The Thrill of It All

by Christie Ridgway

  Mr. Caruso tilted his head, staring at her with those calculating eyes. “Ah, sì, it is an ultimatum.”

  Felicity gave her own elegant shrug. “If you like. What I’d say though, is that it’s family, and I’ll do what I must for them.”

  A few minutes later she was shown out the front door by Pale Suit. She smiled at him, said, “Give your mother my best,” then pointed the pointy toes of her pumps toward the end of the gated drive and the black Jeep waiting on the other side.

  Holding back a silly urge to skip, Felicity made her way to Magee. She gave another smile to the security guard and, still wearing it, opened the passenger door.

  At the furious look on Magee’s face, though, her mouth dried and her heart shuddered. Whoa. She was right to have been worried about intimidation—but now she thought she’d been worried about a threat from the completely wrong man.

  That Mr. Caruso had promised to get Ben back home—unharmed—within the next twenty-four hours didn’t appear to appease Magee’s mood. As they drove through the expensive desert communities, Felicity eyed the muscle jumping in his jaw and considered jumping out of the Jeep that was speeding back toward Half Palm.

  “I don’t see what you’re so angry about,” she finally said.

  He shot her a look. “The goon at the gate pulled a gun on me when I tried to follow you in, Felicity.”

  “You’re kidding.” She shook her head, connecting crime family and the Caruso family was still not easy. “No wonder you’re upset.”

  He cursed beneath his breath. “I’m upset because you went inside the house without me. Did you stop to think I might be worried as hell?”

  She’d thought about making sure Magee didn’t have the opportunity to do something stupid like bring up an old, unsolved murder. And she’d thought about making it clear to him they were two separate entities who could get engaged or get on with business without informing the other.

  “Well?”

  “Look,” she said. “You don’t need to worry about me. I can manage myself. I’m not Ashley. I’m not anything like her.”

  Everything went quiet.

  Felicity pinched her thigh as punishment and turned her head away from him as if she had a sudden need to count palm trees or luxury cars. Why had she said it? She’d promised herself not to say anything more, not one thing, about her cousin or about the engagement.

  “I do care about you.”

  Oh, Lord. He’d said it before. Could there be a more tepid declaration? She tried to laugh off its sting. “Please, Magee. If you want to coax me back into your bed, you’ll have to do better than that.” Not that they’d ever been in a bed, come to think of it.

  In the short city block they drove along, she added up twenty-one date palms before he broke the silence.

  “Our…affair shouldn’t have happened, I’m aware of that. And I’m sorry.”

  No! She didn’t want him apologizing. Worse, she didn’t want him wishing away one moment of the time they’d had together.

  “But now that I’ve asked Ashley to marry me…” He stopped for a red light.

  In need of fresh air, Felicity unrolled the window and stuck her head out. The wind rustled the fronds of the palms overhead, creating a shimmery sound like a drummer’s brush against cymbals.

  Magee raised his voice against the noise. “…I want you to know that I’ll be faithful to her.”

  God, how she hated that she believed him. It would be easier on her to still think of him as the debauched Thrillbanger, instead of a man whose worst fault was how seriously he took his promises. “I don’t know if you’re noble or just plain nuts,” she muttered.

  “Noble?” He glanced over at her, frowning. “What the hell makes you say that?”

  “You don’t like noble? Fine.” The light turned green, he accelerated, and she was forced to pull her head inside or risk eggbeater hair. “Then feeling obligated to marry your best friend’s wife is nuts.”

  “I love Ashley and Anna P. I told you that.”

  Thinking of him galloping the little girl up Aunt Vi’s sidewalk, Felicity believed that, too. It wasn’t any of her business, though—it wasn’t as if she wanted to marry the man—so she kept her mouth shut.

  He shot her another frustrated look. “You don’t understand.”

  The car turned, leaving behind the carefully groomed excess of the desert estates—excess grass, palms, water, wealth—and moving toward the de facto desert that was dusty scrub and twisted cactus…as well as amazing skyscraper rocks and hidden, natural pools.

