Phaze

6470A Glenway Avenue, #109

Cincinnati, OH 45211-5222

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

eBook ISBN 1-59426-571-2

All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Phaze is an imprint of Mundania Press, LLC.

www.Phaze.com

Chapter One

"Virginia! This is your mother. Where are you? Call me back."

Ginny stared at the answering machine, not breathing. Afraid her mother would somehow sense she purposely would not pick up once she heard that all too familiar, and far from melodic, voice over the device.

She heard the click as her mother hung up and Ginny dared to breath, until the loud ringing of the phone began again, making her jump. She waited through her own voice delivering the outgoing message and then heard, "Ginny. Where the heck are you on Christmas Eve? Where could you possibly go up there in no-man's-land where shopping malls don't exist?"

Ginny dove for the receiver. "Hi, I'm here. Sorry."

She heard her friend Molly laugh. "Screening again?"

"Yeah. Thank goodness for answering machines."

"It's Christmas Eve. The least you can do is talk to your mother on the phone."

Ginny shook her head violently back and forth even though she knew her best friend couldn't see the gesture. "I can't take her rehashing how I should get out and find a man and give her grandchildren, or how I'm crazy for moving away to begin with and that I should move back in with her and Dad and get a real job."

"You'd think the fact that you moved two hours away to take a job that pays almost nothing rather than live with them for free would give her a hint," Molly suggested.

"My mother doesn't take hints." Ginny blew out a frustrated breath and glanced out the window at the falling snow. "She is really going to freak when she hears I probably won't be able to make it home for Christmas dinner tomorrow, not with the way this snow is falling."

Ginny could practically hear her friend's pout. "It's snowing by you? There's not even a hint of a flake here. Oh, you're going to have a white Christmas. I'm jealous." That coming from a woman who lived in a condo where some nice hired maintenance man shoveled, plowed and salted the walkways for her before she even woke up in the morning.

A white Christmas, yippee. Had she been eight years old, Ginny would be jumping for joy and getting out the sled and the makings for a snowman. Being twenty-eight, she realized with dread that she would be breaking out the shovel and bag of ice melt instead.

"It's snowing like crazy up here, but you know she'll think I'm making it up to get out of dinner with her and Dad." The few thousand feet increase in elevation made Ginny's weather dramatically different than that of her hometown only a hundred miles to the south. Admittedly, sometimes Ginny used the difference in weather as an excuse to get out of driving home to visit her mother for the day. Just little fibs, things like 'the wind knocked a tree down and the road is closed' or 'the parkway is flooded', but not in this instance. She always knew eventually, just like with the boy who cried wolf, her little white lies would someday come back and bite her in the ass. Tomorrow would probably be the day.

Molly laughed. "You're right. She won't believe you. Maybe you better have the local weather man or highway patrol on the phone to back up your story for your mom."

Snow now totally covered the ground and the thick wet flakes stuck to every tree limb and rooftop. Quite the makings for a picturesque scene until Ginny considered there might be a good chance she'd lose electricity along with the heat and hot water unless she could get the generator working. At times like this she actually did regret not having a man in her life or at least a hired handyman. But when she took the position as caretaker for a family living in London for a year, she'd become the handyman. It gave her the time to pursue her writing, but in light of the broken generator and current storm, she probably should have thought over taking the position, and moving in all alone, a little bit more.

She sighed and turned her mind to brighter thoughts. "What are you doing for Christmas Day?"

"Marco is taking me to the city to see the tree at Rockefeller Center, then back to his place for a romantic dinner."

Now it was Ginny's turn to be jealous. Her friend not only had a great job, a fabulous condo in the suburbs, and parents who lived in Florida and only called once a week, but also a hot new boyfriend with an Italian accent to go with his expensive Italian sports car. "That sounds perfect. You better call me and tell me what he bought you for a Christmas gift the minute you have a chance." Might as well be completely green with envy and get it all over with at once.

"I will. Are you going to be all right up there by yourself if you can't get home tomorrow?"

"Sure. There's food in the fridge and I've got dry firewood stacked on the porch and plenty of candles in case the power goes out." Ginny sounded more confident than she felt.

"I'll make sure I keep my cell phone on in case you need anything."

Ginny didn't know what Molly and Marco were going to be able to do for her from Manhattan. If the roads proved so bad she couldn't drive south, they wouldn't be able to drive north either, but she did appreciate the offer. "Thanks, Mol. I'll keep that in mind."

Ginny considered that maybe she should find a replacement caretaker for the rest of the year and move back to civilization. Then she thought of her mother's smug 'I told you so' expression and quickly dismissed the thought. No way would she give up and move back in with her parents again. She'd only go back when she could do it as a successful published author, able to afford her own great apartment. That decision made, she groaned as the lights flickered.

