Adele raised her coffee. “Ditto. Celibacy sucks.”

“Double ditto,” Clare said.

Lucy smiled. “I’ve got a good-looking man to practice with.”

Clare finished her coffee and reached for her purse. “Bragger.”

“I don’t want a man on a permanent basis,” Maddie insisted. “Snoring and hogging the blankets. That’s the good thing about having big Carlos. When I’m finished, I throw him back in the nightstand.”

One brow lifted up Lucy’s forehead. “Big Carlos? You named your…”

Maddie nodded. “I’ve always wanted a Latin lover.”

Clare looked around to see if anyone had overheard Maddie. “Sheesh, lower your voice.” None of the other diners were looking their way, and Clare turned back to her friends. “Sometimes you’re not safe in public.”

Maddie leaned across the table and whispered, “You have one.”

“I didn’t name it!”

“Then whose name do you call out?”

“No one’s.” She’d always been very quiet during sex and didn’t understand how or why a woman could or would lose her dignity and start hollering. She’d always thought she was good in bed. At least she tried to be, but a soft little murmur or moan was as loud as she got.

“If I were you, I’d practice with Sebastian Vaughan,” Adele said.

“Who?” Lucy wanted to know.

“Clare’s hot friend. He’s a journalist, and you can tell by looking at him that he knows what to put where and how often.”

“He lives in Seattle.” Clare hadn’t seen Sebastian since the night of Leo’s party. The night he’d kissed her and made her remember what is was like to be a woman. When he’d flamed the desire deep inside that she’d almost allowed her relationship with Lonny to extinguish. She didn’t know firsthand if Sebastian knew the who, what, where, when, and why, but he certainly knew how to kiss a woman. “I don’t think I’ll see him for another twenty years or so.” Leo had spent Thanksgiving in Seattle, and the last Clare had heard, he planned to spend Christmas there also. Which was sad. Leo had always spent Christmas day with her and Joyce. Clare would miss him. “I’ve got to get going,” she said, and stood. “I told my mother I’d help her with her Christmas party this year.”

Lucy looked up. “I thought you refused to help her after last year.”

“I know, but she behaved herself over Thanksgiving and didn’t mention Lonny’s aspic.” She reached for her wool peacoat on the back of her chair and shoved her arms inside. “It about killed her, but she didn’t mention Lonny at all. So as a reward, I said I’d help her.” She looped her red scarf around her neck. “I also made her promise to stop lying about what I write.”

“Do you think she’ll be able to keep her promise?”

“Of course not, but she’ll try.” She grabbed her red alligator skin purse. “See you all on the tenth,” she said, bid her friends good-bye, and walked from the restaurant.

The temperature outside had risen, and the snow on the ground began to melt. Cold air brushed her cheeks as she walked along the terrace toward the parking garage. She pulled her red leather gloves from her coat pocket and put them on. The heels of her boots tapped across white and black tile as she hooked a right at an Italian restaurant. If she’d walked straight ahead, she would have ended up in the Balcony Bar-the place Lonny had always assured her wasn’t a gay bar. She knew now that he’d lied about that, just as he’d lied about a lot of things. And she’d been perfectly willing to believe him.

She pushed open the doors to the garage and walked toward her car. At the thought of Lonny, her heart no longer pinched in her chest. What she mostly felt was anger, at Lonny for lying to her, and at herself for wanting so desperately to believe him.

The temperature inside the concrete garage was colder than it was outside, and her breath hung in front of her face as she unlocked her Lexus and got behind the wheel. If she thought about it, she truly wasn’t all that angry anymore. The one good thing that had come out of her failed relationship with Lonny was that she’d forced herself to stop and take a good hard look at her life. Finally. She was going to turn thirty-four in a few months and she was tired of relationships that were doomed to failure.

The obvious ta-da moment she’d been waiting to reveal itself and solve all her problems had never happened. About a month earlier, while she’d been folding laundry and watching The Guiding Light, she’d realized that the reason she hadn’t been able to experience the big eureka moment was because there wasn’t just one-there were several. Starting with her issue with her father and sliding right into her subconscious desire to either rile or please her mother. And Clare had dated men who’d fit both bills. She hated to admit that her mother had that much influence on her personal life, but she did. To top it all off, she was a love junkie. She loved love, and while that helped her career, it wasn’t so good for her personal life.