  “Damn it, Felicity!” His harsh voice snapped her attention away from the scenery and back to him. “Can you imagine how close you get to someone you trust with the other end of your rope? We were more than climbing partners, we were like brothers.”

  “All right.”

  “No, it’s not all right.” Everything she said and anything she didn’t say seemed to increase his foul mood. “You need to understand that I should have died when I broke my ankles that day. Simon should have left me there. But instead he saved me.”

  She remembered the night Magee had saved her. Once the realization had sunk in, she’d wanted to celebrate her breath, her beating heart, each drop of blood that pulsed through her veins. “You must have been relieved. Euphoric.”

  “Euphoric? Relieved? I was barely conscious on the way down. When I was lucid again, they broke the news to me that Simon was dead.”

  Meaning he’d skipped right over rejoicing and moved straight into mourning. “But…but you’d lived. That had to mean something to you.”

  “What, exactly? I’ve thought about it for months, and I can only conclude that I must have been spared for a reason.”

  And it was clear what Magee thought that reason was. He’d been saved to live out the rest of Simon’s life. It was what gave him purpose—she remembered him mumbling about it when he was half-drunk the night they’d first made love.

  And he was almost right. Looking into the light she’d understood—

  No. Felicity shut down that train of thought. It was weird. Creepy. And it made her…doubt.

  Her sanity, she told herself.

  “Magee, take me to the amphitheater, not back to Aunt Vi’s,” she said, her voice urgent. “The GetTV crew should be there by now. And I need to see…I need Drew.”

  “Drool?”

  She shook her head, refusing to look at him. “Don’t start that. You have no right. None.” Magee was engaged to someone else, to her cousin. He had his purpose and now she needed to reconnect with hers. With her job, with her image, and with the Mr. Right who went so well with both.

  Magee left her alone after that.

  Once they reached the parking lot of the nature amphitheater and she saw the trailers and semi with GetTV! emblazoned across them, she released a sigh of relief. Civilization. Her sanity. The Charmed life that she’d made for herself was still there, waiting for her to step back inside it.

  As Magee pulled in beside one of the trailers—thick utility cords already snaking from underneath—she caught sight of Drew. His hair gleamed golden in the sun. His khakis had a knife-edge pleat and she’d be able to see herself in the shine of his tasseled loafers.

  He looked exactly, perfectly, like everything she’d ever wanted.

  Her hand on the door, she turned to Magee. His hair was tangled by his own fingers. Either he needed to change his razor blades or he’d forgotten to shave. His T-shirt read Recreational Gynecologist.

  She had to smile. “Thank you for at least looking like the wrong one.”

  “What?” He tilted his head.

  Her fingers itched to smooth his glossy hair. “Never mind. Just one more thing—”

  “Something more?” But a glint of good humor had returned to his eyes.

  She nodded. “I believe you do care about me. And if that’s true—help me out, okay? Could you…could you keep Aunt Vi and the other Charms away from here the next couple of days? Please?”

&nb
sp; Her gaze flicked to Drew, then back to Magee’s face.

  He must have seen who she’d been looking at because the humor in his eyes hardened. “Ah. Still working so damn hard to be something you’re not.”

  She flinched, the nasty crack like a slap. Her fingers tightened on the door handle and she wanted badly, so badly, to hurt him back. The Felicity Charm she’d created was all that she had, didn’t he see that?

  “Well, that makes us two of a kind, then, doesn’t it, Magee? Since you’re working so damn hard to be someone you’re not.”

  From the startled look on his face, she knew it was a direct hit.

  And she told herself it felt good to come out the winner.

  With Ashley in his arms, Peter hadn’t felt so certain that anything was right since he’d made the choice to return to his broken, lifeless body on that mountain almost three years before. Being with Ashley fulfilled that conviction he’d been unable to shake during his near-death experience. The golden light had been so tempting with its promise of boundless love, but Peter had known he had more to do on earth.

