by Leisa Rayven
I look at him for a moment, feeling more lost and confused and … small than I ever though possible. He’s asking me to open a door that’s been closed my whole adult life, but not only do I not have the key, I have absolutely no idea where to even look for it.
I turn and head toward the bedroom. Just before I reach it, he says, “Do you know why you avoid real connections, Eden?”
I look back at him. He has his hands in his pockets, and he’s staring in my direction but not looking directly at me.
“Why?”
“Because it’s easier for you to think being alone is a choice rather than admitting you might be unlovable.” He looks me in the eyes. “Let me tell you, you’re not. Not even a little. The man who made you think that – whoever the hell he was – couldn’t have been more wrong.”
I hold his gaze while trying to lock down a storm of emotions that are filling me up in unfamiliar and painful ways. And when he gives up waiting for me to change my mind
and looks away, I head into the bedroom and gently close the door.
* * *
Getting back into my dress by myself is difficult. Honestly, I’d rather just curl into a ball on the massive bed and sleep for a week, if only to forget about everything that just happened. Instead, I awkwardly zip myself up as best as I can and bite my tongue every time I even think about calling out for Max to help.
I’ve just finished pulling on my shoes when I hear a buzzing noise. I turn to see his phone on the nightstand, screen bright in the dim room as it skitters and vibrates.
Unable to resist, I walk over and check the screen. A text message is there from someone called Dyson:
The warehouse? God, I’d almost forgotten he’d arranged for Nannabeth to sell his furniture at her stall tomorrow. And they’re picking it up at the warehouse? Intriguing.
I glance at the door, but it’s still safely closed. I shouldn’t be thinking about showing up and seeing what I can find, right? I should wait until he’s ready to level with me about what he’s hiding. But judging by how tonight has gone, the day he trusts me with his secrets may never come.
I grab my purse and exhale before pulling open the door and walking out. When I get out to the living room, Max is seated, fully dressed at the desk, staring at his computer screen. When he sees me, he closes the lid and stands, his face unreadable. “Ready?”
“You don’t have to take me home.”
“Yes, I do. This was a date night. The least I can do is escort you to your door.”
After the world’s most awkward elevator ride, we head out into the street and he flags a taxi. We’re both silent as we ride through Manhattan and across the Brooklyn Bridge, and it feels wrong to be on one side of the cab while he’s on the other.
I glance at his hand splayed on the seat next to his thigh as he gazes out the window. I have the strongest feeling that if I just reached over and slid my fingers between his, this revolting tension would melt away, but maybe things cooling down between us is for the best. One of the first things I learned as a journalism student was to beware of getting too close to my sources, and now I know why. I’ve gotten so close to Max I’ve lost every ounce of my objectivity, and that’s unacceptable. I’m supposed to report the story, not become part of it.
I shake my head at how miserably I’ve screwed everything up and go back to staring out the window. There’s no danger of me being too close to Max anymore. Right now it feels like the distance between us is growing wider every minute.
The whole journey passes without either of us saying a word, and it’s not until we’re standing outside the door to my apartment that we even make eye contact.
Max gives me a tight smile before lifting my hand to his mouth and kissing it. “Thank you for your company tonight, Miss Tate. It was a pleasure.”
It bothers me that he’s gone back to calling me Miss Tate. It feels wrong now. Cold.
I take my keys from my purse and try to look happy. “Thank you, Mr. Riley. Despite everything, I ... I had a really great time.”
He smiles, but I can’t help feeling he’s being someone else right now. Someone who I haven’t disappointed and hurt.
He takes my keys and leans over to unlock the door, but before he does, he stops.
“Eden ... the man who hurt you. Was it your father?”
He doesn’t look at me, which is good. Maybe I can try to be honest if we don’t make eye contact. “Why do you think that?”
“I went back and looked at your questionnaire. When you were asked for a paragraph about your parents, you said a lot about your mother but didn’t mention your father once. If it was him, it would explain why you distrust men so much.”
He unlocks the door and hands me back the keys. “Plenty of women are hurt by men, but the deepest wounds are left by our parents.” He says it gently, like he’s afraid of how I might react.
He doesn’t understand how many times I’ve practiced being unaffected by my father’s actions.
He clears his throat. “What did he do to you?”
I don’t know if he’s expecting some shocking tale of sexual abuse, but that’s not what happened. There are dozens of hideous ways to ruin a child. My dad used the simplest one.
“He ignored me. Saw through me like I wasn’t there.”
I’ve never admitted that to another person. Telling Max doesn’t feel good, but it does feel right.
“I always thought fathers had to love their kids,” I say, staring at the buttons on Max’s shirt. “Like it was a requirement or something. But whenever I tried to hug Dad or get him to play with me, he treated me like an inconvenience. Like my existence annoyed him.” Even now, with all the time that’s passed, those memories have surprising power to hurt me. “Mom would say ‘Daddy’s just tired’, or ‘Daddy doesn’t like to play’, but I knew. Kids always know.”
I hear a noise, and when I glance at Max’s face, he looks just as furious as he did earlier on the phone.
“Tell me everything,” he says, his voice gentler than his expression.
