Red Hot Holiday Bundle

by Alison Kent

  Enticing

  Carrie Alexander

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  1

  To: IsabelParisi@NYletterbox.com

  From: Tom@Gracenotes.biz

  Subject: New Year’s Eve

  Dear Beautilicious: Just a quick note to wish you the happiest of New Years. Are you sure you don’t want to bag that fancy-schmancy party you’re going to and come to my place instead? We could stay in and snuggle by the fire, just you ’n me and the boob tube broadcasting a gazillion insane New Yorkers crammed into Times Square. The backgammon board is always set up and the corner deli is delivering right up till midnight. Yes, I’m offering lowly pastrami on rye and cream soda in place of unrecognizable hors d’oeuvres and Dom Pérignon. Crazy, perhaps, but just picture it, ma bella. You and me face-to-face at last.

  Gulp.

  No, really. Don’t worry. I’m only half the beast you’re imagining. If I’m lucky, you might even decide that being lovers and being friends are not mutually exclusive states of being.

  No?

  Ah, well. One day we *will* meet. Until then, I remain your humble carpenter and devoted beast,

  Tom

  P.S. If you drink too much of that damn Dom, write the word and I’ll be over with the hair of the beast…er, dog.

  To: Tom@Gracenotes.biz

  From: IsabelParisi@NYletterbox.com

  Subject: re: New Year’s Eve

  Beastly man, don’t tempt me! When we started our Napoleon-and-Josephine, Griffin-and-Sabine, Tom-and-Meg correspondence all those months ago, you swore on a stack of the finest Brazilian teak and I on a swatch of French toile du Jouy that we would remain strictly friends. We can’t change now.

  Please don’t be hurt; you know I adore you.

  Maybe it’s all this ringing out the old year stuff that’s making me nostalgic, but I’ve been thinking back to our beginning. After that first e-mail (how proper and businesslike you were!), I never expected that we’d become not only friends, but best, best, best of online friends. Even if only you had the good taste to recognize my brilliance in textile design—before the Monticellos made me a star, tra la, tra la! ;-)

  I think it was the first time I saw my fabric on a Grace Notes piece in the window of a Madison Ave showroom (enough with the humble carpenter boo-yah, Tom) that I realized ours was a meeting of the minds unlike any other. We go together, like damask on a settee. And that’s exactly why it’s better to maintain our separation. I wouldn’t have come to treasure you the way I do if I’d had to throw your furry beast butt out of bed The Morning After. You know how I am.

  Okay?

  Well, I’m off to the masquerade party now, just me and Arianne and Natalie and something-less-than-a-gazillion snooty New Yorkers crammed into Rafe’s ballroom.

  ISABEL PARISI TAPPED the delete key until the words Rafe’s ballroom disappeared from the screen of her laptop. After a moment’s thought, she typed in a glitzy ballroom instead. Tom might not be able to resist if she dropped such a blatant hint about her plans for New Year’s Eve. He could suddenly decide to show up and seek her out.

  And that would not do.

  Tom Grace, the furniture designer she knew only via e-mail, had been angling for a face-to-face introduction since November, when she’d offhandedly mentioned the enormous potluck Thanksgiving dinner she hosted each year for her unattached friends. He’d practically begged for an invite, in his self-effacing way. Surely she must want to save him from a dull formal dinner at his parents’ place in Stamford, where they had the same chestnut stuffing, dry port and stilted conversations every year?

  She’d mailed back a silly LOL message as a brush-off, pointing out that some of her guests were refugees from Salvation Army turkey roll, and clearly he hadn’t suffered enough to warrant an invitation. He’d accepted the turndown, but had continued to bring up the possibility of their getting together ever since. Often jokingly, sometimes pleadingly, but always in a friendly-joe manner. Except for the occasional suggestion that he wouldn’t be averse to becoming romantic.

  Oh, horrors.

