The Little Shop of Afternoon Delights

by Sarah Lefebve

  “I told them Nick – sorry, Jarvis – ties me up in a string of garlic, and shoves me out in the sunlight with a stake through my heart.”

  Maggie turned to face him. “So it was you that started the rumor?”

  “Actually – it was you! But I liked it, so I borrowed it.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “So what does happen to Jago? Maybe I’ve lost the plot, but I thought he was the bad guy in this set-up?” Her tone was deliberately blasé, as if she wasn’t really that interested.

  “Nice try, Maggie. I’m afraid I can’t let you in on that secret.”

  “Not strangled by your brother in the sunshine with the garlic, after all? Someone should invent a board game. I bet there’d be a market for it. Great merchandising opportunity. It’s sounding more like a whodunit and less like warring vampire twins every minute.”

  Wry tension twitched in the corners of Alex’s mouth. “It’s war. Make no mistake.”

  Maggie guessed he wasn’t talking about their TV characters. “What’s up?”

  “It’s no secret that Nick wasn’t ready for Mercy to finish. But I was. My leaving was okayed with the powers that be. They told the writers to write me out. Then the studio did an about face and cancelled the show.”

  “I suppose it’s a question of balance. Without the good-vampire-twin-bad-vampire-twin thing going on there wouldn’t be much drama left.” Maggie chewed on the end of her pencil.

  Alex’s shoulders tensed. He watched Maggie with deep concentration, mesmerizing her with his eyes, and lowered his voice, “I’ll swear you to secrecy. There’s a big twist in the final episode. Turns out Jago isn’t evil after all. He’s the good vampire and Nick’s character is the one that’s mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”

  “I’m guessing he’s not very happy with that.”

  “Let’s just say that’s an understatement.” He sucked in a sharp breath and scraped his fingers through his hair. “It was time the series ended. It had a good run. If we’d gone on any longer the characters would have dried up. People would have lost interest. It’s better this way. We’re ending on a high.”

  Alex’s tension filled the air in the empty studio. He stared off into space. “Nick doesn’t agree with you on that?”

  He let out a grating laugh. “Nick blames me for the show being cancelled. He’s livid.”

  “He’ll come round.”

  “He has no choice. He’s going to LA to talk movies. I’m going to London to do theater.”

  “Cool.”

  “It’s time for us both to move on with our lives, and he knows it. Even if he’s not ready to admit it.”

  Alex’s moodiness and her wayward pheromones produced a terrible combination of angst and attraction. She wished Hannah would come back with the coffee, although she still had that weird metallic taste in her mouth. She didn’t want to be so interested, but she was itching to know if Alex had managed to find a way back into serious acting. She couldn’t picture him headlining a West End musical, somehow. “What theater are you doing?”

  “Hamlet.”

  “Wow. Shakespeare in London. That’s a far cry from vampires in LA.”

  “That’s the general idea.”

  “To be or not to be.” She put on a tone of ominous gravity.

  Suddenly she blushed, thinking about her own date with destiny. She hadn’t done the pregnancy test. She told herself she’d been way too busy, but she was putting it off.

  “To be honest, I’m ready to disassociate myself from the vampire gig. It’s been a blast, but it wasn’t part of my plan. I did it because Nick wanted me to, and because I didn’t want him to miss out on his big chance.”

  “You went along for the ride.”

  Alex let his breath go in a long sigh. “Enjoy the ride while you’re on it?” He paused and fixed Maggie with his gaze. “It hasn’t been all bad. Far from it. But Nick needs to get over himself. He’s much too into this promo tour. Vampires is over.”

  “It’s over for you, but the fans are looking forward to the final series. It can’t hurt to big it up for a few more days,” she coaxed. Alex harrumphed. “And now you’re getting to do Shakespeare, like you always wanted to, so it’s all good.” Nick might be going to discuss a movie, but it didn’t sound like he had anything definite lined up. It was little wonder he was having more difficulty than Alex letting go of the series that had made him famous. “You got your dream.”

  “You remember that about me?”

  “Sure I do.” She looked down at her bright-yellow nails for a second. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  His sexy mouth spread into a wide smile. He started to undo his buttons. And suddenly he was stripped to the waist.

