by Lizzie Shane
She smiled at his use of her real name—as if that would stop people from recognizing her. “I could ask you the same thing,” she said. The noise level in the bar rose now that Ian was no longer holding the room captive with his voice, giving them the illusion of privacy as he bent his head close to hers to hear over the din. “Why didn’t you tell me you still played?”
He shrugged. “It never came up.” She arched her brows to show him what she thought of that answer and he laughed. “I don’t know. Maybe I was intimidated. It always made me nervous, playing for you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah. You look so nervous up there.”
“I didn’t know you were here, hiding in the back.”
“It was the only chair I could get. You appear to be rather popular. Standing room only.”
“You should have seen it last week. There were plenty of empty chairs.” He took a draught of his beer. “I was actually thinking of calling it quits. Or at least cutting back.”
“You’re kidding.” He couldn’t be serious.
Ian shrugged. “I thought maybe the time had come.”
“How long have you been playing here?”
“About three years, I guess? Every Friday. It was actually Lolly who encouraged me to do it. I’d more or less given up music when Sadie was small. Then about three years ago, Lolly came over and said she’d arranged a gig for me and was taking Sadie for the night.” He grinned at the memory. “She practically shoved me out the door. But then when I got here, I realized it was an open mic night rather than an actual gig—I guess she wanted it to be my call, but I had my guitar and she was watching Sadie so I decided to stay for a drink. Then I put my name on the list. And the next week I came back.” He shrugged. “A few weeks later the owners asked me to do a set after the open mic night. Then it just sort of became my night. Voila.”
“I’m not surprised. You’re that good. You could be doing this for real.”
His mouth twisted skeptically. “I’m a handyman who plays once a week.”
“Are you? You think every handyman who plays once a week can pack people into a room like this and hold everyone completely hypnotized?”
“I think you might be exaggerating a little bit.”
“I’m really not,” she insisted. “I’ve seen the people who really have it—do you know how many musical guests I have been booked with on talk shows? And you have it, Ian. I don’t understand why you’re wasting your talent in some little nowhere town.”
His eyebrows bounced up as he took another drink. “Maybe I like this nowhere town.”
“You could give Sadie a better life—”
“She has a good life. A normal life. With a father she actually knows because he isn’t touring three hundred days a year.”
“You wouldn’t necessarily have to tour—”
“Maggie.” Her name was hard on his lips, and loud enough that she glanced around nervously to check if anyone else had heard, but if they had they were doing a good job of pretending they hadn’t. “I just don’t want it anymore. Okay? I never wanted the fame like you did. Since when has that shit ever made anyone happy? Are you so happy?”
She pressed her lips closed, lowering her gaze to the shredded label of her cider.
Ian groaned. “Shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that—”
“It’s okay—”
“No, it isn’t. I shouldn’t take it out on you just because I did want it once and having someone tell me I could have really made it makes me wonder if I made the right call by walking away.”
She chanced a glance at him beneath her lashes. “You could still make it.”
He shook his head. “That’s another life.” He bumped her shoulder gently with his, making an effort to get them back to a comfortable place. “You know when you starred in your first movie, I knew you were going to be huge. I used to imagine that the story of my first kiss—the fact that it was with the great Maggie Tate—would be this amazing anecdote for when I got interviewed on a late night talk show someday.”
“I used to think maybe we’d meet up again someday. That you’d be a famous singer and I’d be a famous actress…” She smiled, shaking her head. “God, I was such a sucker for you when you played.”
“Yeah?” His grin was cockiness personified and she laughed.
“Ian.” The bartender’s deep voice had them both sobering as Ian turned to him and gave him a nod.
“I’ll be right there.” He drained the last of his beer and turned back to Maggie. “I’ve got one more set to do.”
“Right. Of course.” She smiled brightly to hide her disappointment at the interruption. “Knock ‘em dead.”
One of his hands gently brushed the small of her back and he lowered his head close to her ear. “You gonna still be here when I get done?”
A dozen questions seemed to whisper behind that one, as if he was asking so much more than just whether she was planning to stay for the whole set—and all those questions had the same answer. “Yeah,” she murmured. “I’ll be here.”
Ian grinned and shifted around her, weaving slowly back toward the stage. The patrons noticed him moving and conversations began to die, the general din in the room lowering to a hum by the time he stepped up behind the mic again. When he picked up the guitar again, he didn’t have to say a word for an anticipatory hush to settle over the room—
And he thought he could give this up. He was made for this and everyone in the room knew it.
Ian flicked a glance in her direction, a little smile curling his lips, and leaned into the microphone. “This one is an old friend,” he said, introducing the song, and the first few chords of Van Morrison’s I’ll Be Your Lover Too twanged through the room.
Maggie’s breath caught and held as the aching sweetness of the song reached into her chest and squeezed. He’d played this for her a hundred times that last summer, the slow promise of it seeping into her skin and permeating her thoughts—and she couldn’t escape the feeling that this time he was playing it just for her too.
