Chapter Twenty-Six
Maggie should have been freezing, but she wasn’t. The hedges were thick and tall beneath their blanket of snow and ice, blocking
out the wind and the world. From the window, the maze had seemed like Eleanor herself—complex and spiraling and too good to
be true, but as Maggie turned down narrow path after narrow path, it felt more like Maggie’s life. She didn’t know where she
was going or how she was going to get there. She just knew she was alone and she had no intention of giving up.
So she pinched that sprig of mistletoe between her fingers and she kept moving, using her own footprints as a cheat sheet
to know which way she’d been.
Every time she hit a dead end, she marked it up as a path she didn’t have to go down anymore, and she kept searching. Because
the dead ends weren’t setbacks. Not if she learned from them. Maggie had been backing up and changing directions her whole
life. She could do this. She was going to do this. She just had to find—
Snow crunched behind her. Unfamiliar footprints laid ahead. And there was a deep voice on the wind, saying “Well, this is
a funny place to look for Eleanor.”
Maggie cursed beneath her breath but slowly turned and looked at Ethan, gave him her biggest, most innocent eyes. “Well, like
you said, I’d feel awful if she’d wandered off and gotten lost in here. An almost ninety-year-old woman—”
“She’s eighty-one.”
“Well, you can never be too careful.” Maggie pushed past him.
“So careful you ran out without a coat?” he called as she reached another dead end.
“You’re right!” She spun on him. “Let’s go—”
Ethan sidestepped and blocked her way. “I’m going to ask you one more time, Margaret Marie.”
“Still not my name!” She pushed past him and headed down another path, then made a turn and—
Slammed right into Ethan.
“How did you get ahead of me?” Maggie asked, stumbling and a little unsteady.
“You sure seem awful busy out here. It’s almost like you’re... looking for something .” He flashed a knowing grin and, suddenly, Maggie couldn’t meet his gaze.
“Just Eleanor. But you’re right. She’s not here. We should go.”
She started back, but it was ridiculous how easily he kept pace beside her.
“So what’s with the mistletoe? Is it because you want to make out? Because if you want to make out—”
“No, thank you.”
“You’d have to hold it over your head first. Or I can hold it. Do you want me to hold it?”
“Nope.” She made a turn and hit another dead end, and Maggie wanted to scream. It felt like the temperature had dropped ten
degrees, but Ethan was standing there in his leather jacket, looking so hot the snow might melt. Meanwhile, Maggie’s jeans
were wet from the knees down and she’d lost feeling in at least four toes and her nose was starting to run.
“You’re freezing.” His voice was soft but slightly smug. “Lucky for you, I brought your sweater. Hands up.”
That’s when she noticed the bundle of items he held under one arm.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Maggie said, but she was starting to shake as she stood there, arms wrapped around herself,
hands balled up in her sleeves.
“You know, you’re going to hurt Kitty’s feelings. She knitted these herself.”
“Really?”
Ethan shook his head. “I have no idea. Now up.” Maggie didn’t move. “Are you going to fight me, Margaret Jane?”
She felt like a petulant child but it was faster to stick her hands in the air and allow the world’s most annoying man to
tug a Christmas sweater over her head and gently work it down her arms. Her hair was standing on end and full of static by
the time her head popped through. She felt ridiculous and he was looking at her like he would have given anything for a camera.
A phone. Anything to immortalize her humiliation. But the worst part was that the smile Ethan gave her wasn’t mocking. It
was indulgent and kind and it made Maggie’s fingers tingle. Either that or she was developing frostbite. Maggie hoped it was
the latter.
“Thank you.” She looked down at the snow.
“Any time.” Then he draped a heavy coat around her shoulders like a cape. “James let me borrow these. They’re Eleanor’s favorites.”
He pulled a fuzzy wool hat with a pom-pom on top from his pocket and tugged it over her ears.
Maggie hated to admit it, but she really was warmer, maybe because of the clothes or, more likely, because Ethan was better
than the hedges at blocking the wind.
“Great. Thank you.”
But then he gripped the coat’s lapel and pulled her closer.
“Now about that mistletoe...”
“Ugh.” Maggie blew out a frustrated breath and headed back the way they’d come. “You’re right. Let’s go in.”
“So why the maze?”
“No reason!”
Dead end. Darn it! And, of course, Ethan was right behind her. She was stuck, trapped. And she could feel him moving closer; the heat of his
gaze was going to burn.
“You know, you’re not a very good liar.”
She wasn’t, but that was hardly the time to start agreeing with him. “I don’t know what you’re talking—”
“What was in the book, Margaret?”
Oh no. “What book?”
“The one in the library.”
“There are thousands of books in the library. It’s a library. ”
“See? You get a little line right”—he pointed to her forehead— “here when you lie.”
“Hey!”
“So what was up with the phone call?” His gaze shifted from her eyes to her lips, then back again. Slowly. “Because it sounded
to me like you think this is all some kind of... test .”
The word was low and crisp, little more than frosty breath, but Maggie watched it hang in the air like a snowflake. She thought
it might not fall.
And, suddenly, she didn’t care. It didn’t matter if he knew they were running a race. It didn’t matter if he sprinted ahead.
It didn’t matter.
Because Maggie was going to win.
