Maggie's head spun. Her body was still flushed with anger, but he was right. She was thinking the exact same thing he was. “I'm thinking you should.”
“Good.” He was already so close that it was a matter of just tilting her head to the side to bring their lips together. A tiny distance, but the second they closed it, Maggie felt like she'd crossed oceans. Climbed mountains. Reached the stratosphere. There was no other way to explain how utterly changed she felt the second Vane took command of her mouth.
He cupped her chin with his long fingers, holding her in place gently but firmly as he slowly teased her lips with his. He nibbled and nipped until she let her lips part with a gasp, and then he swept his tongue against hers with such authority that she felt dizzy. He tasted like wine and secrets, secrets that she wanted to know the reasons for and the answers to. She moaned eagerly, tucking her knee up under her to lift herself closer to him before twining her fingers in his too-long hair.
He growled out a low, frustrated sound and pulled back with a curse. He raked both hands through his hair before letting his head droop. “Shit,” he said. “I have to slow down.”
“I'm sorry I—”
“Don't be sorry,” he silenced her. “I'm your boss now. That wasn't right.”
She grinned in triumph. “You said what you were thinking, though.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, I guess I did. You've made your point.”
“I wasn't trying to win or anything.”
“Sure you were.” Even in the now-dark room, she could see the mischief glinting in his eyes, and it made her stomach clench. He was such a mass of contradictions. Buttoned up to the point of robotic on the outside, but passion simmered under that polished surface.
It fascinated her.
She wanted to see it again.
“Okay, maybe I was,” she agreed, tucking her foot up under her again. “But only because I've realized I like hearing what's on your mind.”
“Oh yeah? You like it when I tell you I think you're beautiful.”
She swallowed hard and nodded.
He leaned in closer. “And that you kiss like you're daring me to go further.”
A small sound escaped her throat.
“And you're so sexy.” He grinned wolfishly, looking for all the world like he meant to devour her then and there.
Maggie fell back against the couch as he leaned in again, eager for him to kiss her and maybe more. But in her haste to let him closer, her tucked foot shot out awkwardly, knocking her abandoned glass.
“Oh!” she cried as the full glass splashed them both.
Vane pulled back and wiped his cheek. Horrified, Maggie looked at the couch. “Oh my god,” she moaned. “I'm so sorry.”
“Don't worry about the couch,” Vane chuckled, pointing.
She looked down at her chest and gasped again. “Oh my god, I'm covered. I look like a Jackson Pollack painting, and this is my only shirt.” She bit her lip. “I have nothing to change into. All my stuff is still at my apartment.”
“Do you want to send someone to get it?” Vane asked.
She shook her head. “No. I have to water my plants and—oh, the mail! I should have asked my neighbor to get the mail, but I was all caught up here—”
“In the next adventure,” Vane supplied knowingly. He leaned back and gave her another one of his impenetrable looks. “You'd better go get your things. But please, hurry back.”
6
She'd hurried, all right. She left the beach house the next morning, before dawn even thought of cracking, and was at her little apartment just as the sun peeked over the horizon. After a quick apology to her bone-dry houseplants, a fly-by visit with her elderly neighbor to let her know she'd be back—"And could you mist my peacock plant once in a while? She's a real diva about humidity”—she'd thrown every item of clothing she owned into a ragged duffel bag. Then she'd slung the bag over her shoulder, grabbed her favorite little succulent plant as a token of home, and hurried back to the beach house. Not because Vane had told her to hurry, she rationalized as she nudged the speedometer past ninety miles per hour. Because this was her adventure before her adventure.
Maggie ran her fingers through her snarled hair, then smiled at herself in the rearview mirror. On the move again. This was what she craved. In a couple short months, she'd be committed to staying in the same place for five years. Five long years, filled with sameness. She'd be doing the same thing in the winter as she was in the summer. Not that summer in rural Alaska counted for much.
