They’d taken the long way home. He knew that much. And he knew not to question it. To just let her lead and be quiet. She’d come around when she was ready.
He ran. She meandered. That was just how it was.
He just hadn't expected her to jump in dick first with another recrimination about the acquisition following his afterschool special moment.
He should have. Only her laser-precise focus was stronger than her ability to deflect any and all messy, personal outbursts. And because he knew this, he knew he’d jump in right with her on this acquisition crap they’d already been over a hundred times and save her from talking about what the heck just happened back in that big house. Because she needed him to.
Didn’t mean he’d give her an easy time.
“No, I don’t understand why. We’ve been over this, Maggie.”
“Yes. And I’m certain you heard me the first ten times. But you keep pushing it, so it bears repeating. It’s no good for SD9, and you know it.”
“I do not know it. How could bringing a product—that’s been proven in the market, I might add—to our servicemen and women be a bad thing? How could the chance to develop and market new technologies that might—”
“Seriously. I get it. But what you don’t get is a Department of Defense contract will make negotiating with major sports leagues look like room mothers making cupcakes for kindergartners. Not to mention the potential eth—”
“Are you saying you don’t believe in SD9 anymore?”
“I— What?”
“Because if you don’t believe in us anymore then—” He didn't know what followed the then. It was a big black hole that loomed. Threatened.
“What us? There’s no us. Everything goes back to normal once we touch down in Austin. Before then, even. When we get in the car to drive back to Logan.”
“Don’t be deliberately obtuse, Maggie.”
“Ooh. Big word.”
That stung. She was never nasty, and that comment sliced down to the heart of all his insecurities. And she knew it. But Maggie was instantly contrite. He watched her face fall as her brain and heart caught up with the words she’d said.
“I’m sorry. Don’t listen to anything I say tonight. This whole week. It’s no excuse, but I’m not quite myself right now. At least, I hope that isn’t my real self.”
He wanted to grab her hand, but he settled on murmuring a quiet, “You don’t have to apologize. I know the real Maggie.”
Or, at least, he’d thought he had.
They walked the rest of the way to her parents’ house in near silence before she mentioned that they could drive into town for burgers or something—or raid her mother’s freezer.
“Won’t we eat with your parents?”
“Oh, no. Mom’s still over in the kitchens with Helen doing…something. And Dad gets up so early, he’s probably already getting ready for bed.”
That word, that one tiny word, seared through his brain.
They were approaching the tidy little cottage in the woods. The tidy little cottage that had a room up on the second floor. With a tiny little bed in it. A bed they’d soon be sharing.
His skin was a few sizes too small, and he had to take a few extra cleansing breaths before he could make a joking comment to defuse the tension. But there was no joke that could possibly lighten the situation. He’d barged in, got his way, and now he had to live with the consequences.
Consequences like a kiss on the beach that had burned more than the twenty-five-year reserve he’d been served this evening. Consequences like suddenly noticing every little thing about Maggie’s body and breath as she stood next to him during the cocktail party—something they’d done together countless times before but something that had never before shaken his concentration.
He’d been in a room full of the sons and daughters of the nation’s leaders. Industry’s leaders. And though he was, himself, emerging as a leader, he’d worked to bite back insecurity. And the feeling he wasn’t worthy of that beautiful woman everyone now believed was his.
Hell, it all circled back to that bed.
“I still can’t believe your parents are letting me stay in your room.”
“Oh please,” she scoffed. “Don't get too excited. My mother is so happy I'm spending a week at home, she’d willingly let me share my room with Satan himself.”
Well, that put him in his place.
Maggie stopped dead. There was a rustling in the leaves. It wasn’t yet dark, so it was too early for predators, wasn’t it?
Like he even knew what predators could be in this part of the world.
Maggie—who knew very well what predators—grabbed his hand, threading her fingers through his, and they stilled. “What is that?”
