Mystery Date

by Crystal Green

  Why not jump all the way into this? Callum wanted it.

  Her body said yesyesyes, please continue. This was just another way to explore the sexuality that’d been pressed into her and hidden for so long, and no one could take it away from her now that it’d emerged.

  Yet before she could take another step, Adam came toward her, and she stopped.

  “The first moment I saw you, Leigh,” he said in that sexy drawl, “I wanted this.”

  There was such an intensity about him that she couldn’t go on. She’d always longed for someone to say something like that to her, but that wasn’t the real reason her skin was tingling. The way Adam had uttered it told her that he wasn’t putting her on or merely trying to get into her figurative pants. He truly meant it.

  She allowed herself to really appreciate him for the first time: his glossy, thick black hair, his tanned skin, his compelling gold eyes that gleamed like a predator that knew what would appease its hunger. He was built strong, with wide shoulders, muscled arms, and she could imagine what they would feel like wrapped around her.

  But she also wanted Callum’s arms. Damn him. Why did her thoughts always go back to him?

  Adam spoke. “I only want to touch you, make you feel good.”

  “Just like Callum.” She was dwelling on the “touch you” part. Did that mean they weren’t going to go all the way?

  With a sidelong glance, she looked toward the door again. She couldn’t stop it. Was Callum in the other room, enjoying the show?

  Adam came to her, such a tender expression on his face that she blinked. He’d been hiding his attraction to her, just as Callum always hid. It was only now, when he had permission to show it, that his need for her was clear.

  Reaching her, he lifted his hand, resting it on her bare shoulder, then tracing it down her arm, leaving a trail of raised hairs and awakened skin.

  Her breathing had turned erratic, even with this one minor gesture. And when he skimmed his fingertips back up her arm, his gaze was muddy, as if he was struggling for control.

  “Is it okay for me to go on?” he asked, the same way Callum had always sought her permission.

  She thought of Callum in the next room, watching, waiting.

  Before she could answer, Adam did something totally unexpected. As the country-noir music played on, just as if they were in a darkened club in the middle of a night-washed nowhere, he pulled her to him, grasping her hand and bringing it to his shoulder.

  He began to lead her in a slow, breath-stealing dance, her chest to his, her heartbeat pounding against him.

  “Leigh,” he whispered, as if trying out her name, seeing if it belonged to him or not.

  It didn’t, but something inside her sure wanted it to in this crazy moment. Callum had been seductive but never this romantic. It was as if she had one side of a coin sitting in the other room while the second side was here, leading her in a surprisingly sweet dance.

  A bass plucked away on the sound track, complementing the singer’s soulful voice.

  His cheek was against her head. “I like when you wear your hair down,” he said.

  True—it had always been in a braid or ponytail around him. But how many times had he seen her?

  He put a stop to her curiosity when he slid his hand to the small of her exposed back, just above the expansive bow of her gown. Stroking there, he kept swaying with her.

  It was all a dream: like Callum, he smelled of leather, but the outside kind, not from fancy furniture inside a beautiful house. Most important, though, Adam was willing to show his face, revealing his soul in his eyes.

  When he dragged his fingertips up the center of her back, following the bumps of her spine, she stopped dancing, thinking about Callum watching.

  This is what he asked for, she thought. So she let Adam draw his fingers over other parts of her back, high and low, slow and sensual.

  “You’re everything I ever thought you’d be,” he whispered near her ear.

  Strange, the way he’d said it, as if the first time he’d seen her in those stables had really marked him. But when he brought his hands to her face, cupping it, looking into her eyes, she got too lost to think anymore.

  Passion-dizzy persuasion—that was what filled Adam’s gaze, and it made her chest cave in under a melting warmth.

  But when he lowered his mouth to hers, she swerved away from him.

  Cheating, she thought. This felt just like cheating, and it wasn’t right at all.

  He pulled back slightly, his fingers encircling her upper arms like the silken cords Callum had used. “Leigh, is the answer yes or no...?” he asked, clearly surprised at her response.

  Maybe that was why his accent had disappeared.

  Leigh froze, because his voice... Oh, my God, his voice.

  When he froze, too, she stared up at him, backing away.

  Had she heard what she thought she’d heard?

  “Callum?” she asked.

  12

  SHIT.

  Maybe he should’ve used the dramatic chops he’d developed lately to throw her off track—what’re you talking about, darlin’? I’m just some cowboy, not the demented rich guy in the next room—but he knew his face confessed everything.

  He was Callum...sort of. And the charade was over.

  As he held up his hands in guilty surrender, his groin agonized with all the pounding blood there. But it was his chest that was paining him the most, as if something were twisting and trying to bend toward her.

  She was leveling an injured look at him, backing away so that a chasm opened between them. “Damn it, say something. Who are you?”

  The answer wasn’t as easy as she might’ve been imagining. “I’m Callum...and Adam.”

  “Stop messing with me.”

  Last week, when this had all started, he might’ve taken her anger in stride, but he couldn’t now. If she walked out that door, he wasn’t sure what he would do.