  While Isabel had been able to elude all requests so far, she dreaded the letter when he issued an ultimatum. She had no intention of meeting Tom—ever. Although she liked to call their electronic friendship her “saving Grace,” the truth was that in some ways her e-mails to Tom had become a confessional. Feeling safely anonymous, she’d been honest with him about herself—fears, follies and foibles included. As a result, no one knew her the way Tom did, even though they’d never met.

  Their correspondence had started almost a year ago, not long after she’d serendipitously met Arianne and Natalie at the bar at Rafe Monticello’s traditional New Year’s Eve gala. The three of them had swiftly become best friends, but not even Arianne and Natalie knew what a wake-up jolt Isabel had received that night when she’d been carrying on merrily as usual, burning her candle at both ends, thinking she was hurting no one.

  Except herself.

  You’re not worthless, Tom had once written, as only Tom was allowed, so why would you treat yourself as if you are?

  The words had sunk in. Maybe because they’d come from him, maybe because she’d been ready to hear them. She’d finally begun to wonder why she wasted so much of herself on men who had no value to her. Especially when compared to…well, to Tom.

  Isabel shook her head. It was hard to believe she hadn’t scared him away early on. She’d been up-front with him about her past—and probably future—as a free-spirited sexual adventuress. He’d taken it in stride, showing none of the possessive, slavering, bonehead reactions she’d gotten from other males. But it would’ve been a different story if they’d been more than friends. Or if there’d been even a possibility of romance.

  She knew from experience. When sex entered the picture, men tend to lose focus on all else.

  As she couldn’t bear for that to happen with Tom, she kept him at arm’s length via computer. Otherwise, it was too easy to predict how, in a few clicks of the keyboard, they’d mutate from jolly good friends to Bootie and the Randy Beast.

  And there would go the most intimate relationship she’d ever dared to have.

  “Not gonna happen because I won’t let it happen,” she said out loud, then relaxed into a fond smile as she read over the recent e-mail. Beautilicious?

  He’d been calling her Beauty ever since he’d confessed to buying the September issue of W that had published Natalie’s short piece about Isabel’s textile designs. There’d been a teeny-tiny photo accompanying the article, a shot of a barefoot Isabel in her studio loft, wearing white painter’s overalls with her hair all wild. Suitable for the bohemian-artist look the magazine had wanted, but Isabel had thought she’d come across like the Madwoman of Chaillot and had immediately gone out to have her hair whacked off in a short, boyish pixie cut.

  Tom had been so flattering in his praise of her beauty and accomplishments that she’d feared he was smitten. To deflect the attention, she’d jokingly responded that then he must be an ugly, terrifying beast with a heart of gold and that was why they got along in such a storybook fashion. What she hadn’t said, but implied, was that she was not the self-sacrificing fairy-tale heroine type, and so there’d be no chance of wrecking their beautiful friendship.

  Isabel tapped the key and returned to her reply to Tom’s invitation. Aside from his self-deprecating refrain about being her beast, she had no idea what he looked like. They’d never spoken on the phone, either. Trusting him not to show up one day unannounced was particularly worrisome because she didn’t trust easily. After all, they were in the same city, but different boroughs—she in Manhattan and he with a furniture-design studio and factory in Brooklyn. And they did know each other’s addresses, having exchanged them for business correspondence early on.

/>   She did, however, believe that Tom would bow to her wishes, even if they should happen to meet. So maybe it was herself she didn’t trust when it came to messing up their relationship.

  She had male friends she could hang with, and she had lovers of brief duration. The two distinctions were kept entirely separate. It was clear which category Tom had gone into. But if they met and she was physically attracted to him, she probably wouldn’t be able to say no. Her willpower was lacking, particularly where men were concerned. They’d wind up sleeping together and then there would be a ninety-nine percent shot that they’d wake up to disaster.

  And a one-percent chance of…

  “Never mind,” Isabel said, glancing at the clock. Natalie would be calling from the cab any moment now, saying she was approaching Elizabeth Street, and Isabel had better be ready.