The next song was another familiar one from those long ago summer afternoons—a sexy ballad off Lorenzo Tate’s solo album. If he was trying to seduce her with music, he couldn’t have chosen a better set list. When he played Maggie May, she noticed a few people stealing glances at her, though no one bothered her. The bartender asked if she wanted another cider, but she’d mostly been ignoring the one in front of her so she shook her head, thanking him.
The bar started to empty as the night wore on. The original age group of the crowd had been more diverse than she’d expected when she walked in the door and a few senior couples were the first to depart, followed in trickles by others who each waved to Ian and the bartender before hitting the road. A few empty seats began to open up around the room, but the bar stayed largely full until Ian announced his last song.
It was after midnight when the last note faded and the mass exodus began. Someone turned on the jukebox, but the conversation level stayed low as the patrons shuffled toward the door. Ian took a few minutes up on stage, putting away his gear.
As a Sam Smith ballad began to wail through the jukebox, Maggie became uncomfortably aware of all the people in the room. A few glanced her way and even tossed her a nod, but Maggie only gave them a small smile, calculated to acknowledge them but not invite them closer. She fished out a fifty and tucked it beneath her half-empty cider bottle as a sort of apology for taking up space and only nursing the one drink all night, then slid off her stool.
Ian met her halfway to the door, his guitar case in hand. “You okay to drive?” he asked as he appeared at her side, instantly reading the situation and acknowledging that she didn’t want to stay here with all these people watching them.
“Yeah, I don’t, I mean, I didn’t drink much.”
“I’ll tail you back,” he offered. “Make sure you get there all right. We don’t have many streetlights and the roads get really dark around her
e at night.”
Maggie glanced up at him beneath the brim of her hat. “Thanks. I’d like that.”
The parking lot was emptying and Ian walked her over to her car even though it was the wrong direction from his truck. “What’d you think of the show?” he asked as they drew up beside the pink convertible.
“You know it was incredible.” She leaned against the car, looking up at him. “I recognized a lot of those songs.”
“Blast from the past,” he murmured, and she had a feeling he wasn’t talking about the music as his gaze traced her face, the seconds seeming to slow down. He rested his hand on the hood of the car beside her. “What are you doing here, Maggie Tate?” The question was soft, a whisper in the cool night.
“Listening to you play?” she whispered back, though she knew that wasn’t what he was asking.
He leaned in, closing the distance between them, and even in the darkened parking lot she could feel his gaze lowering to her lips.
It felt like he’d been slowly seducing her for the last two hours, every song auditory foreplay. She came up on her toes, taking a half-step closer, her hand coming to rest on his chest—
A pair of headlights panned over them. Ian shifted back suddenly as Maggie turned her face away from the glare—and the reminder that they shouldn’t be doing this here.
Ian dropped his hand from the hood of the car. “I’ll be right behind you,” he promised, and Maggie nodded, opening the driver’s side door and sliding into the car with anticipation whispering across her skin.
She set her navigation and pulled onto the dark country roads, headed back toward Long Shores with Ian’s headlights in her rearview mirror. He stayed far enough back that he didn’t blind her, but never so far back that she couldn’t see him.
He was being a gentleman. A friend. Looking out for her. Making sure she got home all right.
It wasn’t the first time she’d had someone watching over her, not by a long shot, but usually it was her security team. Usually it was professionals she paid to protect her. When was the last time someone had looked out for her just because he wanted to? Not because he expected something from her—because even though she would have been more than willing to give him that kiss and see where it went, she knew on some instinctive level that Ian would have watched over her even if she had shut him down. It was who he was.
She pulled into her driveway and climbed out of the car, hesitating in the driveway to see if he would join her, but he merely slowed to a crawl at the mouth of Lolly’s driveway and lifted one hand in a wave before continuing on to the beach house.
Maggie cursed under her breath as his taillights disappeared. Had he had second thoughts on the drive home? Had his good judgment taken hold? Because she was still firmly in the bad judgment zone and wanted him to join her there again.
She unlocked the door to Lolly’s house, greeting a sleepy Cecil and letting him out in the back yard to do his business as she stared at the trees separating her from the Summer house. Sadie was in Seattle tonight. If Maggie was going to make a fool of herself throwing herself at Ian, there was no time like the present—especially because he’d given her several reasons to hope he might not think something between them would be entirely foolish.
Maggie was impulsive, so why not chase this impulse? She wanted him, and he’d seemed to want her too. What could it hurt to go over and knock on his door? She let Cecil back into the house and paused to look in the mirror, pulling off her baseball cap and smoothing her hair.
She’d just knock. If he didn’t answer, she wouldn’t ring the doorbell, but what if he was as awake as she was? What if he was waiting for her, hoping she would make the first move just like she had when they were thirteen and she’d ambush-kissed him on the beach?
Maggie smoothed her sweater over her hips and strode to the front door, pulling it open quickly, decisively—
And freezing before she could run into the man holding the screen door open, his hand raised to knock.
“Ian,” she murmured, the word breathless.
