Animal Attraction (San Francisco Dragons Book 2)

by Kate Willoughby

  She burrowed even deeper into him as all the feelings of loss and shame came back as if this had all happened yesterday instead of fifteen years ago. But this time, another emotion crept into her heart.

  Love.

  She was in love with Spencer. Wholly and deeply in love with him. Looking back, she realized she had zero chance of resisting. He was too good a man to push away or ignore, considerate, generous, funny and smart. And he listened. Oh, how he listened.

  As her tears subsided, she tucked the tender new love away for the time being. This wasn’t something she was going to unload on him now. Lord, no. This wasn’t the right moment and there might never be a right moment. But that was okay. Now it was enough just to know he understood what she’d been through.

  Not having expected this outpouring of despair and contrition, Spencer felt a bit shell-shocked. The only thing he could think to do was give off all the positive, accepting vibes he could. He’d had no idea what she’d been through and was touched she had shared her story with him. The admiration and respect he’d felt for her before had doubled, even tripled.

  With a deep breath, Maggie pulled away. His shirt was soaked with her tears, but he didn’t mind. After kissing her on the forehead, he rose, went into the house and returned with a box of tissues and a bottle of water.

  “So I take it you’re not in contact with the family she ended up with,” he said in a low, soothing voice.

  Sniffling, she shook her head and smiled sadly. “No. I opted for an open adoption and the parents were supposed to send me photos and emails, and they did. For a while.” She took a deep shuddering breath. “She was so beautiful and in the pictures she looked so happy. Her first word was ‘dada,’ and I have videos of her learning to walk, laughing, being kissed by a puppy.”

  Her voice trembled but she held it together as she talked about the daughter she clearly loved and missed.

  “Can I see a picture of her?” he asked, not sure if this was an insensitive thing to ask or not.

  “I don’t have any with me,” she said. “All that stuff is in a safe deposit box.”

  He didn’t press her any more on that. Instead, he said, “You said they sent you stuff for a while. What happened?”

  “Slowly but surely, the pictures and emails tapered off. The last photo I have of her is from her fourth birthday party. She’s fifteen now.”

  “Bastards,” he swore under his breath. “And you didn’t try to push the issue, of course, because that’s not the kind of person you are.”

  “Of course I didn’t. I wasn’t about to force myself on them. That would just cause resentment and that’s not what I wanted for Maya. The only thing I ever wanted was for her to be happy and secure and loved and she has that.”

  “Maya is a beautiful name,” he said, softly cupping her cheek. “And you have a beautiful soul, Maggie. They’re idiots for not keeping in touch.”

  “You don’t think I’m a horrible person for giving away my own child?”

  “Maggie, honey, how could I possibly think that? Look at me.”

  She pulled back and met his gaze. Her eyelashes were spiked with tears and she looked so incredibly vulnerable he swore he was never going to let anyone or anything ever hurt her, not while he was alive.

  “You are, hands down, the most compassionate, loving woman I’ve ever met and that includes my own mother. Although if you ever tell her I said that, I’ll deny it. The day I met you, you lent me your precious Kirby, even though he’d been missing for months. God, woman, you deserve a medal, not condemnation.”

  22

  Even though Maggie knew her choice to tell Spencer about Maya was the right one, that didn’t mean she was free and easy with sharing the information. Jade was the last person she’d told. Plenty of people would lose respect for her if they knew. She’d seen it happen. She’d told a so-called friend once and been slowly ghosted by her afterward. It was okay. She reminded herself she’d taken responsibility for her actions and somewhere out there was a child who was being raised by two loving parents instead of by a single-mom who would probably have ended up with two or three minimum wage jobs, living paycheck to paycheck.

  These days she preferred to think of her daughter as the most private part of her private life. Maya was a mental keepsake from a different, closed-book era of her life, except it wasn’t quite completely closed. Legally, the door was open if Maya or her family wanted to get medical information or whatever, but she didn’t intend on pursuing contact with the Martins. The last thing she wanted to do was inflict herself on her daughter and her adopted family and make them feel uncomfortable or beholden.