“Doesn't that scare you?” her friend Kiara had asked her when Maggie confessed to accepting the Alaska posting. Kiara still lived out of her van, not because she needed to—her trust fund made sure of that—but because, like Maggie, she felt better when she knew she could up stakes at a moment’s notice.
“I think we should do things that frighten us,” Maggie had told her. And it had sounded good at the time. But the closer she got to the future she'd mapped out for herself, the more she yearned to screw it all up. She wanted lighting to strike or a tornado to tear through. Something unpredictable. A reset button that would start her all over again from zero.
Vane was staid and stable, the opposite of a tornado, but his sudden presence in her life was exactly the reset button Maggie needed. That kiss last night—she touched her lips and grinned—had shaken her, and she liked nothing better than that feeling of not knowing what came next.
She was still smiling as she pulled back into the circular driveway in front of the beach house. The noise of the demolition assaulted her ears even before she opened her car door.
Annabelle stood on the porch with her hands clapped over her ears. “You're back!” she yelled.
“I'm back! Let's go inside where it's quieter!'
“It's even louder in there!” Annabelle complained, but accepted Maggie's hug eagerly. “What's that?” the little girl asked, pointing to Maggie's treasured plant.
“It's called an echeveria. It's a kind of succulent. I like it because it looks like a rose, but it's much tougher.” She tweaked Annabelle's nose. “Like you.”
“I'm a rose. I'm pretty, but I have thorns.” She curled her fingers into claws, then clapped her hands over her ears again. “Uncle Vane!” she shouted up the stairs. “Make them stop.”
Maggie swallowed and turned. Vane stood at the top of the stairs, a full floor away, but she could feel his presence so strongly, she may as well be pressed up against him. The corner of his mouth quirked when he caught her eye, and Maggie felt a flush start at the roots of her hair and burn all the way down to her toes.
She'd risked a speeding ticket to get back to him, but now that she was here, the only thing she could think of was getting away. “Hey,” she called up to him. “I'm back.”
“Good,” he said with a knowing smile that made her blush even harder. “It's quieter up in the attic, if you guys want to hide up there. I've been moving the boxes that were up there.”
“Do you need help?” Maggie asked, glancing down at Annabelle to confirm. “That could be our job, right? Get away from the noise?”
“Some of them are heavy,” Vane warned.
“I'm strong!' Annabelle announced, striking a bodybuilder's pose.
Vane chuckled. “That would be a huge help. They need to start reframing the wall, and I can't have them do that until we sort through all that. When that wall comes down, the whole attic is going to be exposed.”
“Leave it to us. You go... do architect stuff.” Maggie smiled brightly and hoped it wasn't obvious she was trying to get away from him. “Come on, Wonder Woman, let's go be strong.”
She let Annabelle lead her into the dusty attic. Labeled boxes were stacked nearly to the rafters, tucked against the lofty wooden beams. Dust motes danced in the shafts of sunlight that pierced the gloom, but it was oddly cool up here, and the sounds of the demolition around them were muffled enough to talk in a normal voice. Vane had started moving everything down to the lower floor, so that's what
Maggie instructed Annabelle to do as well.
They made three trips before Annabelle's energy started flagging. “This is boring.”
“I thought you were strong.”
“I guess I'm not.”
Maggie laughed. “Don't give me that. Here. This one says clothes. You can handle it, right?”
“Give me another one,” Annabelle urged. “So we can be done faster.”
“Good plan. This one says... Toys!”
Annabelle dropped the box of clothes. “Let's open it!”
“Need a break already?” Maggie teased as Annabelle tore into the dusty box and yelped in glee before pulling out an old marionette. The puppet was beautifully constructed with wooden joints, but her face was smooth porcelain and clearly hand painted. She wore a dress with a white satin bodice and a cloud of taffeta for a skirt. Her dark eyes were rendered in such loving detail that Maggie got the feeling they were based on real life. She'd been tucked into the box in a cradle of brittle tissue paper that still bore the faint traces of a rose-scented perfume. “Wow, that's in amazing condition. Be careful with it!”
