WELL. That had been interesting, Miranda Kelly mused ruefully, standing in her dressing room, staring at her reflection and finding Candy Cane staring back.
She had yet to remove her costume—a costume that was more than the dress or the shoes or the colored contacts or the wig. The whole persona of Candy was everything she wasn’t.
As Miranda, she wore glasses, though she did accessorize with fashionable frames to emphasize the green of her eyes. Her own hair was auburn in contrast to Candy’s strawberry-blond, and cropped close in a wispy elfin cut.
Her skin was nowhere as smooth as Candy’s, plus it was ridiculously freckled—a fact that she’d hidden from Baltimore society when she’d lived there behind a cool façade of flawlessly made-up skin, French twists and perfect posture, the veneer of a high-profile life.
She was nothing if not a chameleon.
But, wow. Kissing an audience member? Had she really been so stupidly careless? She’d told Corinne several months ago that her biggest fear about testifying at Marshall’s retrial was suffering a repeat of the media madness and losing her sanctuary in Mistletoe as a result. It was imperative that she draw no attention to herself to keep that from happening.
Oh, sure, she flirted and toyed with and played with and teased members of the crowd every night, but she did so as Candy; Miranda was off-limits to the visitors at the inn. That personal touch was part of Candy’s act and the only outlet Miranda had to keep her feminine wiles from rusting.
She hadn’t dated at all in the five years she’d been here, and hadn’t enjoyed more than conversation with the male company she regularly kept. Mistletoe, Colorado, was not a hotbed of sexy, intelligent, available men.
It was a lovers’ resort, a place where the people listening to her sing would not be focused on her but on their partners. And that was exactly as it should be. Her rumination was not at all a complaint. Her complaint was that she had behaved so rashly, so…thoughtlessly. With Marshall once again in the news, she couldn’t afford to stand out, to be noticed.
So who was he, the man she had kissed, the man who had let her, who had kissed her back with a mouth that tasted like aged Scotch and heat? And what was he doing alone in a town that catered to lovers—most of whom had sought out the hideaway specifically because of the privacy it afforded?
She sank onto her vanity bench, still shocked. She could not believe how impressively she had screwed up.
No one passed through Mistletoe by chance, or planned a night out at Club Crimson unless they were staying at the Inn at Snow Falls. The town was off the beaten path, the inn stuck in its own time warp. Visitors were here for a reason.
That meant the likelihood she would see him again was spectacular. And with this combustible thing between them having flared in such a sparkling display, her odds of screwing up again were even higher. She couldn’t let that happen—not with the publicity from Marshall’s trial looming.
Before the career move a decade ago that had taken her from Denver to Baltimore, and before meeting Marshall and marrying him in the same church where she sang in the choir, she’d spent all but her college years in Mistletoe, growing up an only child of parents who worked in the school district here.
When her life as Mrs. Gordon had soured—not a surprising development considering her husband’s indictment for fraud and the dredging up of his affairs during his trial, she’d found herself thinking back to the simple, uncluttered magic of this place she still thought of as home.
In Mistletoe, discretion was paramount. It was even more so at the Inn at Snow Falls. The resort’s staff was merciless in vetting credentials, checking IDs and keeping out media riffraff.
She’d seen them in action, and knew that facet of the hideaway’s reputation was what brought celebrities and public figures here for intimate trysts, photos of which they didn’t want splashed across tabloid covers.
That was the atmosphere she, too, had needed, and with the help of trusted friends, she had escaped the East Coast, leaving the gossips floundering.
For months after, newsmen who followed society scandals had hunted her, wanting the exclusive of her exile. She’d watched from the safety of her snowy cocoon and experienced a flurry of emotions, her feelings ultimately boiling down to one.
She hated the press. H-a-t-e-d reporters and their supposed journalistic integrity. They were vultures. They’d treated her like carrion during Marshall’s trial and the divorce. They were as responsible as her ex for making her life hell. But no more.
She refused to spend another moment feeling bared and naked, flayed, exposed to her bones like an instructional cadaver or a plasticized body in a museum display. That’s how it had seemed, having the population of the northern Atlantic states knowing minute details of her life….
Her propensity for speeding through traffic lights. How she spent more time on her own charity work than socializing with Marshall or at home. The way an hour of Ashtanga yoga left her smelling as though she hadn’t bathed in days. Whether her salon’s beauty technician gave her a bikini wax or a Brazilian. And if any of those things sent Marshall into the arms—and beds—of all those other women.
Despite her very public night job she now held, no one had found her, partly because of the disguise she wore onstage—and that was one of the reasons she wore it, to limit any obvious connection between her two selves—and partly because of how well the residents of Mistletoe protected their own.
But the main reason her cover hadn’t been blown—besides her legal change of name—was that the only outsiders she mixed with were the customers who came in to order plants and floral arrangements from Under the Mistletoe.
Or such had been the case until she’d fallen all over the gorgeous stranger who’d kissed her until she felt as though she was going to die.
Smart. Real smart. A veritable genius of a cookie.
She dropped her forehead to the vanity’s surface and groaned—which only made things worse because it brought to mind all the things he’d made her feel. She’d forgotten how sweet it could be to slide her tongue against a man’s seeking to enter her mouth.
Such an exquisite pleasure, that first sweet connection, its wetness, its promise, its warmth. She’d enjoyed a comfortable sex life with Marshall—until he’d begun finding his comfort elsewhere—but she never had seen stars.
She could get used to stars, she told herself, sitting up to study her reflection. She didn’t know what she was looking for, something different or new, a visible indication that something within her had changed because of a starry kiss.
She knew that nothing had, that nothing could have. She’d been on her stranger’s table and in his lap no more than seconds, and her mouth had been pressed to his, seeking, searching, aching, almost no time at all.
The only thing to change had been her perfect record at staying smart. Five years sober, and she’d fallen off the wagon because of a man. Stupid, stupid, stupid. If her actions became a time bomb and blew up in her face, she would have no one to blame but herself.
“Argh,” she roared, surging up off the bench. She needed someone to talk to. Reassurance that she hadn’t screwed herself. A reinforcing slap to the head telling her that everything she wanted was not in a stranger’s kiss—no matter that it had
