Rosie put a hand on my shoulder but she spoke to Jack, “Are you staying in town? Do you need digs?”
He shook his head. “I’m taking the girls to the airport. My parents are flying in to pick them up. Then I’m coming back to stay by Angela’s bed.”
I could imagine he wouldn’t be shifted from there by a hurricane.
I squeezed his hand. “Do you want me to take the girls to the airport?”
He shook his head. “Thank you for distracting them, but Angela asked me to hand them over personally. We both want them surrounded by family right now.”
He didn’t need to say anymore. We all knew the circumstances of their mother’s recent death. This would be traumatic for them. Anything that made them feel more secure was not only desirable, it was necessary.
Jill let his hand go and grabbed mine. “Come on.”
I said, “Thank you,” to Jack, then gave Rosie a one-armed hug which she was upset enough to accept, and glanced at Max who just nodded, as if he’d wait. Then Jill was racing me down the corridor, both of us barefoot, to the room where the nurse was waiting to let us in.
Angela was propped up in bed, her dark black hair stringy with sweat, her usually glowing brown complexion pale, and her eyes dull. I’d never seen her looking so sick in the twenty years we’d been friends.
Jill faltered in the doorway, but I walked straight over to the bed and took her hand. A second later, Jill was on the other side.
“Louella?” she asked, her voice scratchy.
“On the way,” Jill said softly, patting her hand. “Are you okay, honey? You gave us a fright.”
She tried to smile, but her eyes brimmed with tears. “I lost the baby.”
And then my heart broke. I could feel it crack inside my chest, and hot tears scalded down my cheeks. I swallowed and swallowed and tried to speak but I couldn’t. I knew what this child meant to her, and I knew that she’d blame herself for its death.
Nothing I could say would talk her out of this. She just had to find her way through, so I offered the only comfort I could, holding her hand, and when Jill reached across the bed to me, holding hers too. We were together, there for each other, just as we had been since school.
That counted for something.
“I love you,” I said, when I could speak, but my voice was hoarse.
Angela nodded, then she said, “I’m going to see the girls now before they leave, then they’re giving me a sedative.”
I squeezed her hand. “Good idea.”
Jill said, “I’ll tell Louella to wait until the morning and visit you then.”
Angela smiled. It was faint, but it was genuine, and in that moment I saw the future. She would accept this. It would be brutal. But her life would go on, and she would try for a baby again if that was safe.
We were all made of stronger stuff than we suspected, and it was only at times like this that we saw our unshakable core. I wanted to say all of that, and more, but she was tired and I was overwrought, so I said, “I’ll see you in the morning, honey. I love you so much.”
I just couldn’t say it often enough.
Then we were out in the corridor, hugging Jack before he took the girls in to see her, and Jill hugged me and left with Finn who’d been waiting outside the door. Rosie was near the waiting room when I came back, so I reported on Angela and thanked her for all that she’d done.
“You’re going with him?” She nodded toward the room where I presumed Max was still waiting.
“I hope so,” I said honestly. “But if I’m not, can I come back to your place?”
“Sure.” She gave me a key and money for a taxi. “Remember, my girls are showing up at noon. You need to sort out what you’re doing before then, because our drunken all men are bastards party ends when they arrive.”
“I think it’s over already.”
“For you, maybe,” she said and surprised me by smiling. Then after a few seconds she added, “Banks isn’t the arse I thought he was.” But before I could jump in she said, “That doesn’t mean I trust him. I just like the way he treats you when people are watching.”
“He’s like that when we’re alone.”
“Then maybe you are the one. Good luck with that.”
Once a cynic, always a cynic. But I just hugged her, and when she was gone, I sucked in a breath and went into the waiting room.
Max stood instantly and came straight to me. “Is your friend okay?”
“Physically.” I felt tears welling again but it was easier to suppress them this time because he didn’t know Angela. “She’s surrounded by people who love her. That’s got to be healing.”
He pulled me into his arms for a hug, and whispered against my hair. “Sometimes it just takes one person.”
I did cry then, because for the first time in my life, I was getting what my heart needed from a man. I’d always relied on my girlfriends for emotional support, because men were for sex. But Max was turning that world-view upside down.
Eventually he pulled back. “So, it’s well after midnight. Can I offer you a place to stay the night?”
I sucked in a deep breath, wanting to think this over carefully. I had Rosie’s key and taxi money in my pocket, I could go there. Only, there was no part of me that wanted to separate from Max now. I’d forgotten how amazing his skin smelt, and how gazing into those bottomless brown eyes made my stomach flutter. Then when his hand slid from my shoulder to my nape, caressing the sensitive skin there, my nipples tingled so hard they hurt.
“I could beg,” he whispered, a second before his lips landed on mine, and then I had no resistance whatsoever.
The hot flavor of his mouth reminded me of the amazing sex we’d had, and I simply wanted more. So I pulled away and said, “Yes.”
I wanted to get out of the hospital, away from the sadness I could do nothing about. Tomorrow I could benefit Angela, I could share my strength, and support Jill and Louella. Tonight I needed something for me, so I put my shoes back on and took his hand, but instead he pulled me into his side and kissed my forehead.