  Oddly, even though she hadn’t planned on telling Spencer about Maya, now that she had, she felt…relief. Like a knot of tension in her back was finally, after years, relaxing.

  Spencer admired her for what she’d done. Admired. Most people condemned her for getting pregnant in the first place. She could always tell by the slight curl of the lip. Then, when they found out she’d given her baby away, they pitied her, which was almost as bad.

  Spencer, on the other hand, had praised her.

  He’d made her feel as if he was completely on her side, no matter what. She’d shared one of her deepest, darkest secrets with him and it only lifted her in his eyes. In retrospect, she should have jumped at the chance to tell him the thing that even Jade didn’t know about, since it was all part of the same story, but she hadn’t. There was a limit to how much embarrassing emotional baggage a person could unpack in one night.

  “Hey. Did you bring Miss Rumphius?” Jade asked when Maggie entered the teacher’s lounge at recess.

  They were doing an art project today based on the Miss Rumphius picture book. It was about a woman who had been tasked by her grandfather to make the world more beautiful in some way.

  “Yes. In fact, I—” She stopped. She was about to say she’d made a special trip home to get it, but Jade would ask her all kinds of questions she didn’t want to answer right now.

  “You what?”

  Maggie shook her head. “Nothing. Did you go to the supply closet by chance? I think we’re going to need another bottle of purple paint.”

  Jade frowned. “Okay. I’ll—oh my God, you had sex with him,” she said in a low voice.

  “No, I didn’t,” Maggie whispered, “But…stuff happened.”

  Jade promptly hustled her into the hallway. “What stuff?”

  “Spencer and I made out last night and we’re going out to dinner tonight.”

  Jade’s eyes went as big as the disc representing the sun on Maggie’s hanging solar system mobile. “That’s wonderful! Oh my God. I should put matchmaker psychic on my resume. I told you!”

  “Hey, reel it back there, Madam Crystal Ball. The last thing I want to do is rush headlong into this and then crash and burn. I mean, I’m so far out of my comfort zone, I may never find my way back.”

  “Hey, that’s smart. It really is, because I know I was all gung ho before, pushing you hard, but that was because it was all fun and games. Now things are getting real and…are you sure you want to start this? You hear things about athletes, you know? There’s a good chance he’s going to hurt you if you let him too close. Someone glamorous, a celebrity maybe comes along, and there he goes, chasing the sparkle. Like Julianne Hough. Or Carrie Underwood.”

  Both were famous women who married NHL players.

  “I know, believe me, this has been uppermost in my mind, but I think it might be too late.”

  Jade bit her lip. “Oh wow. You’re in that deep?”

  Maggie nodded.

  “Well, that’s it then.” Jade gave a decisive nod. “I’ll have a talk with him and make it clear that even though I’ve seen him in a couple of nasty hockey fights, I will kick his ass if he breaks your heart. I’m not even kidding. I will harass him online until he’s afraid to pick up his cell phone. I’ll gather up Kirby’s excrement and leave it where he’ll step in it the moment he gets out of his car.” />
  Jade continued to list the ways she would make Spencer’s life a living hell while Maggie smiled at her friend’s active imagination.

  “Okay,” Maggie said, “let’s not get ahead of ourselves. He hasn’t done anything wrong yet. In fact, he’s done absolutely everything right, which is so nerve-wracking. It’s like the big earthquake they keep telling us is inevitable. He’s going to mess up sometime and I have this terrible feeling it’s going to really suck when he does.”

  Jade took a sip of her coffee. “I don’t think so. I think it’s much more likely that something small will start to annoy you, like—remember Mike the insurance adjuster I was seeing? He had this laugh that I thought was amusing at first. It was sort of a cross between a snort going in and honking goose going out. Eventually, it drove me up a wall. And you know me. I’m really funny, so you can imagine…” Jade cleared her throat and placed her hands on the table. “Okay, here’s what you’re going to do. Stop worrying. Be like Kirby and enjoy what’s happening as it’s happening. Kirby doesn’t worry about what’s going to happen, like if his favorite toy is going to get lost or he won’t go to the dog park for weeks. He just takes things as they come and enjoys them. Let’s call it the Kirby Way of Being.”