  Yet if she stayed, would that be equally as bad for him?

  It seemed she’d reached her boiling point, and she headed for the exit.

  “Don’t go,” he said in his natural voice—no drawl, no pretense. “Please, Leigh.”

  His last two words kept her in place, her back to him. “Why should I stay?” she said softly.

  Because he wanted her to hear him out? Odd, but this moment was actually bigger than if he’d walked in here from the other room, revealing what he looked like. This unmasking was scarier—the unveiling of what he was like inside.

  He still wasn’t sure he was ready to let go of his biggest obstacle to getting close to Leigh, though. A tug of war raged inside him—just let Leigh go.... No, make her stay—and she sighed, looking so out of place in that fantasy dress. This was reality now, so it didn’t belong anymore.

  When he said nothing, she went for the door again. “Whatever, Callum.”

  Emotions burst out of him, seizing him. “Adam,” he said. “My name is Adam.”

  That halted her for good, and since she was still on one side of the room and he was on the other, it seemed so much easier to explain everything to her now that he didn’t have to look in her eyes.

  She turned her head only slightly but he could tell she was glaring at him. “Adam...what?”

  “Adam Morgan.” As soon as he said his full name, it felt as if a ten-ton boulder had been lifted off his shoulders.

  He could see that she was running the name through her mind, sifting through memories in an attempt to find him. But she obviously came up blank.

  “You wouldn’t know me,” he said. “We didn’t even officially meet. I was a freshman at Cal-U when you were, and we were both pledging our sorority and fraternity when I saw you at a party. It was at Gary Ballard’s house.” Gary had been a junior, and
all the underclassmen had felt like hot shit partying with him.

  “One party ran into the other back then,” she said, turning around a little more but not much. Just enough so that some of her hair shimmered down her shoulder with the movement, falling over part of her exposed back. “I never met you, but you remembered me enough to bid on my basket at the auction?”

  “That’s half the story.” Now that the dam was broken, this was so much simpler. But it felt as if it was too late all the same.

  To think he’d been hoping for a chance like this—one that would allow him to easily break off whatever they had going. One that would give her an excuse to leave him all on her own. But then he’d danced with her, and the world had spun. It was true that a twinge of betrayal still held him back from pouring out everything to her, yet getting Leigh to stay seemed more important than his guilt about Carla for now.

  She shook her head. “I still don’t understand. Why didn’t I meet you at any of the functions or charity events our sorority and fraternity had together?”

  “I left school not long into the first semester,” he said. “My dad died, and I was the oldest in the family, so I went home to help my mom raise my sister and two brothers. Mom needed all the help she could get.”

  By now Leigh had come to face him. “That’s awful.”

  He nodded, needing to move forward. He only wished it could be that easy with Carla, too, but the scars he carried from her were newer, fresher.

  Yet Leigh was right here, and he just couldn’t let her go. “Years later,” he said, “I hired Beth as my right-hand woman, and she still kept in touch with everyone in the sorority. She told me about the reunion and who was putting the basket auction together.”

  “Margot and I,” Leigh said. “That’s when you remembered me?”

  “Yes.” He almost looked away from her, as he’d been doing so much in his Adam identity. But this time, he took the chance of seeing if her heart was in her eyes, as he suspected his own might be.

  She was staring at the ground; she was the one who was hiding now. “So you’re saying that you remembered me from one little college party, and you sent Beth to bid on my basket so you could have a date with me.”

  “I’d seen you on TV, and it reminded me of...” God, should he lay it all out?

  Yes. Damn it, yes.

  “It reminded me of how I had an across-the-room crush on you all those years ago, even if I didn’t know you. If I’d stayed in school, maybe I would’ve eventually introduced myself, but I was kind of shy back then anyway, so who knows.”

  “You’re not so shy these days.”

  “Neither are you.” He thought of how she’d almost taken part in the so-called threesome. But he wouldn’t blame her; after all, “Callum” had given her permission to be with Adam.

  Instead of blushing, Leigh was looking straight at him, and the eye contact made him simmer inside. It only took a look from her.

  But his sense of betraying Carla rose up like a wave gathering strength, and he was barely able to shove it away.

  She shook her head again. “Under normal circumstances, I’d say that’s a romantic story you just gave me. I should be flattered.”

  “But this has gone beyond normal.”

  He suspected she wanted to know more about Carla, and her expectant gaze confirmed that.

  “I haven’t exactly gotten out since my wife died,” he said. “I haven’t been...ready. So when I asked Beth to bid on your basket, I already knew that we weren’t going to have a run-of-the-mill date. I’m a businessman who makes deals on real estate and start-up companies all the time, but...” This was mortifying.

  “Go on,” she said.

  Her voice, soft and gentle, gave him the strength to continue. “I’m used to online computer relationships. Or more like nonrelationships.”

  “You always have a distance between you and women?”

  “Since Carla died, yes.”

  Was she going to think he was less of a man because of it? No, from the way she was watching him, she thought he was more of one for admitting it.

