by Lizzie Shane
“Rita Hayworth,” he said and she blinked, surprised he’d recognized the quote. “Except I don’t want Gilda. And I don’t want the Alien Adventuress. I’ve seen that movie and that’s not what I’m here for.”
“You sure about that?”
“Maggie. Yes. I’m sure. Are you?” He stepped closer to the bed, grabbing her ankle and tugging her toward him so she slid across the comforter. He bent, sliding his hand into her hair and lowering his forehead until it almost touched hers. “Stop trying to give me Gilda. I want you. Stop trying to perform and feel this.”
He kissed her—and she tried. She tried to turn off the comfortable distance of the performance. She tried to throw herself into the moment. But the doubts were whispering in the back of her mind now, all the old insecurities, and she couldn’t make them stop. Their chemistry had always been incendiary, but she couldn’t quite make herself believe he really wanted the real her, exactly as she was.
She fell back onto the bed, pulling him with her, the weight of him firm and strong in her arms. As they shoved aside their clothes, her thoughts kept trying to get in the way, but Ian seemed determined to drown them out with need. He seemed to be able to sense the second she was slipping out of the moment—and with a brush along the side of her neck, a kiss along her collarbone, he brought her back to him.
“Just feel, Maggie,” he murmured, his breath caressing her ear, then he was moving down her body—and all her doubts short-circuited.
This was Ian whispering that she was beautiful. Ian with his hands sliding across her skin. Ian’s beard tickling the tender skin of her stomach. His hair thick and soft beneath her fingers. His strong shoulders pressing her thighs apart. His tongue—
Maggie arched, gasping, digging her heels into the mattress, squeezing her eyes shut tight against the surge of sensation. “Fuck. Ian.” He hummed and her limbs jerked at the jolt of vibration shooting across her nerve endings. “Please,” she whispered, repeating the word over and over again, the only one that seemed to make sense to her addled brain. Then something flicked, something pressed, and she was falling apart, shaking her head as if she could deny it, but he was there stroking her hair away from her face, soothing her, holding her together, reminding her it was him.
She’d become an expert at acting the part, but this time the breathlessness was real. The connection was real.
She was still boneless when he shifted away from her, reaching for something—the condom? But it wasn’t protection in his hand when he rolled back to her. He tapped something on his cell phone, bringing up a playlist—their songs—and then he was kissing his way down her body to start all over again, making her feel until she wanted to cry.
She could tell herself this was just another role to play, but her body knew the difference. Her heart knew it too. And later, when he slid inside her, his black eyes inches from hers, his kiss slow and decadent, as if they had nothing but time, as if they had the rest of their lives, that zing of connection frightened her to the bottom of her soul—but she’d already surrendered to it. There’d never been any holding back from Ian.
As he began to slowly drive into her, twisting the crank of her desire to ratchet her up again, she dug her fingers into his shoulders, both of their skin slick, nothing photogenic or pretty about the need, the gasp, and the rough jolt of his body against hers—nothing staged or choreographed as she lost all sense of place inside the moment.
Just pure, raw perfection. And him.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Ian was pretty sure he’d made a huge fucking mistake. He woke up with that certainty squeezing his chest as he turned his head slowly, taking in his surroundings.
Maggie had rolled to the far side of the bed during the night, sprawled on her stomach half hanging off the edge with her long hair covering her face. She’d taken most of the comforter with her and he shivered in the early morning chill, tugging up the sheet she’d left behind—and silently cursing his stupidity.
Last night sleeping together had seemed like a great idea, but in the light of day—or as much light as managed to penetrate the dark cavern of Lolly’s bedroom—he couldn’t help thinking getting involved with Maggie, no matter how casually, was a terrible idea.
His life for the last few years had been largely celibate, and he’d been fine with that. He liked sex as much as the next guy, but his life as a single dad hadn’t left much room for dating and he’d never felt good about himself after a random hook-up where he snuck out in the middle of the night so he could be home before Sadie woke up. He might not have to sneak out this morning because Sadie was in Seattle, but this was still a random hook-up. It had to be. There was no future with Maggie.
He’d been enjoying building a friendship with her again and he’d known sex would only complicate things, but he’d done it anyway. What the fuck had he been thinking?
She shifted, rustling the covers, her breath catching as she went still for a fraction of a second before resuming a deep, even breathing pattern. Awake, but pretending not to be. It was impressive, believable—but then she’d always been a good actress.
He could slip out. He had to get to work. Mr. Kim’s deck wasn’t going to build itself. She could keep pretending to sleep and they could avoid the entire morning-after awkwardness. The whole “We shouldn’t have done that” conversation. Sadie would be back tomorrow anyway and his daughter was much too observant for them to try to carry on under her nose. Much better if they cut if off now.
A one time thing. Just a single moment of insanity. Or four moments of insanity over the course of the night, but only the one night. It was for the best.
A quick retreat.
But Ian couldn’t quite bring himself to sneak out. It felt like the coward’s way. And he hated the idea of Maggie regretting last night—even if it had been a mistake.