I shrug. “When Asha came along, he was a completely different person. She was his angel, and I was just ... the other one.”
“Do you have any idea why he was like that?”
I look at the window down the end of the hallway. “Once, when Mom and Dad were fighting, I heard my name. Mom was saying that he couldn’t treat me like nothing and Asha like everything … that it wasn’t fair. He countered by saying I was the chain Mom used to keep him with her, so how could she expect him to love me?”
“Your mom was pregnant before they got married?”
I nod. “Once I found out, it explained a lot. I wasn’t his daughter. I was the weight around his legs, drowning him in his own life.”
He steps closer and wraps his fingers around mine. “Eden ... I’m sorry.”
I give him a faltering smile. “Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I’m still sorry it happened to you.”
I look down at my purse and fiddle with the line of pearls around the edge. “Even after he left us all high and dry, Mom never stopped believing he just needed time to ‘find himself’ or whatever. Sometimes when he needed money, he’d come back for a few days. He’d bring flowers and chocolates and tell Mom he loved her, and she’d take him back every time.”
I look at Max with a bitter smile. “He was a lying sack of shit. Why the hell would she do that?”
He nods like he understands only too well. “Sometimes, people stick with what they know, even if all they’ve known is misery.”
“The thing I’ll never understand is, even while Mom worked herself to the bone supporting two kids by herself, she never allowed us to say a bad word against him.” I shake my head. “I vowed I’d never be like her. In so many ways she was a strong woman, but when it came to my father, she was weak. He made he
r weak. That’s not going to happen to me.”
I see understanding in his eyes, and his posture falls, as if he’s discovered the hill he thought he’d been climbing with me is actually a mountain.
“Maybe that’s why you scare me,” I say. “In a lot of ways, you remind me of him. He was handsome like you. He had green eyes like you. He had a way of melting women with a glance like you.”
He cups my face and urges me to look into his eyes. “There’s one important difference between him and me.”
“Which is?”
“I have no idea how he treated you like you were invisible. When I’m with you, you’re all I see.”
He stares at me for a second before stepping forward and pressing his lips to my forehead. “You should get some rest. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
He gets one step away before I grab his hand to stop him. When he turns back with a perplexed expression, I step forward and stand on my toes to press my lips against his. For the longest second in human history, we freeze, lips conducting enough shared energy to detonate a supernova. I move first, releasing his lips and then moving in again. I press against his warmth, tasting his top lip and then the bottom. He doesn’t move and is still standing rigid when I pull back to see his face.
“Max?”
He stares at me, his jaw tight. “I promised you I wouldn’t.”
I grab his shirtfront and pull him forward. “For the love of God, Max ... I give you permission to kiss me.”
With those words, it’s like I’ve released a lion from its cage. He grabs my face with both hands and presses me back into the wall as he takes my lips. I groan and open my mouth to him, and I’ve never felt the kind of hunger that consumes me as his taste filters through all my senses. When his tongue slides softly against mine, it unleashes more sensation than I know how to handle. I drop my purse and grasp at him, all the areas I can reach; his arms and shoulders, the curve of his butt, his chest, the back of his neck. Every part of him feels incredible, and it all makes me ache for more.
When I slide my fingers into his hair and pull, he makes an animalistic sound before reaching around to grab my butt with both hands and pressing me tightly against him.
“God, Max …” He’s rock hard, and knowing it’s me who’s done that to him only makes me kiss him more passionately.
He moans against my tongue, his hands angling me exactly where he wants me as the unbelievable taste of him drives me insane. I grunt against the tidal wave of need that hits me. As crazy as my attraction to Max has been, nothing could prepare me for this feeling of pure insatiability. No matter how hard I try, there’s no way for me to get close enough, or kiss him deep enough, and the more I try, the dizzier I get.
I’ve never felt like this with any other man … nothing even remotely close to this. I’m not equipped to deal with it. The desperation is raw and relentless. He seems to feel it too because he grunts as he presses me against walls then pulls me away, only to push me to the opposite side, shoving me noisily against the dated wallpaper.
I knew kissing him would be something I could never come back from, and right now even my fear isn’t strong enough to ruin it. For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m wide awake and dreaming at the same time.
For long, hazy minutes we kiss each other like we’re afraid to stop. Like the world could come crashing down in a fiery apocalypse around us, and neither of us would notice.
In fact, neither of us does notice when Mrs. Levine from the apartment next door comes to see what all the commotion is about. It’s only when she clears her throat loudly that we pull back, both surprised by our elderly spectator.
“Eden,” Mrs. Levine says with a tight nod. She gives Max a long look up and down as he tidies himself up and runs his hand through his hair. “Man attached to Eden.”
I lean against the wall and try to calm the hell down as Max steps forward, who despite his best efforts, still looks the victim of an animal attack. His tie is half off, his shirt is untucked, and his hair is everywhere.
Still, he smiles at Mrs. Levine as if nothing has happened and holds out his hand. “Maxwell Riley, ma’am. Pleased to meet you.”
Mrs. Levine glares at him for two seconds before breaking into a toothless grin. Oh, man, I hate it when she doesn’t wear her dentures.