  So he went on. “I really did intend for that date to be one night only, a silly, fun time together, and that would be that. I just wanted to complete my youthful fantasy of going out with you, and nothing more.”

  “But then you asked me to come back.”

  “And you did.”

  She hesitated, then said, “I thought I felt a... I don’t know. A connection might be the wrong word, seeing as it didn’t turn out to be one, after all.”

  Wham—a bull’s-eye hit. So she really didn’t feel a connection with him, even after he’d put himself out there to explain?

  When she crossed her arms over her chest as if protecting herself, he wasn’t sure about that. Was she hiding what she really felt? Or was that too much to hope?

  She spoke again. “It’s so clear to me that you refuse to have a connection, Adam. You told me just as much last night when you let me know about your wife.”

  “Carla.” Now he crossed his arms, too. “I didn’t tell you the details, though. She died two years ago of breast cancer.”

  “I’m so sorry.” She paused. “It’s as if she’s still with you.”

  He felt the pressure of that boulder coming down on him again, pushing him back into a dark corner. “I told her I would never forget her, but you know that already.”

  “Yes.”

  They merely stood there, everything out in the open between them except for how they felt here and now. He should say something more, but he wasn’t sure what. After all, he’d just told her once again that Carla was still a part of his life. What was Leigh supposed to do with that?

  She held up her hands, then took a step backward. “I guess that’s all there is to it, then.”

  “Leigh...”

  She stopped. “What? What do you want me to do? Should I put a blindfold on so I don’t have to see how you still feel about Carla?”

  His shoulders sank. She was right. What exactly did he want from Leigh? Sex wasn’t enough, but he didn’t have the guts to come out of the shadows in any other way.

  She laughed, a wounded sound. “All my life I’ve never been first with anyone. Not with my parents. Not with boys. Not even with anything I’ve ever accomplished. And now that I’m standing here with you, I realize that I need someone who’ll give me the respect I deserve. I’m not saying a man should ever forget about the woman he loved and lost, but to put her memory above the person who’s standing before him, wanting to lay out her heart...?”

  As she wiped at her face, her words rang in his ears.

  She was waiting for him to tell her that he was going to change, wasn’t she? But he couldn’t do that, and she gathered her dress in her hands, heading for the door, abandoning him. The storm of emotions hit him with such brutality that he couldn’t do anything but stand there and brace himself.

  Keeping him from going after the only woman who’d made him feel since his wife’s death.

  * * *

  HE’D KNOWN LEIGH would leave right after their confrontation, and once arrangements had been made to schedule an earlier flight and get her to the airport, Adam had watched her go from an upper story window.

  Watching once again.

  And as she’d gotten into the limo in front of the house, he knew where she was going—to her friend Dani’s house, then Margot’s, where she and Leigh would be having a wedding-planning party. Leigh had mentioned this to Beth when his assistant had booked the transportation, but it didn’t matter where she’d be.

  She wasn’t going to be here.

  Before she’d gotten all the way into the limo, she’d turned around once as if knowing just where he was waiting and had given him a long, regretful look.

  He’d touched the windo
w, wanting to call out to her at the last minute, but what would he have said? Nothing. They were at an impasse—Leigh needing one thing, Adam not able to give it over.

  But as the rest of the day passed, then the next and another, the hole in Adam’s chest only got bigger. And there was no doubt it was because he’d thrown away the sort of chance most people lived a lifetime hoping for.

  Now, on his home estate in Cambria after a business trip during which he’d basically sleepwalked his way through board meetings, he left his suitcase unpacked and went to his bedroom. There he opened a dresser drawer where a silk-swathed package waited. He’d been doing so much thinking during his trip, and he’d come to a firm conclusion.

  He couldn’t put off this moment any longer.

  After undoing the material from around the item, he merely stared at the silver jewelry box with a carousel horse etched into the lid. He’d special-ordered it to commemorate the day he’d asked Carla to marry him, and she’d kept her favorite pearl necklace in here.

  If he were to open the box, he’d see only her ashes now.

  He went to sit down on the bed, just holding her, sadness closing his throat.

  All the thinking he’d been doing since Leigh had left finally clarified in that one moment, just as if a box inside of him had been opened.

  Carla would’ve wanted him to be happy, and he’d been doing his best to make sure it didn’t happen. He’d been making excuse after excuse, but they just weren’t working anymore. Not since Leigh had come into his life....

  Beth eventually wandered into his room with some contracts he needed to sign, putting them aside. She sat next to him, clearly recognizing the box.

  He spoke without preamble. “In those last few minutes with Carla, I made a promise.” He ran his finger over the carousel horse. “I always thought I’d be able to keep it.”

  “I know, Adam.”

  And the next time he’d looked, she’d been gone.

  Beth rested her hand on his arm. There’d been days when she had hinted around this subject before, and he’d been too destroyed emotionally to hear what she had to say. But she’d known, and it was different now. He was ready to hear her talk about what he already knew.