Beyond Broken (The Bay Boys #3) (7 page)

“Ah, I see.
 
Maybe it’s just been too long between your…sessions.”

“Maybe it has,” Caleb murmured, his gaze on Maddie’s parted lips.
 
She was staring down at the folder in front of her.

Caleb could practically hear Luke rubbing his hands together in absolute fucking glee.
 
“Good.
 
I’ll text you where we’ll meet.
 
Let’s say 9?”

It was nearing eight now.
 
That gave him an hour.
 
“See you then.”

When he hung up, Maddie regarded him with those soft brown eyes, quirking a brow.
 
“A friend of yours?”

“None of your business.”

She shrugged.
 
“Well, hope you’ll have fun tonight.
 
You wouldn’t want to disappoint all those
random hot chicks
.”

Caleb almost laughed.
 
“Jealous of them?”

She snorted, rifling through papers.
 
“I pity them, actually.
 
I hope for your sake they’re not
irritating
, or all you’ll do all night is nag them about how they’re not working
hard
enough.”

Caleb almost choked in surprise.
 
Then calm as can be, Maddie flipped closed the folder she’d been perusing and faced him fully.
 
“Now, if you don’t mind, I have other work to do at home which is due in the morning.
 
Same time tomorrow?
 
Great.
 
No, no…no need for you to stand up, I’ll just get my car from Brian.
 
Good night.”

With that, she immediately swept from his office, snagging her purse at the last moment, leaving him dumbstruck in his desk chair.
 
He didn’t remember the last time a woman had gotten the upper hand.
 
He
was always the one in control because he never wanted to feel weak again.

With an angry growl, he pushed out of his chair and stalked to the office door, wrenching it open with enough force to slam it against the wall.
 
Maddie had already made it to the bottom of the stairs, but she didn’t even turn around when he stomped after her.

Chasing a woman.
 
What had become of him?

Frankly, he was too pissed off to care.

“Did I say you could leave, princess?” he grated.

She turned to him, all wide-eyed innocence.
 
“Oh, I’m sorry.
 
I wasn’t aware I was being kept here against my will.
 
You know what they call that, don’t you?”

Caleb’s jaw clenched.
 
He was torn between giving her a verbal lashing or taking her back up to his office to strip her out of those damn jeans—naturally the heels would stay on—and give her a good, proper spanking.

“That office—” he started, jabbing a finger over his shoulder.

She cut him off smoothly, her tone positively
chipper
.
 
“Isn’t going to be done in one evening.
 
Besides, it sounds like you have plans.
 
I’m just making myself scarce so you don’t have to go through the horribly awkward process of kicking me out.”
 
She gave him a smile that…no, goddammit, his heart did
not
just skip a beat.
 
“Although, I’m sure you’ve had lots of practice with that.”

It took him a second to catch onto her meaning—that little minx—but by then she’d already called out for Brian.

“What’s all this, sweetie?” the older man asked from across the garage.
 
He was getting ready to leave, had already shrugged on his jacket.

“Caleb
kindly
said I could go home a little early.
 
Could I please get my car keys?”

“Brian, don’t you dare give them to her.
 
For all I know, she’d just take her car and never come back.”

She stiffened at his accusation and swung her gaze to him.
 
“I’m not a cheat or a liar.
 
When I said I’ll do your bookkeeping, I meant it.”

Caleb believed her.
 
He didn’t know why, but he did.
 
He never really thought that she’d back out of their deal, but he needed to regain control of the situation.

“You’re not leaving without a little insurance on my end, princess,” he told her, his tone dangerously low.
 
“Your credit card details, for instance.”

Her eyes narrowed.
 
“For all I know,” she started, repeating his words, “you’d steal my card number to pay for your little night out when I’m already working to pay you off.”

“Princess, what’s in your account couldn’t even
pay
for one of my nights out, if you can’t even afford your car repairs.”

It was a low blow and the color that flooded Maddie’s cheeks made Caleb almost regret his words.
 
Almost.

“You know nothing about me,” she said quietly.
 
“So don’t you dare throw that in my face.”

“All right, all right, kids.
 
Let’s play nice,” Brian intervened.
 
Maddie looked away from Caleb, down to the floor of the garage.
 
And just like the time when he’d blasted the radio to tune her out, he was bothered by her silence.

Or maybe you’re bothered because you’re just an asshole
, his mind whispered.

Pushing his sudden remorse to the back of his mind, he rumbled, “You still can’t leave without insurance.”

Maddie straightened and looked him in the eye.
 
“Fine.”

She dug into her purse, pulling out a wallet the size of a brick.
 
The garage was silent as she unzipped it, collecting cards from various pockets.
 
Seriously, how many pockets did that thing have?
 
When she was all done, she thrust eight or nine black and white gift cards into Caleb’s hands.
 
Their fingers made brief contact—she had the softest damn skin—before she pulled away like she’d been burned.

“What the hell is this?” he asked.

“My Sephora gift card collection from over two years of birthdays and holidays,” she told him.
 
“They’re worth around $600 total.”

“You have over $600 of gift cards in your wallet?
 
How stupid can you be?”
 
Even Caleb knew not to store everything in one place.
 
And hadn’t she lost her wallet the other night?
 
Jesus
.

She glared.
 
“Take it or leave it.
 
I’m still not giving you my card details.”

“And what the hell am I supposed to do with these?” he asked, glancing back at the cards.
 
Wasn’t Sephora a chick haven for make-up and shit?

Fuck me
.

“Nothing,” she told him, arching a brow.
 