“Why are you smiling right now?” He actually sounded afraid.
“Oh, Ethan, if you were an Eleanor Ashley fan, you’d already know the answer to that question. But you’re not, Mr. Leather
Jacket Guy, so it doesn’t matter.”
“It matters because either an eighty-one-year-old woman is lost and possibly injured, or she’s not.” Darn him and his perfectly
reasonable point . “Margaret—”
“Of course it’s a test!” She couldn’t believe she had to say it. She couldn’t believe he didn’t know. “The greatest mystery
writer the world has ever known disappeared out of a locked room two days before Christmas. Of course it’s a test!”
“Why?” The word was flat and even, but there was tension in it, like a bowstring drawn tight and ready to fire.
“Because she’s retiring.” It didn’t matter that it was just a guess. Maggie was right—she had to be. “Eleanor’s retiring,
but she wouldn’t leave her legacy to just anyone. She’d pick a successor who is worthy and who appreciates her and who thinks
like her. And...” She couldn’t bring herself to say it.
“And you think you’re that person?”
“I know I’m that person.” Blame her Baptist upbringing or childhood poverty or the way that, according to Colin, her failures had
always been hers but her successes had always been theirs , but Maggie had never had a lot of confidence. Not in her looks or her smarts or her talent. But she’d never doubted this.
Not once. Not for a second.
“Why—”
“Because I’m the person out here with this!” She held up the mistletoe.
He gave another smirk. “So I guess we’re back to kissing?”
“It’s a clue, okay? It’s a clue.”
“How can you—”
“Because in Murder Under the Mistletoe the killer leaves a map in the middle of a maze. So... maze!” She threw out her arms, then huffed out a laugh. “But you
wouldn’t know that. Would you?”
Maggie had never felt so smug—so right. She hadn’t won... yet, but the great Ethan Wyatt hadn’t even realized they were
playing.
Which was why it didn’t make any sense when a slow smile started growing on his lips—when a predatory gleam filled his eyes
as he said, “Oh, but I know now.”
He plucked the mistletoe out of her hand and started spinning the little sprig between two fingers. Maggie lunged, but he
held it high over his head like they were on a schoolyard, playing keep away with Maggie’s future.
“Hey! That”—Maggie trailed off, realizing that, for the first time in her life, she could actually stop jumping— “doesn’t
matter.”
“What?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Since she was eighteen years old there had been no room for error in Maggie’s life, but right then—in
that moment—she was free. “Oh, Ethan, don’t you get it? That’s just going to lead to another clue, but you won’t know how
to follow that one either. Or the one after that.” She took a slow step toward him, cocky for the first time in her life.
“Or the one after that.”
She should have felt warm in her cloak of rage and satisfaction, but there was something in his eyes then, a calculating gleam.
“See, that’s where you’re wrong.”
Now Ethan was the one prowling closer and Maggie was the one inching away. She felt something cold at her back. Little clumps
of snow dislodged from the top of the hedge and landed on the nape of her neck, sliding, cold and liquid, down her spine as
Ethan towered over her, bigger and brighter and blocking out the sky.
“I don’t have to follow the clues.” His breath was warm against her skin as he whispered, “ I just have to follow you. ”
The cold air in Maggie’s lungs turned to fire. Her blood started pounding in her ears, and through it all, one sentence played
over and over in her mind like a mantra. Or a curse.
I’m not surprised he left her.
I’m not surprised he left her.
I’m not surprised—
“Maggie?”
It was the pity in his eyes that did it—that lit the fuse and made her burn.
“Sometimes I lie in bed at night, thinking of ways to kill you and make it look like an accident.”
His whole face changed. Pity turned to arrogance as his gaze dipped to her lips. And lingered. “So what you’re saying is,
you think about me in bed.”
And then all Maggie could do was scream and storm away.
She could still hear his footsteps crunching behind her, but she didn’t feel anything. Not anymore. Hopefully never again.
And she walked faster, sinking in snow that was fresh and deep. It didn’t matter that she was numb from her knees down. She
had to keep moving forward. Then. Now. Always. If she stopped moving forward, she would die, so Maggie just walked faster.
“Why do you hate me so much?” he called.
She hated him because he was handsome and charming and they lived in a world where a man didn’t have to be anything else.
She hated him because life was graded on a curve and he was the kind of guy for whom a seventy-six would always be an A.
She hated him because he was universally adored and even the people who were legally obligated to love Maggie had shrugged
and said maybe not .
She hated him because she was alone and afraid and nothing. She was nothing.
And Ethan...
Ethan hadn’t even known her name.
“Because we hate each other!” she shouted back. “We’ve spent years hating each other. It’s kind of our thing.”
Ethan darted out to block her path, but it was the look on his face that stopped her. His chest rose and fell in the chilly
air, like he might start sweating despite the cold. Like he was in the fight of his life, and he was losing. “I don’t hate
you. I’ve never hated you. And so help me I tried,” he mumbled as the snow started falling in a thick white wave—like they
were inside a snow globe and fate had given them a good, hard shake.
For a moment, he was quiet. Pensive. And when he spoke again, the words were nothing but a whisper of frosty breath. “Just
tell me. Please. What did I do?”
And Maggie tried very, very hard not to remember.