She puts her hand in his, and he gives it a gentle squeeze. Mrs. Levine bends sideways to look at me around his body. “Oh, Eden, he’s lovely.”
I smooth down my dress and give her an unsteady smile. He is lovely, but in the emotionally stunted world of Eden Tate, that doesn’t make all my trust issues pack up and leave. If anything, it makes them worse.
“Sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Levine,” I say with a wave. “It won’t happen again. Have a good night.”
She gives Max one more head-to-toe assessment before giggling under her breath and going back into her apartment.
Max turns back to me, looking as shell-shocked as I feel. Tonight, we’ve gone from romance, to arguing, to making out like demons in a public hallway, and those things combined with the fact I laid bare my pathetic childhood makes things become awkward again real fast.
After I open my apartment door and turn back to him, he steps forward, hesitantly. “Eden ... I –”
“I should go in. Goodnight, Max.” I can’t deal with any more emotional upheaval tonight, even if the concept of not kissing him again is physically painful.
For a moment, it looks as though he’s going to say something, but then he shoves his hands in his pockets and nods. “Goodnight, Eden.”
I close the door and then lean my head against the cool wood until his footsteps disappear down the hallway.
What the hell am I doing?
Perfect good looks, perfect body, perfect mouth, and perfect, caring heart. I didn’t think someone as perfect as Max could possibly exist in the world, and that’s why my stomach is sitting in my shoes. Because if I know one truth above all others in this world, it’s this: if something seems too good to be true, it usually is.
Even if I could contemplate letting him into my life, for all I know, the passionate man with the mysterious past I spent the evening with is just one more character in his romantic arsenal. Until I find out more about who he was before he became New York’s favorite escort, the jury is out, and there’s no way in hell I can allow myself to get in any deeper. Especially considering the volatile temper I saw on him tonight.
I swallow down the paranoid scenarios playing in my mind as I strip off the trappings of the glamorous woman I’ve been for the past few hours and get ready for bed. And when I set my alarm for six a.m., I tell myself I’m not doing it so I can get up early enough to scope out the warehouse that could contain all of Max’s secrets.
SEVENTEEN
Family Secrets
I poke my head out from behind the dumpster to see if there’s a truck outside the warehouse yet. There isn’t. It seems that whoever this Dyson person is, his idea of 7am is vague and inaccurate. It’s now 7:18, and there’s still no sign of him.
I’m torn about this mission to snoop on Max, especially considering everything that happened between us last night, but I can no longer let my emotions sideline my objectivity. No matter how charming and magnetic he might be, I still have a job to do, and with Derek breathing down my neck to see a partial draft of my story on Monday, I don’t have time for Max to keep stalling about his past. If he has skeletons in his closet, that’s fine, but I’d rather know about it now than be blindsided later.
“Any truck action?” Toby asks from behind me.
“Not yet.”
He sighs, loudly. “You wake me up at the asscrack of dawn, get me all excited about being spies, and now we’re just sitting around, waiting.”
I turn to him. He’s leaning again the wall behind the dumpster, sipping his soy milk latte and munching on a seven-dollar granola bar he picked up on the way. When I called him at 6:30 to see if he could help me out, he jumped at the chance, but I didn
’t count on him dressing up in his best paramilitary gear. Of course, for Toby that means khaki skinny jeans, a grungy black T-shirt, a black beanie, and a camouflage-print cardigan. Yes, I said a camo cardigan.
“Have I mentioned what you’re wearing yet?” I ask. “Because seriously ... I have so many thoughts.”
He looks down at himself then back to me. “What? You said we’d be doing crime, so I wore my most crimey outfit.”
“Toby, first of all, you don’t ‘do’ crime; you commit crime, and the only person committing anything this morning will be me. You’re just my distraction. And second, never in the history of the world has any criminal thought to themselves, ‘Hmmm, you know what this felony calls for? A nice camo cardigan.’ Where on earth did you even find that thing?”
“I’ve had it for years. It’s both kickass and comfortable, so you can stop giving me shit about it.”
“You look like you belong in a retirement home for hipster bird watchers.”
He waves his giant leather-cuff wrist watch in front of his face. “Sching! Sching! Just deflected all of your negative energy.”
“How many cardigans do you own, anyway?”
He shrugs and has another sip of coffee. “The usual amount. Thirty. Forty.”
I roll my eyes and go back to staking out the warehouse. When I see a truck making its way down the alley, I elbow Toby. “Showtime, Soy Rambo.”
He comes over and looks out, his head sitting above mine. The truck backs up to the roller door right next to the mural stairs, and two guys get out. I recognize one of them as my former pool partner, ‘Pat’, the giant Irishman. I’m guessing he’s Dyson.
Huh. Actor and furniture mover. Multi-talented.
“You know,” Toby says, “if you wanted someone to distract those burly dudes, you should have brought your sister. I know she’s in France, but as attractive as I am, I’m not sure they’ll take much notice of me.”
“Sure they will. You know that stupid character of yours you do around the office?”
“Hertzog, the Particularly Dense German Tourist? Oh, ja.”