  “I like that.”

  “Now, speaking of the present, what are you going to wear? Because while you’re channeling your dog, I think you should also take a page from the sparkly celebrity book and wear something that wows him. Something unexpected that makes his jaw drop. You’ve never dressed up for him, right? This is your chance. He’ll be expecting the same old Maggie and I think you should show him just what you’re capable of.”

  They went shopping after school on a street known for its charming boutiques. The prices averaged on the higher side as far as Maggie was concerned, but Jade assured her if there was ever a time to open her wallet a little wider, this was it.

  The trick was how dressy to go. Was he taking her to someplace with tablecloths and a sommelier? Or a hole in the wall with quirky décor and unfamiliar food? Hard to know. Jade kept suggesting she go with some skinny jeans that would show off her butt.

  “Because if I had that sweetheart butt, I would be flaunting that all the time but you’re always wearing fluffy skirts. Plus, I’ve seen him looking at your butt.”

  “You have not.”

  “Have.”

  Maggie thought a moment then shook her head. “Tight pants are too constricting.”

  “When was the last time you wore tight pants?”

  “College, probably. I think I got a UTI from them.”

  “Well, they put a lot of Lycra in pants these days. Skinny jeans are almost like wearing leggings.”

  Maggie dutifully tried some on and happily conceded Jade’s point, so she did end up buying a pair with a small rip in the knee and an orange top with a racer back that also showed off her shoulders. But she also snagged a little one-piece jumper made of off-white lace, a drawstring waist, and a deep neckline that had tasseled ties to keep it as modest as she chose.

  “Oh, I really like that,” Jade said when Maggie came out of the dressing room. “Pair that with some heels and you are THERE, sister.”

  “I was going to wear—”

  “Do not say cowboy boots. I forbid you to say cowboy boots. In fact, I forbid you to wear those boots on your date. If you wear your old boots, he will smile and think ‘quirky’ when he sees you. Is that the reaction you want? An amused smile? Didn’t think so. No, if you wear some heels tonight, his mind will short-circuit. Please, if you do nothing else tonight, you will follow my edict.”

  Maggie had laid both outfits on her bed and vacillated between them for at least a half hour. Times like this she wished she was a man with fewer choices to make, and a small part of her hoped Spencer was facing a similar anxious indecision as he dressed tonight.

  Probably not. He knew where they were going.

  To freeze or not to freeze? She tried on the little jumper and it was pretty insubstantial and without her boots to keep at least her feet warm, she might chatter her way through the date. But being cold with a gentleman meant that he’d offer her his jacket, which was one of life’s greatest pleasures.

  In the end, she decided it was going to be too cold and if she wore the cream-colored number, Spencer would probably think she was an idiot. So jeans and blouse it was, with the orange heels Jade had forced her to buy. They really did make her legs look good, even if they pinched.

  She gasped when she looked at the time. She’d spent longer dithering than she’d meant to. Spencer was due in about fifteen minutes.

  Her heart rate sped up as she jumped into the shower before it was fully warm. She shaved her legs with record speed then realized too late that she was out of conditioner, which meant more of a frizz fest than usual. Great. Nothing she could do about it now.

  She’d intended to actually do her hair with a round brush and a blow dryer but there was barely time to get makeup and clothes on.

  In the end when he knocked on the door, she was clothed and made up, but her hair was still damp and in desperation, she twisted it into a bronze clip. It would have to do. She had no more time to futz with it. She’d completed three-quarters of her look and saw that as a win.

  She opened the door and her heart stumbled at the sight of him in jeans, a blue dress shirt and gray jacket. His shirt was open at the neck and she got a glimpse of his chest hair. Lord, she loved chest hair. The pants had a slick narrow cut and they molded to his thighs like they’d been painted on. Did they add Lycra to menswear too, she wondered?