  “How do you want me?”

  Maggie picked her jaw up off the floor. “Um.” She focused on the row of clothes on the rail. The hangers tinkled as she faffed. “Here,” she said, as if she was actually concentrating on her job. Really she was busy enjoying the view. His broad, bronze chest and honed muscles blew her away. His hands went to his belt buckle and she couldn’t help but notice the dark line that arrowed downwards into his jeans. “I need you to change into this lot.” She pushed a well-laden hanger into his hands before he could strip off completely.

  Clearly he’d been around enough wardrobe girls not to feel bashful. Why would he? With that body! He was way too hot to handle, a one-hundred-and-ten per cent sexy fireball of a man. His fingers brushed hers as he took the clothes. The contact ignited fierce heat inside her. She wished the floor would open up and swallow her. She had to remind herself that it would have been insane to turn this job down.

  A hot, half-naked Alex must feature in a high percentage of women’s fantasies. And she was living the dream.

  Might as well enjoy it!

  Everyone arrived together. Hannah with the coffee, Natalie with the make-up, and Nick with the two stunning flame-haired, pre-Raphaelite-style models. From then it was all go. Run off her feet, Maggie clicked into super-efficient mode, making changes to the clothes to suit Hannah, keeping a tight rein on Natalie to make sure that she didn’t do anything too scary with the make-up, generally trouble-shooting, and making sure that everything was absolutely fab.

  At lunch they all went to a bustling café-bar near Faneuil Hall. The walls were covered with Boston Red Sox memorabilia. The place was packed. It made Maggie smile to see how the lunching office workers and shoppers made a production out of acting like they hadn’t noticed the famous Wells brothers. Not to mention the striking six-foot models they were with. Before she joined the others at the table Hannah’s assistant had reserved, Maggie ducked into the Ladies. She bolted the cubicle door, took a deep breath and dived into her handbag to dig out a pregnancy test.

  “Maggie, is that you in there?”

  Oh flip. It was Natalie. She thought about putting on a very deep voice and pretending to be a transvestite to get her to leave, but she liked Natalie and she didn’t want to freak her out.

  “Yes,” she squeaked.

  “Oh. My. Gosh. I think I’m in love. Don’t tell my fiancé, but Nick Wells is the most delicious thing on this earth.”

  Maggie abandoned her mission to establish if she was or wasn’t pregnant and exited the toilet cubicle.

  “Didn’t you tell me that Alex was the vampire for you – any day of the week?”

  “That was yesterday, before I’d met them. Today …” Natalie sighed dreamily. “It’s Nick.”

  Maggie nudged her with her elbow. “Fight you for him.”

  “No way.” Natalie slicked on a generous layer of her signature red lipstick. “You can have Alex.” She paused with a minxy grin on her face. “Judging by the way his eyes were following you all morning, I’d say you have a better chance with him. And I don’t mean in your dreams.”

  Maggie froze. Unless Natalie had supernatural powers, there was no way she knew what Maggie had been dreaming. Even so her words had an uncanny effect on her resolve to appear unaffected by Alex.

&
nbsp; “You leave my dreams out of this,” she joked. “Come on, let’s get some lunch. I’m starving.”

  Paralysis set in the moment she walked into the bar. The compelling rumble of Alex’s smooth-as-the-most-exquisite-chocolate voice resonated off the baseball-themed walls. The group was hanging on his every word – and so was everyone else in the café-bar.

  “Maggie and I are old, old friends,” he said. “We knew each other in London, right before Nick and I moved to LA.” He stared directly at Maggie, and she stopped, hands hanging weakly at her sides. “Things moved pretty fast back then. I guess we lost touch.”

  As his words trailed off Nick cut in. “The last time we saw Maggie she was wearing sparkly stilettos, red silk stockings and a verrrrry cute Santa suit! Alex had to lend her his best sweater so that she could go home on the London Underground without drawing too much attention to herself.”

  “And reindeer antlers.” Alex’s cool Jago face brightened into a wide, winning smile. “Don’t forget the reindeer antlers.”

