“Where did you learn to do that?” Maggie asked, delighted.
“My dad taught me.” Alex frowned. “Right before he left. It took me two years to master it. I practiced on Nick.” He looked abashed. He laughed. “I never got the chance to show him that I’d got the hang of it.”
Maggie smiled. “Well, it’s coming in handy now.”
Recognition suddenly dawned on the faces of the parents.
“Are you?”
“Is he?”
“Alex Wells? Yes – he is,” Maggie confirmed.
The woman clapped her hands excitedly and together the couple exclaimed, “Jago!”
By the time they all parted, after another quick photo call to include the yummy mummy’s favorite vampire, everyone was smiling – even Alex.
Towards the end of the afternoon Alex hailed a yellow taxi and took Maggie and the giant penguin to Bloomingdales.
“What are we doing here?”
“We’ve got shopping to do.”
“Shopping’s what I do best. It’s practically my career.” She frowned, puzzled. “Frankly, it’s a bit of a busman’s holiday in my time off.”
“It’s my mother’s charity gala tonight. You need something to wear to the ball, Cinderella.”
Maggie stopped in her tracks. New York’s pedestrians diverted around her, as if she, Alex, and the penguin were rocks in a stream.
“After last night’s fiasco I think I’d prefer to stay holed up at the hotel in front of the TV with my friend here.” She jabbed a finger at the penguin. “I don’t think I’m cut out for all this red-carpet palaver.”
“I’d like you to come.” He pulled off his sunglasses and spiked a hand through his dark hair. “The event’s being held at the Empire State Building. It’s an excellent place to end our day in New York. The dinner guests get access to the observatory.” Maggie didn’t budge. “Come on, Maggie. Work with me here. What can I say to tempt you?”
Despite her reservations, Maggie was tempted. Ve-ry tempted.
“On your own head be it. Don’t blame me if I jinx another high-profile occasion.”
“Excuse me for thinking that you’d like to come. That you might actually – heaven forbid – enjoy it.”
“There’s no need to be snarky.” Truthfully, it sounded like a lovely evening. She’d get a second chance to prove to herself that she could be the perfect date, and to the world in general that she could do that front-of-camera stuff as well as the next person. After last night’s mishaps it was a wonder he hadn’t stuck her on the first flight out of here already. But Alex styling her for the second night in a row was a step too far. She couldn’t risk appearing in red again. Or pink.
“I’ll come with you on one condition.”
“Name it.”
“I style myself.”
He put his shades back on. “It’s a deal. Lead on, Macduff.” Maggie smiled at the much- misquoted line from Macbeth. Alex was going to make an awesome Hamlet. In a few weeks’ time the London theater reviews would be raving about him. Alex Wells would be the hottest ticket in town. And not just for his versatility as an actor. “Just one thing, though … I think I should mention … It’s a kind of tradition … A little matter of a color coordination thing that Cassandra insists on …”
Maggie was off. She wasn’t even listening. She waved a dismissive hand. She’d had all the color coordination she could take. She couldn’t face another red-on-the-red-carpet situation.
“I’m wearing black. It’s what I do.”
Inside the store Maggie shopped like a fashion missile. She targeted a shimmering black sequined sheath dress with a demure neckline and a back scooped seductively low. It came from the collection of a stylist turned designer. It was exactly right with a shadowy graphite and black zebra print that she loved. Both sexy and subtle. She’d no idea if she could pull it off, but she was flipping well going to try.
Next she went in search of shoes. She found a gorgeous pair of black-satin stilettos that she could actually walk in. They were fab, with a lovely ribbon detail at the ankles.
Last thing, she headed to the lingerie department. Not convinced by the adhesive options for backless dresses, she opted for braless. She was done inside of an hour and most of that was spent waiting for one sales assistant to meticulously pack the dress while another one provided a chair for the penguin and made a production of processing Alex’s credit card. Judging by the moony looks on their faces Maggie suspected that they were taking their time just to keep him from leaving.