She said goodbye and quickly hung up with Molly, then went to find candles and a flashlight in case the electricity did go out. Even at only four in the afternoon, on a cloudy December day, it was nearly dark as night already. Best to be prepared, that's what Ginny always said. Well, she never actually said that, but it sounded good.

Luck was on Ginny's side and the power remained on, for the moment at least. After making herself a quick bowl of canned soup for dinner, she changed into her pajamas and chose to ignore the fact the clock showed the time only to be a little after five. What good was being a caretaker/writer if she couldn't work in her pajamas when she wanted to? With that thought in mind, she sat down at her computer and found the file for her novel, still there, looking exactly how she'd left it—unfinished, stalled halfway through the first chapter.

She blew out a breath. Ginny had heard of writer's block, but her experience seemed more like writer's amnesia. Nothing spilled out of her brain and onto the screen and she started to suspect that what she'd already written might be crap.

A colonial era, historical mystery novel sounded like a good idea when she'd originally come up with it and done the research. So why wasn't it working? She had no idea, but sitting and staring at the screen didn't help either her mood or her novel. Finally giving up, she logged off the computer, flopped on the couch and flipped on the television. When all else failed, there was always TV.

It's a Wonderful Life came on, again, the colorized version. Gag! Why couldn't people leave well enough alone? Black and white movies were meant to remain just that, black and white. In silent protest, Ginny changed the channel and came upon a talk show called The Relationship Doctor, the topic of the day—how to find a man. About to flip again, she stopped when the relationship 'expert' said, "...you are alone because subconsciously you choose to be so."

She paused long enough to give the supposed expert on television her opinion on that theory. "Yeah, sure, Doctor Idiot, I choose the fact that every man I meet is old and married."

As if speaking directly to her, the Relationship 'Doctor', who she doubted was really a doctor at all, continued. "Yes, you do. Think of where you choose to work, to live, to shop, to recreate. Are these places where you are likely to meet the man of your dreams?"

Ginny sat on the couch mouth agape. The doctor of course spoke to the woman on television, but it seemed as if he addressed Ginny directly. She thought over her choices. Ginny chose to be a writer, a solitary profession, and to live and work on a country estate where the only men she came across were the mailman and the old guy who delivered the heating oil. And recreation? Ha! Surfing the channels on television and reading pretty much covered it. Zero man potential there.

It was her own fault she remained alone. Her mother might be right! Just that realization alone shifted Ginny's entire perception of reality. "So what do I do?" Ginny asked the television. The woman sitting on the television couch, in tears now, asked the Relationship Doctor the same question.

The doctor handed the woman a tissue box. "You make a list of everything you want in your life. By writing down and acknowledging your goals, you will unconsciously take the steps to achieve them."

Ginny grabbed a pad of paper and a pencil while the woman continued to sob on the screen. Crying would do no good. Writing down what she wanted probably wouldn't do much either, but at least it seemed more productive than sobbing on national television.

She began her list with the heading, What I Want in Life, and then sat there, tapping the eraser tip of the pencil against the pad of lined paper. Dammit, not a very promising start. Did her writer's block extend to list making, too?

Then an idea hit her. Ah, ha! Ginny thought of something she wanted. "I want to get over my writer's block. I want to write a novel." She wrote as she spoke and felt better the minute something went down on the paper. On a roll, she went back and added the words 'and publish' after 'write'. Then she thought some more and added 'best selling' before 'novel'. As long as this was a wish list, she might as well make it a good one. She read the revised sentence, "I want to write and publish a best selling novel."

Off to a good start, Ginny continued to consider what she wanted in life. Through with feeling helpless, she had enough of being unable to fix the generator or afford an apartment on her own…"I want to be able to take care of myself." Independence was important to her, however, she didn't want to be alone all the time either. She added, "I want a man." Hmm. Better be more specific than that. She started a list of criteria below that. "Young, handsome, unmarried, smart, honorable..." After a moment of further consideration, she penciled in, "good in bed, and allows me to be my own person."

She glanced up and saw the woman on screen finally started making her own list while the doctor kept speaking. "Once you have your list, what steps can you consciously take to help achieve it?"

Ginny answered him. "I could get out once in a while." No wonder she was alone and had writer's block. How could she obtain any material to write from if her entire existence consisted of this house, the television and her computer? Maybe she needed to get a life in order to write a book and land a man. She glanced down at her list of male criteria. To find a man like that, she should be living closer to a city, visiting museums, libraries, art galleries, maybe taking some adult education classes at a college somewhere. She wrote all those things down.

