New Year's Eve
Present Day

The Old West owed its legends to dance music, jalapeño buffalo wings, and margaritas, Jolie Alexander decided sometime after midnight. Or, more specifically, to the lack of them.

Any one of the triumvirate would have felled the old-time gunslingers and pioneers she'd spent the past nine months learning about. Taken together, the techno-revved beat, blistering food, and frosty alcohol would have squelched their urge to tame the frontier in a heartbeat. Especially in a place as raw and inexplicably desolate as the mountainous former ghost town of Avalanche, Arizona, in the middle of a snowbound January night.

But snow and stars and pioneers aside, the celebratory vibe-wings-and-'rita trio had definitely done its work inside, at her supposedly sedate investors' New Year's gala.

With mingled pride and watchfulness, Jolie surveyed the scene. Below her vantage point on the second floor landing of her newly-constructed faux saloon, partygoers thronged the dance floor, dressed in everything from beaded designer evening gowns to cowboy hats. Her investors, assorted FantaSee, Inc. colleagues and supervisors, and recently-hired wild west cast members mingled, danced, and tossed back hors d'oeuvres with a practiced ease, mixing business with pleasure even more enthusiastically than she'd dared hope for.

In their midst, the caterer's uniformed staff glided across the sawdust-strewn laminate floorboards, offering trays of cactus coolers, sarsaparilla, and green gecko margaritas. Multicolored lights twinkled from the exposed rafters, and the spicy aroma of chile-laden southwestern cuisine filled the air. Thanks to the exclusive Los Angeles chef Jolie had coaxed into appearing at her attraction's launch party, the appetizers' kick was unrivaled-except by the music.

No less seduced by its pulsing rhythm than her guests were, Jolie rocked her hips back and forth, feeling her strappy black cocktail dress shimmy higher up her stockinged thighs with every gyration. She wanted to feel decadent. Wanted to dance and drink and celebrate the accomplishment of more than a half-year's work. Wanted to step out of the shadows-literally-and bask in the approval she must surely have earned with this project.

She couldn't. Instead, remaining half-hidden in the shadows outside her second floor office, Jolie nodded her head in time with the DJ's latest selection and watched the party's progress a little longer. As much as she yearned to join in, she knew she would stay on the outside. For now. Soon, she would be so accomplished that nothing could keep her from the spotlight, she promised herself.

Until then-until she'd earned the accolades she longed for-there was work to be done.

Dozens of tasks still vied for her attention. There were supplies to order, additional cast members to hire, insurance to select and pay for. Costumes to purchase, tickets and brochures to be printed, advertising to arrange. She'd come to the mountains of northern Arizona to launch the latest in a series of award-winning theme parks, not to party amidst strobe lights and a lot of schmaltzy back-slapping.

She could do without all that. Sure, the Go West! theme park's plans were drawn. Yes, the prototype saloon's construction had been finished with time to spare, just before the first snowfall. But Jolie hadn't become FantaSee, Inc.'s youngest and most successful exec by waiting around for somebody else to see to the details.

There had been hints of a promotion, if all went well with tonight's schmooze-fest. More responsibility. More travel. More pole-vaulting up the rungs of the career ladder she'd been eyeballing since graduating from college two years ago, with nothing but an MBA and ambition to keep her warm at night.

Jolie raised her curvy margarita glass in a toast to the glittering revelers below. "Congratulations, Alexander. You've hit the big time at last!"

No one looked up. The music swallowed her self-made tribute, leaving her with a slippery glass and a trembling grasp on her sense of accomplishment. Funny how making a toast to yourself didn't have quite the same élan as someone else's acknowledgement did.

Memo to Jolie, she thought with a twist of her lips. Hire somebody to compose toasts and perform other ego-boosting activities. No references necessary. What were career experience, a stock portfolio, and an expense account good for, if not for making her feel fabulous?

She'd sure as heck given up plenty to get them.

Frowning, Jolie sipped the margarita her assistant had shoved into her hand on the way upstairs. Enough with the gloom-and-doom squad, she told herself. She'd created the life she had all by herself, and had done it knowingly. Nobody had strong-armed her into postponing a personal life for the sake of a career. Nobody had glued the cell phone to her ear or the day planner to her hip...or forced those frequent-flyer miles' worth of business trips onto her laptop's accounting program.

But nobody had warned her it would be this lonely, either.

Oh, boy. Wincing at her uncharacteristically maudlin thoughts, determined to work herself into a festive mood, Jolie swallowed more of her margarita. Its icy tartness slipped between her lips with the ease of a kiss, then traced a path to her belly. That was better. Who said drinking on an empty stomach was a bad idea?

With the same deliberation with which she did everything, Jolie drank a little more. Everyone was entitled to a few regrets, especially on New Year's Eve. The secret was in not going crazy trying to undo them all at once.

Halfway through her drink, she sneaked a glance at her platinum watch bracelet. Just before one o'clock in the morning. Nearly time for the festivities to wind to a close. And nearly time for the hostess's encore appearance. With a decisive gesture, Jolie drained her margarita and left her glass atop the banister.

New Year's Day was a time for new beginnings, she told herself as she clicked her way downstairs in her high heels. A time for starting over.

Who knew what the days to come might hold for her? Suddenly, the possibilities seemed endless.

~ ~ ~

By the time Jolie had shepherded the last party guest onto the last chartered bus headed for the college town of Flagstaff, several miles distant, the night seemed more endless than those possibilities she'd been thinking of earlier. Only the promise of the Snowbowl skiing trip she'd already arranged for tomorrow had been enough to coax her investors and colleagues onto the bus and into the darkness toward cozy lodgings and civilization.

It definitely paid to plan ahead.