She mentally pinched herself. All day Alex had been doing a convincingly good impression of the perfect man. She’d do well to remember that perfect men didn’t exist. He wasn’t into her. He wanted a stylist. Not that he needed one. For tonight, she’d be concentrating her efforts on her own style. There would be no more Cinderella-gone-wrong scenes on the streets of New York, not if she could help it. She couldn’t make any more of a fool of herself than she already had. Was there a chance that this time she could actually get it right? There was only one way to find out.
Chapter Thirteen
What on earth was she doing in there? At this rate getting ready for the gala event was going to take Maggie even longer than it had the previous night with stylist Edwina and her hair and make-up team on hand to string the palaver out.
Alex glared at the laptop screen while he waited for her to emerge from her half of the hotel suite. Who knew Maggie would be such a stickler for her “I-only-wear-black” thing? He’d thought she’d enjoy being styled for once. Not a bit of it. She hadn’t liked being taken over. And with good reason, as it turned out. He was staring at the result. On the internet, the red-carpet pictures were great, but in the ones of the two of them leaving the premiere he looked more like a comic turn than a serious actor. As for Maggie – she wasn’t going to thank him when she saw herself all over the celebrity news pages looking like a fashion disaster. And she’d be shocked for her pregnancy to be announced to the world this way. Seeing her personal news on the laptop he felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. He wished he’d taken better care to protect her privacy. He’d no idea how word of Maggie’s pregnancy had got out. That press favorite “the source” was mentioned. That was probably a chambermaid who’d found the packaging from the umpteen pregnancy tests in the hotel bin. He should have been more discreet.
He held his head in his hands and closed his eyes. The night had gone into a nosedive and the photographic evidence was out there. The media wreckage amounted to a “pregnant former flame”. The headlines were ridiculous. “Baby Surprise for Glamorous Grandma Cassandra Wells” made him smile, though. She wouldn’t cope well with being labeled “grandma”. He took out his phone and quickly sent Cassandra a text – damage limitation. Amazingly their publicist hadn’t contacted him. Perhaps she hadn’t clocked the gossip pages yet. She’d be after his blood when she did. So much for media training.
It could be worse. The story had turned out to be a hit with the no-publicity-is-bad-publicity charity organizer. She’d already texted her congratulations. Both on the great PR – and the news of the happy event. He’d have to take her aside later and put her straight.
Maggie had walked back into his life and he’d taken leave of his senses. He felt surprisingly calm, given his hatred of shambolic publicity. Growing up in the Wells’ spotlight was nothing to the full-on multi-media madness that periodically accompanied the on- and off-screen brothers. If anything, his parents had prepared them for things to come.
After the scene at the airport, one parent or the other frequently threatened to make the fact that Drake wasn’t the biological father of Cassandra’s sons public. All these years later and still neither of them had actually done it. He wondered how Drake would react to the false reporting that he was a soon-to-be grandpa. He hoped he wouldn’t do anything rash, like follow through on his currently dormant threat to disown his sons. His mother was on an even keel, and he didn’t want her upset.
He cl
icked haphazardly through the internet images. He didn’t give a toss about damaging his efforts to be taken seriously as an actor. What he cared about, above all else, was Maggie. Showing her off as his mystery date on the red carpet had backfired. He’d dragged her into a three-ring circus.
To top it all, it was getting harder by the hour to resist her. Last night she couldn’t have been clearer about wanting a fling, although frankly he figured rampant pregnancy hormones had skewed her judgment. It’s not that he wasn’t tempted. In different circumstances they’d have been tearing each other’s clothes off since the middle of last week, but right now no woman could be more complicated than Maggie. The desire to say yes burned inside him. Could he risk getting into something he mightn’t want to stop?
