Take A Chance On Me (11 page)

“Not many.”

Maddie’s throat tightened, and tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. She swiped under her lashes before they could fall. “Everyone kept telling me what a saint he was, how perfect he was, how indispensable.” A tiny sob caught in her throat. “I just didn’t know how to leave.”

He rubbed slow circles over her leg, the touch soothing and platonic. “I understand.”

For some inexplicable reason, those two little words made her breathe more easily. “So that’s how I ended up almost married.”

His fingers stilled, squeezed a little. “Do you regret climbing out the window?”

Her teeth clenched. The truth, regardless of how it made her sound: “No, I don’t. And you know what’s really terrible?”

His slow, methodical stroking started again. “What?”

Real. No more hiding. No more denying to the outside world what she felt on the inside. “I’ve never been so relieved in my whole life. It was the first time since before my dad died I felt free. Do you know what I mean?”

With his gaze thoughtful, he studied her, the tilt of his head and jut of his jaw highlighting his masculinity. “Yeah, actually, I do.”

“I don’t know why, but I like being here.” She nibbled her bottom lip. “With you. You’re helping me remember who I used to be.”

“And who did you used to be?”

New tears welled in her eyes. “I don’t know. Not really. That girl seems like a dream just out of my grasp, but here, I keep getting hints. I miss her.”

“Tell me what you miss about her,” Mitch said, those golden eyes boring into her.

“I was, I don’t know.” She waved an arm. “Wild and impulsive. I’d do anything on a dare, and I wasn’t ever afraid.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re here? Why you’re not ready to go home?”

She blinked and one tear slid down her cheek. “I don’t want to go back because I don’t have a choice. I want to go home on my terms, not because my car broke down and I’m helpless to fix it.”

“And after? When that’s no longer keeping you here?” Mitch’s hand still stroked over her skin, but the corners of his mouth tightened.

She wiped the wet track from her cheek. “I don’t know, I’ll figure that out when the time comes.”

“So we’ll take it day by day.” He squeezed her knee. “But I don’t want you to leave. You’re helping me, too.”

“How?”

“I thought I was content, but since you came along I realized I was just numb. I thought they were the same thing, but they’re not.”

“Maybe we’re not bad for each other after all?”

Another smile, so sinful that her heart stopped. “I don’t know the answer to that, I guess time will tell. In the end, like most things, it will probably be a little bit of both.”

She met his gaze. “Do you want to tell me why you’re not a lawyer anymore?”

“Not really.” That shuttered, closed-off look slid over his features.

More than anything, she wanted to pry, but something stopped her. Just because she’d confessed didn’t mean he’d automatically reciprocate. “All right.”

He released his hold on her leg and shook his head, almost as though exasperated. “Christ.”

“What?”

With another shake of his head, he shifted on the bed, fidgeting more in the last minute than he had the entire time she’d known him. “I’m afraid.”

The idea that he’d be afraid shocked her. “Of what?” He viciously raked his fingers through his hair. “I like the way you look at me. I’m not ready for that to change.”

What could have happened three years ago to cause this much distress? She swallowed, her pulse hammering in her throat. “You don’t have to tell me.”

His chest expanded as he took a breath and slowly exhaled. “I know, but I think I want you to know the truth more.”

Maybe it was better not to know. She folded her hands in her lap. “It’s up to you.”

He stared at a spot over her shoulder. “I was indicted for embezzlement.”

Chapter Ten

“Y-you what?” Maddie sputtered, green eyes wide.

“I was indicted for embezzlement,” Mitch said, in a remarkably calm voice. He supposed it was better than being an axe murderer.

She reared back. Her auburn brows drew together. “That can’t be right. You’re not a criminal.”

He might not have been caught, but he’d committed illegal acts—criminal acts that he’d be disbarred for if discovered. “I was never convicted. The case against me was dropped before I went to trial.”

Her face smoothed over, relaxing. “So you were cleared?” “Not exactly.” He sighed, a deep, weary sound. God, he wanted to avoid this topic. He had avoided it for three years, but Maddie had made that impossible the second she’d told him her story and hadn’t asked for anything in return. “The evidence disappeared.”

“How?”

After one day, he cared what she thought and it scared the shit out of him. It’d been twenty-four-fucking hours and she’d twisted him up in knots. That he didn’t want to destroy her heroic illusions made him more determined to carry on. “When I graduated law school, my father landed me a job at one of the top law practices in Chicago. His lifelong friend was a senior partner there. My dad and Thomas Cromwell both grew up poor, and they clawed their way up out of the trenches. Their shared background bonded them like brothers. I grew up calling him Uncle Thomas, and he was part of the family. He gave me the highest recommendation. He worked in the corporate division of the firm, and I was under his tutelage for two years until it was discovered that I had a knack for criminal law and was moved.”

Mitch had avoided thinking about this part of his life for so long, he was surprised to find himself viewing it from a distance, as though it had happened to someone else.

Sitting cross-legged on the bed, Maddie looked pensive but not ready to run screaming from the room.

He gathered his thoughts and continued, “Long story short, Thomas was corrupt, and when I was working under him, he’d named me assisting council for some of the clients he was accused of swindling.”