Huddled in her hooded down-filled parka, Jolie watched with relief as the bus chugged onto the snowbank-bordered road. On either side of it, white-shrouded pines rose into the night sky. At this altitude, and with the sky so icy clear, the stars looked close enough to touch. They glittered over the pine and oak forest by the millions. The sight of them never failed to steal the breath from even the most jaded of tourists-including tonight's guests.

And Jolie.

Having never thought of herself as the type to stand still and gape at constellations, Jolie had to smile. She guessed everybody had to stop to admire beauty like that at least once in a lifetime. Even ambitious tourism execs with more degreed initials after their names than lasting relationships to their credit.

Besides, could she help it if ambition and romance didn't exactly cozy up together at night?

Ahead, the bus paused at the turn onto the winding two-lane highway. Its taillights shone through a plume of hazy exhaust, then dipped out of sight. With a final wave, Jolie turned her gaze from the road to the snowy clearing around her. Her domain, her staff jokingly called it. Twenty acres of pines and meadows and possibilities, just waiting to be transformed into another of the tourist attractions she was rapidly becoming known for in the industry.

The sound of footfalls tromping through the snow broke the stillness. With a muffled exclamation, Erin Delaney skidded to a stop beside Jolie.

She raised the clipboard she held in mittened hands. "That's the last one, boss. Sheesh, I thought they'd never leave. Who'd have thought a bunch of stuffed-shirt investors and FantaSee bigwigs would have that kind of staying power?"

"Anybody who's golfed with them," Jolie said, holding back the edge of her faux fur-trimmed hood to grin at her assistant. "I barely wrenched them from the golf courses in Phoenix as it was. I'd swear they jumped off the plane from Boston with putters in their hands."

Of course, when she'd arrived from Boston last April, Jolie had all-but jumped off the plane herself-with a swimsuit in her hand. After a damp springtime back east, Arizona had felt like a sun-baked heaven on earth. With no family to lure her back home-other than distant relatives of the parents she barely remembered-she had been tempted to stay in the southwest forever.

Still was tempted, in fact.

For some reason, Arizona felt like home to her. She couldn't explain it any more than she could resist it. The magical sensation of homecoming had persisted all during her stay here...and had only increased when she'd first stepped onto the rocky soil that had once housed a ghost town called Avalanche.

A brisk, snowflake-sprinkled wind swept through the pines, ruffling the papers on Erin's clipboard. Jolie reached for it, and cast aside her whimsical thoughts. "I'll take care of this, Erin. You've done a great job tonight. Thanks for all your help."

"You're welcome. It was fun, wasn't it?"

Jolie nodded. "Sure. Lucrative, too. Did you see how fast everyone snapped up those raffle tickets?"

It seemed everyone had wanted a chance to win the saloon piano they'd found in one of the dilapidated ghost town buildings and painstakingly restored. Even Jolie had succumbed, and bought two tickets for herself.

"Anything for a good cause, I guess," Erin said. "That was a brilliant idea you had, to use the raffle winnings to send inner-city school kids from Phoenix to Go West! when it opens next year."

"Well, ideas like that are why I earn the big bucks," Jolie said with a teasing smile. "Too bad I won't be here when they visit."

Turning, she gestured for Erin to accompany her back to the saloon. They walked together through the moonlit snow, their knee-high boots packing the drifts into an improvised pathway.

"You're right." Beneath her cropped red hair, Erin's face scrunched in a frown. "By then, we'll be visiting investors, drumming up enthusiasm for the next FantaSee attraction."

Jolie murmured her agreement...but kept the sudden sadness she felt to herself. There was no point in burdening Erin with whatever New Year's angst had struck tonight. After all, as her oldest college friend-and all that passed for family in her life-Erin deserved better.

Inside the saloon, warmth and dazzling light blasted them both, stealing some of the melancholy from Jolie's heart.

"Thank God for central heating and electric lights," she said, peeling off her scarf as she tromped to the brass-trimmed faux mahogany laminate bar. She propped her booted foot onto the bar rail and looked at Erin, watching her pull her car keys from the depths of her purse. "I don't know how the pioneers survived without them."

"I don't know how you survive out here with them. Sure you don't want to drive into town with me, instead of shacking up on that cot in your office tonight?"

Jolie yawned, pausing in the act of unbuttoning her parka. "Nah. Thanks, anyway. I've still got more work to do."

"Now?" Erin crossed her arms and gaped at her. "Not even you could be that much of a workaholic."

Well...actually, she could. Jolie winced. But in her defense, at least work promised rewards-unlike the rest of life, which was about as predictable as a lotto winner and as controllable as the weather. Judging by the obvious disbelief on her friend's face, though, tonight wasn't the time to compare philosophies.

"I'm not. But I don't mind staying here. I know my office digs aren't fancy, but...." But they feel closer to home than anywhere else. Jolie shrugged. "But they'll do. You go on. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Okay, see you then." With a smile and a wave, Erin tramped to the saloon's exit, then paused on the threshold with one hand on the door. "Don't forget that New Year's wish I told you about. My granny always said it was good luck to make a wish before sunrise on New Year's day."

"Sure. Make a wish. Gotcha." Jolie waved her assistant out the door, then dropped her scarf amongst the scattered confetti and empty cocktail glasses littering the bar. Propping her elbows on the laminate beside the puddled red knit, she rested her chin in her palms and looked around the recreated saloon that months of work had wrought.

Her gaze stopped on the ornate gilt mirror behind the bar. Spying her image in it, Jolie remembered Erin's words and frowned.

"Who are you kidding, hotshot?" she asked her reflection. Her dark-haired likeness scowled defiantly back at her, backlit with multicolored lights and incongruously dressed in a padded parka and skimpy evening dress. "You make wishes like you stop to look at the stars. Once in a lifetime."