Crazy Thing Called Love (19 page)

“You think I’m right? That’s a first,” she said.

“I don’t know you. Not really. Not Madelyn Cornish.” As he talked, she sobered. It was as if she’d dropped her mask for a moment. And he saw her—the real her—nervous and worried but pleased, somehow, even though she didn’t want to be. “And I want to know you. I really do.”

“So you sent me a ticket to a charity fund-raiser, dressed up in a tux, and braved my anger, just to get to know me?”

“I know, I amaze myself sometimes. But you amaze me all of the time. My whole life, I’ve been grateful for the chance to be with you and now isn’t any different. I want to know you, Maddy. The real you. Not the reflection of me you were for so long.”

She was gaping at him and he pulled back, suddenly brutally uncomfortable with all that he’d said. But it was honest. He could stand by it, even if she walked away, he could say he went down trying.

“Stay,” he said. “Please. Think of the poor kids.”

“Oh! Cheap shot, Wilkins.”

“I’m a desperate man.”

She blew a raspberry, letting him know what she thought of his desperation. Those men looked over again and he glared at them.

And he waited, aging a year with every second.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I’ll stay. For a while.”

“I’ll take it.” He resisted the impulse to fist pump and take a victory lap.

A waiter went by with a tray of champagne flutes and he grabbed two and handed her one. “You look beautiful, by the way. I always liked you in purple.”

“You liked me in anything,” she laughed. “But thank you.” She pressed a hand to her waist and tilted her head; her hair, brown and gold and red, picked up the low lights and gleamed. “You look … amazing.”

“You think?” He ran a hand down the snowy white shirt, preening for her.

“Tam created a monster, didn’t he?” she asked. “You and clothes, who would have guessed?”

“Not me.”

Another waiter went by, this time carrying little cracker things with black stuff on them. He grabbed two of them and handed her one.

“You like caviar?” she asked as he threw the whole hors d’oeuvre in his mouth and began to chew.

No. Decidedly no.

“Is that what that is?” he asked around the disgusting salty ball things, which weren’t delicious at all.

Laughing, she handed him a napkin. “You gotta stop just puttin’ stuff in your mouth.”

Turning his back to the crowd, he spit out the caviar into the napkin.

“Are you hungry for something else?” he asked, happier than he’d been in years because she was here and laughing. He was giddy with memory and delight. “There’s some shrimp and I know how much you like shrimp—”

“I’m fine.”

“You sure? Because there are these crab cakes going around that are seriously delicious.” He craned his neck, looking for one of the waiters with the crab cakes.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Are you lying?” he asked. “Because … you look great, don’t get me wrong, but you’re … skinny. Seriously, very skinny.”

“Wow. How could I possibly take that the wrong way?”

“No. I’m just—maybe it’s just one of the things about you that’s so different now.”

“Billy, I’m on television five mornings a week. If I gain three pounds, it’s all over the Internet. I’ve worked hard to look like this. It’s a part of my job.”

Man, that caviar taste was not going away. He took a sip of champagne and tried to pretend he liked that, too.

“Did … did you always want to be on television?”

“Not television. Not exactly. But I wanted to be a journalist. Remember?”

He nodded. He did. Her career, her passion for writing, had been one of the things that had gotten left by the wayside when his career took off. She’d traveled with him as much as she could at the beginning. And then her dad had gotten sick, and that had started to eat up the rest of her time. That was when the fighting had started.

“I’m … I’m really sorry I didn’t support you more with that. I knew you wanted to go to school, and I was … I was selfish, wanting you on the road with me.”

They just looked at each other, the events of the past a winding line of dominoes long since toppled.

“Well, in the end you did. The divorce settlement paid for my tuition.” She drained the rest of her champagne.

“I’m glad something good came out of it.”

“Are you bullshitting me right now, Billy? Because,” she dropped her voice, “I’m already sleeping with you.”

“I told you, I want to get to know the new you.” He brushed her wrist with his thumb and felt the ripples in the air around them. It was powerful, what they shared—the attraction, past and present.

He wanted to ask her if she’d ever felt this way with another man, but he wasn’t sure he could handle the answer if it was “yes.”

Because no other woman came close to affecting him the way she did.

She made him want to be better. And she made him regret every single time he fell short. And that had happened a lot in the years of her absence.

She pulled her hand from his, rubbing her wrist as if to wipe away the sensation. They couldn’t keep standing here like this. People, namely Tara Jean, were going to start staring. He set his nearly full glass of champagne down on the table. “Let’s go cause some damage at the silent auction.”

She seemed to be in the process of solving a difficult equation. As if having fun with him at the silent auction might be some unsolvable mistake.

But then that wrinkle between her eyes vanished and her smile spread across her face like a brand new day, and he had to suck in a breath at her beauty. “Let’s go.”

There had been
a surfeit of champagne. A plethora. And that wasn’t Maddy’s style. Nope. Not anymore. Champagne had calories. Lots of them. Delicious, delicious calories.

And now, tipsy, unable to drive, all she wanted was french fries.

She stood out in front of the Four Seasons, her green pashmina slipping over her shoulders, letting the warm Texas breeze travel across her skin like a sigh. Her skin felt alive tonight. She wanted to open her arms and feel everything.

The doormen were handling cabs and she waited for her turn, smiling at the young valets, who tried to flirt with her in Spanish.

“You shouldn’t encourage them,” a voice whispered over her shoulder and she nearly closed her eyes in relief.

Billy.