Molly and Marco met at the snack bar at their gym. Ginny had never belonged to a gym. She preferred exercise videos she could work out to in the privacy of her own home. See! Another way she unconsciously made the choice to be alone. Ginny needed to join a gym. She added that to the list.

Damn. Both her mother and the Relationship Doctor, whom she'd always considered to be a quack, appeared to be right. Ginny had chosen, although unintentionally, to be alone. That represented far too depressing a thought for Christmas Eve. Ginny flipped the channel once again, deciding not to think about any of it for the rest of the night or the next day in honor of this holy holiday. And with New Year's Eve just around the corner, next week didn't look too promising for self-contemplation, either.

Ginny must have fallen asleep in front of the television because she woke up on the couch freezing, in pitch black darkness, sometime in the middle of the night. Not knowing the time since the electricity was obviously out along with the digital clock on the VCR and the heat, she sat up and fumbled for the flashlight. Good thing she had the foresight to leave it on the coffee table.

Then she heard it. The sound must have woken her to begin with, the loud banging of a door slamming open and shut outside as the wind howled.

Dammit, the barn door must have blown open. She shivered in the dark. Now she would not only have to get up and make a fire for heat, she'd also have to go outside and secure the barn door or it would keep her awake all night. Why did these people even need a barn anyway? It wasn't like they had any barn animals! As she pulled on her boots, all she heard was her mother's voice saying 'I told you not to take that job' in the back of her mind.

Ginny wasn't winning any fashion awards as she tromped out of the house in her flannel pajamas, wool socks, knee-high rubber boots, puffy insulated jacket and a ski hat. What she looked like wouldn't have mattered except for the fact that after she latched the barn door she tripped over something in the dark that her flashlight revealed to be a man. A very handsome, but possibly frozen and dead, man. He lay unmoving on the cold white ground as the beam of light glinted off the icicles forming in his dark wavy hair.

"Oh my God!" She dropped to her knees in the deep snow, pulled off one glove and searched for a pulse. His skin felt freezing but her rapidly numbing fingers detected a steady beat in his neck. Thank goodness, he wasn't dead. However, she didn't know how she would be able to get him inside unassisted. The guy was pretty big from what she could see. The snow still fell. The electricity remained out. She didn't even know if the phones worked. Not that a call to the local authorities would guarantee her any assistance before the man froze to death, there was a good chance the roads were impassable by now.

Ginny began to feel the absolute panic of helplessness just about the time the man on the ground moaned. Laying the flashlight on the snow, she leaned in, ripped off her other glove and rubbed his face hard to get the circulation moving. She tried to block the snow falling onto his face with her body. "Come on, you have to wake up," she pleaded.

His hand came up and touched her wrist as she saw his snow covered eyelids flutter open to reveal warm brown eyes. A frown creased his ruggedly handsome face as he squinted against the glare of the nearby flashlight. "What happened?"

Relief flooded Ginny and she allowed herself to breath again. "Good question. Can you stand if I help you? You have to get inside." Not that it would be very warm in there with the boiler not working, but at least she could start a fire and get him dried off.

He raised one hand to touch his head while looking confused. "I think so."

Somehow, between sheer force of will and muscles she didn't know she possessed, Ginny and the weakened stranger staggered onto the porch and into the house. She guided him to the couch and threw every blanket she could grab over him. She pulled off her own boots and hat and dumped them in the foyer, fluffing her short curly hair while hoping that between the dark color of her hair and the dark of the room, he wouldn't notice if it looked a mess. Speaking of dark, Ginny lit the candles she'd left out and then squatted in front of the fireplace to attempt building a fire.

Some people are good at making fires, and others aren't. Never having been a Girl Scout—her mother didn't want to be bothered driving her to the meetings—Ginny was one of the latter. She could get the fire going, if she had the whole Sunday New York Times newspaper, a ton of kindling wood and an entire box of matches to start it with, but it often didn't stay lit and eventually smothered into a smoldering half-burnt blackened mass. Hearing the stranger's teeth chattering and knowing they might possibly freeze if she didn't get either the fire or the old generator in the basement started didn't help her much either. Her own hands were starting to shake as she rolled paper and added wood. The fire eventually made lots of smoke, but not a whole lot of flame or heat. She flung in one of the smaller candles, hoping the wax would help the fire along. Meanwhile, the guy's shivering became more violent.

She turned back to the still shaking man on the couch and touched the skin of his face. "You're ice cold and your clothes are soaked. You have to get out of them or the blankets aren't going to help any."