It had been one of the worst days of his life: one of those before-and-after tipping points when the world had tilted off its axis and never quite righted again. “By then, I was high up in the firm. I’d created a lot of press and brought in a ton of billable hours. I’d just won a high-profile case and was up for partnership.”

“What happened?” Maddie asked, her voice soft as she twisted her hands.

Mitch wanted to touch her, feel her satin-smooth ivory skin under his hands. It wasn’t just sex, although he wanted her like wildfire. Something about her grounded him. He cast one wayward glance at her thighs and laced his fingers over his stomach to resist the urge.

“The senior partners called me into the office and informed me I was being indicted and suspended until further notice.” He scoffed, a hard, scornful sound as his chest squeezed. “Of course, I had no idea what was going on. It’s strange, parroting the same lines of innocence I’d heard from every client I’d ever represented. Needless to say, they didn’t buy my story any more than I’d bought my clients’. Only difference was, I wasn’t paying them to defend me, so they didn’t bother pretending.”

Fiddling with the comforter, she watched him in that careful way of hers, measuring his words. He didn’t expect her to believe him—why would she? He’d listened to countless people spit out the same lines of bullshit time and time again. Sure, he’d gotten them cleared of their crimes, but he’d rarely
believed
them. In the world he’d come from, almost everyone was guilty of something.

She cocked her head, tucking behind her ear a lock of that long red hair he wanted to wrap around his fist. “So you didn’t do it?”

He’d done plenty of other things, but on this point he was innocent. “Nope, and if I did, I’d never be so fucking stupid about it. I sure as hell wouldn’t lay blatant tracks pointing in my direction.”

“But why you?” She narrowed her eyes, staring at the intricate woodworking of the headboard, trying to piece the puzzle together. “You said yourself that Thomas was like family, so why? What could he possibly have to gain?”

He shook his head, gritting his teeth. He’d been hoping to avoid this part. No wonder he’d stuck to women with low expectations for the last three years. “I haven’t always been a nice guy, Maddie.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She waved her hand in dismissal. “What’s your theory?”

“I don’t have to theorize,” he said, shrugging. “I know why.”

“So?”

“I slept with his wife.”

She froze, blinking at him like a deer caught in headlights. “How stupid could you be?”

For the first time in three years, he laughed about it. “Pretty fucking stupid, Princess.”

She wrinkled her nose, her gaze darting away as she ran a hand through her hair. “Why would you pick her, out of all women in Chicago?”

How could he explain to a good, Catholic girl who’d only had sex with one guy her whole life that sometimes you’re just an idiot? That’s how things had been in his world. He’d moved in a circle of entitled, privileged people who took what they wanted, and he’d been one of them. Consequences hadn’t even been part of the equation.

“I didn’t
pick
her. It was more like she fell into my lap and I didn’t say no.”

She rolled her eyes. “Give me a break. You weren’t eighteen. You’ll need to do better than that.”

He thought about Charlie’s comment earlier about his preference for unavailable women. He blew out a breath. “I worked sixty to seventy hours a week. It didn’t leave a lot of time for relationships. Sara was his second wife and not much older than I was. I took her home one night after a benefit we both attended and it just . . . happened.”

It sounded like the cop-out it was. They hadn’t stopped after the first night or the second. They’d screwed every second they could, the riskier the circumstances the better. Two bored people, desperate to break up the monotony of being handed everything they’d ever even thought to desire on a silver platter.

The mistake had blown up in his face and cost him everything.

If he’d left Sara alone, he’d have made full partner by now and would still be dressing in custom-made suits and dating women so glossy that it was hard to remember them as real.

Those strawberry-stained lips of Maddie’s pursed, and her eyes narrowed. “Still, Thomas was a family friend and mentor.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I grew up with powerful people. That kind of life, it’s a different world than you’re used to: everyone fucked everyone over. No one expected loyalty and trust.” The statement made his old life back in Chicago sound ugly and made him wonder what the hell he’d been pining for.

“Ah, I see,” she said, her tone unreadable. “I guess he got the last laugh.”

“Not really. He died in a plane crash.” The small Cessna had gone down in the Pacific. Nothing but the black box had survived.

“And then what happened?”

“The charges were dropped. Thomas had taken his records with him. There wasn’t enough evidence to convict me. There wasn’t enough evidence to clear me, either, so in the end, my name was still mud.”

Maddie met his gaze. “What happened to Sara?”

“She died with him,” Mitch said, his voice flat. Maddie was quiet for several minutes, staring down at the comforter as though it held the answers to all of her unanswered questions. Finally, she raised her head. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me too,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say. “But it was my fault. I was stupid and arrogant, and I paid.”

A heavy silence filled the bedroom. She picked up a corner of the comforter and started playing with it. “Was Sara beautiful?”

He tensed on instinct as she uttered the question every male in the universe hated. He wanted to lie, but couldn’t. “Yes, Maddie, she was very beautiful.”

“What did she look like?” She tilted her head.

