Kiss & Tell

November…

MISTLETOE, COLORADO’S

THE INN AT SNOW FALLS

PRESENTS

CANDY CANE

APPEARING NIGHTLY IN

CLUB CRIMSON

IT WASN’T IN Caleb McGregor’s bag of reporter’s tricks to go after a story by drinking himself under anyone’s table, but here he was, at the Inn at Snow Falls’ Club Crimson, in the lovers’ resort of Mistletoe, Colorado, looking for clarity in the bottom of a glass.

Several glasses actually.

He knew better. Of course he knew better. But knowing better hadn’t kept him from recently making the biggest mistake of his life. Neither did it negate the fact that he’d found many an answer to an intriguing question when his nose—or his blood alcohol level—was where it didn’t belong.

Even when he was sober, his intuition rivaled that of the female population of Baltimore—the city he called his base of operations rather than home, home being a word with too much emotional resonance and Caleb not being a feelings kind of guy.

And that sixth sense had shifted into high gear the minute the lounge singer had taken the stage.

Unfortunately, the Scotch he’d downed had left him with a slippery grip on the instincts insisting he was sitting on top of a big fat scoop—one that might be as big and as fat as the exclusive he’d come here at Ravyn Black’s invitation to get.

Whether or not that was the case, one thing was certain.

Club Crimson lived up to its vivid name.

The Inn at Snow Falls’ nightclub was a kaleidoscope of reds, from the carpet splashed with sherry, claret and port-wine hues, to the padded bar and stools of scarlet, to the plush sofas and matching wing chairs in patterns of ruby and rose.

The decorative color scheme was not what Caleb found objectionable. After all, he’d yet to meet an Italian or Chinese restaurant he didn’t like. Hell, his favorite baseball team had red in its name and wore the color proudly when taking the field at Fenway.

But when the design of a club was calculated to evoke a romantic, sexy mood, and that evocation lacked even a hint of the subtle finesse that made sexy sexy, and the entire setup was set up in a town called Mistletoe, well…

Never let it be said that Caleb McGregor didn’t embrace his cynicism wholeheartedly.

And then, as if the ornamental bloodbath wasn’t enough, Club Crimson had gone so over the top in their efforts to promote romance as to hire a red-haired chanteuse and call her Candy Cane.

A textbook case of adding insult to injury. Or it would’ve been had she not manipulated the schmaltzy lyrics into telling a story with the skill of Scheherazade—and done so with a husky R & B style, and in a voice he swore he’d heard before but couldn’t for the drunken life of him place.

He was falling for it all—the words that seduced him, the costume that tempted him, the act as a whole that had him mentally panting like a randy teen. Or a full-grown man with more alcohol than reasoning skills at his disposal.

Considering the number of drinks he’d downed, the only part of this that came as a surprise was the fact that he was able to recognize the folly of his ways.

At least he’d had the good sense at the beginning of the evening to claim a back corner booth. He was out of the way, and in the perfect position to watch. And watch he did, closely, enjoying himself more than was wise.

She was a looker, Ms. Cane, though considering the pretense of the rest of this place, he doubted her assets were genuine. That didn’t stop him from having a good time ogling the plunging front of her cherry-colored gown.

He wasn’t sure how women did it—kept their tits from falling out of flesh-baring tops cut from their throats to their navels. Some, he knew, had little to fear, but not in this case. Whether Mother Nature or manufactured, she had a lot.

She was curvy, too, her cinched-in waist flaring into real hips instead of not flaring at all. He liked hips. He liked a woman with an ass. If he ran the world, women would be required by law to be more than a pair of breasts on an androgynous body.

He’d amend the Constitution if he had to, put a picture of Candy Cane next to one of Ravyn Black, the practically hermaphroditic singer for the emo band Evermore he’d come to Mistletoe to see, to illustrate the difference between ass and no ass.

Yeah, that would be the perfect way to make his point. His point being…did he have a point?

