Hot for Him

by Sarah Mayberry

Quickly Leandro squatted down to her level again.

  “It’s great. I especially like the colors. And how big my feet are,” he said with a smile.

  She smiled back, her dark Mandalor eyes sparkling up at him.

  One day, I will have a little girl just like you.

  He’d thought the same thing about all of his nieces and nephews at some time, but today the notion brought no comfort because he knew now that his daughters would not share Claudia’s sloping cheekbones and small, proud nose.

  Hard on the heels of this depressing acknowledgment, the phone rang. The tension in the room ratcheted as tight as a drum as Stavros calmly reached out a hand and lifted the receiver.

  “Mandalor residence,” he said.

  Leandro only realized he was holding his breath when it hissed out of him as his father’s mouth stretched into a big grin.

  “Wonderful news! Wonderful!” he said, waving his free hand exuberantly.

  Covering the mouthpiece, he spoke to the room.

  “Mother and babies are well. The bubs don’t even need the special beds, Dom says.” Stavros sounded proud, as though the entire Mandalor family could take credit for this achievement.

  “And what about Betty? Did she need any stitches?” Alethea asked.

  “Stitches? Why would she need stitches?” Stavros frowned.

  “Because the—Give the phone to me!” Leandro’s mother said, flushing red and snatching the receiver from her husband’s hand.

  Alethea interrogated her middle son for a few minutes before reluctantly ending the call. In the meantime, Stavros had been busy pulling out the shot glasses. Splashing the ouzo bottle from glass to glass, he finished pouring with a flourish.

  Leandro accepted his glass, wondering vaguely what his stomach was going to make of hard liquor at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning.

  “Here’s to our new family members—Christopher and Jason Mandalor,” Stavros said, raising his glass high, sticky ouzo dripping from his over-full glass.

  Leandro raised his own glass and tossed back the liquorice-flavored mouthful in one shot. Isabella gave a small cheer of relief and hugged her husband, and his parents gave each other fond hugs. His sisters clinked glasses, and under the table, the children sent up a cheer of their own.

  His throat burning, Leandro was suddenly acutely aware of the empty space at his side.

  It had taken him nearly a year to get over the failure of his six-month marriage to Peta. His time with Claudia was ridiculously short by comparison, but he knew he would be stinging from her loss for far longer.

  I thought she was the one.

  Standing amongst his family, marveling at the birth of two new tiny beings into the world, he understood absolutely that she’d been right to end things. This was his world, and she didn’t want any part of it.

  Forcing a smile, he reached for the ouzo bottle and topped up everyone’s glass.

  “To new life,” he said, raising his glass.

  * * *

  A MONTH LATER, Claudia rubbed her eyes as she, at last, ended a phone call with one of the show’s most experienced directors. It was Monday night, and she’d spent the past two hours talking the woman out of resigning over a disagreement she’d had with their production manager. Now she had to call the other woman and convince her not to resign, also. The joy of working with volatile creatives.

  She was reaching for the phone again when someone whisked it out of her reach. She glanced up to find Sadie hovering over her desk, the receiver clutched to her chest. Rather incongruously, she also held a stack of plates and a fistful of cutlery. Grace stood in the doorway behind her holding two carrier bags that gave off the distinct aroma of takeaway Chinese food, and Claudia realized she was about to be on the receiving end of an intervention.

  “No more work,” Sadie said bossily, proving Claudia’s theory. “It’s seven, and it’s time to stop.”

  “Guys, I need to call Sally-Anne before she takes a job with someone else,” Claudia said wearily.

  She’d been feeling so tired lately. Partly because she was having trouble sleeping, but also because she just wasn’t getting the same kick out of work that she used to.

  “Sally-Anne is not leaving this show, she loves it more than her own children and she would go insane if she didn’t have us all to boss around. Let her wait until tomorrow and then she’ll feel a bit stupid about what happened and all will be well,” Grace said, unpacking the bags and laying out a daunting array of boxes.