“I should go,” he said, keeping his voice low, but not pretending to buy her sleep routine. “I have to work today.”
She abandoned the act, rolling slowly to face him and tucking the comforter under her nose so it covered her mouth—always covering her mouth. As if her eyes didn’t give everything away. They were vulnerable now. Uncertain. And he hated that he’d had something to do with putting that look in them.
“Disappointed not to wake up with Gilda?”
She was trying to joke, but the worry in her eyes was too real for him to laugh. He crawled over her, tugging at the comforter to reveal her mouth and gently tracing her lower lip. “You could never disappoint me.”
He pressed a closed-mouth kiss to her lips, not starting anything he didn’t have time to finish, just reminding her he’d been there. Her lashes lifted slowly as he raised himself above her. Her eyes were no longer worried, but studying him, as if he was an enigma she couldn’t quite figure out.
He shook his head. “All those idiots who were disappointed they didn’t wake up with Gilda, didn’t they realize waking up with Rita Hayworth was even better?”
“Margarita Cansino,” she corrected.
“What?”
“That was her real name. Before they decided she was too exotic, dyed her hair red and started calling her by her mother’s maiden name.” The twist of her lips was cynical, wryly self-deprecating. “The things we do for fame.”
Ian traced the curve of her shoulder. “You always reminded me of her.”
Maggie laughed. “Rita Hayworth?” She twirled a long, blonde curl. “Because we have so much in common.”
“You both have sad eyes.” Maybe that was why she was so famous. No matter how bold and sexy she was on the screen, there was always that ache, that vulnerability beneath the surface which America couldn’t resist. That lonely girl reaching out for someone to see her…
“I do not have sad eyes.” She pushed him away with a hand to his chest, sitting up in bed with the comforter covering her to her collarbones. “I am effervescence and sunshine. Critics love me because I’m a breath of fresh air. Effort
lessly charming. That’s what they call me.”
“You are charming,” he assured her. “But it isn’t effortless. You work at it every day. Work at making sure no one can see it’s work. Or that underneath it all you’re lonely.”
Her stunning turquoise eyes narrowed. “And you see beneath the façade, is that it? You’re so clever. So perceptive.”
“Maybe not,” he acknowledged, retreating back to drop his feet over the other side of the bed to give her space, reaching for his boxers. “Maybe it’s all in my head. Wishful thinking.” He stood as he pulled on his boxers and searched the floor for his jeans. “Maybe that’s my fantasy—that I can see behind the mask.” He found his jeans and stood up with them in his hands, facing her where she still sat in a defensive posture on the bed. “Maybe I shouldn’t presume that I know the real you.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t,” she grumbled.
“What I should do is get going.” He stepped into his jeans, tugging them up over his hips. “I’ve got a deck to finish while the weather holds. You wanna come over for dinner tonight?”
He didn’t know why he’d asked. He’d had this great plan to put distance between them. One night only. And if he made dinner for her, just the two of them, that was going to be a hard plan to follow. But he hated the guarded look on her face—would have said anything to get it to slide away as it did now.
“With you and Sadie?”
“Sadie’s still gonna be in Seattle with my mom. The game’s tonight.”
“Oh. Right.”
He couldn’t blame her for thinking Sadie would be back—it felt like much more than just one night had passed since his daughter left. He turned away to reach for his shirts, part of him hoping she would say no. Then things could go back to the way they’d been. He concentrated on separating the button down flannel from the solid grey t-shirt that had gotten knotted with it when he yanked them both off over his head last night.
“Yeah, I’d…I’d love that.”
Shit.
“Great.” Ian turned back, tossing the flannel on the bed so he could pull the t-shirt over his head. “Say, seven?”
“Perfect.”
He grabbed the flannel from the bed and collected his shoes, leaning over to drop another quick, just-marking-my-place kiss on her lips. “I’ll see you then.”
* * * * *
Maggie watched Ian leave, trying not to dwell on her doubts. Last night had made her feel raw, like it stripped away all her shields, exposing her vulnerabilities, and she was glad he was gone so she could put herself back together again—but that didn’t stop her from feeling a little hurt that he hadn’t wanted to stay.
She was used to men who had crushes on her, not connections with her. Even with Demarco, they’d been mutually infatuated with the idea of one another rather than actually in love, no matter how she might have tried to convince herself otherwise at the time. There was something comforting about the men who wanted to be with the Alien Adventuress. She knew what they wanted of her.
But with Ian…
Who was she supposed to be with someone who just wanted Maggie? A real connection was foreign—and freaking terrifying, even if she had felt like she was searching for it her entire life.
He did see her. All that shit about her sad eyes—she felt like she’d been fooling everyone for years, wondering if anyone would ever see behind the act, and Ian had brushed aside the illusion as if it had never hidden her at all. She knew about the emptiness of fame. The hollow loneliness of it. But for him to know…
It was too real. Too much. She needed him gone from the house so she could regroup—and hated that he was gone at the same time.
Cecil padded into the room, whining softly, and Maggie forced herself out of bed and into what had become her morning routine. Let Cecil out. Feed him. Walk on the beach. Shower. Pick an outfit from Lolly’s hand-me-downs and then find a box to start sorting through.