Had he ever had a point? Was that the point his crossed eyes were seeing at the end of his nose? Or had his point become all soft and squishy and not pointy at all when he’d upended his glass and swallowed the last of his drink?

O…kay.

It was quitting time, heading-to-bed time. Time to just say no.

Or it would be if he wasn’t stuck.

The pianist was playing the introductory notes to the singer’s final song, and the crowd that had quieted when she walked onstage, that had done no more than whisper as she sang Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald and Harry Connick, Jr., had grown deathly still, pin-droppingly silent.

If Caleb got up now, he was likely to be shot.

Candy pulled the microphone from the stand she’d made love to during her previous song, and began to croon the opening lines of her last. Her hips swaying, she crossed the small corner stage and descended the steps into the mesmerized crowd drunk on whiskey, wine and love.

Her hair that he was sure was a wig—long, wavy, strawberry-blond—picked up and reflected the flashes of red thrown by the spinning disco ball, as did the sequins in the dress molded to her curves. So molded, in fact, that if it weren’t for the peekaboo slit running up one thigh, he doubted she’d be able to walk.

He watched her wind her way through the gathered listeners, smiling, fingering one man’s tie, brushing another’s hair from his forehead, cupping a shoulder or stroking her finger along a forearm of their female companions. An equal-opportunity seductress, Caleb mused, finding his eyelids drifting lazily as he, too, fell prey to her spell.

A siren, she moved from table to table, the sultry sweep of her lashes, the alluring touch of her tongue to her lips, making men’s knees weak, their palms sweaty, their blood run hot, the front of their pants—once flat against their abdomens—rise like pitched tents. He knew that’s what was happening around the room because it was happening to him.

It didn’t matter that he was the only person in the room sitting by himself. His reaction would’ve been the same had he been in the company of his mother, a date or a priest. He wasn’t hard because he was alone, or because he was lonely. He was hard because Candy Cane had made him that way.

But the fact that this was a group erection cheapened what he felt—or so he tried to convince himself, since he didn’t want to feel anything.

And then something else happened. She turned just so, moved to the perfect spot, leaned against the back of a sofa at the ideal angle with the lights exactly right. The moment didn’t last longer than a blink before it was gone, and she’d bowed her body toward another sap in the crowd.

But it stuck with him, wouldn’t let him go, and he studied her instead of looking away, stared at her instead of chalking up what he thought he was seeing to too much Scotch on a stomach empty of anything else.

What he thought he was seeing was a familiar face. A familiar face to go with the voice he could’ve sworn he recognized at the beginning of her set. A recognition he’d then dismissed because of how many times the server had replaced the single malt in his snifter.

Now he really did need a drink, and he needed it to be hot, black and fully caffeinated so he could make sense of the psychedelic swirls and splatters of reds Club Crimson had painted in his mind.

His job depended on rumors. He listened, he verified, he discarded. He’d been doing it for ten years, writing a celebrity gossip column that had started out small and gone into national syndication twenty-four months after launch. It was so popular, it was featured during what one TV network called their “celebrity beat,” and had its own Web site to boot.

Caleb McGregor was Max Savage, the notorious “Snoop with the Scoop,” loved, lauded and feared far and wide by politicians, society players and celebrities alike for his sarcastic riffs on what his audience demanded and deemed newsworthy about those in the public eye.

Not that anyone at the inn knew who he was, or that he was here by invitation for an exclusive—the very private wedding of Ravyn Black and Teddy Eagleton. Over the next few days, he’d be covering the preparations leading up to the big event. But as always, he was posing as a member of Max Savage’s street team. Not even Ravyn knew he was Max.

The only people who knew his identity, who would ever know or have need to, were his agent, his attorney and his editor. When he’d set off down tabloid road ten years ago, he’d made sure his only connection was to the Max Savage machine, not to the alter ego itself.

It was a decision that had turned out to be a sanity-saver, keeping his personal business out of the limelight. And it was going to make it a whole lot easier to transition to life after Max—a retirement that would have him hanging up his gear as soon as he finished this gig.