He glared at the time in the bottom right corner of the computer screen. He’d give her five more minutes – then he was going in. He jagged a finger at the touchpad, scanning photos. Maggie looked as lovely as any of the A-listers and every bit as gorgeous as the Manhattan elite who’d wangled invitations to the movie screening. His mouth was dry. A rock had taken up residence in his throat. He swallowed. It refused to be shifted. He should have snuck her out a side door and into a cab. What was he thinking when he pulled the stunt with the horse and carriage? It galled him to admit it, but having her here was rapidly turning into one hell of a media muddle.
Weirdly he quite liked reading that he was going to be a father. He must be going crazy. He’d be starting to believe what he read in the tabloids next.
He had a really strong sense of déjà vu. Five years ago, he’d read the report that he’d got engaged to Rachel. He’d cared about her, but he hadn’t had any intention of asking her to marry him. She’d gone ballistic. The fallout from press intrusion had been disastrous, and this could get messy too.
He clicked onto another screen and he couldn’t help the grin that broke out across his face.
Cute!
There was another picture of Maggie in her I Heart NY tee and stars-and-stripes leggings. All he could do was hope she’d see the funny side of this. The headline read “Cinderella of New York City”, and the horse and carriage was hilarious. Looking on the bright side, the not-so-perfect Cinderella moment had harnessed some great impromptu publicity; the fairy-tale angle worked brilliantly for the children’s charity the Wells family supported.
He heard Maggie coming. He closed the laptop and stood up, hands in pockets. He’d have to break the media intrusion to her …
Wow!!!
She walked into the room, elegant, sophisticated. And in black. He wished he’d been more insistent about the dress code. He hoped his mother wouldn’t be abhorrently rude, but he wasn’t counting on it, especially in the light of the grandma allegations. Volatility was her default setting.
As far as he was concerned Maggie looked great. He was getting used to her monochrome tendencies. He couldn’t care less if she was wearing multi-colored polka dots instead of the customary Wells Wish Foundation colors, but she looked truly stunning, shimmering in shades of black. He should at least warn her about Cassandra’s pink and blue theme, and give her the heads-up on the press speculation.
Press photos? Or dress code? Given the choice he’d ignore both topics and stay right here addressing his impulse to finish what they’d almost started much too much time ago already.
He needed to get her out of his system, move on. He wanted to believe that he could be her friend. He really did. But every time he made a stab at it, he ended up more confused. It was a non-starter. Did she want a fling? Did she want someone to hold her hand at her first baby scan? Did she want someone to pick out a buggy and adorable dinky clothes? What did she want exactly? The more he thought about it, the more he figured that what she required was a gay best friend. He was much too attracted to her to be a good friend, no matter how badly he wanted to try.
Once upon a time he’d imagined that if there was anyone on the planet it might be worth trying to be more for it would be Maggie. Angry at being at the center of his parents’ latest public spat, hurt by harsh criticism from Drake, he’d been a mess that December when he’d quit university. Maggie had snuck past his defenses and gone straight to his heart. He shouldn’t have gone there. When he realized that he’d let her get too close, he’d frozen her out, and if he’d felt guilty about it then, what he felt now was worse; deep and strong and unquantifiable.
He squashed it. Blocked-out feelings were an improvement on messy ones. He’d watched the love bleed out of his mother when her marriage had failed. Seeing someone he loved self-destruct because he couldn’t love them enough, give them all that they needed from him, would be worse than any other personal failure he could imagine. He couldn’t risk doing that to Maggie – and her child. The stakes were much too high. He wasn’t a one-woman-forever guy. Falling in love and making commitments wasn’t for him.
Maggie looked achingly seducible. She didn’t want a forever guy, and he couldn’t be one, so why not get this thing between the two of them out of the way and let her go?
“You look a million dollars.” The cliché was inadequate. Gorgeous didn’t cover it. Chic, understated, beautiful, her hair was piled up with diamantes sparkling enticingly here, there and everywhere. He wanted to pull her into his arms and remove each jeweled hairpin slowly until her soft curls unfurled into his fingers. She’d left an artful strand falling in a corkscrew tendril at the pulse point in her neck. He stepped forward, reached out and cupped her face. Her make-up was flawless. She’d matched smoky eyes to the dark shades of graphite, black and grey in her figure-hugging dress. He stifled a groan and curled one finger in the frond of loose hair on her neck.
