The Christmas Key (2 page)

"If the weather permits it?"
Shalaine asked him with confusion.

"Oh yes
, ma'am. There's talk that a bad blizzard will come through, but by the looks of things, you'll more than likely be inside. I'll be here Friday if the roads are open. Merry Christmas." He nodded, entered his cab, and drove off.

"
Perfect," she mumbled as she started for the door.

Shalaine
knew dusk was fast approaching. First things first: a fire. The cabin was just as the online pictures promised—a quaint single-bedroom-and-bath love nest perfect for a loving couple.  At least she'd get to enjoy it herself and Nathan could just go to hell. The caretaker had placed an undecorated fir in the corner of the room, right in front of the window. If there was some Christmas spirit left in the cabin, it didn't make her jolly. There would be no Christmas in Alaska. That damn pine would be just as cold and lonely as she planned to be.

She put
all her luggage in the cute bedroom made for two and pretended not to see the rose petals on the bed. She started a small fire that soon grew to a fiery blaze. When the room started to warm up, she grabbed
Tennessee Rain
and put it in the DVD player. Soon, she'd watch Xander's character Carson fall for a woman in Tennessee. He'd killed a man and the two lovers would be on the run but wouldn't make it past the Tennessee border before the authorities took Carson. An award-winning love drama,
Tennessee Rain
was one of Xander's best films and her favorite.

She wasn't a quarter through the film
before she opened the album and looked at their two-year anniversary pictures in Cozumel. She pitched a lone photo of Nathan kissing her cheek in the fire. As it bubbled, seared, and became discolored, she realized so had their relationship. In fact, Nathan was right. It had been that way for a long time. It was almost to the point that they were pretending around friends and family.

W
hen the photo was nothing but a pile of ash, the tears came.

TWO

Driving Alaska, whoever said it was fun was a damn liar.
There is nothing out here,
Xander Christian thought to himself while seeing miles and miles of snow and trees, and
more
snow. It was pretty how the canopy of white blanketed the land and the small towns he'd driven through. As a southerner he wasn't accustomed to heavy snow, Louisiana wasn't a fine place to test his mettle on wintery roads. Living in New Jersey helped some, but this wasn't Jersey and he swore the snowfall was heavier than when he’d arrived at the Anchorage airport. He'd had to slow down considerably on the highway, adding more time he didn't have the luxury of sharing.

First
thing, as soon as he got on the movie set, he was going to call in a complaint on the rental car place. They’d seemed reluctant to give him a car. "A blizzard is coming," they'd said. However, his career was on the line and he had a deadline. Also, someone would have some explaining to do about the limo service not being there to pick him up in the first place. The clock on the dashboard showed he had a few hours of driving left. He should be at the set a little past sundown. He glanced at the movie script in the passenger seat.
Winter's Passion
. Catchy title, he supposed, as romance titles went. Xander picked up his bottled water, took a swig, and practiced lines from a tough scene out loud, but he had trouble focusing.
It's so damn cold out here
.
They better have the best makeup crew.
If he looked chapped all the time, it defeated the purpose of his mouth looking the way it was supposed to.

His cell phone started ringing
, finally receiving some tower service. He snatched it up and answered without looking at the screen.

"
Xander Christian, speak up or I hang up."

"Where the hell are you?"
his agent Rich demanded.

"I'm being adventurous and driving Alaska, since the limo wasn't at the damn airport."

"Oh man, you didn't get the memo."

"What fucking memo?"

"They decided to pull you out of the production; they're going with Kingsley Victor."

"What?"
Xander let out a tirade of curses—some that didn't really make sense when strung together. He was tired of hearing the name of the young buck who’d stolen a lot of his roles as of late. "Can they do that? What about the contract?"

"
Yeah, you signed giving them rights to swap leads during production. Don't you read the damn things?"

"That's what you're for, Rich."

Rich scoffed. "Look, sorry, man. The kid has got talent and they think he's better for the part."

"So he makes a high
-budget teen romance and he thinks he's big enough to get my parts?"

"Movie producers
’ orders. When the movie flops, they will wish they had you. It always happens that way." Rich cleared his throat.

"Well, what's next on the list then?"
Xander asked, accepting defeat yet again.

"
Planet Vabre,"
Rich rushed out.

Xander
shook his head, even though Rich wasn't there to see. "No. I don't do B-rated sci-fi. Romance is my thing, my forte. What's the next
romance
on your desk, Rich?"

"That's just it
, X. They all want young twenty-year-olds for the parts."

Xander
clutched the steering wheel so tight his knuckles went white. "Jesus, Rich. You're killing me."

"Listen, when
Illegally Yours
comes out in a few months, the offers will come rolling in again. Right now, you need to be diverse. You've done over twenty films, all of them romances. Try something else."

"Rich, I'm sticking to what I'm good at and what keeps me on the guest lists and VIPs
. Switching can ruin my career."

"So could sticking to the same genre.
Well, come back to L.A. We'll talk about it some more." As usual, Rich hung up without a goodbye.

Xander
had been making films for ten years. The offers for him to play the next big role had never stopped coming…until apparently, now. He turned a drab flick into a masterpiece. His Creole and Spaniard blood gave him an exotic appearance like no other man in the business. He didn't want Rich to be right;
he
wanted to be right. Guys who played in B-rated sci-fi and horror flicks barely got noticed. He didn't want to be one of
those
guys, lost and forgotten among the reels. Xander scoffed.
I think not
. He'd been a six-time
50 Hottest Guys
winner, for Pete's sake.

