Rusty Nailed (Cocktail, #2)
Alice Clayton
acknowledgments
This book is 100 percent the result of wanting Banger Nation to have a little more time with their Simon and Caroline. It is because of you, you perfect reader you, that this book is even on the page. Thank you for being patient as you waited for it, for being mouthy when you told all your girlfriends to read it, for being steadfast in your devotion that sexy and silly can exist in the same space. Banger Nation, you get me. So this is for you. Thank you from the bottom of my tiny Grinch heart.
Thank you to my editor, Micki Nuding, and the entire team at Gallery Books for taking such an enormous chance on a new author. Most days I have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming.
Thank you to my San Francisco/Sausalito detail police, the one and only Staci Reilly. And yes, the Hillevator is real and she could tell you some stories . . .
Thank you to my family, who is incredibly patient with me when I have to say no to things because I’m on a deadline, and for remembering that even though I work in my pajamas some days, it’s still work.
Thank you to the bloggers who bang this drum day in and day out, promoting all of us authors and putting our books into the hands of your readers. At the end of the day, I am a reader first and a writer second. I appreciate your love of storytelling and your eagerness to share your new favorite book more than you know.
Thank you to some of my favorite authors on the planet, whose words I not only love but who I can now call friends: Kristen Proby, Tiffany Reisz, Jennifer Probst, Ruthie Knox, Kresley Cole, Samantha Young, Sylvia Day, Helena Hunting, Debra Anastasia, Mina Vaughn, Leisa Rayven, EL James, Katy Evans, Jasinda Wilder. Thanks, ladies.
Thank you to Christina Hogrebe, my agent and friend and guide to this crazy world of Get Alice on the Shelves. You’re a brave woman, and I appreciate you a thousand ways. Looking forward to the next meal at Mohonk when we are celebrating something big!
Thank you to one of my oldest and dearest friends, Jessica Royer-Ocken, who has literally gone through the fires of hell to help get this book ready. The fires of hell being my lack of punctuation skillz and my shitty formatting capabilities. Not to mention, she’s a helluva sounding board. And not a bad baker . . .
Thank you to the Captain Hookers, my partners in crime, PQ and Lo (you’d know them as Christina Lauren). For the podcasting, for the texting, for the Tower of Terror. For the love of the mouse.
Thank you to Nina, the best taco a girl could ever ask for. Thank you for the endless motivation, the RPatz pics, and the Gummi Bears when I get fussy. Which, let’s face it, is almost always. Can’t wait for your book!
And a big fat thank you, thank you, and thank you again to you Fantastically Loyal Readers. To those of you who’ve been here from the beginning, to those of you who are just jumping on the Crazy train, thank you. It’s been the ride of a lifetime, and it’s just the beginning. So hold on tight, chickens; here we go!
Alice
XOXO
prologue
It was the best of times, it was the nakedest of times . . .
December
I’d never spent a Christmas away from my family. Christmas to me is family: immediate, extended, and later, created. My family and friends gather, trees are trimmed, presents are wrapped, nog is made and most certainly consumed. It’s Norman Rockwell, with a drunk uncle. I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Except this year. This Christmas was entirely different. This was Rockwellian with a Wallbanger twist.
As a freelance photographer, Simon had a seriously cool job. He traveled the world on assignment for National Geographic and Discovery Channel, or whoever needed a photographer to go to the farthest-flung places on earth. This Christmas he was photographing European cities in their holiday best, and he’d be gone nearly the entire month of December.
Since officially becoming a we, we’d settled into our own normal. He’d continued to travel for work, booking trips all over the world: Peru, Chile, England, even a long weekend in LA to do a study at the Playboy Mansion . . . Hardship.
But when my globe-trotting Wallbanger’s home, he’s home. Home with me, either in my apartment or in his. Home with me for the dinners out with Jillian and Benjamin, or playing poker with the other two couples that make up our best friends. Home with me, in my bed or his, my kitchen or his, on my counter or his—home.
Yet apparently Simon was always away on Christmas. He’d taken jobs in Rome, covering the mass in St. Peter’s Square. The Vanuatu Islands in the South Pacific, the first time zone to celebrate the holiday. He’d even traveled to the North Pole one year and made a snow angel at midnight.
Strange, you say? Not really. His parents were killed in a car accident when he was a senior in high school. Eighteen years old, and his entire world was turned upside down. With no other family, he left Philadelphia a few months later when he enrolled at Stanford, and never looked back.
So yeah, Christmas was hard on him. I was beginning to understand my Wallbanger, beyond the man, the myth, the legend. Holidays were sticky in general. And as such a new couple, Christmas with my parents would be a Very Big Deal. He hadn’t even met them yet, and a Reynolds Family Christmas was perhaps not the best time to take that major we step.
So I wasn’t surprised when he started planning to be away for the entire month. The surprise was all on him when I brazenly invited myself along.