Her eyes flashed confident challenge. “No vampire moves. We made a rule.”
“Uh-huh,” he said in a husky tone he barely recognized as his own. “Rules are made to be broken.” He dipped his head slowly and placed his lips against her neck. Her scent rocketed through his senses. He hardened. He raised his head. He shouldn’t kiss her, but he ached with temptation.
“If you kiss me, you’ll ruin my make-up and if I have to go back in the bathroom to fix it, I may never come out.”
A deep chuckle rose up from his diaphragm. Kiss her was exactly what he wanted to do.
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s a fact,” she whispered, her eyes never leaving his. She was doing a very good job of appearing not to feel the attraction between them. She felt it, all the same. It shimmered in her dilated pupils.
“It’s just as well we have an important event to attend. Otherwise I’d be tempted to risk it.”
She wasn’t taking any chances. She turned and started to walk to the door. He took in the expanse of bare skin and the way her dress dipped below the small of her back to the curve of her bum. He needed a bucket of ice to cool him down. The way it clung to her curves there could only be an infinitesimal wisp of thong beneath.
Fabulous, she oozed confidence. Forget friends. He’d frazzle if he didn’t make Maggie his lover. When he’d kissed her at Cape Cod, he’d made time stand still, pretended it didn’t mean anything. He’d have to let her go. She was having a baby and he wasn’t the right guy for her. His fight with want had run out. They could be right for each other, right now. He couldn’t be her one, and that was okay because she didn’t want a permanent man in her life. It was a no-brainer. They could be together for one night without hurting each other.
Heads turned as the couple walked through the hotel to the limo waiting at the curb. Alex took Maggie’s hand and she slid in. He followed her onto the back seat. She’d been so pre-occupied with choosing the little-black-dress-to-die-for and the best-high-heels-in-Manhattan that she hadn’t asked Alex a single thing about the charity.
“What’s this gala in aid of? Fill me in. I need details.”
“It funds small projects to help underprivileged kids, mostly here in the States. Tonight’s one of their big fundraisers. A night like this attracts publicity to the work The W
ells Wish Foundation does.”
“You have a children’s charity named after you?”
“It’s nothing to do with me and Nick. It’s our mother’s pet project. She’s a bit of a fanatic. We help out with the annual gala. But that’s about it. I’m no good with kids.”
Methinks Alex doth protest too much!
He acted like kids were an alien species. Yet he’d been sweet with the family at the zoo. And here he was putting his face to a children’s charity.
“Listen,” he started to explain, “My mother’s a bit pernickety when it comes to her charity.”
“Pernickety? What’s that?”
Alex grunted out a fractured laugh. “Fussy. She gets hung up on minutiae. Her heart’s in the right place and I know she’s a total diva, but she’s in a much better place than she was few years ago. She means well. I don’t want you to think badly of her.”
“I won’t. I don’t. Why would I?”
“There’s been such a lot written about her over the years. After my dad left she stopped eating, got much too thin. She got by – just about – on a self-prescribed diet of over-the-counter drugs and herbal remedies. When that stopped working she got hooked on sleeping tablets and alcohol. Eventually things got so bad that she was admitted to rehab.”
Maggie felt the urge to scrape at one of her nails. She’d covered them in a clear, shiny polish and if she did, she’d ruin them. She and Alex used to joke about their families. What they hadn’t really done before today was tell the whole truth. He would barely talk about his father and she’d had next to nothing to say about hers. When he spoke about his mother, he made light of things, throwing out quips about how she outdid her soap character with her real-life scandals.
“Sometimes I think her obsession with the children’s charity is her way of making up for not loving Nick and me enough when we were kids. It’s not that she didn’t care; she just couldn’t show it.”
The Little Shop of Afternoon Delights Page 15