Toward the end of the night, when things started to get fuzzy, when her loneliness became too heavy to carry, she’d avoided him. Because she was a little drunk and he’d been … he’d been so fun. So silly and charming and she found herself wondering if maybe he was different after all. If maybe she was wrong to hold all those crimes against him. They’d been young after all. Neither of them without blame.

And she knew, in the sober part of her brain, that those thoughts were dangerous. They were best left … unthought. And frankly, she was slightly scared of being this loose around him, this weak.

Billy made his livelihood taking advantage of weaknesses.

She should have left at the beginning of the night.

But at the same time she was so glad she’d stayed.

Because more than french fries, she wanted Billy.

“You need a ride?” he asked, taking his keys from the valet and slipping the guy a tip.

“I can take a cab.”

His eyes burned through the night, all coy flirtation gone. All the careful boundaries they’d established and adhered to all night eradicated.

The pashmina slipped from her limp fingers, trailing on the ground.

“Let’s go, Maddy,” he breathed, winding the pashmina in his arms, uncovering her as he did it. It was as if he were unwrapping her—a present. And then he slipped a hand under her elbow and led her over to where his car crouched at the curb. Not his SUV, but an erotic, low-slung sporty beast.

Even his car looked like sex.

He opened the passenger door for her, waiting until she slipped in before giving her back the pashmina and shutting the door.

The car was small and dark and intimate. And it smelled like Billy—and when she took a breath, the air tasted like him, too.

This was a very very big mistake but she couldn’t really get herself to care.

After all, she did need a ride home.

The car roared to life and he shifted it into gear, his legs flexing under the material of his lovely tux. She rolled down the window, letting the Texas night inside.

“Congrats on your boat.” She tipped her head against the headrest to watch him. The street lamps and car lights illuminated his face in flashes and slices, vivid and jagged.

“Oh my God,” he groaned. “That was totally your fault.”

“Hardly.” She laughed, resting her hand out the window ledge where the wind, that soft air, feathered over her skin.

She felt so alive—on this night, with this man, the possibilities all around them like magic.

“You told me the guy I was bidding against was going to call it
My Fair Lady
. It would have been a crime for that boat to be called something so stupid.”

“What will you do with it?”

“Give it to Luc and TJ, I guess.” He checked his mirrors, flipped on his blinker and shifted again. She wanted to trace the muscles of his leg under those pants. “An engagement gift, for whenever they get around to that.”

“I liked Tara Jean.”

“I’m sure you did. You two are a lot alike.”

She crossed her legs and leaned toward him, aware of how he was watching her when he wasn’t watching the road. “Coach Hornsby seems nice, too.”

“I suppose he is.” In the years they’d been together she’d run into that tone of voice before. He didn’t want to talk about the coach.

During the silent auction she’d watched the two of them talk and there had been a lot of tension between them. The reporter in her wanted to keep at him. Dig a little deeper. But it wasn’t worth it. No point in ruining a great night over hockey.

“You want me to hit the drive-through?” he asked, his eyes glowing under the neon lights of Turtle Creek Boulevard.

“Very funny. No.”

Still, he slowed down in front of the golden arches and she laughed.

“You want me to, I know you do, Maddy,” he said, but after another grin he picked up speed and turned left, heading toward her condo.

Without warning, the magic in the night made her nervous. And she was very aware of how small this car was, of how badly she wanted him to come upstairs, of how scared she was that he would.

Once they stopped, she pulled her pashmina and clutch closer to her. “Thanks for the ride,” she said, too loud. Too bright. Like she was talking to a bus driver.

He laughed. “My pleasure.” And then he opened his door and walked around the car to open hers. Slipping out of the car, she was so close to him. A breath away. And then none. Her chest, her thigh, his thigh, his chest, they were a puzzle coming together.

“Do you want—”

“Yeah, Maddy, I want.” His fingers brushed the side of her face, tucking hair behind her ear. But then he lingered, his thumb against her cheek, an electric touch she felt through her whole body. The night pulsed, her body loosened and tightened. Want and desire and worry and fear were dust storms inside of her and she could barely think.

Billy shifted closer to her, his other hand cupping her cheek, her whole head cradled in his palms. He was so big. So strong, and she didn’t want to think about why this was a mistake anymore. She wanted him.

“Come upstairs.”

“Can I kiss you?”

His thumb brushed her lips, teasing the corner. She sighed with pleasure, liquid and troublesome, a drug far too potent, and she tasted his thumb. The salt and heat of it.

“Baby,” he groaned, his eyes locked on her lips, the thumb that played there. “Please let me kiss you.”

She almost said yes. For a second she was so tempted to throw away that rule. But if she let that go, what would happen next? What part of herself would she lose?

His words from earlier rolled through her head, her heart. Everything she’d ever wanted him to say, ever dreamed of him saying, he’d said it.

All she had to do was believe it.

Looking at him, she could see that he was changing. The boy he’d been was vanishing.

But whatever the reasons—trust, fear, you name it, it was part of the messy stew in her heart—she couldn’t open her mouth and accept him back.

Once, a long long time ago, she’d silenced the doubt in her heart. She’d ignored the fear and trusted that her faith, her love, would be enough to keep them together.

And she’d paid—brutally—for that.

She shook her head. Things had gone far enough tonight, boundaries erased at every step. She had to cling to something.

His smile was terribly sad but not surprised and he stepped away, lifting his hands from her skin as if he were a magician and without his touch she would just vanish.

And then he was gone, into his car, into the night.