He tried to answer but shook so hard he couldn't speak. He tried, but it seemed his trembling hands couldn't unzip his coat, either.

"Let me help you." Her fingers were already warmed up a bit from the attempt at fire building but Ginny still struggled herself to undo the nearly frozen zipper of his coat. The wool jacket, apparently far from waterproof and not at all warm when wet, soaked up moisture like a sponge. She peeled the wet item off him and laid it near the pitiful fire she'd built.

When she returned to her 'patient' she found his flannel shirt damp and his jeans sopping wet with melted snow.

"I…I can do the rest." Being a stubborn, typical man, even nearly frozen, he tried to unbutton his shirt himself. Judging by how long the first button took, his fingers didn't want to cooperate.

Ginny finally couldn't take it any longer. "Please let me help you. I'll have you out of those clothes in no time."

He shot her a glance that made her realize the statement probably hadn't sounded very good. But come on, he was still chattering away. Surely, no sacrifice was too great for the sake of warmth. He finally dropped his hands and let her undo the rest of the buttons. She stripped him of the wet shirt quickly. Her haste was, of course, because of the cold room. She simply wanted to get him dry and warm. It had nothing to do with his tempting muscles that begged for her to slide her hands over them. Just as the fact that having to run her hands down each arm to get his shirtsleeves off had nothing to do with her rapid breathing. Not one bit. She was just being a Good Samaritan. She wasn't thinking about how good he looked…and felt.

Once she stripped him from the waist up, she wrapped the blanket around his shoulders again and then realized only his jeans and shoes remained. Kneeling, she untied and pulled off each extremely large shoe, all the while trying not to think of that old adage about big feet indicating the size of other body parts. She supposed she'd know soon enough as she swallowed hard and reached for the button of his jeans.

His ice-cold hands stopped her. "I can do that," he chattered.

Actually relieved at not having to perform that particularly awkward duty, though curious, she nodded. "Okay." Ginny knelt on the slate of the hearth and blew on her sorry attempt at a fire, thinking it would give him some illusion of privacy as he stripped the rest of the way. She heard the jeans hit the floor behind her with a wet slap as he dropped them.

When she turned around again, she found him already bundled in the blanket, which was good since she saw his boxer shorts as well as his jeans on the floor. Yup, he was naked under there, all right. Alone, in the middle of the night, with a naked stranger. She should probably be nervous. Ginny's heart was beating faster, but not with nerves, with excitement.

Trying her best to ignore the boxer shorts, she retrieved the sopping wet jeans from the floor and hung them from an old nail stuck in the mantle. The family who owned this house probably hung their Christmas stockings there. Ginny hadn't bothered to hang her stocking this year, but the naked and shivering Christmas gift she'd found in the snow qualified as the best thing she could imagine filling her stockings anyway.

Sitting down next to him, she found the couch literally vibrated with his shivering. "How do you feel now?"

"Cold."

Short and to the point. She wondered if he was always a man of so few words or if hypothermia caused it. Oh, well. She considered herself a flexible kind of girl. She could deal with either a talker or a quiet man. Besides, verbal ability in a male was overrated, anyway.

"I think your core body temperature dropped too low. You must have been out there for quite a while before I found you. We have to warm you up somehow."

The stove in the kitchen operated on electricity so she couldn't make him hot tea. Her fire looked pathetic, so she couldn't even warm the kettle in the hearth like some pre-electricity pioneer woman. That left only one thing for her to do. "The boiler in the basement won't work until the electricity comes back on so I guess we're going to have to share body heat."

Still clutching the blanket for dear life and shaking, he watched her wide eyed as she stood and stripped out of her own jacket and began to unbutton her pajama top. She paused. "Close your eyes."

He half laughed, half chattered. "You're going to crawl under this blanket with me naked to warm me up but I can't watch you undress?"

"That's correct." Ginny stood and waited until he rolled his eyes at her and then finally, shut them tightly. The temperature in the room had already dropped to what Ginny classified as damn cold. The feel of it shocked her bare skin when she finally peeled off her pajama bottoms, wet from where she'd knelt in the snow, and stood naked in the middle of the room. She dove quickly under the blankets with the man and arranged herself so she lay lengthwise on the couch. "Okay. Now lay on top of me. Or wait. Maybe I should be on top of you. Would that be warmer for you?"

