Page 52 of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year

But something about the picture that she’d painted made him smile. “Are you an author?”

She looked like an angel when she smiled. “What gave me away? The fact that I can’t remember how to walk in these heels or the emergency paperback in my purse?” She tried to finger comb her hair but that just made it do other things she evidently hated because she groaned.

Ethan wanted to smile, to laugh, to ask her if they’d met before but that would sound like a line, and besides, it would also be a lie. If he’d met her, he’d remember.

She pulled off her right glove and kept working on her hair, but something in the reflection caught her eye and her whole demeanor changed.

“Are you kidding me?”

“What’s wrong?” he asked, suddenly worried.

“My pass has the wrong name on it!” She pointed to the sticker building security had to give all visitors before they were allowed in. “Did you know Eleanor Ashley might be at this party? Eleanor Ashley is going to think my name is”—she squinted at the name tag—“Marcie.”

“Oh no. What will you do?” he teased, but no one had ever been more serious than she was in that moment.

“I will legally change my name to Marcie.”

She would have done it too. She had the look of a woman who would have done anything, and Ethan found himself smiling for the first time in a year.

“What if I act like that’s always been your name?”

She brightened. “You’d do that?”

He leaned his good shoulder againstthe elevator wall and smiled. “Absolutely.”

The last sixty seconds were officially the best Christmas he’d had in ages and he was just starting to wish the elevator ride would last forever when the lights went out and the car stopped moving.

It felt, to Ethan, like the luckiest break in the world, but the woman beside him obviously didn’t agree because she started quietly chanting, “Oh no. Oh no. Oh—”

“It’s okay.”

“Oh no.”

He could feel her trembling. She pressed against the wall and her breath grew ragged and too fast.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he told her. “It’s fine. I promise.”

“I don’t...” She started but trailed off like there wasn’t enough oxygen in her lungs—in the elevator. In the building. “I don’t love the dark. Or small spaces.” It was the kind of intensely private thing she probably hadn’t meant to share, and he watched her take him in through the red glow of the emergency lights. He saw her shudder and swallow hard, then force a smile.

“Or tall, strange, bearded men who look like they live on a mountain and kill all their own meat?” He smiled back because Ethan knew how he looked those days. Ragged and burned out and practically feral. But that wasn’t the weird part. The weird part was that, until that moment, he hadn’t even cared.

For a moment, she just stood there, weighing her options. “Um, just out of curiosity, is there a not-rude way to answer that question?” Ethan’s laugh was his answer, and he felt her relax, just a little. “So... uh... Killhaven?” she tried.

It took him a moment to remember the name of his publisher and where he was going. And why. “Yes. Yeah.”

“Are you an author too?”

“Yeah. I mean no. I mean kind of?” He looked down at the floor, almost embarrassed to admit, “I just sold my first book. It won’t even be out until next year.”

Ethan realized with a pang thatit was the first time he’d said those words aloud. He hadn’t told his friends and former colleagues, and he sure as hell hadn’t told his father. Even his sisters-in-law were in the dark because they would feel obligated to tell his brothers and once the brothers knew... Well, then a dozen guys would rappel out of a helicopter and break his other arm. His father would be that angry.

But this woman... He wanted to see what she would say, do. He wanted to hear her smile.

“Congratulations!”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“Yes, it is.” Her voice was soft and low and somehow he knew he’d never forget it—knew he’d be able to recognize it in the dark for the rest of his life. “It’s a big deal.”