  “Good Lord, did you buy the whole restaurant?” Claudia asked.

  “Some of us are eating for two,” Sadie said, patting the cutest baby bump the world had ever seen. From behind, she didn’t look as though she were pregnant at all, but her belly had popped out in a gentle bump in the last two weeks.

  “And some of us aren’t eating at all,” Grace said meaningfully.

  Claudia frowned and shifted some paperwork around on her desk.

  “I’m eating,” she said defensively.

  “Not enough. So here’s the deal—either you eat, or you talk to us. One or the other, although to be honest we’d love you to do both,” Grace said. “We’re worried about you.”

  “There’s no need to worry about me. I’m fine, more than fine,” Claudia said.

  “Bullshit,” Grace said, pulling up a chair.

  “You’re a bag of bones, Claud,” Sadie said, prying the lid off a container of steamed rice. “How much weight have you lost?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t weighed myself in months. I’ve just been busy, that’s all.”

  “You’ve been throwing yourself into work like a complete obsessive, running yourself into the ground. We all know this is about Leandro, and if you still don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine—but you have to eat,” Grace said.

  Sadie shoveled rice, kung pao chicken and beef in black bean sauce onto a plate and pushed it toward Claudia. Claudia’s stomach rumbled and she picked up a fork. It wasn’t that she had no appetite, or that she hadn’t been eating. It was more that she could only eat so much. A few mouthfuls, and she’d had enough. But she knew that was not going to satisfy her friends tonight.

  “Have you heard from him at all?” Sadie asked.

  Claudia stiffened. “Look, this is all very sweet, guys, but I’m not hung up on Leandro, okay?”

  Even as she said it she could feel a blush rising into her cheeks. She’d never been good at lying to her two best friends. Ever since she’d met Grace and Sadie at the University of California Los Angeles all those years ago, they’d been the ones she turned to in good times and bad. No one knew her like these two women.

  Neither Sadie or Grace called her on her lie, however. For a moment there was just the clink of cutlery on plates as they ate in silence, then Claudia put her fork down and sighed heavily. A part of her wanted to talk, even though she was afraid of how much pain she’d been holding inside her. She’d expected to walk away from her fling to Leandro and get on with her life. That’s what she’d always done in the past. But he had touched something inside her, made her dream dreams she hadn’t even known she’d wanted.

  “I haven’t spoken to him. Haven’t seen him, nothing. Which is what I wanted. And, anyway, it didn’t end too well. He was angry with me, and I got angry back.”

  Picking up her fork again, she pushed her food around on her plate, getting mad all over again as she recalled his parting words to her.

  “He said I was a coward because I didn’t want to have a relationship that I already knew was doomed to failure. I was doing the smart thing for both of us, and he just couldn’t see it,” she said hotly.

  “Why was it the right thing, Claud?” Grace asked quietly.

  Claudia stared into Grace’s clear green eyes.

  “Because it had no future. You guys know me. I don’t want marriage and kids and a house in the suburbs.”

  Sadie made an unconvinced noise.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Claudia asked.


  “It means I think you want to love and be loved just as much as everyone else in the world. But you think your childhood makes you a bad risk,” Sadie said.

  “I know it does. You guys have met my mother,” Claudia said, feeling distinctly under attack. Sadie and Grace knew all the things she’d been through—hell, hadn’t they walked the streets with her just weeks ago, looking for her mother?

  “You’re not your mother, Claudia,” Grace said.

  “But I could be. She had a career before she met my father. Then they got married, and the babies came, and she fell apart. She hated being at home. She couldn’t handle us kids. And she felt she’d given up too much to be a wife and mother. So she drank. And she never stopped.”

  “Who’s to say the same thing will happen to you? You’ve had a completely different life from your mother’s. You’re more educated, more affluent, you don’t drink at all, Claudia. And you’re self-aware, you know what the issues are. Don’t all those things mean you have the best chance in the world of not being like your mother?” Grace said.

