by Angel Payne
Michael
“Have a safe and pleasant flight, Mr. Pearson.”
“Thanks.”
I managed a smile out of habit, knowing that if I didn’t, Mom would somehow find out I’d been “rude” to the woman at Lindbergh Field TSA and drag me in here to apologize. The second I grabbed my carry-on and stepped away from security, the black cloud assumed its rightful place over my head. Right where I wanted it.
I’d helped the movers load the last of my shit into their truck yesterday afternoon, then confirmed they’d meet me at the storage facility in Atlanta in three days. The rest of my life was contained in one suitcase and the bag slung over my shoulder, meaning the Hyatt had the “privilege” of hosting my morose ass last night. I’d hit the hotel gym hard, parked my sorry self in the whirlpool, and scowled down flirty glances from three models working the convention center’s car show before heading back upstairs for three hours of semi-meaningful sleep. But that was my way of aiming for the positive today. I dared fate to ask for more, because it’d be damn fun to answer that bastard with what I really thought of his latest turn my life had taken.
Seriously? This is “fate’s” fault now? You made this decision, asshole. Nobody forced you to make that call to Atlanta—not even the woman who kicked you to the curb. You climbed your way back up from that muck. Grew a pair and decided to take a chance on a new start. Now buy yourself a beer and force yourself to remember that.
I grabbed a seat in the corner of the terminal 2 bar and ordered an Alpine IPA. Bumping my head back against the wall, I tried out a little more self-bolstering, courtesy of the Di Pearson book of cheesy quotes. I’d been treated to enough of them during our phone conversation last night, her last motherly rah-rah before I officially left the state—for the benefit of us both. She’d definitely pulled out the stops on this one.
“Sometimes the right decision isn’t the easy decision.”
“The best thing about the story of life is that there’s always a new chapter.”
“Changing is growing—and growing is the key to living.”
“Pain is inevitable, Michael. Suffering is optional.”
There were more, but the minor buzz from the beer kicked in, bringing a welcome gauze to the wound I’d once called a chest. At least on the surface. Deep down, where the real blood still flowed and the real ache still throbbed, I’d be a mess for a while. Thank fuck Hayden and Hutton had both already promised I wouldn’t see my desk or bed for months after signing the contract. Now if I could only think of “work therapy” without memories of a certain gaze full of green mischief, or a pair of legs to rival JLo and the Queen Bey…
If I could think of any damn thing without associating it with her.
I snarled, but managed to confine it to my throat. The rest of the world didn’t need to deal with the noise of a man repeatedly booting himself in the gut.
Maybe another beer was in order. I had all the time in the world for wallowing.
Before I could catch the waitress’s attention, my phone let out a text bing. I retrieved it from my pocket, expecting a classic Mom text like :: safe flight; text the minute you are on ground! :: With the requisite string of smileys, of course.
“Goddammit.” No way to control this growl. But there was no way I expected the boot in my crotch to be replaced with one woman’s perfectly-aimed stiletto.
:: Hey. ::
I wiped my thumb over the delete key. Proud as hell of myself, I nodded at the waitress for another Alpine. Maybe I’d ask for a tequila chaser—unconventional, yes; understandable, huger yes—maybe the extra, golden prod I needed to go ahead and wipe her from my phone.
:: Have you boarded yet? ::
Delete.
:: Don’t board that plane. I need to talk to you. ::
Delete.
“Because that went so well last time?” I muttered.
:: Michael, please tell me you’re still in San Diego. ::
Delete. Although any second, she was going to remember the app I’d installed for her that morning before our Buffalo Bill’s breakfast, giving her access to my location at the touch of a button.
:: I know you’re still here. ::
“Faster than I thought, princess.” I hadn’t fallen in love with a stupid one.
Re-phrase. Hadn’t fallen over the damn cliff, beyond ridiculous, I-will-die-in-the-dragon’s-mouth-for-you, love.
Who was truly the stupid one here?
Apparently, the one who dashed his thumbs over the keys in one of the most juvenile moves invented for the modern age.