“Maggie.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
They both moved at the same time, reaching for one another, meeting in the middle in a tangle of need.
Ian sank one hand into her hair, the other wrapping around her, holding her tight against his chest as she wrapped one arm around his shoulders, her other hand clutching his biceps. She didn’t feel the same as he remembered, her breasts fuller against him even as she seemed more delicate in his arms—but the rush, the sheer momentum of them, that was the same. They’d never been able to get enough of one another.
She pulled him into the house, the screen door slapping shut behind them, and Ian kicked the front door closed without breaking the kiss.
He’d told himself, on the drive back here, all the reasons this was a bad idea. But his libido had a rebuttal for all of them.
She was leaving—so he wouldn’t get attached. Sadie was already too attached to Maggie—but Sadie wasn’t here. She would have no way of knowing if anything happened and what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. It would complicate things, sex always complicated things—but why did it have to? They weren’t kids anymore. They were both consenting adults. As long as they were clear about what this was and what it wasn’t, no one had to get hurt.
And he wanted her like he wasn’t sure he’d ever wanted anyone in his life.
Ian walked her backward through the kitchen, moving by memory until she bumped against a box and stumbled, breaking the kiss. He caught her before she could fall, glancing around them at the floor and releasing a groaning laugh at the boxes scattered across the kitchen and living room. “I see you booby-trapped the place.”
“I was sorting. There’s a system.”
“I love a system,” he murmured, distracted by the full softness of her lower lip. He kissed her again and that familiar momentum carried them away. He didn’t know how long they kissed like that, only that she was pinned against the doorframe, one of her knees hooked over his hip, and both of her arms twined around his neck, when he lifted his head again. “Bedroom?”
She nodded, her eyes dazed, and he reached to lift her into his arms, but she was already slipping away, catching his hand and leading him through the maze of boxes to the bedroom, where—thank God—the bed was clear.
She dropped his hand and turned to face him. Toeing off her shoes, she sank down onto the bed, scooting backwards with her chin lowered, casting him a sultry look through her lashes, gently biting her lower lip—and he was hit with a sudden sense of déjà vu.
Not from when they were kids. From the love scene in Alien Huntress 2. He’d seen that exact look on the big screen.
Was she acting? Did she think that was what he wanted? Some fantasy version of her?
Her bedroom eyes dimmed as she read something on his face. “What’s wrong?”
“I, uh…” Would she be offended if he told her he didn’t want a performance? He didn’t think she’d been faking it in the kitchen, but now all that frantic momentum seemed to have retreated into something staged.
“Do you have a condom?” she asked, and he leapt on the words.
“In the truck.” He was suddenly grateful he hadn’t thought to bring one. With Maggie posed on the bed in Alien Adventuress mode, he felt awkward, like maybe this was a mistake after all. “Should I…?”
“Yeah.” Her gaze flickered uncertainly. “I mean, if you want to…?”
“I’ll be right back.”
* * * * *
Maggie watched Ian bolt from the room like he couldn’t get away from her fast enough. She tried to tell herself that he was just that eager to get the condom and get back, but she’d seen something shift on his face when he looked down at her on the bed.
It wasn’t the first time she’d seen that look on a man’s face, though usually the disappointment that she hadn’t lived up to the fantasy didn’t set in until the morning after.
> She was the ultimate prize—thrilling to chase after, but once she was caught…
Maggie sat on the bed, wondering if she should strip off her sweater and jeans and arrange herself on the bed to try to recapture that moment of frantic heat from the kitchen. Everything had been so good until they moved to the bedroom, but she should have known the good couldn’t last.
In her experience men didn’t want her, they wanted the idea of her they’d built up in their heads. She shouldn’t have expected Ian to be any different.
She heard the front door open and shut again and watched the doorway to living room as Ian appeared, silhouetted by the light from the living room behind him. “Hey,” he murmured.
“Hey,” she said softly, slanting him an inviting look beneath her lashes, the look that photographers always begged for when she did magazine covers.
A frown tightened Ian’s brows and her internal siren shriveled, but she kept up the performance, crawling toward him across the bed and biting her lip. She reached toward him and Ian caught her hand, stopping her. “Maggie…”
“What is it?”
He studied her face. “Do you want this?”
“Of course.” She tried to reach for him again and he caught her other hand, stepping forward so they were facing one another, her kneeling on the bed and him standing beside it holding both of her hands.
“You don’t have to pretend with me.”
She shook her head, avoiding his gaze. “I’m not.”
“Maybe this isn’t a good idea.” He stepped back, dropping her hands.
“That was faster than usual,” she muttered, dropping back to sit on her heels.
Ian frowned. “What does that mean?”
Frustration made her feel sharp and restless, but she just shrugged. “You all want the fantasy.”
“That isn’t—” He started to argue, but she cut him off.
“There’s no point denying it. I’ve been proposed to more times than I can count by men who have literally never met me. They don’t know me and they don’t want to. They want who they think I am, this idea of me they have in their heads. All of you do. ‘They go to bed with Gilda and wake up with me.’”