His ph
one rang. It was his publicist Perry. He was probably afraid Xander might've tainted his image somehow. He always wanted to be ready when the impending paparazzi snapshots were set loose to the media. Xander was tired of being coddled, tired of being monitored, just fucking tired of being brushed aside until they worried he did something wrong

"Damn it!" He rolled
down the window and the bitter chill wind caught him off guard as he chucked his ringing cell out the car in a fit of rage. There was no way he would bend on this. Chicks thought he was a romantic guy. Hell, most of the time he didn't even try hard to bed them, not when their affection was already there. If they didn’t seem all that eager, he merely had to drop a few small lines from his flicks and they never even knew the difference, unless they were devoted fans and knew his lines word for word. A sci-fi flick would ruin all of that with one bad rating.

Damn Rich
for not remembering to forward the memo. Xander was fading off the radar and no one noticed but him. Rich had the young actors and actresses on speed dial when something promising landed on his desk. They were to be the
next
big star. That used to be him: eager young stud who became an acting god onscreen.
Thirty isn't old.
There were still older actors who were big hits and still making bigger names for themselves. But then again, the young stars were the “in” thing now.
Like Kingsley Victor
. He sneered when he thought of the boy's perfect hair and the fans he stole daily.

With that remembrance,
Xander realized he was still driving toward a movie set he no longer belonged on and that he was a dipshit for tossing out his phone. He found an open patch on the side of the road and made a U-turn. Not a patch at all but a bank of snow that gave way under the weight of the small sedan. The front end of his car dropped into a steep ravine and his face collided with the steering wheel. Pain burned through Xander's nose. He winced, trying to breathe through the agony.

T
he sting dimmed just as warm liquid dripped down over his lips. Still somewhat dazed, he noticed red stained his expensive coat and pants. To stop the bleeding, he clutched his nose and realized the car was at an angle that would need a tow truck. He went to reach for his phone and then recalled throwing it out.
Fuck
. He clenched his fist and hit the dash, groaning at the throb that ricocheted through his hand. This day was turning into shit. His nose bled for a few minutes more before he slowly unclenched it. He flipped the visor down to make sure it hadn’t broken. Though it might make his image seem more rugged and manly, it was a multi-billion-dollar face. Rich would be pissed if he jacked it up. After digging crumpled napkins out of the glove box, he stuffed a few in his nostrils and called it good. He flipped the visor back up and scanned his surroundings. He hadn't caught sight of a town for miles, but signs put him ten miles shy of Trapper Creek. His eyes caught a glimpse of something tan some yards away from the road. It stood like a dirty giant boulder along the pristine snow. And was that tire tracks leading to it? He squinted to focus better.
Hot damn!
Across the snow, what looked like hundreds of yards away, sat a small cottage. Smoke wafted from the chimney, which meant someone was home. They should have a phone.

****

F
reezing his nuts off, Xander trudged to the cottage porch with his backpack and luggage. The snow was falling like clouds of dusted sugar. Visibility in the distance was near impossible and he wondered how much farther he would've gotten up the road had he still been driving. He pulled the bloody stuffers out of his nose and buried them in the snow before marching up the steps. He knocked briskly at the door and waited. It opened to reveal a petite woman of average height, sporting a reddened nose and cheeks against toffee skin and bloodshot eyes. When she caught sight of him, her puffy eyes widened in shock and her mouth gaped like a fish as she rendered herself speechless.

"Can I use your phone? My car is in a ditch." He s
et his bags on the porch and she stepped back, swinging the door wide for him to enter the small homely cottage. "Thanks, I should be out of your hair in a second."

The first thing he noticed was the
undecorated Christmas tree with no presents underneath and a welcoming fire. At the base of the hearth, a photo album with pictures scattered all over littered the living room. The next thing was the TV.
Tennessee Rain
. Of all his movies, she was watching that one. He loathed that film. They’d edited the best parts out and put the bad-angle views in. She flicked the screen off, as if she didn't want him to know she'd been watching his film, and retrieved her purse from the two-seating table. She handed him a cell phone and kept staring in shock. Self-conscious about the blood all over his shirt, Xander faced away from her. He dug the business card out of his wallet and called the rental car place, hoping perhaps they knew or had a tow truck service. After going through the recorded prompts on the line, he was able to speak to a representative of the service department.

"Sorry
, sir, no tow trucks are dispatching till the storm comes through and is over," she said.

"
Well, the car is in a ditch," Xander said gruffly.

"And there it will stay
till after the blizzard. We don't risk these things. No other tow truck company will come and help you. In fact, I'm the last one in the office and I'm leaving after I hang up with you."

"So what am I supposed to do?"
Xander growled.

"Stay where you are and call us after the storm.
Merry Christmas." She hung up on him. This was just freaking great. He turned to see where the woman had gone and spotted her on the floor stacking up her photos, casting awe-filled glances his way.
Fans.

Next, he d
ialed Rich's number by heart.

His agent answered on the second ring "
Happy Holidays, this is Rich Daly."

"Hey Rich, it's me
, Xander. I'm gonna be stuck in Alaska. Some blizzard is coming through and people are freaking out about it."

"Where are you at?" Rich asked,
not seeming too concerned.

"A cottage
using a lady's phone."

"She hot?"

Xander gazed down at the woman and studied her. Her black hair waved down her back and her thighs were plumper than what he typically went for, but he could still see them straddling his body while he had his way with her. "The possibility is there."

"Well, not
all is lost then. You'll be stuck there for Christmas. Make the best of it and call me when your blizzard's over."

Xander
clipped the phone shut and glanced at the woman. She must've been in shock or something because she still hadn't spoken a word. "Do you have a bathroom I can use?"

S
he pointed to a narrow walkway. Xander started forward, passing by a room that had a single bed in it. This wasn't going to be good at all. He took a step back for a double look when he realized there were rose petals all over the comforter.
Not good at all.