“They’re insurance, remember?
 
Something to ensure I’ll be here tomorrow evening.
 
And trust me, I won’t be coming back for your winning personality.
 
But $600 worth of Nars, Urban Decay, and Philosophy…well, I’d have to be as dumb as you think I am.”
 
She turned to Brian with a small smile.
 
“Now, can I please get my keys?”

Once Brian gave her the keys and she drove off in her perfectly humming Volkswagen, Caleb still stood in the same place, holding onto $600 worth of Sephora gift cards.
 
And he had a sneaking suspicion that, once again, Maddie had gotten the upper hand.

Brian passed him, whistling, on his way out to his own car.
 
He seemed extremely pleased about something, grinning from ear-to-ear.

“What?” Caleb snapped.

“Man, oh man,” he responded, letting out a chuff of laughter.
 
“You’re in trouble.”

With a slap on Caleb’s back, Brian too left the garage and drove away.
 
Caleb could hear his damn whistling all the way to the end of the block.

And in the back of his mind, Caleb feared that Brian was right.

SEVEN

Maddie silently fumed on the way home in her perfectly running car.

The minute she pulled away from
Montgomery Restoration & Repair
she plugged her iPod into the stereo system her brother had wired for her and blared the latest pop hit she’d downloaded.
 
If Caleb had been appalled by her keychains, she knew he’d definitely be over her music choices.
 
So, she turned it up even louder in hopes that he’d hear it.

Had she really given him $600 worth of Sephora gift cards?
 
If the look on his face hadn’t been so priceless, she would’ve slapped herself.
 
But little ol’ Maddie seemed to have gotten a one-up on him, so all she felt was a delightful smugness that overshadowed her annoyance.

As she pulled onto the freeway towards Concord, his accusations about her financial status rung in her ears.

Princess, what’s in your account couldn’t even pay for one of my nights out, if you can’t even afford your car repairs.

That one hit below the belt.
 
What Maddie hated even more was that it was true.
 
She had a debt pile the size of Mount Everest and she was barely scraping enough together for her crappy apartment each month.
 
The idea of asking her mom or brother for help sent her spiraling into major mortification territory.

Maddie strongly suspected she’d gotten her pride from her father, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing considering his pride may have killed him.
 
Even though his death had been tragically sudden, the warning signs had been there and her mother had tried to make him go to the doctor’s office on multiple occasions.
 
Yet, he’d always brushed her concerns aside, saying in his booming voice that he felt as ‘healthy as a horse’ and that he would never go near a doctor unless he was already on the way out.

Like a prophecy, that was exactly what had happened.
 
Except by then, it’d been too late.

Maddie had awoken to her mother’s panicked yells.
 
It had been the night before Maddie’s homecoming dance.
 
She’d been overly excited about the possibility of Caleb being there.
 
Maybe he would see her in her pretty royal blue dress with the sparkly hem and fall madly in love, just like in the movies.

She’d never had the chance to go.

Maddie had spent her homecoming at home, sitting on the couch and staring at the wall, as her mother sobbed upstairs.
 
Thomas had been missing all day. He’d never spoken a word once they returned from the hospital and he’d taken his car and left.
 
Maddie hadn’t been worried though.
 
It was his way of coping.
 
Deep down, however, Maddie had always resented him for it.
 
She’d wanted to leave too—to get away from the house where her father had been laughing just the day before, to block out her mother’s crying, to not feel so helpless—but she’d stayed.

In no time at all, Maddie pulled into her apartment complex.
 
She had about fifty pages of reading to get through before she could head to bed and she needed to apply for a few internships while she was at it.
 
A paid internship would be fantastic, but she knew the possibility of landing one was quite slim in the museum sector.

Twenty seven pages into her reading and Maddie’s mind turned back to Caleb, to that one moment in high school that had helped her cope with her father’s death.
 
The week after her father passed away, Caleb had stumbled upon her crying in a secluded courtyard during their lunch period.

A startled expression came over his face, taking her by surprise since it was usually so blank.
 
No one could ever hope to read Caleb Montgomery, but Maddie saw his shock as plain as day.
 
Embarrassed, she quickly dashed her cheeks with the back of her hand, trying to hide the worst of it.
 
But he’d already seen.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked, standing in front of her.
 
He was so tall that he blocked the sunlight pouring in the small courtyard from above.
 
His face was shadowed, but Maddie knew every dip and curve of his profile.

Maddie’s mind still hadn’t caught up with the fact that Caleb was in front of her.
 
Talking
to her.
 
It seemed so unreal.
 
Plus, it didn’t help that her throat was still clogged with tears and she felt like a miserable mess.

Her brilliant response?
 
A shrug.

Caleb hesitated.
 
She saw him glance back towards the hall he’d come down, probably wondering if he should just leave.
 
She couldn’t blame him.

But the thought of him turning away from her, even with the state she was in, brought a new rush of tears.
 
As she tried to hide them, he gruffly asked, “What’s wrong?”

A small hiccuping sob escaped her.
 
“My dad died last week.”

“Shit,” she heard him murmur.

Maddie kept her face tilted down as he took a seat next to her on the bench.
 
He was quiet.
 
He simply sat with her as she softly cried.
 
He didn’t say anything, but that moment was more comforting than anything she’d experienced all week.

Maddie had never told Caleb, but that afternoon in the courtyard had given her strength for the weeks, months, years to come.
 
Whenever she missed her father, she thought about that moment.
 
About how a complete stranger sat with her and was there for her when she was at her lowest point.
 
And it gave her hope.