  Buono notte, bello anno! she typed, sticking to the Italian theme in honor of the Monticello’s Venetian ball. Isabel.

  Sure enough, her cell phone began to ring right after she’d mailed the letter. She grabbed a feathered, beribboned mask off the worktable, flung a vintage cashmere cloak over her shoulders and flipped open the phone, holding it to her ear as she raced to the elevator, her dress-up flats thudding on the scarred wood floor.

  “I’m on my way, Natalie,” she said, glancing back at the loft as she wrenched the heavy industrial elevator doors closed.

  Happy New Year’s Eve, Tom, my friend.

  IN BROOKLYN, still sitting at his desk in the deserted warehouse of Grace Notes even though all his workers had been given the holiday off, Tom read Isabel’s latest e-mail with mixed feelings. Despite her spicy outrageousness, the woman exuded warmth and generosity. She never failed to make him smile and feel good about himself…even when she was turning him down.

  But he couldn’t help wanting more.

  Tom knew why the idea scared her. All that Isabel had told him about her background as a teenage runaway and her present habit of flitting from man to man had given him plenty of insight. She claimed to be open and free, but when it came to romantic love she’d shut down long ago.

  For months, he’d been puzzling over how to reach her without destroying their friendship. Finally, when she’d mentioned plans to attend a masquerade ball on New Year’s Eve, the perfect solution had presented itself.

  He would go to her, but not as himself. He would meet her in anonymity. Safety. He would sweep her off her feet before she had time to put up her defenses. If it worked, magnificent. If not, there would still be a chance that he could disappear from her real life and return to his role as the unseen confidant.

  Tom lifted a hand to his face. For many reasons, some of them his own, the plan had been immensely appealing from the start.

  It had been easy to figure out which party Isabel was attending. Even in New York, center of lavish celebrations and holiday excess, there was only one important Venetian masked ball. Every year, Rafe Monticello, CEO of the family firm, hosted a New Year’s Eve party with his mother, the shoe designer, Lucia Monticello. The guest list included celebrities, politicians, socialites and fashion and design professionals. Isabel had been working with the Monticellos for months, designing fabrics for their exclusive use, so naturally she’d be invited.

  Tom was not. Grace Notes was doing well, though not well enough to make him more than a nobody among the glitterati. He’d called everyone he knew with contacts to the fashion industry until he’d found a friend of a friend who’d broken a leg at Vail and was willing to barter the coveted invitation for a piece of furniture from Tom’s showroom. The secondhand invitation had cost him a satinwood sideboard that retailed for several thousand.

  So what, Tom thought, gazing at the garment bag he’d hung on the edge of the door. The mask he’d picked up at a costume shop lay nearby on his drafting table.

  He was taking a gamble, but a night with Isabel was worth any risk, any price.

  Especially if it led to many more.

  2

  NEAR THE ENTRANCE of the grand ballroom, Isabel tipped her first glass of champagne to her lips. Within moments of her arrival with Natalie Trent and Arianne Sorenson, they’d been greeted by their host, Italian-American playboy Rafe Monticello. Already Natalie was drifting off, absorbed by a masked man she’d spotted in the glittering crowd. She seemed unusually distracted, which was odd when there were so many designer gowns to gape at.

  Isabel eyed Arianne, who was stunning in an elegant black dress and matching silk mask that contrasted with her pale hair and skin. Rafe stood beside her, sparring with an amused lift to his lips. The air between them was so electric it crackled.

  If Arianne hadn’t had such an obvious lech for Rafe, Isabel might have jumped his luscious bod any number of times during the past year. The man was a catch who didn’t want to be caught, and that was the best kind as far as she was concerned.

  Still, nothing had happened between them, even though they’d met frequently during the course of her work with his mother, Lucia, who was the design genius of Monticello shoes. The spring line of pumps that had used Isabel’s richly colored fabrics had been such a success the Monticellos had asked her to license several of her fabrics for their use exclusively. The money and prestige had elevated her career beyond her wildest dreams.