  “You look amazing,” she said.

  He didn’t reply. He was staring at her. Well, kind of staring. Staring implied a fixed gaze, but Spencer’s eyes were flitting all over her, going from her face, to her shoulders, to her breasts, waist, legs, back to her breasts, down to her feet. She felt dizzy with all the attention and her skin felt buzzy, like lightning was about to strike.

  “Maggie, shit. I…I have no words. You’re gorgeous.”

  She blushed as he stepped forward and kissed her.

  “Thanks. I just never had the opportunity to wear something different for you.”

  “I can only blame myself, then, I guess. Shall we?”

  “Where are we going?” she asked, grabbing her purse and locking the door behind her.

  “I thought maybe dinner and movie? You like Chinese?”

  “I love Chinese.”

  “One of my favorite places is—believe it or not—in the mall on Market downtown. You can pick out a movie on the way. Sound good? I almost never get to see a movie in a movie theater anymore and I thought it’d be fun.”

  She was taken aback. Here she’d fretted about going to such an upscale place that she wouldn’t know what half the menu items were. Ha. They were going to a food court. She hadn’t even needed to dress up. Putting on a smile, she tried to hide her disappointment. She must not have done a very good job because he reassured her.

  “Hey, it’s not Hot Dog on a Stick. It’s an upscale place in a weird location, that’s all. Trust me. You’re gonna love it.”

  The restaurant was on the third floor of the mall. M.Y. China was TV chef Martin Yan’s brainchild, and it was elegantly decorated with dark wood, a giant iron bell, three feet in diameter, and a kitchen completely open to view from the dining room. The aromas made her mouth water. So did the menu. Maggie had trouble choosing dishes, so they totally over-ordered. A dim sum collection, Da Dao “Big Knife” Fish Noodles, Jasmine Tea Smoked Sea Bass, Garlic Pea Shoots, Forbidden Rice, and for dessert, the egg puffs, served with three kinds of dipping sauces. Everything was packed with flavor and texture. They washed everything down with Baby Chrysanthemum tea.

  “This is the best meal I’ve ever had in my life,” she said. “But I can’t eat another bite.”

  Spencer gave her a “told you so” smile. “You mind if I keep going? I don’t get downtown too often.”

  “Be my guest. I’ll just si
t here and try to digest.”

  As he finished up a couple of the dishes, Maggie noticed a small commotion behind the counter. Some of the chefs were glancing in their direction and chattering. She was just about to say something about it to Spencer when their server approached them with an elaborate looking dessert that they hadn’t ordered.

  “Are you Spencer Corbett?” the waitress asked, her eyes wide.

  “Guilty,” he said.

  She turned to her companions across the room and nodded. Spencer waved at them and they gave a small cheer, holding up various kitchen utensils, and in one case, an eggplant.

  “We’re all Dragons fans, Spencer, and we’re honored you came to visit our restaurant. I wish Mr. Yan was here tonight. He’s going to be really disappointed he missed you.”

  “I’ll write him a note of thanks, because this is as amazing as I remember it being. I think it’s been two years since I was here last. Did you hear that?” Spencer said, addressing the kitchen staff. “AMAZING FOOD.”

  The resulting cheer was louder.

  Maggie watched Spencer get up and go meet his fans by the counter. Everywhere in the restaurant, phones popped up. Maggie followed him, curious to see what he was going to do. If they were going to invite him behind the counter to cook in a wok or something, she wanted to see it up close.

  People took photos and video of him as he signed autographs and had his picture taken with at least a dozen people. Did this happen often to him? He seemed very relaxed about it all and had no trouble putting his arms around total strangers for photos. She shuddered to think what that must be like.

  That was the point at which she started getting pushed around by eager fans.

  She gasped softly when one big guy, actually wearing a Dragons jersey, pushed her shoulder so he could get past her, but before she could say anything in protest, Spencer was there thumping the guy’s chest with stiff fingers.

  “Hey, watch your step, man,” he said with a hint of menace in his voice. “You almost knocked over my girlfriend.”