  There were guffaws of laughter. All eyes turned on Maggie. The picture Nick and Alex painted didn’t exactly tally with her current blend-into-the-background image. In smart black designer jeans and black ankle boots, with a businessy white shirt, unbuttoned at the neck where she’d hooked her big, black oversized sunglasses into the vee, she aimed to look unremarkable. The laughing triggered a blush the color of a London bus – a glowing contrast to her monochrome look.

  Great!

  “And to avoid freezing,” she chipped in. “I’d like to point out that it was one of the coldest Decembers on record.”

  “It was Christmas Eve, actually.” Alex spoke slowly. The piercing glimmer in his eyes sent shivers up and down her spine. She wished he would stop looking at her like that.

  “Hence the Santa ensemble.” She made a face, shrugged, and held her palms out apologetically to the group.

  Sitting on a bench seat at the opposite side of the table between the two models, Nick leaned forward and moved the things in front of him about randomly – the salt pot, his sunglasses, a coaster. He seemed to be watching his brother for a reaction. Alex didn’t say anything more. He stopped looking at her and stared off into the distance.

  Maggie sat down at the table, picked up a couple of menus and handed one to Natalie, who suddenly closed her gawping mouth, as if for a fraction of a second she’d lost control of her features. Almost faint, not with hunger, but embarrassment at being scrutinized by every woman within earshot, and most of the men, Maggie’s fingers trembled. “So,” she announced, eager to close the subject. “Enough of the boring friends reunited stuff.” She rolled her eyes. One of the models sent her a sympathetic smile across the sea of drinks, menus and cutlery littering the rustic table top. “Should we order? What’s everyone having?”

  The memory of her Underground journey wrapped in his sweater, scarf and oversized gloves gave her butterflies. His student house had been in North London, hers South. She pictured herself sitting on the Tube in her barely-there Santa suit and scarlet silk stockings, squished amongst the bag-laden Christmas shoppers, hung-over and smarting from her night of doomed passion with Alex. Her heart fluttered. The stops had seemed never-ending – Leicester Square, Charing Cross, Waterloo. On and on, until Clapham Common, where she shared a down-at-heel terraced house with five friends. Had she been too much of a coward to step into the danger zone and get full-on physical with Alex? Had she allowed herself to fall asleep on purpose? She’d been procrastinating, shying away from her feelings. Even so she’d been elated at the prospect of hooking up with Alex after the holidays. Friend to boyfriend. Result.

  Except her grandmother’s instinct that no man was to be trusted had been right. No matter how much she’d hoped to love and love back, Alex wasn’t The One. There was no such thing. Marcus had proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt. His antics with the woman from the pub had got rid of any rubbish notions she’d had about forever love. At least he’d cheated before she’d been dumb enough to marry him. The one positive that she’d clung onto was that they hadn’t had a baby. It was a plus – no child to get hurt.

  Maggie pasted a chipper smile on her face and forced herself to stay afloat. She hadn’t expected to react so strongly to Alex. His aura was intoxicating. She was all out of kilter. Her body going on a bender every time she took a hit from those eyes was one thing. His magnetism sending her emotions into free fall was quite another. She’d learned to protect her heart the hard way. Letting people go was easier than complex feelings, and safer – much less risky. So how come she was sitting there wondering “what if”?

  She was over that we-were-almost-an-item thing, really she was. And she was at a new place in her life – ready to have a baby, a child whose feelings she could safeguard, the same way she shielded her own emotions.

  She ordered a New England crab roll. Then she sat quietly in the corner of the table and let herself drift out of the conversation. Push men away. It was the best way she knew of putting up barriers. The last thing she needed was Alex waltzing back into her life and stealing her heart again, so she closed him out.

  She had a knot in her gut from wading through a quagmire of feelings. When the food arrived she only picked at it. She felt nauseous. With one more day to get through, she’d play along in her role of old friend from way back when, and then she’d wave bye-bye to the Wells brothers, this time for good.

  After lunch, back at the studio, she threw herself into preparations for day two. Everyone else had gone, except for Hannah who was working on her photographs.