"I don't care who is on top, just please warm me up." He laid himself over her and let out a shaky breath. "Oh, my God. Your skin is so hot. It feels wonderful." It would have been a nice compliment in any other situation. Ginny wished she could say the same thing about him. There might be a naked hottie on top of her, but he felt much more like a Popsicle at the moment—or rather, a man-sicle. She stifled a laugh at her own little joke. It would probably be rude as well as childish to giggle, particularly since he was naked and in danger of freezing. Besides, at that moment he snuggled closer and slipped his arms beneath her and she lost all previous train of thought when she realized not every part of him was still frozen. One particular part, currently pressed firmly between them, felt very warm.

Awkwardly, she asked, "Are you warmer now?" He nodded and she could swear the part trapped between them moved. Ginny added, "Um, maybe you should tell me your name, since we are, you know, both naked and all."

A frown creased his brow when he raised his head to look down at her in the candlelight. "I don't know my name. I can't remember."

"You can't remember your own name?"

Wide-eyed, he shook his head.

She realized she'd have to go about this a different way. "Well, do you have any idea how you came to be unconscious in front of this house in the middle of the night in a snowstorm?"

"I don't know." A look of utter panic crossed his face.

"Okay, don't worry. Stay calm. I'm sure there is a good explanation." This was too strange. People on television got amnesia all the time, but in real life, it had to be pretty rare. "Maybe you have a wallet in your jeans pocket?"

"I felt in the pockets when I took them off. No wallet. No phone. Maybe I was robbed and knocked out?" he suggested.

She raised a brow. "All the way out here? I think it's more probable that you had a car accident. It's pretty bad out there. You probably hit your head, tried to go for help, forgot your wallet and cell phone in your car, and then passed out in front of the house."

He considered that and shrugged. "Maybe."

"Don't worry. In the morning when it's light, we'll go out and look for your car. You can sleep here for the night. When you wake up, you'll probably remember everything."

He nodded. "I hope so. Thanks."

In the meantime, that part in question definitely not only moved, but was without a doubt, larger than when they'd first started out naked and huddled together. From the feel of it, she figured she now had the answer to her previous question. Men with big feet did also possess other big body parts as well.

He suddenly pushed up from her, still trembling with cold. "I think I'm warmer, you can get dressed and go back to your bed now."

She raised a brow, knowing exactly what he was doing and why. "Look. I'm a big girl. So we're naked and you got, you know, excited. No big deal. I can handle it. You, however, are not warm enough yet." She ran a hand up and down his back. All right, so maybe she went down as low as his butt, but that was an accident. "You're still ice-cold. I can feel it."

A pained expression crossed his face. He looked away and finally slumped back down against her. "Thank you. I am still cold. And I'm sorry about…you know."

"No problem." Ginny ran her hands slowly up and down his body, over and over…to increase the circulation, of course. She noted his nice back and butt muscles. Whoever he was and whatever he did for a living, he possessed one hell of a body, even though she didn't join a gym to meet him. This turn of events possibly represented a true Christmas miracle and it proved the Relationship Doctor wrong. A man did drop into her lap, literally, and she only traveled ten feet from the front door to find him.

Unless she met him simply because she put him on that list of what she wanted and willed it to happen. In that case the Relationship Doctor was totally right. Hmmm. She already had too much to consider in her current situation, so she pushed that thought aside and went back to feeling up her icy hottie with no name.

Ginny didn't know if he felt any warmer, but she sure did, inside and out. Her hands slid down, down, down the hard muscle of his back until they reached the soft rounded flesh of his butt, then the hard, hair-covered backs of his thighs. Then her hands slowly began the return journey and she felt him shiver when she reached the base of his spine. This time, she assumed his shudder had nothing to do with the cold.

She felt his deep voice vibrate through her chest. "What you are doing with your hands…it feels really good. But you have to stop, or I…" His head buried in her hair rolled from side to side as he let the sentence trail off, unfinished.

An almost painful twisting low in her stomach made her realize she wanted this man so badly she could taste it. Hell, she had practically molested him with her hands, not to mention they were naked thanks to her suggestion in the first place. What got into her tonight? She knew what she wanted to get into her.

Ginny continued to be bolder than she'd ever been in her life. "What if I don't want to stop?" she asked.

In the candlelight, she watched him raise his head. He swallowed and hesitated before he slowly lowered his mouth toward hers. Their lips touched and she let out a sound of sheer pleasure. His tongue sought hers, as warm as his skin was cold and she let it plunge into her mouth and fill her.

He pulled back. "Oh, boy. Should we be doing this?"

"Why not?" She didn't know when she became such a sex maniac but she didn't want to stop. Not yet.

"What if I'm married and I don't remember?" he suggested.

Hmm. Good question. Ginny hadn't thought of that. "You're not wearing a wedding ring," she pointed out. She had checked for one first thing, right after she'd made sure he wasn't dead.