Then we walked down corridors with me tucked into his body and his hand resting reassuringly on my hip. I loved being so close to his body, and although we were silent, it was companionable, and that was so easy I felt like I wanted it for the rest of my life.
So I was relaxed and smiling when we exited the hospital and Max looked around for a taxi. What neither of us saw coming was the photographer who opened up beside us and I was caught in the flash like a deer in the headlights.
I should have pulled away from Max, but instinct saw me hugging in close, ducking my head down, and trying to hide my face. He navigated me to the taxi and I dove in with Max behind me, telling the driver he’d pay double for a fast escape.
The taxi jolted and I jerked upright to put on my seatbelt as the photographer reached the side of the car and the flashes went off again. I let go of the seatbelt and put both hands over my face, but it was too late. By the time we merged into traffic, the damage was done.
Max was staring straight ahead, his jawline tense as if his teeth were gritted. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just looked out the window, telling myself this was nothing. What I’d endured at the hospital had been far more painful. This publicity shit was like a mosquito bite. I needed to ignore it and move on.
Only…Max wasn’t ignoring it, so should I be worried?
In the end I said, “Does that matter?”
He glanced across at me, and for the second time in our acquaintance, he didn’t look like the Max I knew. He looked like the angry food critic the public adored. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“You’ve had a bad night. You don’t need this. I shouldn’t have rushed here without Traci. She would have seen this coming.”
My emotions were close to the surface, so I could have wept tears of gratitude for the way he wanted to protect me, but it suddenly felt important to let him know I wasn’t the weak creature he imagined me to be. “I
don’t care about that,” I said. “Sticks and stones. They can’t say anything worse than my father already has, and who are they? I don’t have to care about their opinions.”
His expression softened. “But your father…You’re supposed to love him.”
“I don’t. I haven’t since I was thirteen.” The day he’d backhanded my mother had been the day I stopped making excuses for him, for them both.
Max sighed. “My father always told me You’re nobody unless you’re somebody, and I was a nobody to him.” He shook his head, infinitely sad. “It wasn’t until after his death that I developed Max Banks the bastard and suddenly became somebody.”
There was a long pause, and although he was looking at my face, it felt like he was looking through me. “I try not to think about it too much, but sometimes I can’t help wondering if I’m living a life he’d approve of, instead of the life I want.” He focused on my face then and said, “Before I met you, I didn’t know what I wanted.”
Holy hell.
I swallowed down a lump of emotion and forced myself to ask the question that had been burning in my mind for the last twenty-four hours. “They said I was your girlfriend and you didn’t deny it.”
“I liked it.” He looked so open and vulnerable I wanted to just stop talking and hug him, but I pushed myself on because I had to know if that meant what I thought it meant.
“We barely know each other.”
“I don’t care.” His chest was rising and falling now, as if he was getting agitated. “I knew within an hour of meeting you. You’re perfect for me. Sexy and innocent and outrageously unpredictable, which, again, is sexy. And it might make me certifiable, but I want you to be mine and nobody else’s. And when you didn’t deny being my girlfriend—”
“Rosie wanted me to.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I didn’t.”
“Because…?”
I bit my lip, telling myself I could do this. Rejection wasn’t the end of the world. And sometimes you had to put yourself out there, and—
He reached across and took my hand. “Because you love me?”
“I like you a lot.”
Cop out.
But in my defense, Rosie had said that the man must always say it first.
His smile was slow, and with the stubble surrounding that delicious mouth, he was so sexy I wanted to swoon. “You like me,” he said.
“A lot.”
“I see. And Tyler Bennett, who you were chatting up earlier tonight. Do you like him too? Is this like, I like you in bed? Because I’d been talking about—”
“Wait. What?” I pulled my hand out of his and all my romantic, swoony fantasies ground to a halt. “How do you know—”
“It’s all over the Internet.” His mouth twisted. “The Colonial Cougar is on the prowl again, hitting on Hollywood this time, instead of a stuffy old Brit.”
I swallowed. That couldn’t be true. “Wait.” I pulled out my phone, and sure enough, Rosie had sent me an email with the subject line Fucking selfies: Not the publicity Tyler was after. I opened it to discover that the ever-so-grateful matron who took the selfie with Noah in the restaurant, had sold it to the networks so they could blow up the background and there I was winking at Tyler with a hand on his arm.
“Shit.” I looked up at Max, deliberately setting aside the fact that Noah would be furious, to concentrate on one upset man at a time. “You can’t possibly believe—”
“That you’d fuck someone younger than yourself?” He raised an eyebrow. “Your Hollywood heart-throb fits all the criteria: young, good looking, a complete stranger.”
“I left that restaurant with Rosie.”
“And did you set up a date with Tyler?”
“No. I haven’t wanted to…I haven’t…since you left.” It was coming out all wrong.
“Haven’t…?”
“You made me promise to be celibate.” He was frowning, and I couldn’t help saying, “Why did you come to the hospital if you thought I was fucking someone else?”
“I didn’t think you were. I just wanted to hear you deny it.”