  “Hey Maggie, come see,” she beckoned. The petite thirty-something had shiny brown hair in a boyish crop and legs that were made for skinny jeans. With a big grin on her face she looked like a cute and happy pixie.

  Maggie watched as she scrolled through the pictures on her laptop. “They’re amazing,” she gasped. “Well done you.”

  Maggie loved the photos. Alex and Nick looked fabulous in the bespoke Harris Tweed jackets she’d commissioned for them. Tall and aloof, they were pictured with the red-headed models against a backdrop of perfect blue sky. In the foreground it was a market scene. There were crates of apples and tomatoes and one of the girls was holding a huge bunch of helium balloons. Behind them a steel and glass skyscraper was silhouetted against the blue.

  “Well done us,” Hannah corrected. “I’m loving the colors in those Scottish tweeds. The guys’ look is awesome.”

  “Some might argue that the guys are always awesome,” Maggie quipped.

  “Sure,” Hannah smiled. “But in our photos, they’re beyond awesome. They’ll love this at the magazine. These pictures are going to knock their readers’ socks off.”

  Hannah folded her arms and studied Maggie with a shrewd look on her face. “That was some story Nick and Alex told at lunch. You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. What’s the deal with you and Alex? Do I detect a hint of romance in the air? Were you two more than just friends back then?”

  Now that she was over the embarrassment, she quite liked that Alex had fessed up to having been friends. The difficult part was that she’d failed spectacularly to prove to herself that, ten years on, she was no longer affected by him. She wasn’t handling her attraction at all well, but Hannah didn’t need to know that.

  Maggie chewed on her bottom lip and shook her head. “Nope,” she said with conviction. She curled the fingers of her left hand into her palm. “Just friends.”

  Chapter Five

  Alex sat in the hotel cocktail lounge watching for Maggie. He had a perfect view across the lobby to the elevators. He looked at his watch. Where was she?

  He took a slug of mineral water. And waited. This stake-out was probably a bad idea. He’d give it five more minutes, then he’d quit. Knowing she was around here someplace felt good. The prospect of seeing her again turned him stupidly cheerful.

  He spotted her, dressed in black, kitten heels clicking on the marble floor. Stroke of luck, she was headin
g for the cocktail bar – alone.

  “Maggie,” he called. She spun on her heels and her hazel eyes met his for an nth of a second. “Where’ve you been? You’re a workaholic!”

  “I’ve been returning the things I borrowed for today’s shoot. I got a bit of a rollicking. One of the models got make-up on her collar and we lost a button.” She dumped her bags on the floor and sank into a chair, frazzled. “Then I was going through the clothes for the Cape Cod shoot tomorrow and realized I’d forgotten leather belts. So, I’ve been talking nicely to a PR in one of the other big stores.”

  “Like I said, you work too hard. Nick and I could have worn our own belts.”

  “Models’ own!” Maggie laughed. “Why didn’t I think of that? Anyway, it’s sorted now. The PR was lovely.” She gave a knowing smile. “Naturally, when she heard they were for Jarvis and Jago she let me borrow exactly what I needed.”

  “Buy you a drink?” A shadow crossed Maggie’s face.

  “I shouldn’t really. I should just grab a bottle of mineral water and run. I’m really busy. I need to look over the brief for tomorrow.”

  Was she making excuses? He could swear she was avoiding making eye contact with him. “Go on. Live dangerously.” She grimaced. “Chill and have a cocktail. You deserve it.”

  She bit her glossy bottom lip. He hoped she was contemplating caving.

  “Since you’re offering …” She arched a brow. “…Why not?” She held up a finger and sucked in a breath as if something important had just occurred to her. “Can we make it alcohol-free? I – um – need to stay off the booze.”

  A strip of pink neon light illuminated the wall behind the bar. A pop of contemporary color in the midst of the otherwise Edwardian elegance, it sent a glow into the room. In the far corner a pianist effortlessly played something jazzy on a baby grand. The wood on the piano’s lifted lid shone with a mirror-like polish. Waiting for the barman to pour the cocktails, Alex took a mental snapshot. Being here with Maggie was like being lifted out of his life and dropped into another world. Not the past exactly. That was a closed door. But somewhere familiar.