She’d made some progress in the last few days, though there were still an impressive number of unsorted boxes in the hall closet. It had gotten easier, deciding what to keep, what to give away, and what to throw away. She seemed to have reached a plateau of calm—or maybe she’d just retreated into denial. She still hadn’t cried.
Maggie sat on the floor with Cecil trotting around her, showing off the tennis ball he’d stolen from Edgar. She pulled the lid off a banker’s box, expecting more old insurance paperwork or tax documents that had yellowed with age, but what she found instead were newspapers. Hundreds of clippings. Advice columns. Articles. All with the byline Lola Tully.
Lola.
Maggie shook her head, smiling. “Aunt Lolly. Look at you.”
She knew she should just set the entire box in the keep pile to look through later and continue sorting, but she couldn’t resist skimming a few of the articles, and before long she was reading page after page. There were a few advice columns, like Ian had said, but most of those had been under a different name and stashed in the box Maggie’d found last week. Nearly all these pieces were investigative stories or editorials.
Then her fingers brushed a familiar thick stationary.
Maggie’s heartbeat accelerated as she fished the paper out of the newsprint. There was no envelope, no name on the single, folded piece of stationary, but it was the same kind that had been used for the other letters she’d received. She unfolded the sheet, her heart drumming as she looked.
She’d found a few other notes written on this stationary before—To Do lists and recipes stashed in among various papers, but this was clearly a letter, albeit one without a salutation, almost as if it was only Lolly’s thoughts, though she was addressing them to someone. And as she read Maggie realized that someone was Maggie’s teenage self.
Little girl, I worry about you with that boy, the letter began. I’m sure you will object to being called a little girl, but you are still so young in so many ways, even as you play at being grown. He’s a good kid and he seems to treat you well, but does he know how fragile you are? Does he know how unguarded your heart is, for someone who plays so big and tough? You can bleach your hair and call yourself by a new name, but all I see is little Lori pinning all her hopes on a boy who isn’t yet a man—a boy I can only pray doesn’t disappoint you. Young hearts can be so fickle. Every Monday when he goes back to Seattle, I worry that your heart will be broken when he comes back on Friday. And even if he is everything we might wish for him to be, what happens when the summer ends and you go back to Texas? Will he
Maggie flipped over the page, but the letter ended there, mid-sentence. She searched through the box for more pages, but it was as though Lolly’s writing had been interrupted and she’d never come back to it.
Maggie could easily picture it. Lolly stretched out on the lounger on the sun porch, the TV tray she used as a desk propped across her lap as she wrote. Perhaps Maggie had come running up from the beach path.
She remembered that summer well—the last one she’d spent with Lolly. The next year she’d stayed in El Paso, working two jobs to save up, already planning her escape to LA after graduation the following year. But that year she’d been here, dreaming with Ian during the weekends and dreaming about Ian during the week.
That had been the summer she’d become a blonde. It had been an act of defiance at first—or a bid for attention, if she was honest with herself—but then looking in the mirror and seeing that blonde looking back at her had made her feel like she could be someone else. Like she didn’t have to be trapped inside who she was the rest of the year. It was her first taste of the freedom of being someone else. Of being the girl who would become Maggie Tate.
Lolly might have worried about her with Ian, but those afternoons with him when they’d been dreaming big dreams together had been the happiest of her life. Yes, they could kiss for hours without stopping and she’d been wildly in love with him—but they’d also talked about everything and anything. He’d understood her. Understood why she di
d all the crazy things she did without ever having to be told, and without ever judging her.
Lolly may have thought she was fragile, vulnerable to him, but she’d never felt stronger than he made her feel. She was brave with him. The best, happiest, freest version of herself.
He’d been the antidote to her regular life—and when she’d had to go back to it at the end of the summer there had definitely been a few moments of teen angst as she sobbed the entire flight back to El Paso, but she’d also carried that feeling with her. That someone believed in her, someone saw her, even if he was a thousand miles away.
They’d both been terrible pen pals. That hadn’t changed just because they thought they were in love. She’d never blamed him when he didn’t reply to her half-hearted love letters. She’d gotten the lead in her school production of Grease and started dating the boy playing Danny—the first in a long and ill-advised string of costar relationships.
Ian had become a fond memory. And a reminder that things could be good. That she could be happy. That boys could be sweet and funny and amazing kissers and like her just the way she was—even if she didn’t always find many of those boys populating the cast of her life.
No one had ever lived up to Ian. Maybe that was why she’d always found her relationships crashing and burning—she was always comparing them to the incomparable perfection of her teenage memory. Or maybe it was just that no one could ever be as right for her as he was.
Was that why the universe had brought her back here? To bring them back to one another? It sounded like something out of a movie, the kind of thing that didn’t really happen in real life, at least not her real life.
But what if this was why she’d felt so empty in Los Angeles? What if Ian and Sadie were the missing pieces that would make all her success feel like it was supposed to feel?
What if this could finally be the real thing?