She pulled out of her parking space and headed toward the toll booth. She was a little embarrassed that she’d reached thirty-three and was only now changing the destructive patterns in her life.

It was past time she took control. Time to break the passive-aggressive cycle with her mother. Time to stop falling in love with every man who paid attention to her. No more love at first sight-ever-and she meant it this time. No more settling-ever-and that included, but was not limited to, cheaters, liars, and fakes. If and when she got involved with a man-and that was a big if and a cautious when-he was going to feel damn lucky to have her.

The day before Joyce Wingate’s annual Christmas party, Clare dressed in old jeans and a cable-knit sweater. Over that she wore her white ski parka, wool gloves, and light blue wool scarf wrapped around her neck and the lower half of her face. She spent the afternoon adding the finishing touches to the outside of the house on Warm Springs Avenue.

The last two weeks since she’d met her friends for lunch, she’d helped her mother and Leo decorate the big home inside and out. A twelve-foot Douglas fir stood in the middle of the foyer, adorned with antique ornaments, red bows, and golden lights. Every downstairs room had been decorated with pine greenery, brass candlesticks, nativity scenes, or Joyce’s extensive nutcracker collection. The Christmas Spode and Waterford crystal had been cleaned, and the linens pressed and waiting in the truck of Clare’s car to be brought inside.

The day prior, Leo had come down with a cold, and she and Joyce insisted that he abandon the remaining tasks outside for fear his cold would worsen. He was given the job of polishing the silver and wrapping pine garland and red velvet ribbon up the mahogany banisters.

Clare had taken over outside, and every time she ventured into the house for a coffee refill or just to thaw her toes, Leo fussed and argued that he was well enough to hang lights on the remaining shrubs. He might have been, but at his age, Clare didn’t want to take a chance that the cold would get worse and turn into pneumonia.

The work outside was neither hard nor heavy, just freezing and tedious. The big house was festooned with lighted boughs that hung about the door, along the porch, and around each stone column. A pair of five-foot pepperberry reindeer stood in the front yard, and lighted candy canes lined the sidewalk and driveway.

Clare moved the ladder to the last shrub and untangled one remaining string of C-9 lightbulbs. After this string, she was finished, and she was looking forward to going home, filling her jet tub with hot water and sitting in it until her skin wrinkled.

The sun was out, warming the valley to a balmy thirty-one degrees, which was an improvement over the twenty-seven high of the day before. Clare climbed onto the ladder and wrapped the lights around the top of the eight-foot tree. Leo could have told her both the common and scientific name of the shrub. He was amazing that way.

The frozen foliage made a rasping sound as it slid across the sleeve of Clare’s coat, and the toes inside her boots had turned numb about an hour ago. She could no longer feel her cheeks, but her fingers still worked inside her fur-lined gloves. She leaned into the shrub to wrap the lights around the back and felt her cell phone slip from her coat pocket. She reached for it a second too late, and the thin phone disappeared into the shrub.

“Dang it.” Her hands dove into the greenery and pushed it apart. She caught a glimpse of the silver and black flip phone as it slid deeper into the middle of the shrub. She leaned forward, bending over the top of the ladder and reaching as far as she could into the middle. The tips of her gloves brushed the phone, and it disappeared into denser foliage. As she pulled her head out of the shrub, a vehicle turned into the driveway and continued to the back of the house. By the time she looked around, the car was out of view. She assumed the florist delivering her mother’s poinsettias, crocuses, and amaryllis for the party was a little early.

She moved to the back of the shrub closest to the house and pushed the branches apart. The frozen stems brushed her face, and her thoughts turned to spiders. For the first time since she’d stepped outside, she was glad it was below freezing. If it had been summer, she would have bought a new phone rather than risk spiders in her hair.

“Hey there, frosty.”

Clare straightened and turned so fast she almost tripped herself. Sebastian Vaughan walked toward her, the sunlight catching his hair, lighting him up like an archangel come down from heaven. He wore jeans, a black down parka, and a smile that hinted at less than heavenly thought. “When did you get here?” she asked, and came out from behind the heavy greenery.