The rustling persisted, along with a soft whining sound that sounded like—
“Lady Anne!”
The elderly dog was caught up in some stuff on the floor of the woods, and Cruz held Maggie back before she could rush forward. “Hey now, she’s so excited to see you, she’ll get tangled up even more. And you’ll be no help to her if you hurt your feet. Let me.”
“She knows better to come this way.”
She might know better, but she sure couldn’t see better. The dog had to be a century old, but he wisely didn’t point that out to a distraught Maggie.
Anne’s front paws had met with some brambles or something, and her liquid brown eyes pleaded with him. “Looks like you wanted to be our welcoming party, didn’t you, gorgeous?”
He kept up a running monologue while he worked to free her. Wasn’t that bad, thank goodness; she was just scared.
“Old girl must’ve really missed you.”
As Cruz cradled Lady Anne in his arms on the way back to the cottage, he tried to ignore the sound of sniffles coming from the woman at his side.
“Where are the damn plugs?”
Maggie had just walked back in from the linen closet. “What kind of plugs?”
He held up his laptop charger.
“Oh, you mean an outlet?” Uh-oh, she hadn’t meant to correct him—had just been trying to figure out what he’d been talking about—and now she’d poked the bear.
Boy, he’d been in a mood ever since she’d taken him to task—again—about the DOD contract. And, okay, after she’d been the biggest beyotch on the face of the planet. But she’d apologized. And Cruz wasn’t one to hold a grudge. At least he wasn’t one to hold a grudge on her. She’d seen him remember a slight someone had done to him back in grad school—or even earlier—and cut them ruthlessly. In a strictly professional way, of course.
“There’s one right by the bed.” She tried to modulate her tone, aware she’d been a real piece of work lately, and that she’d only get through this week with his cooperation, but it still came out strained. Because she’d had to acknowledge there was a bed in here. And that they’d soon be in it together—or sort of together, once they slid the trundle out.
Thank goodness for that last-minute recollection and the extra twin sheets Mom kept in the linen closet.
“Already saw that one. I need a grounded outlet. Why are there no three-prong outlets?”
“Because this house is one hundred and fifty years old. Be glad you’re here in the summer and not when it’s twenty below zero.”
“Lucky me.”
She swallowed the snark that was on the tip of her tongue—Well, I didn’t invite you here; you Cruz-ed your way into this situation—and calmly told him, “If you need a grounded outlet, go to the kitchen.”
That was a mistake, too. Because saying the word kitchen reminded them both that they’d just been downstairs heating up leftovers, knocking knees together at the old wood table, sharing a meal and laughter like it was no big deal. Like they were Cruz and Maggie again. Like there was no weirdness. No ultimatums. Nothing threatening their easy coexistence.
Except there had been weirdness.
There’d been a moment when he’d been washing the dishes—he’d insisted—t
hat had seemed so profoundly domestic and beautiful and surreal that she’d frozen where she sat, unable to move to assist him even if he hadn’t refused help. And that cold heart she worked so hard to preserve cracked under the pressure, wide fissures opening up, threatening her stability.
Being back in the cheerful kitchen, with its dotted Swiss curtains and butcher-block counters, was pretty intense. She needn’t close her eyes to see herself decorating Christmas cookies and dyeing Easter eggs and doing homework at the gleaming wood table.
But it was more than just a trip down memory lane with him in there with her. He’d put on an apron to do the dishes—just like her father did. It was a ruffled, frilly thing that looked ridiculous on her tiny mother but somehow heightened her father’s—and now Cruz’s—masculinity.
He was the first man she’d ever brought home. Even if it wasn’t like that—couldn’t be like that. But it reminded her she could have had three kids by now. More if she'd started early or had stairsteps.
The wave of longing wasn’t just a wave. It was an undertow. And no amount of swimming parallel to the shore would save her. Because Cruz had been her shore for so long. And all she wanted to do was swim to him.
Then he’d almost kissed her.