He glanced at his hand. "No, I'm not. But that's not exactly a guarantee."

Damn, he was an honorable man, too. Now she wanted him even more. "Well, do you feel married?"

He laughed and moved slightly so his erection no longer crushed her pelvic bone. "No, I don't."

She raised a brow and let her hands slide over his torso again. "Well, then…"

She watched his throat work as he swallowed hard.

"It will definitely warm us up," she suggested as further persuasion.

His hands moved down her body as he lowered his head toward her mouth again. "I'm sure it will," he whispered before he kissed her.

The man might not remember his name, or how he came to be there, but he sure knew where all a woman's parts were located, as well as what to do with them. He demonstrated that fact as he lavished attention on every bit of her body. As good as his touch felt, between the combination of his warm mouth and cold fingers, it wasn't long until Ginny cried out for more than just foreplay.

After the barest of hesitation, he gave in to her demand. He grasped her thighs in each of his large hands and slid deeply into her with a groan of satisfaction.

Ginny's clutched at the blanket covering them both as she felt the pleasure building deep within her with every stroke of his hard body into hers. She didn't know what made it so exciting, the fact they were strangers or because it had been so long since she'd been with a man, maybe it was just being with this man in particular that drove her to near madness, but never in her life had sex seemed so incredible.

When she came with wave upon wave of a powerful orgasm, it threw him over the edge too. She felt him as he pulsed deep within her before he collapsed, panting on top of Ginny's very satisfied body.

"Warmer now?" She smiled, feeling the afterglow like never before.

She felt him laugh. "Oh, yeah."

When she eventually gathered the energy, she slipped from beneath him and traveled to the bathroom with her candle and pajamas. She returned to find he'd built the fire into a roaring blaze and fallen asleep on the couch beneath the pile of blankets. She smiled down at him and went to the bedroom to grab a blanket off the bed for herself. Settled on the loveseat in front of the fire with her dream man snoring softly on the couch across the room, Ginny decided this was probably the best Christmas Eve she'd ever had.

Chapter Two

The sun, high in the sky by then and streaming through the living room window, awakened Ginny late the next morning. As all of her senses slowly began to come into focus, Ginny realized she wasn't freezing cold any longer even though the fire was totally dead in the hearth. The electricity and the heat must have come back on sometime during the night. A glance at the VCR confirmed that. The digital clock readout rapidly blinked twelve o'clock at her.

Ginny threw off the blanket and stood with a groan. The fact she'd slept on the loveseat would probably end up making some chiropractor very rich in the near future. She stretched, and then crazy, wild memories came flooding back to her. Wasn't there a man out in the snow last night? Hadn't they…? She blushed at the memory. A quick glance around the room proved it empty. The house seemed silent but she did a quick sweep of all the rooms anyway and found nothing.

She now began to doubt her own memory and started searching in earnest for evidence that the man had really been there at all. The blankets she always kept on the arm of the couch for when she got cold sat neatly folded, as usual. She glanced around the fireplace. No wet clothes hung drying from the mantle. No shoes sat warming on the hearth.

What the hell had happened last night? Could it have all been a dream? Obviously the power outage was real, judging by the blinking clocks. But the man…the nearly frozen, incredibly hot, unbelievably attractive man who she thought she'd had mind-blowing sex with, that wasn't real?

She felt extremely strange and disoriented when she retrieved the newspaper from the front doorstep. So much so she glanced down to confirm the date printed in the top corner of the paper's front page, directly above a story about the snowstorm. December twenty-fifth. At least she found some sort of confirmation of her sanity.

Okay, so it was actually Christmas Day. So far so good, she hadn't totally lost her mind.

Dressed in nothing but flannel pajamas and socks, she peered around outside the house from her spot inside the front door. Snow still covered the yard, but the temperature had risen high enough that the sunlight melted all accumulation from the blacktop on the driveway and walkway. Ginny caught herself inspecting the remaining slush for large manly footprints as evidence her dream man actually existed.

She didn't find any.

"Get a grip, Ginny. It must have been just a dream," she said aloud. Great. Now she realized she'd developed the habit of talking to herself, too, on top of imaging sex with strange men.

Back inside, she still couldn't shake the surreal feeling as she showered, made coffee, cooked breakfast and ate while absently watching something mindless on television.

Ginny hadn't realized she possessed such a vivid imagination. Amazing. Her dream seemed so real. It struck her as extremely strange she could imagine something as incredibly detailed as last night—right down to how the guy looked, smelled, tasted, and felt inside of her—but she couldn't write a novel. Why the hell couldn't she finish her stupid book? And then it struck her. The whole concept was wrong. Maybe the fault lay not with her as a writer, but with the novel itself. Perhaps the dream represented her muse giving her the means, the idea, to start a new novel. A better one.

