Icecapade by Josh Lanyon Page B

Hangover.
    That’s all this was. He needed a couple of Alka-Seltzer and sleep. He could have both on the flight to Amsterdam.
    A moment later he pushed out of the restroom, strolled through the main lobby and walked out through the entrance of The Michelangelo.
    Yellow dawn cast baked watercolor light across the tall buildings and shady streets. No planes fell from the sky. The computers of the world had not Josh Lanyon
    9
    ground to a halt. The traffic signals continued to blink their messages to the eerily quiet streets.
    Noel raised his arm to flag down a cab, and moments later one pulled to the curb, exhaust warming the cold air. From behind smudgy windows, he could hear the muffled blast of Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Only Living Boy in New York.”
    He drew a deep breath of cold, dry air scented of exhaust and the salt and chemicals they used to keep the streets ice free—and something uncannily like…expensive urine. The Manhattan cocktail. There was no place on earth that smelled like New York City.
    Noel tossed his bags in the cab. No one tried to stop him. No one noticed him at all. It was the first day of the New Year. The first day of the new Millennium.
    A new beginning.
    So why did it feel like something was ending?
    Chapter One
    Two days before Christmas—present day
    “That went better than I expected.” Elise Bennett locked the doors of Odyssey Books as the final customer departed into the sleety December night.
    She glanced back at Noel. “You’re not serious about winding up the Nash Blue series are you?”
    Elise was a pretty, forty-something brunette, the former marketing director of a large publishing house. She’d opened her own bookstore and made it a success at a time when indie bookstores everywhere were folding, which said something for both her acumen and her drive.
    Noel shrugged into his black cashmere coat. “I think it’s time, don’t you? I’ve had a good run.
    Eight books.” Seven books more than he’d ever expected to write—let alone sell.
    “I might have agreed with you earlier this evening, but after listening to your fans…although I still don’t know what the ultimate fallout will be from making Nash Blue gay.”
    “He was always gay. I finally brought him out of the closet.”
    Josh Lanyon
    11
    “If Nash was always gay, what the heck was he doing bedding all those beautiful women all these years?” Elise pulled down the shades across the double doors and moved to turn off the Christmas lights in the large picture windows.
    It was a lovely shop. Gleaming hardwood floors, low and easily accessible shelves that looked like real bookcases, colorful, old time framed posters. It looked like Noel had wanted all bookstores to look when he was a kid. A kid from a family where only goluboj —faggots—read books for fun.
    “He bedded a few beautiful men too.”
    “Yes, but we all believed that was something he had to do to stay alive.”
    Noel laughed. “Isn’t that the point of all sex?”
    Norma, Elise’s assistant, looked up from counting the register. “Let me try to wrap my brain around this. Nash Blue turns out to be gay and in love with his plodding police nemesis Detective Richard Cross, and you’re going to leave it there?”
    “Where do you think it should end?” Noel fished the gray silk scarf from his pocket and tied it around his neck. December seemed to be a bit colder every year. Or maybe it was him, some failure of his internal thermostat.
    “I think Cross should turn out to be gay too.”
    12
    Icecapade
    “Ah. A romance reader.” Noel’s gaze met Elise’s.
    Elise said, “But Cross is gay, isn’t he?”
    Elise was one of Noel’s dearest friends. His first ever book signing had been at Odyssey Books and she had loyally supported every release since. He occasionally spent the night at her Manhattan brownstone when he was in town, and Elise and her husband visited Noel’s upstate farm every summer. He liked Elise, he respected her, he