And that time it hadn’t been for show, because there’d been no parent nor creepy Cinco nor even any of The Dogs around to witness the way he’d pulled her in, hands low on her hipbones. It hadn’t been a hey-girl-c’mover-here-and-let’s-hug-it-out kind of movement. It had been, totally, a hey-girl-c’mover-here-and-let-me-get-the-most-important-of-our-parts-lined-up-together kind of moment.
And they’d lined up really well.
There was a low curse from the other side of her bedroom. He’d set up mission control on her old desk—leaving her space on the window seat, she guessed—and was pounding away on his laptop. Clearly not lost in thought like she was, remembering how his hands had been so insistent and beguiling. How she'd just willingly swayed into him and might have kept going if not for the headlights slicing through the window.
No, he clearly wasn’t consumed at all by the heat that had rolled through her, and the insidious thought that maybe it wouldn’t be terrible if the trundle got stuck, if the fishing cot broke, or if he had to share that narrow strip of mattress with her.
Madness. Utter madness. She was losing her edge.
If she’d ever had one at all. It was terrible to think everything she'd built for herself since leaving Virtue Cove was a sham. That she wasn’t really strong and capable. That she was still a creature who let emotion and indecision rule.
“I’ve got a hotspot set up if you want to log in to the VPN.”
“Oh, thanks.” The squeak and thump of the bed under her thighs punctuated the stillness of the room.
He stood up, stretched arms up high before untucking his shirt. She watched him unbutton the left cuff. The right. Start in at the bottom and work his way up to the top.
Maggie shouldn’t just sit here and watch him get undressed. But her bedroom wasn’t that big. Everywhere she looked, there was some reflection of him. In the windows. In the mirror above her old chest of drawers. There, yes, she should focus her attention there, to the crystal knobs she’d found at an estate sale one summer and swapped out for the old brass handles.
But even focusing all of her attention on where glass met wood, a rogue flash of tanned skin entered her peripheral vision. A tight abdomen bisected by a sleek shadow of black hair. Dark hands at his belt. Long fingers efficiently threading leather through metal. A long schrrrrrp of leather unfurling and the light tink tink of metal meeting metal.
“Mind if I take a quick shower before bed?”
She turned her head to see Cruz stripping off his shirt on the way to the bathroom, his belt coiled loosely on her desk while she clutched the spare sheets to her chest like a matron clutching pearls.
“N-no, I…” Her brain stuttered as her words did. “I prefer mornings.”
Something in his eyes flared when they met hers, and it was as if they were right back in the kitchen, pelvis to pelvis. “Good to know.”
Morning came too early on the East Coast. So unfair that it came, oh, just about four hours after she’d finally closed her eyes. It hurt. Too bright.
Normally, she dropped into an exhausted heap and immediately into deep sleep. And though she had been completely exhausted the night before, the smell of his soap had wafted in from the bathroom while he’d showered, and had acted like ephedrine skating through her system. Now she felt hungover.
How many thousands of times had he grabbed a shower in the executive suite while she’d worked late, and vice versa? Countless. And they’d never affected her like this. Never forced her to completely lose her rational mind and irrationally focus on what was happening behind that bathroom door.
Some spicy, peppery man scent had rendered sleep absolutely impossible—especially since it reminded her of just how up close and personal she had been with that spicy, peppery man scent in the kitchen. When there had been no audience to deceive. No parents to fool. Only themselves.
Because, yes, she thought as she punched her pillow. Squeak. Thud. Shit! (He didn’t stir: a relief!) Ugh, they were fooling themselves if they thought they could go on like this.
Boston, and then Austin, was going to come, and it was going to shake their partnership to the core. Maggie just hoped they could pull out and move past it like they’d done before.
She had to shower. Which meant she had to get naked behind that wooden door and that thin cotton shower curtain. But first, she had to figure out the best way to extricate herself from the current situation.