The realization hit her so hard it physically whipped her head back. She ran to the desk as the story began to flow into her head. She tapped her foot and drummed her fingers impatiently while the computer took an eternity to boot up. Once she opened a new document and positioned her hands on the keyboard, the words came faster than her fingers could type. She ignored the typos, just getting it all down before the flood gates closed and left her blocked and novel-less once again. Although she doubted that would happen this time. The entire story, beginning to end, was firmly in her head, clear as day and knocking to get out. She only needed to get it onto paper. The book practically wrote itself.

The novel, a contemporary romance mystery, told the tale of a stranger in a storm with no memory and no past, and the woman who found and fell in love with him. It outlined the struggle as his mysterious past revealed itself to them both. The conflict, the eventual resolution and of course the happy ever after. Wow! This was what writing should feel like. Ginny had been trying to force a story, when instead she should have waited for one to come to her.

Ginny wrote until after noon when the phone rang and she realized she'd been sitting at the computer for hours. In such a good mood, so happy at how far she'd gotten in the work; she forgot to screen the call and actually answered the phone. "Hello?" she greeted the anonymous caller.

"Merry Christmas, Virginia." Her mother sounded shocked at getting the live rather than the recorded Ginny.

"Merry Christmas, Mother." She smothered a groan until she heard what her mother said next.

"I heard there was a horrible storm up by you. Your father and I want you to know that if the roads are bad, don't come down for dinner. We'll understand."

Ginny stared at the phone receiver in her hand for a second. Maybe she still slept and dreamt this too. She pinched herself hard. It hurt like hell. Nope, definitely not a dream. A Christmas miracle perhaps…

She glanced outside and saw barely any snow remained, definitely not enough for her to use as an excuse. Not that it mattered, she could always lie, but that didn't feel right during the holidays. "That's all right, Mother. The sun has melted almost all of the accumulation. The roads should be fine. I'll see you a little after three." Somehow, the prospect of going home for Christmas dinner didn't seem so horrible today. In fact, she actually looked forward to it and if that didn't qualify as a miracle of the season, she didn't know what would.

Ginny hung up with her mother and ran to the closet to pick out some appropriate 'going home for Christmas dinner' clothes to wear, gathered the gifts she'd bought for her family and stowed them in a shopping bag, and planted a kiss on her computer before logging off. She couldn't wait to wake up in the morning and work some more on the book. In fact, perhaps she'd start working again the minute she got back from dinner tonight. Maybe she wouldn't sleep and work all night. She hadn't felt this excited about writing in…well, ever.

On the way to the garage to load the gifts in the car, she caught herself humming a holiday carol and smiled. Even with the visit home looming before her, she hadn't felt so peaceful in a long time. Who knew a good sex dream relaxed a person just as much as good sex?

Epilogue

Ginny stowed the final box in the car and it actually fit. Things seemed to be going her way. She looked around her as the summer sun directly overhead warmed her face. This house had been a good place to live and a wonderful place to work, but now the time had come to go. The family who owned the property flew home today. Glancing back at the house, her home for the past year, she felt nostalgic about the time she'd spent there. Ginny would always have fond memories of where she'd found her muse in the guise of a handsome stranger in a dream, the place where she wrote her first novel, He Came Upon a Midnight Clear, the book responsible for launching her writing career.

One little dream—all right, one hell of a dream—turned into a publishing contract with a New York City print house, followed by an agent and a second book contract. The lovers in her story got their 'happily ever after'. Now, Ginny, moving back to her suburban hometown and into her very own place (albeit a one room apartment, for now) had created her own happy ending. Maybe that list she made last Christmas with the television Relationship Doctor worked. Partially, anyway. She still needed to find her smart, loyal, handsome, unmarried man who was good in bed, but the time would come for that.

Ginny turned to go back into the house and wait for the family to arrive so she could turn the keys over to them and leave when an SUV pulled into the driveway. She shielded her eyes against the glare of the sun as the vehicle came to a stop and the driver's side door opened.

The man who climbed out wore a business suit and dark sunglasses. As he stepped closer, he removed the glasses and studied her closely, almost as if he recognized her. "Hi. This may be a strange question, but…last Christmas, did you and I…um…spend some time together during a snowstorm?"

Realization hit her like a physical blow. She put one hand on the hood of the car to steady herself as she swayed.

The shocked look on Ginny's face must have answered his question. "Yeah," he said, "that's what I thought."