“Her name is Felicia,” Annabelle corrected. “And she's a prima ballerina—watch.” She executed a clumsy pirouette, then wrinkled her nose. “I have to practice. Go over there and don't watch.”
Maggie laughed. She loved seeing Annabelle like this. Happy and playing like a regular kid should. Vane should see this, she thought, and peeked out the window in the hopes she'd catch a glimpse of him. She wanted to ask where the marionette had come from. Was it his? His mother's? What was it doing packed away up here, when it was clearly so loved?
A familiar long-legged figure strode into view below her. An errant breeze lifted his hair, raking through it the way she'd raked her fingers through it last night as he'd kissed her. She touched the glass. Drew her hand away like it had scalded her. There was no doubt she liked him, and she was pretty sure he liked her too. And that was definitely going to make these next few weeks interesting.
But then she'd pack up and leave on her vacation. This whole nanny thing was just a means to an end, a little more money in her pocket before she set out on her next adventure. She hadn't taking this job to spend it mooning over him from his attic window.
“You're not watching, right?” Annabelle squealed from the other corner. “I'm not ready yet.”
Maggie shook her head to clear it and then smiled brightly. “You know what? I can still see you. Why don't you go over there?” She grabbed the boxes she'd set down. Annabelle took her prize over to the window and began practicing in the sunbeam, loudly claiming that Felicia loved the spotlight. That was fine. With her charge occupied and out of the way, it was easier to make headway on the wall of boxes.
She hefted another load into her arms and carefully stepped down the steep staircase.
“Careful there!”
She turned with a yelp, sidestepped and managed to catch the top box before it crashed to the floor. “Don't sneak up on me!” she huffed.
Vane lifted the top box from her stack and grinned at her. “I was just coming to see how you two were doing.”
He was too close again. How did he look so immaculately pressed and meticulously groomed? She was covered in dust and needed a shower desperately. She backed away before he could catch a whiff of anything embarrassing. “I'm fine. Annabelle's playing.” Nervousness made her voice tight, and Vane's face fell.
“Playing, huh?” He edged around her. “Hey, what did you find?” he called up the stairs.
“Can I take her down, Uncle Vane?” Annabelle's eager voice floated down the stairs. Maggie pressed her lips together as Vane dashed up to her, taking two stairs at a time.
It made no sense, she chastised herself as she set her boxes down and wiped her hair back from her face. When she was away from him, she wanted him to be close. But when he was close, she wanted to run as far from him as she could get. With a grunt of frustration, she retied her hair back and squared her shoulders. Sometimes, when one of her students was scared of something, be it a dog or a thunderclap, she held their hand while they faced it again and again.
The only way to stop feeling nervous around Vane was to face him. Again, and again.
She climbed back into the attic and stopped at the top.
Vane knelt in the sunbeam with Annabelle. He dangled Felicia the marionette so that she danced along the floor. “See? It's all in the wrist,” he told a fascinated Annabelle.
“Was that yours?” Maggie blurted.
Vane looked up. He gave her such a wide, happy smile that she forgot her nerves. She smiled back readily before kneeling next to Annabelle.
“I guess, in a way it is now,” Vane said, a note of wistfulness in his voice. “But no. It was actually my grandmother's.” He made the puppet twirl. “She had two of these, I remember, a mother and a daughter. I'm not sure where the mother ended up, but this little lady was always my favorite anyway. I used to think she was a princess.”
“She is. A princess ballerina,” Annabelle added.
“Of course,” Vane agreed. “My grandmother actually made them. She sewed these clothes by hand. I think the pair were meant to be her and my mother.”
“Did your mother play with them?” Maggie asked, fascinated.
“You know, she probably did, but not with me. It was always my grandmother who'd take them out.”
“We should find the other one,” Annabelle announced, sprinting over to the pile of boxes. “I bet she's in here somewhere.” She yanked down a box from a random stack and knelt with it on the floor. “Memorabilia,” she sounded out. “Maybe in here?”