  “And what if they’re not enough? What if there’s some gene that’s just waiting to switch on inside me, or some innate, subconscious learning I took in with my mother’s breast milk? What if it’s just in me, like it was in her?”

  A hundred ugly memories rushed up to haunt her—the time Talia had flown into an alcohol-induced rage and screamed at her and her brothers until they all cowered in the corner, scared of the banshee who had once been their mother. The time her mother had insulted her and told her off in public because Claudia had dared to move the wine bottle out of her mother’s reach. She’d been just thirteen, and the memory burned still. Then there were the many, many times her mother had lain on her bed sobbing uncontrollably for hours, lost in private misery.

  Quivering with emotion, Claudia leaned across the desk, her finger stabbing the air to emphasize her point. “I will never, ever put children in that situation, do you hear me? I never want another kid to go through what George and Cosmo and I had to go through,” Claudia said, her voice breaking. “Never.”

  Tears threatened, but she choked them back. It would be so much easier if she hated her mother. But she didn’t. She loved her with all her heart for the gentle times between her despair and her rages. The elaborate cakes she’d baked for birthdays, the games she used to play with them, her insistence in believing that if Claudia wanted to be a producer, she could make it, despite the odds. She loved her mother desperately—which was why it hurt so much every time Talia let them all down.

  Springing up from her chair, Sadie rounded the desk to rub Claudia’s back.

  “We didn’t mean to upset you, Claud,” she said softly.

  “We love you more than anything, you know that. We just want you to be happy,” Grace said.

  “I am happy,” Claudia said.

  There was a speaking silence for a beat.

  “Okay, I’m miserable at the moment, but I’ll get over it,” Claudia conceded. “I fell in love with the wrong man. I knew I was doing it, but I still let it happen. And I miss him. I miss him so much my skin aches with it.”

  She closed her eyes as she thought of the dreams she’d had where she was with Leandro again, lying in his big arms. She’d forced herself out of each and every one of them—the reason her sleep pattern had gone to the dogs—but it didn’t stop them from coming.

  “Claud, I know you think breaking the cycle is about not having kids, not having a family, but maybe that’s the wrong way to look at it. Maybe breaking the cycle is about doing all those things, but making sure that your kids never know what it’s like to live like that,” Grace said.

  Claudia felt a thrill of fear, followed by a surge of anger.

  “And whose lives am I gambling with? Children can’t choose their parents. They’re utterly defenseless. What if I’m not strong enough, like my mother? Who pays the price then?” she asked.

  Grace and Sadie both looked a little pale, and Claudia realized she’d been yelling.

  “Sorry. I’m tired, and you’re right, I haven’t been looking after myself. I’m just going to go home and get a good night’s sleep,” Claudia said, running a hand through her hair.

  Without saying a word, Grace started to scrape Claudia’s virtually untouched meal into one of the take-away containers.

  “It’s not pretty, but it will taste just the same,” she said as she handed the box over to Claudia. “We had a deal remember—talk or eat.”

  Claudia dredged up a smile. Even when she was being stubborn and horrible and incommunicative, these women still loved her.

  “I’ll eat it, I promise.”

  They all stood, and Claudia gave them each a fierce hug.

  “You’re the best, and I’m sorry for being such a psycho at the moment. I’ll be fine.”

  Sadie and Grace both nodded, and Claudia grabbed her handbag, briefcase and the Chinese food then escaped to her car.

  Only when she was alone did she let her shoulders sag. She felt so…alone at the moment. Despite her friends. Despite filling every waking moment with work. Leandro had shown her how it could be—how it felt to never be alone, even when that other person wasn’t physically with her. He’d filled all the empty places in her heart and her life and now that he was gone, she was painfully aware of all that was missing.

  Knowing that Sadie and Grace would be walking out to their cars any minute, also, Claudia forced herself to pull it together. She’d been strong all her life. She wasn’t going to fall in a heap now.