:: Who is this? ::
Before I could talk myself out of it, I stabbed the Send button. Within seconds, I envisioned her slow, pissy burn, lips all twisty and cheeks all flushed—all but demanding a kiss to bring her down to earth and back in line. Yeah. I’d do exactly that if I were anywhere near her, too. Dig my fingers into her scalp, thrust my tongue down her throat, and—
Goddammit.
A soft giggle tugged my head up. The waitress, named Roxy, if her name badge was correct, added a little grin. “Get her, tiger. Grrrr.”
“What?”
“Whoever you’re telling off.”
My brows crunched. “How do you know—”
“Oh, I just do.” She set my fresh beer down. “Three years doing this, a girl gets good at the reads. From your first step in, you had brokenhearted written all over you.”
“I’m not—” I shifted against the leather seat. Wasn’t polite to make a friend stand, and my new bestie, Unnerved, was ready for a long visit.
Just like that, Margaux filled my mind again. This time, she wasn’t pissed. She was tear-streaked, near-hysterical, defeated—
And breaking my heart.
I’m broken, Michael. Just accept it.
Then shattering my soul.
Broken can be fixed, Margaux. Incinerated can’t.
Was this what incinerated felt like? Was I there yet?
I knew the answer before the phone buzzed with an incoming call. I didn’t have to look at the screen to know the image filling it. It was a shot I’d taken of her during our trek to the meadow, sunshine spilling over her hair and highlighting her adorable freckles…
Nope. Not incinerated. Because if I was, thinking about that picture wouldn’t feel like a goddamn cleaver through my heart—and a bucket of acid behind my eyes.
Every second felt like an hour until the damn thing stopped vibrating. I only had three seconds to suck in new breath before her redial connected through. By the time she’d done it a dozen more times, I turned off the phone. That, of course, meant looking at her picture on the screen again. New cleavers. More acid.
“Fuck.”
I framed my head in both hands and leaned over the table. Across the room, a group of Brits whooped in victory. Their man was likely going to cinch the Tour de France. At least someone in the world was reaching for the sun and not getting fried.
I was suddenly very thirsty.
Alpine number two went down without a pause.
Though I muffled my belch in my elbow, it still tripped Roxy’s call button. She was right; the magic people reader was permanently installed on her hard drive.
“Three’s a charm?” she asked, tilting her head so her black bob swayed. “Or are you leveling up? Some Señor Patrón? Mr. J. Daniels, maybe? Maybe a handshake with Jim Beam?”
Yes, yes, and yes. “No.” I thanked her with my eyes. “Close me out before I do something stupid.”
Well…something else stupid.
After settling up with Roxy, I made my way to the gate. They’d just started boarding. Along the way, I turned my phone back on. Scrolled down the list, too many to count, of all the calls Margaux had attempted. My gut lurched and my jaw clenched. She’d tried really hard to contact me…
For what?
Logic crashed in like an eighteen-wheeler falling through ice. The force was warranted, considering what I’d contemplated doing for one treacherous second.
<
br /> Don’t. Go. There. What is tapping back at her digits going to get you—except a shit-ton more of all this? She told you to leave. Threatened to call her henchman on your ass if you didn’t beat it.
You need a shrink, asshole. Or a lobotomy. Or a castration. Or all three.
Hell. Maybe I should’ve taken Roxy up on that offer of the big boys’ booze. I wasn’t buzzed enough for the reality of this.
Pulling out my ticket. And hating it.
Staring out the windows at the sailboats on the bay, with the understanding it’d be Thanksgiving before I returned for a visit.
Hating. It.
Forcing a smile at the gate agent while she scanned me in.
Hating. Every. Fucking. Second.
“Goodbye, princess.”
A shriek ripped through the terminal.
Everybody froze.
Another scream.
People hit the floor.
What the hell was—
“Sweetie, get your nasty Playtex Living gloves off of me, unless you want those returned on bloody stumps.”
The gate agent burst out a giggle. I would have joined her but was too busy trying to heft my jaw off the floor. “Holy shit.”
