Chapter One
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Kate Carson said. She gripped the phone the bartender had given her a little tighter, so her knuckles turned white and her nails bit into the palm of her hand. “You can’t ground all the flights out of Chicago. It’s Christmas Eve. How am I supposed to get home?”
Kate listened to the apologies and explanations about the incoming blizzard with half an ear while trying to think of another way she could make it back to New York by eight o’clock that evening. She had plans, dammit.
“Yeah, I understand. Thanks, anyway.” Kate hung up the phone and put her head in her hands, massaging the headache that pounded at her temples. Reality was sometimes a bitter pill to swallow. She was just going to have to face the fact that she wasn’t getting home for Christmas.
“Can I get you a drink?” the bartender asked.
“Just a white wine, please,” she said, looking up in time to see her reflection in the long mirror behind the bar.
What she saw wasn’t reassuring. She looked as immaculate as always. Her sleek black hair was chin length, and the expensive cut guaranteed that it always swung back to the position it was supposed to be in. Clients didn’t have confidence in an attorney who looked harried or had their hair mussed. She’d chewed off her lipstick again, but that was easily remedied. Long, thick lashes framed a pair of wide gray eyes filled with intelligence, annoyance and exhaustion. Worse than that, they looked like the kind of eyes that never had any fun—too serious—too cynical.
Where had the spark gone? The fire that had once driven her to make partner at her firm at the age of thirty? She needed a vacation. A long one. She needed to be reckless and learn to take chances again. It was the risks she’d once taken that had moved her up the ladder and into a corner office so quickly.
“Thank you,” she said when her drink was set in front of her. “And don’t go too far away. I might need another one really soon.”
“That kind of day, huh?” he asked.
“It’s turning out that way.”
She’d checked into the Worth Hotel at the beginning of the week, and if all had gone as planned, she’d have been back in New York two days ago. Now she was going to be stuck in Chicago for God knows how long because of a stupid blizzard and her stupid client.
The last thing she’d wanted to do was take a business trip the week before Christmas, but one of her more high profile clients had insisted on a Christmas Day wedding and had decided to spring a prenuptial agreement on his bride less than two weeks before the big day, which was smart because she was giving his new marriage six months tops.
Kate could have had her assistant make the trip to avoid the hassle, but she hadn’t had the heart to take Justin away from his wife, who was due to deliver their first child at any time. So she’d drawn up the papers and flown them to Chicago for her client and his fiancée to look over and sign, but the fiancée hadn’t been happy about the prenup, and a lot of tears and screams had followed their initial meeting. So she’d twiddled her thumbs for two days while they’d fought about money and their relationship. Seeing this side of so-called love was exactly the reason she’d decided never to get married.
In her experience—which included an ex-fiancée of her own—money always trumped love. Her clients proved it on a daily basis, and the loser she’d been engaged to had proved it when he’d walked away after they’d found out her father had been too creative with the money from his hedge fund company. He’d stuck by her through the FBI investigation and her father’s arraignment, but he’d split the moment he’d found out all of her father’s assets were being frozen and she wouldn’t inherit the vast fortune he’d bilked people out of the last thirty years.
She’d only had one serious boyfriend in the ten years since. As
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