Seductive and glamorous. The killer red dress she’d worn to the benefit the first night they’d been together was burned in his brain. It was almost always how he remembered her. In a sea of black, he’d spotted her from across the dance floor. Most of the other women had worn their hair up in some complicated arrangement like they were flowers instead of women, but not Sara: she’d worn her straight, midnight glossy hair down.

He’d smiled at her and she raised her glass in a toast. Their eyes had locked, and he’d known right then that she’d be under him.

Mitch sat straighter and looked at Maddie, cross-legged on the bed and decked out in her cotton tank top and shorts, red hair a tumbled mess around her cheeks. She managed to look cute and sexy in a way Sara would never have been able to pull off.

He cleared his throat. “She was tall, with long black hair and really blue eyes.”

“What was she like?”

“She was . . .” He paused, hating the conversation, but for some reason, Maddie wanted to hear this and he couldn’t deny her. Not after her painful story about her father’s death. It made his ordeal sound shallow. Insignificant. He sighed, continuing, “She was vivacious and charming. She had that ‘it’ factor and could pretty much have anyone eating out of the palm of her hand.”

“Did she have a job? Or was she a socialite?”

“She was a corporate attorney.”

“So she was smart and beautiful?”

Her cunning wit had been part of the attraction. “Yes.”

“Did you love her?”

He braced himself and told her the truth. “Yes, I did.”

 

 

Maddie wasn’t surprised. She’d known by the tone of his voice, by the shadows that crossed over his expression while he spoke, that he had.

Of course she’d been beautiful. He was beautiful. Even though Maddie had never seen Mitch in anything other than jeans and T-shirts, she had no trouble picturing him moving with Chicago’s elite.

Propped against the headboard, the white sheet a stark contrast to his golden skin, he watched her. The qualifiers gleamed in his eyes, but he was too smart to add them.

Talking about her father’s death had left her vulnerable. As much as she didn’t want to hear about the married woman Mitch had had an affair with, she trudged on. That time in his life was obviously painful. He’d lost everything, just like she had.

“Do you still love her?” Maddie forced her expression to neutral, surprised and worried that his answer mattered. How ironic. She’d been professing her love for Steve since she’d met Mitch, so she shouldn’t be bothered if he said yes. But that was different.

Both of them knew she didn’t love Steve the way she should.

His brow furrowed as his mouth turned down. “No. I haven’t thought about her in a long time.”

She kept quiet and waited, not allowing him the easy answer.

He ran his hand over his jaw, then sighed. “She’s all mixed up with my past. I think we were infatuated. Addicted to each other so we thought we were in love. But looking back, I doubt any of it was real, and even if it was, we’d never have lasted.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “She would have hated Revival, and I had to leave Chicago.”

“Do you hate Revival?” She’d wondered. He hadn’t kept up this gorgeous house and didn’t seem to care about the bar, but tonight, with his friends, he’d seemed right at home.

“No.” He shook his head as though the words weren’t convincing enough. “Not anymore. I thought I’d go crazy when I first got here, but after a while I adjusted.”

“And are you happy now?”

A small smirk curved over his lips. “I’m about as happy as you are.”

She nodded. The subject of happiness seemed too big to tackle right now.

Silence fell like a heavy blanket as they were once again caught in the awkward place between strangers and intimacy. She glanced around the room, her attention settling on the door. “I should go back to bed.”

“Stay.” His hand tightened on her leg. “Please.”

She pressed her lips together, propriety and desire warring inside her.

“To sleep,” he added quickly, as he ran his hand up her thigh. “I like the way you feel next to me.”

A shiver ran through her. The bed had plush, down pillows, a rich, velvety comforter, and Mitch. He’d be strong and warm. Wrong and right collided and merged into one insurmountable temptation.

Their eyes met and that delicious hint of sexual tension spiked between them.

She gave up the virtuous fight. “All right.”

He swung back the covers and she climbed in. The tribal tattoo rippled as he leaned over to flick off the Tiffany light on the bedside table. He scooted down, his solid body sliding against hers. He turned toward her, smiling in the pale moonlight cast through the window. “Maybe you’d better face away or I’ll risk getting carried away.”

She rushed to turn over, the ache he evoked warming her belly.

His arm slid over her waist, and he pulled her close. Out of nowhere, the urge to weep swept over her. In the darkness, emotion swelled to the surface, and she blinked back fresh tears.

Behind her, his breath was slow and steady. She placed her arm on top of his and automatically their fingers tangled. His leg slid against hers. The tickle of his hair against the smoothness of her skin was delicious. He kissed her temple, and the covers rustled as he put his head on a pillow.

She was in bed with another man, and it didn’t feel wrong the way it should. It felt all too right.

She stared at the bedside clock as its red numbers blurred, then came back to focus when the tears subsided.

“So you understand about Steve?” she blurted into the darkness, unable to stop her confessions to this man she didn’t really know but somehow felt was integral to her life. “I wasn’t nice when I woke up from the coma: I cried uncontrollably. Raged. Had hysterical fits of temper. He didn’t even blink when I’d lashed out or yelled at him to go away. He just stayed right by my side. My whole world was in upheaval, my family in chaos, and he was like an unmovable rock.”