  Isabel peered at Rafe from behind her mask. Career-wise, it was fortunate that she’d been conservative—in a manner of speaking—and had gone no further with him than playful flirting.

  Even that got under Arianne’s thin Scandinavian skin. Of course, dear, gentle, uptight Arianne wouldn’t admit it…except for making an uncharacteristic snipe about Isabel’s penchant for one-night stands.

  Little did she know that Tom’s wise counseling had led Isabel to make a private resolution to drastically cut back on her more outlandish sexual encounters. She still spoke a big game, true. But her discovery at last year’s party that she’d just boinked a man she’d boinked before, and had completely forgotten his face and name in the interim, had been the shock she needed to turn over a new, mature, almost prudish leaf.

  Well, maybe not prudish.

  She didn’t deprive herself. That would be going too far. But she was much choosier about her lovers. Only two of them, the past year.

  Which meant that tonight she was allowing herself a treat. Somewhere in this crowd of tuxedoed boy toys there had to be a man who was confident, intelligent and animale enough to rouse her libido out of its self-imposed exile.

  She wandered deeper onto the dance floor, sipping the remarkable French champagne. Bubbles fizzled on her tongue. Nothing but the best for Rafe’s guests. The calculator in Arianne’s head must be smoking.

  “Mm-mm-mmm.” A lantern-jawed hunk looked at Isabel’s breasts, bountifully bound by a tight red satin bodice. He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her up against a chest layered with so many muscles she could feel them flexing through his tux. “Hello, sweetcakes,” he purred. “Want to go find one of the private rooms and unmask each other?”

  Isabel ran a hand over his chest. It expanded, as did the eager “love muscle” between his thighs. Ugh. She couldn’t believe that a one-trick pony like this had ever appealed to her. “Big, strong and hard, that’s all I need,” she used to say, and sometimes still did for a laugh.

  She patted the hunk’s bulging pectorals. “Sorry. You’re a year too late.”

  “But it’s not midnight yet,” he pleaded as she pulled out of his grasp.

  “Call me Cinderella—I leave before you come.” With a laugh, she swiveled her hips and slid away in a rustle of sheer white chiffon. Beneath the wispy top layer was a miniskirt she’d had made from a length of slightly yellowed but still lovely French Alençon lace. Her only undergarment was a slip of a lace thong. When she moved, her dusky bare skin showed through the shifting fabrics.

  She threw a glance over her shoulder. The hunk was watching her departure with his mouth hanging open. A fleck of his spittle caught the light. Blech.

  Action, Isab
el told herself. She needed a man of action if she wanted to get laid tonight.

  She circled the dancing couples, exchanging distant smiles for interested glances. None of the men seemed to possess the extra zing she needed. Blame the near-celibacy of the past year, or Tom’s stable influence, but she wanted more than a handsome face and a good body. She wanted a connection.

  Granted, a fleeting connection.

  Maybe she’d lost her taste for the mating game, Isabel mused, stopping to gaze around the immense ballroom. Frescoed dome ceiling, gold-leafed arches, imported Italian stone on the floor—Rafe’s mansion was a testimony to wealth and indulgence. The party guests were equally lavish, suited, gowned and masked with no expense spared.

  Aside from the strings of twinkling fairy lights overhead, very few lights had been left on. The flickering flames of multiple candelabra and gilt sconces gave the Venetian ball an enchanted Old World feel. The guests were inscrutable in a variety of masks, from elaborate concoctions of feathers and jewels to fantastical creatures and sinister goblins with long, hooked noses.

  Excitement stirred in Isabel’s blood, despite her doubts. On a night such as this, anything might happen.

  A studly waiter slowly moved by in a black-and-white harlequin mask. She looked into his blue eyes as she exchanged her empty champagne flute for a full one, but felt nothing.