  She stirred, her cheek nuzzling his bare chest. Then, with a contented sigh, she stacked her hands over his heart and propped her chin on them. “I was a little nervous,” she said, a smile tweaking the corners of her mouth. “But I think we did fine.”

  Smiling back, he lifted his hand to stroke her hair. “Just fine. And if you were nervous, think how I felt having to explain exactly what you could, uh, expect.” To tell the truth, sharing with the woman who was his friend and his love that sex would be different with a man who had an incomplete lower motor neuron injury had not been as difficult as he’d thought. Ashley was more resilient than even he had known.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, a touch of wickedness lighting her eyes. “Finding out your erections last longer and that you can climax but not ejaculate was a heck of a thing for a girl to accept.”

  “You’re laughing at me.”

  “Peter, think about it.”

  “That there’s no end to my stamina?” he said, leering at her.

  “Better than that…there’s no wet spot.”

  He laughed, then pulled her up to kiss her pretty mouth. “God, I love you.”

  “And I love you,” she whispered. “I loved Simon, too, so much, but this with you and me…this will be a partnership.”

  “It won’t be easy,” he warned. “There’s complications. Complications like—”

  “What the hell is going on?” said a shocked voice.

  Over Ashley’s bare shoulder, Peter saw one of those complications looming in the bedroom doorway. “—Magee,” he finished.

  “Magee,” Ashley echoed, and rolled over to face the other man, pulling the covers to her collarbone.

  Gripping the bars of the iron headboard behind him, Peter pulled himself to a sitting position. Magee was still in the doorway, staring at the scene on the bed in clear confusion.

  “It’s exactly what it looks like,” Peter said.

  Magee blinked again, then appeared to focus on Peter’s face. “Is that right?” His gaze flicked to Ashley. “Is that right?” he said again.

  “It’s right,” Ashley confirmed. Her hand found Peter’s and she held on tight. “Peter and I, the two of us—the three of us, counting Anna P.—we’re right.”

  Magee walked with zombie steps toward the bed. Ashley tensed, but Peter didn’t think there was anything violent in the offing. He was proved correct when Magee dropped to the end of the mattress. Ashley curled her legs to give him more room.

  “I don’t understand,” he said, his expression still dazed, even as he made himself at home on the bed. He turned his head toward Ashley. “We’re still getting married, aren’t we?”

  Eighteen

  Felicity settled back onto the narrow couch in her GetTV trailer. Outside, the crew scurried about, carrying equipment into the amphitheater that would be used for the next day’s live shoot of her All That’s Cool Afternoon. Inside, the small space was sardined with wardrobe, makeup, and files of information on the products she’d be selling during her hour and the ones she’d be previewing on commercials they’d tape to be aired later.

  On the floor in front of her the products themselves were stacked high, from the Caruso sauces to the mountaineering wear. She picked up a clipboard and pen, ready to familiarize herself with the merchandise and work on her presentation of each item. No matter how much attention Felicity herself garnered in public, on the set it was the product that was the celebrity.

  If she had a secret, it was that she always focused on the star quality of the merchandise. She had to be able to answer the questions Who, Where, When, Why, How, What—and most important of all—So what? What about each product could make it exciting, fun, and for tomorrow’s sell in particular, what about purchasing it would make the customer feel “cool?”

  As she worked alone in the trailer, she felt an up-surge of confidence. Bottom line, she was good at this. She understood the appeal of transforming oneself, and she knew how to feature a product so an item as ordinary as tomato sauce became someone’s passport to an evening as a hot-looking, hot-cooking Latin lover.

  Coming from the knowledge that something as small as a new lipstick could make a woman feel more beautiful, Felicity worked to present her products in a way that made a customer feel more sexy or more adventurous or more hip. Turning one of the Caruso bottles around in her hand, she studied the sauce and scribbled down notes.

  Foolproof fascination—with the meal and with you.