As I managed that, another banshee war cry peeled through the air. “I will not leave and I will not get in line. I already told you, this is an emergency!”
The gate agent laughed again. “I guess it is.”
I choked because my throat had gone dry from not breathing. It succeeded in convincing me this was really happening. If I needed more proof, the terminal-wide PA was activated.
“Michael Pearson. Paging Mr. Michael Pearson at once to the Terminal Two security checkpoint.”
“Hey.” The agent gaped at me. “That’s you.”
“Thanks.” I think I meant it. I really wasn’t sure I remembered who I was. This felt like one of those loopy after-death scenes in B movies, where the dearly departed floats over their body and watches life in a mix of wonder and horror. I told myself to stay up there, certain full inhabitation of my body—and my thundering heartbeat, laboring lungs, and misfiring nervous system—might not carry me all the way to the checkpoint where an army of bright blue shirts raced around as if a bomb had just been detonated.
I stumbled a few more steps. Then found my voice enough to mutter, “Oh, holy hell.”
An explosion had rocked the Lindbergh Field terminal, and its name was Margaux Asher.
I swallowed on a paper bag throat again. Edged closer, baffled and wary, until I saw her in full. Hair blown and wild. Eyes bright and wilder. Plain T-shirt, black leather pants, danger zone heels that dangled from one hand as she squirmed in the grips of at least four burly TSA officers.
Funny about that danger zone. My psyche fired into an F-18 on overdrive.
“Hey!” I surged forward. “The lady’s right. Get your hands off her!” Since two out of the four complied right away, it was clear they’d already patted her down “in full”. Just formulating the conclusion made me see darker red.
I zeroed in on the other two but should’ve remembered the force of nature they attempted to contain. Margaux flung them free like a diva doffing a mink, ditching her shoes between them. Holy fuck, she was amazing—but also distressed, emphasis on the “stressed”. More of the protective burners fired, despite how I rammed all the buttons to order them otherwise.
“Marg—oof.”
She leapt on me like a tree frog, her grip like suction cups, her breaths at hyperventilation status. “Thank God,” she rasped. “Thank God you’re not on that plane. Oh, Michael. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”
She stepped down but grabbed my face on both sides, her own a crazy compilation of angles. I quickly connected the cause. I’m sorry. She usually only spouted it as part of a snarky takedown, never in this frantic form. She was actually seeking confirmation that she’d done it right. I gave it to her in a firm squeeze at her nape before forcing her to move on.
“What is it?” I charged. “Has something happened? Are you okay?”
“No!” Her face contorted—right before she slapped me. Not hard, but sure as hell not a playful tap. The fuck? She clenched back a sob, then slammed her lips to the cheek she’d just smacked. “No,” she repeated. “I’m not okay. Okay?”
“Okay.” I wrapped both hands around hers but still didn’t dare believe what all this hinted at. “So what’s going on?”
She winced again. “I—I—”
“What?”
“You know all that stuff you mentioned? A couple of days ago? At my place?”
I didn’t want to laugh, but I did. I didn’t want to be enchanted by her all over again, but I was. I didn’t want to get up any hopes…but I did that, too. “Sugar, I said a lot of stuff at your place. Can you be more specific?”
“Do I have to?”
“Well, yeah. I still have no damn idea what—”
“Okay, okay!” She twisted her hands in, around my jacket’s collar, before locking her gaze on my Adam’s apple. “The stuff about…how you love me,” she whispered. “And want to make me happy.”
Buh-bye, lungs. Breathing’s overrated, anyway.
“Yeah.” I pushed closer to her. And closed my eyes, ecstatic, as she did the same. “I do remember all that stuff.”
She lifted her head. Fuck. Here was the bomb they’d all been freaking out about. But this catastrophe was all mine, with the green fires of her gaze, the sweet strawberry of her smile, the shimmering tear tracks on her cheeks…the perfect warmth of her embrace. My dazzling little disaster.
