True to his word, James was waiting for her just inside the hotel’s double doors, a Stetson covering most of his hair and bandage, his bad arm hidden beneath his jacket, looking for all the world like some long-legged action-movie hero in battered jeans and beard shadow.

Ignoring the knocking of her wayward heart, she moved toward him with more confidence than she felt.

He looked up and caught her eye. “Hey,” he said as some kind of greeting.

“Hi. You ready?” Before he could answer, she pushed into the street.

“You know where you’re heading?” he asked, following her out.

“There’s a restaurant across the street.”

“That’s where you want to go? A noisy restaurant?”

Beats the alternative, she thought, imagining being alone with him in her hotel room. And the lobby was out. She’d figured that out as she walked through. It was crowded. There were two people on the circular sofa near the Christmas tree, both heads bent over cell phones, a thirtysomething couple arguing with a desk clerk, their luggage surrounding them, their trio of children playing hide-and-seek around potted plants and chairs and yelling while faintly the strains of “Jingle Bells” added to the general cacophony.

“Doubt we’ll get a table,” James said.

Rebecca looked across the street through the restaurant’s windows and saw a crowd within. The booths were all full, and there was a group gathered in front of the reception area just inside the doors. And hadn’t she witnessed Sophia Russo going into it not fifteen minutes earlier? Did she really want to run into the blonde while she was with James? “Where then?”

“Your room?” he suggested.

Hell, no. She thought of the messy bed and lack of seating. And the last time she’d been in a bedroom with James. Shaking her head, she said, “Don’t think so. I thought I made that clear.”

“Then—?”

“You’re the local. You tell me.”

“Don’t suppose you’d want to go back to the house?”

She remembered hiding in his attic and the disarray. “Isn’t it a mess?”

“Being straightened up.”

“There must be somewhere closer.”

He glanced outside, and his eyebrows slammed together. “There’s a bar two blocks down. If we’re lucky no one from the press will see us.”

“This is a pretty small town. It’s not like there are dozens of reporters or the paparazzi waiting outside.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “No one from the newspapers has contacted you?”