess. Maggie was right—she had to be. “Eleanor’s retiring, but she wouldn’t leave her legacy to just anyone. She’d pick a successor who is worthy and who appreciates her and who thinks like her. And...” She couldn’t bring herself to say it.

“And you think you’re that person?”

“IknowI’m that person.” Blame her Baptist upbringing or childhood poverty or the way that, according to Colin, her failures had always been hers but her successes had always beentheirs, but Maggie had never had a lot ofconfidence. Not in her looks or her smarts or her talent. But she’d never doubted this. Not once. Not for a second.

“Why—”

“Because I’m the person out here with this!” She held up the mistletoe.

He gave another smirk. “So I guess we’re back to kissing?”

“It’s a clue, okay? It’s a clue.”

“How can you—”

“Because inMurder Under the Mistletoethe killer leaves a map in the middle of a maze. So... maze!” She threw out her arms, then huffed out a laugh. “But you wouldn’t know that. Would you?”

Maggie had never felt so smug—so right. She hadn’t won... yet, but the great Ethan Wyatt hadn’t even realized they were playing.

Which was why it didn’t make any sense when a slow smile started growing on his lips—when a predatory gleam filled his eyes as he said, “Oh, but I know now.”

He plucked the mistletoe out of her hand and started spinning the little sprig between two fingers. Maggie lunged, but he held it high over his head like they were on a schoolyard, playing keep away with Maggie’s future.

“Hey! That”—Maggie trailed off, realizing that, for the first time in her life, she could actually stop jumping— “doesn’t matter.”

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Since she was eighteen years old there had been no room for error in Maggie’s life, but right then—in that moment—she was free. “Oh, Ethan, don’t you get it? That’s just going to lead to another clue, but you won’t know how to follow that one either. Or the one after that.” She took a slow step toward him, cocky for the first time in her life. “Or the one after that.”

She should have felt warm in her cloak of rage and satisfaction, but there was something in his eyes then, a calculating gleam. “See, that’s where you’re wrong.”

Now Ethan was the one prowling closer and Maggie was the one inching away. She felt something cold at her back. Littleclumps of snow dislodged from the top of the hedge and landed on the nape of her neck, sliding, cold and liquid, down her spine as Ethan towered over her, bigger and brighter and blocking out the sky.

“I don’t have to follow the clues.” His breath was warm against her skin as he whispered, “I just have to follow you.”

The cold air in Maggie’s lungs turned to fire. Her blood started pounding in her ears, and through it all, one sentence played over and over in her mind like a mantra. Or a curse.

I’m not surprised he left her.

I’m not surprised he left her.

I’m not surprised—

“Maggie?”

It was the pity in his eyes that did it—that lit the fuse and made her burn.

“Sometimes I lie in bed at night, thinking of ways to kill you and make it look like an accident.”

His whole face changed. Pity turned to arrogance as his gaze dipped to her lips. And lingered. “So what you’re saying is, you think about me in bed.”