“Go for it,” Vane said. He shifted back onto his heels. His shoulder bumped against Maggie's, and he grinned again. Warmth spread in her belly once more.
Annabelle tore the box open and lifted a glass dome. A golden key stuck out from the back. She gave it a twist. Inside, a golden gear clicked and set four orbs to spinning. “What's this?” she asked.
Vane frowned. “Looks like it might be a clockwork something or other.”
“You don't know?”
Vane shook his head with a laugh. “I doubt anyone alive would know what that is.”
Annabelle froze for a long moment, then she set the clockwork on the floor, her lips pinched together in a bloodless white.
Alarmed, Maggie scrambled to her feet. “Annabelle? Honey, what's the matter?”
Annabelle stood. Two spots of furious color blazed high on her otherwise pale cheeks. “You mean, someone used to love this, but you don't know because they're dead. Dead and forgotten about.”
“Hey now,” Vane said, standing up carefully.
But Annabelle shook her head. “That's what's going to happen with my dad. And my mom too. They're dead and soon everyone will forget them too!”
“Oh honey, no—” Maggie broke in, but Vane reached out to bar her from rushing to gather Annabelle in her arms. He licked his lips and then looked the girl right in her tear-streaked face.
“Yes, honey. In time, people forget. But that doesn't mean that those people were any less loved.” He gently lifted the puppet. “I kept this because I loved my grandmother, and I wanted to keep a piece of her here with me, even when she couldn't be. Someone else did the same for that clockwork. They held on to that piece of memory and kept that love alive.”
“Until they died too,” Annabelle said dully.
“But that's okay, because things aren't people, right? They're just tokens. Little bits and pieces. It's what we hold here that counts.” He touched his heart.
Maggie blinked rapidly. Annabelle's head drooped, despair written in every line of her body. Maggie ground her teeth in frustration. It's too much for her. She's just a kid, she can't handle the nuance.
But then Annabelle straightened back up again, and to Maggie's surprise, her eyes were clear again. “I'm going to lie down,” she said, in a flat, small voice.
“Oh, honey,” Maggie said, but once again, Vane barred her
from rushing to her charge.
“Give her space,” he murmured. He reached around her waist.
And squeezed her tight.
Maggie turned to him. He nodded once and then leaned in.
Another kiss? Now? She was about to shake her head at him, this not being the time or the place, when his other hand landed on her shoulder.
“Fuck,” he sighed. And then pulled her to him into an awkward, sidelong hug. “God, that was rough, but I'm trying.”
Maggie closed her eyes against the tears that suddenly pricked at the edges. “You are,” she sniffled, rubbing soothing circles along his back as he hugged her. She turned her face to his cheek and inhaled sharply. His back was broad and strong, but curved in such a vulnerable, heart-breaking way. “You did good,” she said, and placed a gentle kiss on his cheek.
He turned at that exact moment, and her lips caught the edge of his mouth. He made a soft noise and pressed his mouth to hers.
Where last night's kiss had been all wine-soaked passion, this one was gentle. Searching, even. His lips were warm and yielding, and the way he sighed into her sent a thrill up her spine. She turned into him and let him pull her close.
“Maggie,” he murmured against her lips.
“Miss Stewart!” Annabelle called from below. “Uncle Vane?”
Maggie pulled back from him with a gasp. He grunted and looked down at his feet. “Still up here,” he called down the stairs.
“I'll go first,” Maggie blurted.
“She called both of us.”
“I know, but—”
“We're not doing anything wrong,” Vane told her, holding her gaze.
Maggie wondered which one of them he was trying to convince.
7
“Hey.” Maggie knocked softly on Annabelle's half-open door. “Mind if I come in a sec?”
Annabelle set her chapter book on her bedside table and sat up in bed. She was dressed in an old, faded men's softball shirt as a nightgown, and Maggie wondered if it had belonged to her dad. “Hey,” she said sleepily. “Sure.”
McClellan Billionaires: The Complete Series Page 24