  Her thoughts shifted to her mother as she pulled out into the traffic. Talia had surprised the world and listened to her doctors when she recovered from her alcoholic binge. She’d been receiving treatment at a residential rehabilitation center for three weeks now. Part of the process required that she have no visitors for the first two weeks, and last week her father had gone to see her for the first time. Her brother George reported that her father had been shaken by the experience—apparently Talia had been edgy and easily agitated, nothing like her usual self. The fact that her usual self was usually well-sedated thanks to several glasses of strong drink was something that they’d both left unsaid. As usual.

  But her mother was in treatment. Even though Claudia had taught herself not to care, not to believe in second chances where her mother was concerned, there was a tiny part of her soul holding its breath in hope. If only…

  She shook her head as she stopped at a traffic light in West Hollywood. She was so stupid, so ready to step on the roller coaster ride of faith and betrayal again. How many times would she have to get slapped in the face by the same reality before she learned to duck?

  The sound of laughter drew her attention to the sidewalk seating of a popular eatery to her right. It was a warm night, and the tables were overflowing with Los Angelenos filling up on cool drinks and fancy food. Claudia thought of her Chinese takeaway and the empty house she was going home to. She really had to make an effort to pull herself out of the doldrums. She wasn’t a wallower, and it was time to stop acting like one.

  Her eye was caught by the colorful shimmer of a bright pink and turquoise summer dress on a dark-haired woman weaving her way through the outdoor tables. Claudia looked down ruefully at her own black-on-black ensemble. Maybe she should think about breaking out of her little black box, also.

  Still waiting for the light to change, she idly followed the sway of the other woman’s hips as she walked. The man waiting for her stood politely as she approached, and a lurch of adrenaline kicked into Claudia’s belly as she recognized him.

  It was Leandro. Leandro, out with another woman. Claudia’s gaze darted to the woman again, taking in the olive skin, the long curly dark hair, the sexy figure. Jealousy ripped through her like a knife. She wanted to get out of the car, stride across the sidewalk and forcibly drag the woman away.

  Claudia shot her gaze back to him, greedily taking in his easy smile, the charming tilt of his head as he asked his di
nner companion something, how broad his shoulders looked in a crisp white shirt.

  The angry honk of a car horn rocketed her from her trance. The light had changed. Some time ago, she guessed, since the guy behind her was swearing and giving her the finger. She pressed her foot down on the accelerator reflexively, sending the Cayenne racing out into the intersection with a burst of noisy speed.

  Leandro had moved on. It was time for her to do the same.

  CHAPTER 10

  LEANDRO GLANCED away from the woman sitting opposite him and out into the street, his attention drawn first by the belligerent honk of a horn, then the overzealous revving of a car engine. Personally, he hated dining in sidewalk cafes at busy intersections, but his date had chosen the venue and the table so he was playing nice. His whole body went on alert as he caught a glimpse of the tail end of a silver Porsche Cayenne disappearing across the intersection.

  He hadn’t caught the number plate, but it might have been Claudia. His thigh muscles bunched, ready to propel him to his feet and out into the street so he could get a better look—then he realized what he was doing. Did it matter if it was Claudia? Not at all, was the correct answer. The sensible, sane answer.

  He hadn’t seen her, heard her voice, spoken her name for more than four weeks. And tonight he was out with another woman—Stella Diodorus, to be exact. Who was very attractive, very warm, very nice. If he played his cards right, he might even stand a chance of getting invited back for coffee after dinner, if he was reading the attraction in her brown eyes correctly.

  If only he wanted to play his cards right. The truth was, he wasn’t interested in any woman who wasn’t Claudia. And, truly, that was the most unmanning aspect of being a forlorn, love-crossed idiot—he’d gone from having earth-shattering, bone-jarring, back-clawing sex with a women he adored to nothing. Zero. Zilch. And because he couldn’t muster so much as half a hard-on for anyone else, he was pretty much stuck in limbo-land, never to be satisfied by the woman he wanted, not able to get off with anyone else because he just wasn’t interested. Talk about a vicious circle.