“Oh, huh. Well, Marco only works by appointment. I can reach out to him to set something up,” Adam offered.
“I’m sure I can take it anywhere in the Diamond District, right? It just needs two of those little balls attached to the bottom part of the band. When we have kids, my fingers might swell like Jimmy Dean sausages, and then I can just have the little ball thingies removed.”
“Jimmy Dean sausages? Really?” He laughed. “Either way, I’d prefer if Marco took care of it. That ring cost almost as much as the down payment on this apartment.”
“You’re joking.”
“I never joke about money,” he said through a grin and pressed a kiss to my forehead.
I beamed up at him. “Just so you know”—I stuck one index finger in the air and the other to my ear, doing my best Mariah Carey–vocal run impression, and sang the famous chorus from “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” my morning voice not quite able to hit those super-octane high notes.
His handsome face lit up. “Very cute.” He kissed me one last time, withdrew into the bathroom, and as thick steam from the shower billowed into the bedroom, snapped the door closed behind him.
Chapter Three
After Adam padded off to the bathroom to shower, I checked my phone on my nightstand and cursed myself for once again forgetting to plug it in to charge overnight. After the barrage of engagement selfies with all the celebrity castmates, videos of the spectacle, and texts sent to everyone I knew, my phone was deader than dead. I plugged it in, turned it facedown, and rolled onto my side, pulling the covers up over my shoulders and tucking a pillow between my knees.
Curled in a little ball and wrapped in the most luxurious thousand-thread-count linens, my body became heavy with fatigue. Maybe it was all the excitement of yesterday finally hitting me. Or the exertion from the sexy all-nighter I had with Adam, a several-hour-long, post-engagement romp. Either way, I didn’t fight the sleepiness that was washing over me and allowed myself to sink into the bed, the scent of crisp snow still fresh in my mind.
Finally, when I was almost lulled back into a hazy, dreamless sleep, a heavy pounding on the front door practically startled me into a heart attack.
“Adam?” I called from underneath the covers but could still hear the water running in the shower. Frick.
I debated not getting out of bed and just letting whoever it was knock until they left. I mean, who was knocking at ten thirty on a Christmas morning anyway? Carolers? A lost Amazon delivery guy dropping off a last-minute gift? It was too early for Chinese takeout. I held my breath and waited a few more moments, hoping they’d just go away, but then an even louder pounding practically catapulted me out of the bed. I grabbed my La Perla silk robe (a gift from Adam last Christmas) and hustled through the living room to the front door.
The pounding continued. “Sheesh, okay, okay,” I muttered as I picked up my pace and then shouted down the hall, “Hold on, will you?!”
My bare feet slapped the dark hardwood as I hurried to get there before the next firestorm of pounding. I popped up on my toes and looked through the tiny peephole and was even more perplexed by the sight on the other side.
I wrenched the door open just as a large, suited gentleman standing at the threshold raised his hand to knock again.
“Whoa. What is going on?” I asked and wrapped my robe a little more tightly around me to properly cover up all my lady bits.
At the same time, two men in the front, flanked by four uniformed police officers, flashed their badges, the gold of their shields distracting me from actually catching anyone’s name. “Ma’am, we’re with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security. We are looking for Adam McDaniels.”
“Adam McDaniels?” I exhaled a sigh of relief. “No, sorry. An Adam lives here, but his last name isn’t McDaniels. You must have the wrong address. Merry Christmas, guys.” I moved to close the door when a meaty hand and a shiny-toed shoe stopped it in its tracks.
“Right, sure. Well, so you may know him as Adam Wright, Adam Fields, or Adam”—he looked down at his notepad and then back up again—“Daulton.”
My chest tightened as my ears began to ring. Daulton. No, this had to be some kind of mistake. Adam had never even gotten so much as a parking ticket.
“Are you . . .” He flipped through the pages of his pad. “Avery Lawrence?”
“Yes,” I managed to squeak out, past my throat now drier than the Sahara.
“We have an arrest warrant for Mr. McDaniels, uh, Daulton, and warrants to search and seize property,” he said, flashing a series of documents in front of me.
“Hold on, what? Excuse me? No, that’s not possible. I don’t under—” But before I could even finish my sentence, the officers pushed their way past me at the command of the taller FBI agent.
I’m asleep. That’s it. I’m still in a sex-hazed, dream-filled sleep. C’mon, Avery, wake up. Wake up. I pinched my arm, a total cliché, but I was out of options and willing to try just about anything to end the nightmare unraveling in front of me. I scurried ahead of them to the bedroom to at least try to throw on some pants and a shirt as a parade of agents swarmed into our Upper East Side classic six. I managed to hop into a pair of old sweatpants, slip off the La Perla robe, and grab one of Adam’s Princeton hoodies, wrenching it over my thin camisole as quickly as humanly possible to give these officers as little of a peep show as I could.
Just then, two agents marched Adam, now dressed, past me through to the living room in handcuffs, a trail of watery footprints leading toward the door. What the hell could he have possibly done to justify an army of agents pulling him from his shower while he still had soap bubbles in his hair? None of this made any sense. Instinctively, I shouted, “You can’t take him like that! It’s twenty-five degrees outside. He’ll freeze to death.”
The officers didn’t slow but continued to usher Adam through the foyer until he was by the coat closet being helped into his sneakers. I raced to grab a towel out of the linen chest and moved toward him with an outstretched arm, trying to dab away some of the water dripping down his neck onto the floor. Adam kept his back to me as he worked his foot into a shoe.
“Adam? What’s going on? Tell them this is all a mistake,” I pleaded.
The taller officer raised his voice and forearm to block me from getting any closer. “Ma’am, I need you to stand down. Get back against the wall. Now!” he barked.
“But he’ll freeze!” I pushed forward, extending the soft, plush terry toward him again. “Isn’t that some form of cruel and unusual punishment? I mean, it’s . . . it’s Christmas!” I bumped up against the portly agent and thrust the towel in his face, trying desperately to get past him and over to where Adam was shivering.