“So that’s why you came? To grill me?”
He said nothing for a moment, simply raised his chin. Then in the light filtering into the back of the taxi from streetlights outside I saw his shoulders drop, as if he was giving in. “I came to support you,” he said at last, and gave me a moment to let that sink in before adding, “I can’t seem to get it through that red hair of yours that I genuinely like you. I want you to be happy. And it hurts me when you’re sad. I came because I wanted you to not be sad.”
A lump the size of Alaska built in my throat and I covered my face because I didn’t want him to see me ugly crying. But he unbuckled his seatbelt and slid across the seat to pull me into his arms so I could cry on his chest.
“It’s okay,” he said, patting my hair. “I’m here.” A minute later he added, “I’m stupid, but I’m here.”
When I could get my tears under control I pulled back to say, “You’re not stupid.”
“Au contraire.” He kissed my forehead and then smiled at me wryly. “The definition of stupid, is a man who expects fidelity amid overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”
That made me frown. “Why can’t you just trust me? I said I wasn’t fucking around. I’m not.” The pause after my request went on for too long so I pushed out of his arms. “And if you don’t trust me, why did you kiss me at the hospital?”
“Aforementioned stupidity.”
“So it’s stupid to kiss me?”
“It is when I—” he caught himself, but I could see where he was going.
“Think that I’m fucking someone else.” An unwelcomed chill settled into the air between us.
He frowned, clearly upset that he’d lost ground, but after a couple of seconds he regrouped. “I spoke to my mother about you.” His voice was stiffer, more remote, as if he was recalling a bad memory. “And when I explored the whole nanny resemblance, she told me she didn’t care about that. There had been so many mistresses, apparently their faces were a blur in her mind.”
My frustration with Max gave way to reluctant sympathy for his mother, and I had to say, “Poor woman.” No one should endure humiliation like that.
“The nanny had stuck in my mind, because she was the only one I knew about, but my mother didn’t even recall the color of her hair, which is helpful.”
“Because…?”
He stared at me silently for a moment. “I want my mother to like you, or at least to accept you.”
I blinked at him in surprise. Were we back to the girlfriend thing? How could that work when he didn’t trust me? “Is that so you can keep your options open, in case you can trust me after all?”
“She told me not to saddle myself with a cheater…” He gave me a moment to understand why her life experience would have caused her to say such a horrible thing about me. “… and I told her you weren’t the calculating seductress that the media portrayed you as.”
I swallowed sickly. “I assume this conversation was before the most recent publicity about Tyler?”
“Yes.” We stared at each other. “I still believe what I told her. You’re not some hedonistic prowler, preying on innocence.”
I felt like I was back at that crossroads, so I took my heart in my hands and said, “What am I then?”
His expression softened, and those soulful eyes I loved were very much in evidence. “You’re damaged by your father. That makes us kindred.” He reached out and took my hand. “And it’s not my business who you slept with before you met me.”
“Good—”
“But that doesn’t mean I’m not jealous,” he cut over me. “And when I see pictures of you with a boy half my age…”
“A young Hollywood star.” I nodded. I got that. “But he’s gay. He told me that in confidence.”
Max’s fingers tightened on mine and his gaze grew very intense. “I’d like to shout that from the rooftops
so the press stops—”
“But you won’t. If Tyler wanted people to know, he’d announce it himself, and he’s had enough unwanted publicity for one day.”
Max let out a long slow breath. “Alright. But fuck…I’m relieved.”
I took both his hands. ‘I told you. I’ve been celibate, like I promised.”
“Me too. Not that I…” He shrugged.
…have as much sex as you.
The unspoken words hung between us and I tried not to feel bad.
He squeezed my hands. “It’s okay. I’ve drawn a line in the sand at the point where we met, and everything before that is ‘need to know’. I don’t need to know. I don’t want to.”
Okay.
That was good.
Jill would approve. She’d always said that getting out the ex-files was self-sabotage.
But now. “So your mother…is okay with you pursuing me?” Color me old-school, but I loved the idea of being chased by a man, particularly one who already knew how to make me come undone.
“Not quite,” he admitted. “But while we were talking, I realized her opinion wasn’t going to influence me. And if I’m honest, my mother wasn’t the reason I pulled back at your house.” He frowned and it took him several seconds to go on with, “I was scared. It was happening too fast. We were so compatible. It seemed too good to be true—”
“You want to talk about too good to be true? This is Cinderella stuff right here,” I said, daring him to contradict me. “I keep expecting to wake up and realize I dreamt this, because it just can’t be real. You’re a celebrity and I’m—”
“Perfect. Too perfect, in fact. You’re a woman who dances naked in the forest.” His eyes were suddenly vulnerable and I had a horrible moment of thinking there was something I didn’t know about, something that would push us apart, then he took in a slow, deep breath and said, “I’m in love with you.” And he nodded once, as though clarifying his own stupidity. “I’m crazy, reckless, can’t-turn-my-back-on-it smitten, and I haven’t a clue what to do about it.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Husband Rollover (Husband Series Book 4) Page 20