The situation being the sleeping male at her feet, so to speak. Idiot! She hadn’t thought this through last night, which was totally unlike her. Maggie always had contingency plans in place—for every situation, no matter how far-fetched. (Though who could blame her for her failing to plan for such a distraction?) The fallout of her complete incompetence was excruciating. She had no idea how she was going to get out of bed without a) the squeak and thump episode like the day before, and/or b) climbing on top of Cruz where he lay sleeping on the trundle.
Oh. Jeez. She should not have looked down. He had the sheet all twisted up around his hips, and pulled out from the bottom of the mattress. His blanket had been tossed somewhere in the middle of the room. How he had slept the night like that was a mystery. If she’d known he had no use for the extra quilt, she would have commandeered it. She froze all night long. Too much time in Austin had weakened her Yankee blood and extinguished the memory of just how cold it got at night, even in the summer. Especially in the summer in a hundred-year-old house. Just as she’d forgotten how early the sun would rise in June in Maine, and with it bring some warmth to the day.
Oh boy. Speaking of warmth, it was time for her to kick off the covers, because she was getting a little warm staring at the expanse of skin on the mattress below her.
All golden and tan and covered with glorious fuzz.
How on earth did he find shirts that fit? His biceps looked like they were flexed, but she knew he wasn’t awake. He was snoring a little bit, and somehow that weakness endeared him to her. He was a dear man, not that she’d ever admit that to anyone. But he was. Dear. And so dearly enormous. All skin and hard muscle. Pretty much just hard everywhere.
Dear God. Maggie found herself a little bit fascinated—and a little bit horrified by her fascination—with that unmistakable lump, bump, ridge (whatever!) beneath the pink polka-dotted sheet she’d forced on him last night.
She had to get out of bed. Pronto. It was too much, all those yards of hot skin and man…things. She had to get out.
But, in her haste to free herself from the twisty vines of quilt and sheeting, she completely miscalculated. Not only did her bed do its best squeak and thump, she ended up doing a squeak and thump on top of Cruz.
His arms went around her instantly, though there was no need. She was frozen in place.
Maggie risked a look up at his face and was astonished to find him still asleep. Making a little Snuffleupagus kind of noise, but asleep nevertheless. How could he sleep through that? Even Lady Anne in the corner, ancient and lovely Lady Anne, heard it and pulled up her head to investigate.
The old dog was a terrible chaperone. After a moment of what on earth is that racket? she put her head back down on her paws and closed her eyes.
Like Lady Anne, Cruz stirred, briefly. But unlike the old dog who quickly lost interest, he held on to her firmly. Which was maybe for the best, Maggie decided, because it gave her some time to figure out how to delicately wiggle off of him.
Only, there was no good way to wiggle off a sleeping man. It made things worse, the wiggling. Or better. Because dang, it felt good, right?
So good.
That feeling of warmth and goodness was soon chased by icky panic and shame with the realization she was all but molesting him as he slept. A horrible breach of trust and etiquette. And why was she thinking about a thing like etiquette when he was practically motorboating her?
“You’re awake.” Her voice sliced like an accusation through the bright silver of the morning.
“Nope. Dreaming.” If anything, he pulled her in closer, tighter, and wiggling was absolutely out of the question now.
“Stop. I’ve got to get up.”
His breath was hot in the crook of her neck. How had she ever been cold? She’d never be cold again. And when he murmured, his lips brushed the thin skin covering her veins, setting off little smoke alarms along the way. Danger, they said. Leave now before you’re consumed.
“Love the wakeup call here at Hotel Kennedy.”
“Cruz, this is not funny.” It was agony. It was ecstasy. It was—
A disaster. One wheel of the ancient trundle frame, only used to kid-sized sleepover bodies two decades ago, chose that moment to collapse under the weight of two very grownup persons’ bodies. Maggie tipped off balance, hands slipping up the mattress until it was impossible to pretend her boobs weren’t now firmly in his face.
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