She swallowed hard and finally found her voice. "I thought that night was a dream. When I woke up and you were gone…"

"I know, I'm sorry about that. I remember waking up early and thinking maybe my car wasn't far from this house. So, I got dressed and went out to look. A town snowplow picked me up. Apparently my family called the police when I didn't arrive home and the highway patrol went looking for me."

"Family?" Ginny didn't dare ask if his 'family' included a wife.

He nodded. "I've spent the last months surrounded by strangers who told me they were my parents and siblings and friends, all while I was trying to remember who I was. The only person I had any recollection of was you, but I didn't feel right coming back into your life until I remembered my own. Then a few days ago things suddenly came back to me all in one big whopping flash. It was a shock but as soon as I recovered from that, the first thing I did was find out from the local highway patrol exactly where I'd been picked up so I could come and find you." He smiled at her and shook his head. "I don't even know your name."

Her heart pounded in her chest. This tale, worthy of a best selling romance novel, was real, and really happening to her.

"It's Ginny."

"Short for Virginia?" he asked.

She nodded. "My mom named me after that newspaper editorial, 'Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus'." Ginny realized she had started babbling, like she always did in the presence of a handsome man, and clamped her mouth shut firmly before any other stupid trivia spilled out.

He smiled, not seeming to mind. "I know the one, from the New York Sun. Virginia. That suits you." He took a step forward and extended his hand. "I'm Nick." She put her hand in his and he held it for a long time, rubbing his thumb lightly over her skin. Making introductions after the kind of night they'd shared felt extremely strange. Although, no stranger than Ginny believing he had been a dream all these months, only to find out he was very real now.

Nick searched her eyes with his. "This may be totally out of line, but can I kiss you?"

They'd already done a hell of a lot more than that, so why not? She nodded, already breathless at the prospect.

He lowered his head to hers, their lips barely touching at first until he pressed them closer. His kiss seemed passionate but restrained at the same time. One of his warm large hands came up to cradle the back of her neck. When Nick pulled back, he smiled. "That was exactly how I remembered it."

Her body remembered more than just kissing him. She felt a tugging of longing low in her abdomen. "Yeah, me too."

He looked behind her at the packed car and frowned. "Are you moving?"

She glanced at the boxes and suitcases filling the back seat in addition to the trunk and smiled up at him. "I keep forgetting we barely know anything about each other. I don't live here. I took care of the house for a year while the owners were in England. They're coming home this afternoon so my job is done. I'm going to wait for them to get back and then I'm moving into my own apartment."

He let out a long slow breath and shook his head, frowning more deeply. "Thank God my memory returned in time, one day later and you would have been gone. I can't believe I almost missed finding you. Where are you moving to?" He looked concerned, as if worried now that he'd found her, she'd move far away and he'd lose her again.

"I'm not going too far. I'm moving about a two hour drive south of here to the suburbs of Manhattan."

He looked relieved and smiled broadly. "It must be fate. That's where I live, in the suburbs. It turns out I own an art gallery in the city." He shrugged.

"Really?" Going to art galleries had been on her list of things to do to meet a man, along with joining a gym. Ginny felt herself blush at a particularly intimate memory but asked the question that rose to her mind anyway. "You have, um, lots of muscles for an art gallery owner."

He laughed. "I also belong to a gym."

At that, Ginny had a laugh of her own and promised herself she'd never doubt the Relationship Doctor and his advice again. "Do you want to come inside and wait with me?"

Nick nodded. "I'd love to come inside and wait with you. And after that, help you move into your new apartment and take you to dinner and show you my gallery and so much more."

Ginny grabbed his hand and squeezed. It may have taken him a few months to find his way back to her, but he was still the best thing she'd ever received on Christmas and she had no intention of ever returning him.

About the Author

It all started in first grade when Cat Johnson won the essay contest at Hawthorne Elementary School and got to ride in the Chief of Police’s car in the Memorial Day Parade…and the rest, as they say, is history. As an adult, Cat generally tries to stay out of police cars and is thrilled to be writing for a living. She has been published under a different name in the Young Adult genre, but Linden Bay is the first to release one of her romances.

On a personal note, Cat has two horses, 10 cats, one dog, six parakeets, numerous fish and one husband and is not sure which of those gives her the most grief. Needless to say, she is very busy on her 18th century little farm in New York State. She plays the harp professionally and stresses that this does not mean she plays well, just that people pay her for it. A past tour guide, bartender, marketing manager and Junior League president, Cat’s life is quite the dichotomy and on any given day she is just as likely to be in formal eveningwear as in mucking clothes covered in manure. Cat looks forward to hearing from you all.