“I—I mean all of it too, Michael. I mean, if you still want me to.” Her brow furrowed. “I suppose even if you don’t want me to. Oh, shit. How the hell would that work if—”
I sliced her short in the best way I knew how. When her lips fell prey to mine, opening beneath my assault, I let the beast out in full, letting him take her senses down like a hapless gazelle. “I want you to,” I finally said “Fuck, how I want you to.”
And that was the moment the shittiest day of my life turned into the best goddamn day in the history of man.
“I love you, Michael. I do. I really do.”
I tugged at the back of her head, exactly like I’d been fantasizing back in the bar, and took her in a kiss that sealed the deal before she could think of taking it back. “As I love you, Margaux-Mary-who-the-hell-cares.”
Coincidentally, that was the same moment a flurry of whispers erupted in the security line. Before a camera flashed at us. Another. A dozen more.
“You sure you don’t care?” She grinned, full of her old sass, though mixing something new in with it. A sweet adoration, glowing from the depths of her eyes, flipping my chest on itself. “Because we’re about to go viral, stud.”
“I’m down with viral.” I winked, purely wicked about it. “As long as it’s a little contagious, and I can share it with you.”
“Ew.” She threatened to smack me again but I was ready this time. I easily caught her hand, jammed it over my ass, and moaned deep as she squeezed hard, giving the shutterbugs something else to Tweet about. “Errr… that reminds me,” she murmured. “I have a thing about germs.”
I pressed my lips, holding in a snicker. “You don’t say.”
“You’ll have to be okay with that. And my shoe closet. And my crappy morning moods. And my nighttime TV drama addictions. But I’ll give the Ice Road guys a try for you, okay?”
It was more than okay. It was my fantasy come true. She loved me. She loved me. And she didn’t just want me in the ivory tower as a boy toy. She wanted me in her life, in her mornings, in her germ phobias…in her heart.
“Keep talking. I sure like your terms, princess.”
“Don’t call me—” She figure eighted her head before grousing, “Ohhhh, fine. If you’re going to try Empire and pedicures for me, then I’ll let you keep ‘princess’.”
“Wait. Pedicures? The hell?”
The brat threw her head back and l
aughed, supremely pleased with herself for the sneak. I growled and snapped her back in against me, swooping my head low to crash her lips with a let’s-review-who’s-in-charge ravishment. As our mouths melded deeper, I poured every drop of my joy and passion into her, promising her a greater flood where that came from. Praying I’d be drenching her for a lifetime.
As our tongues started to dance, the crowd broke out in wild applause.
Seriously…the best day in the history of mankind.
Chapter Nineteen
Margaux
Was it possible the sun was higher in the sky? The sky bluer? That the bird twitters in the trees now sounded like the coolest conversations ever—and I was tempted to join in? Words weren’t necessary when the language of happiness was spoken.
Or was it just that I was seeing everything through rose-colored glasses, courtesy of the amazingly hot man next to me?
Yeah, that sounded more like it.
And shit, was he beautiful arm candy. I could ditch every single Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Hermes bag I had and just strut around with this heartthrob on my arm. My other accessories would be jealous but I’d traded up and there was no going back now. Ever.
Michael’s luggage would have to be reclaimed tomorrow since it was checked through to Atlanta. In the meantime, we’d have to make do with simply the clothes on his back—a concept full of wonderful possibilities. If the luggage didn’t make it back safely, I’d replace everything, anyway. Hmmm, styling one’s own perfectly-sized Ken doll…and this one had every correct part included. I might even let him have some say in the matter. A few times.
No, I hadn’t lost my mind.
I was in love. That’s right, world. I, Margaux Corina Asher, was madly, completely in love with Michael Pearson. And the sooner I could find a private, horizontal surface to fully prove that fact, the happier this princess would be.
Unfortunately, that plan would have to wait. The minute we came downstairs into the baggage claim area, a throng of rabid reporters were ready to swarm. Clearly, Trey had made good on his promise to go public. Stir in a few tweets from bystanders about Michael’s and my PDA back in the terminal and boom. Showtime, kids.