  Tastes like you’ve had it—and yourself—on simmer for days.

  A first-class pleasure feast.

  The lightweight mountaineering jacket required a different mind-set. This product didn’t promise pleasure so much as excitement and a window into the world of extreme sports. She lifted the black and neon fabric, then stood to slip it on. In the full-length mirror on the door to the bathroom, she inspected the sleek fit.

  Not only have the competitive edge, but wear the clothing that shows you do.

  What do you need to take life to the extreme? How about the right jacket.

  She needed some pithier phrases, too, she decided, jotting down high voltage. High performance. The image on one of the advertising posters in the Wild Side popped into her head, an image of Magee in this very article of clothing, hanging by the crimped fingers of one hand.

  Raw power.

  The two words brought to mind other images: His strong arms around her. His long, limber fingers touching her cheek with such heartaching tenderness. Lost in memories, she didn’t hear the door to the trailer open. “Felicity,” a hoarse voice said.

  She whirled. It was Magee. And something had turned him from Raw Power to Raw…Confusion? He stumbled over a box on his way inside.

  Her knees going soft in sudden fear, she stared at the numb expression on his face. “Is it…is it something about Ben?”

  He shook his head, then dropped to the couch where she’d been sitting. “It’s not Ben. It’s Ashley and Peter.”

  Her voice rose. “Something happened to Ashley and Peter?”

  “I found them in bed together. Ashley isn’t going to marry me.”

  Felicity’s heart made an odd jump in her chest, as if the anchor that had been weighing it down now was released, leaving it free. “I don’t understand.” Or maybe she did. Ashley and Peter. Some things that had happened over the last few days began to make sense.

  “I don’t understand, either.” Magee shook his head, his expression still dazed. “I…I don’t know what to do.”

  Concerned by the wooden tone in his voice, she crossed to the trailer’s small refrigerator and pulled out a cold soda. The loud snap of the pop-top didn’t cause him to blink. When she pressed the can into his hand, he didn’t appear to notice.

  There could only be one explanation for his behavior, she decided, and her heart plummeted from its high place. “You love her. You must really love her.”

  He l
ooked up. “I told you I did. She was Simon’s wife. She’s my friend.”

  Wait, wait, wait. Magee appeared poleaxed that Ashley, his mere friend, had dumped him. “But are you…are you in love with her?”

  He made an impatient gesture. “You’re not listening. I don’t know what to do now.”

  “It seems obvious to me, Magee,” she said slowly. “You go back to your own life. The bar, the rock gym, the Wild Side. You forget about the job in L.A. You can start climbing again.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve lost my purpose.”

  Her chest ached. The purpose he’d thought his life had been saved for was gone.

  “Simon said it was time to grow up,” he said, staring off into the distance. “To stop climbing, to get a regular job. Maybe I should still do that. Take the job in L.A., figure out how to be an adult.”

  With two fingers, Felicity rubbed the headache starting to pulse between her brows. “Magee…”

  She tried to imagine him somewhere other than Half Palm, out from behind the bar, off the boulders in the rock gym, on the tame side instead of the wild. It took some effort, but then she pictured him behind a desk, then in a house in a trendy suburb, with a Mercedes instead of that ugly heavy-metal machine he drove. Magee, becoming that hardworking, success-and stuff-oriented man she’d idealized as her Mr. Right.

  Her heart soared upward again, making it hard to swallow. Magee as Mr. Right. It would be double-desserts. Cake served twice, and eating it twice, too.

  And she knew exactly how to sell the idea to him.

  A long-overdue change, she’d tell him.

  You should live out Simon’s legacy.

  Turn your life around and you’ll feel good about yourself.

  In Magee’s vulnerable state, America’s Sweetheart of Sales couldn’t fail. Hadn’t he once said that she could make people believe she had exactly what they needed? If she made him believe she had the answer to what he should do with the rest of his life, then once he was in L.A., she could have him, too.