A Taste of Ice
PRAISE FOR
LIQUID LIES
“Martine delivers an ingenious plot filled with plenty of unexpected twists.”
—
Chicago Tribune
“With her debut novel,
Liquid Lies
, Hanna Martine is poised to make a huge splash with her hot, steamy tale.”
—
RT Book Reviews
“I found the plot new and different and it kept me reading into the wee hours of the morning!”
—
Kindles & Wine
“
Liquid Lies
is an intriguing beginning and I wonder what will happen next in this alternate world.”
—
Romance Junkies
Berkley Sensation titles by Hanna Martine
LIQUID LIES
A TASTE OF ICE
A TASTE
OF ICE
HANNA MARTINE
BERKLEY SENSATION, NEW YORK
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) • Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) • Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books (South Africa), Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North 2193, South Africa • Penguin China, B7 Jiaming Center, 27 East Third Ring Road North, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, China
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
A TASTE OF ICE
A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / January 2013
Copyright © 2012 by Hanna Martine.
Excerpt by Hanna Martine copyright © 2012 by Hanna Martine.
Cover art by Tankist276/Shutterstock.
Cover design by Rita Frangie.
Interior text design by Tiffany Estreicher.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
ISBN: 978-1-101-61858-5
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®
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| ALWAYS LEARNING | PEARSON |
To my beautiful daughter.
Look what you can do when you have a dream
and do everything in your power to fulfill it.
You can be anything you want in this world.
Anything.
Everyone says that writing your second book is much harder than writing the first.
A Taste of Ice
is actually my fourth book, but Xavier didn’t give me any less of a challenge. I am indebted to the following people for pulling me through and demanding the words were as good as Xavier and Cat deserved. My deepest thanks to:
Miles Lowry and Sharon Radzienta, for giving me time when I needed it the most.
Ellen Wehle and Erica O’Rourke, for very early comments about these characters and their goals.
Holly McDowell, for barroom word sprints, and for saying, “That’s not enough.”
Clara Kensie, for asking the most brilliant questions.
Eliza Evans, for personal motivation, and a killer critique.
Cindy Hwang, for helping to mold Xavier into a true hero.
Every reader of
Liquid Lies
who contacted me to say how much they hated Xavier at first, but then were so excited to hear he’d get his happy ending.
ONE
Xavier Jones lingered on the edge of chaos, and about a thousand
people stood between him and his knives.
The first morning of the Turnkorner Film Festival and already he could throw a rock and hit a celebrity. For two weeks each winter, that’s exactly what he wanted to do. He hadn’t moved to White Clover Creek, Colorado, for the swarms of film lovers, the squealing fans, or the demanding Hollywood types. He’d come here for the other fifty weeks of the year, when the insular world of the historic mountain town wrapped its arms tightly around his life, and helped him forget what needed to be forgotten.
Today, however, the sidewalks teemed with strangers. Waterleaf Avenue, the main thoroughfare through town, had been barricaded on either end to disallow cars, and the central square had given birth overnight to several white tents. Music pumped from unseen speakers, the beats rising above the buzz of the shuffling crowd.
Shed, the restaurant where he’d been working for the last three years, was two blocks up, straight through a mass of people in sunglasses and down coats. More than half of them women. Xavier’s fingers twitched, eager to wrap around the comforting handle of his favorite chef’s knife. His mind burned, anxious for him to get to work, bend over his station, and tune out the world for the next fourteen hours.
He could do this. The first day of the festival was always the hardest. If he just got through this one, the next thirteen would be all downhill.
He left the relative safety of the residential neighborhood
and punched through the crowd. Head down, shoulders hunched, he soldiered forward, concentrating on the sting of arctic mountain air as he sucked it deep into his lungs. He loved the cold, the pain of freezing toes. Anything to remind him of what he’d missed his whole life.
Anything to remind him he was free.
The crowd thickened the deeper he went into town. Strangers jostled him from all sides. Salt and ice crunched under his boots. Noise, noise everywhere.
It’s okay,
he told himself on a loop.
You’re okay. No one’s looking at you.
“Excuse me. Pardon me. Excuse me.” The pleading, reedy voice cut through the white noise of the festival goers.
For once, Xavier was thankful for his height. Straightening, he found the crooked little man, his silver hair partially covered by a tweed cap, trying to pick his way against the crowd flow, toward the stairs of the Tea Shoppe. Mr. Elias Traeger, as much a local fixture in White Clover Creek as the bronze statue of the work-hardened miners in the middle of the town square. The old man had worked at the Tea Shoppe for twenty years and would probably totter from local job to local job until his life gave out. Crazy, but that’s what Xavier dreamed of. So normal, so everyday.
Xavier was still getting used to the sight of people with wrinkles and brittle hair and bones. In the Plant, where he’d been conceived and raised, no one had ever lived that long.
A chorus of happy screams went up, meaning someone famous had just shown his or her face. The crowd shifted. A tourist with a cell phone plastered to his ear shoved hard into Mr. Traeger’s shoulder and the elderly man tipped to one side. His eyes went wide, his thin arms scrambling for purchase on the smooth brick of the shop.
Five years ago, Xavier would’ve let Mr. Traeger go down. He would’ve walked on without a second thought. But Xavier wasn’t that man anymore. Despite everything else, at least there was that.
Xavier lunged forward and caught Mr. Traeger under his arms before his knees could hit the ice. The old man found his feet, righted himself and blinked into the bright sunshine.
“Ah, Mr. Jones.” Traeger’s slight British accent trickled
through. “My thanks. Reaction times aren’t quite what they used to be.”
Xavier nodded, surprisingly pleased that Traeger remembered his name. “You should’ve taken the day off. The first day is always the worst.”
A wave of the hand and a flash of false teeth. “Never sit idle, I always say.”
Well, if that wasn’t the truth.
Taking Mr. Traeger’s elbow, Xavier helped him up the steps, which were blocked by two young women holding steaming paper cups of what smelled like Earl Grey.
Xavier cleared his throat. “Excuse us.” Over the years, he’d perfected the art of speaking to people without looking at them. The women moved slightly to one side and Xavier gestured for Mr. Traeger to go up and enter. Through the glass door, Xavier watched the old man remove his cap and tip it in thanks.