Here we go.
Her friend really lobbed that one up for Billy to hit right out of Come-On Park. Inhaling deeply, Maxi braced herself for his flirtatious, most likely borderline inappropriate response. She was sure he was going to take full advantage of the opening that Jana had just given him.
And why wouldn’t he?
Her neighbor across the hall had men lining up. Literally. Maxi had once come home to find three guys waiting at her door. She was an attorney who’d actually been a lingerie model to pay her way through college. Jana was a knockout blonde who also happened to be smart and funny. She was the unicorn that the guys at the gym were always saying didn’t exist.
“Billy Marshall. Nice to meet you.” Billy didn’t even reach out his hand to shake hers.
What the…?
Maxi’s head spun around. She needed visual proof that it was in fact Billy Marshall standing behind her, because there was no way that the Billy Marshall she knew would’ve let that golden opportunity pass him by.
When his eyes met hers, she felt his stare spread heat through her, from her head to her toes. It was the strangest thing, but from the first time he looked at her across the gym, until now, he had a way of making everything else disappear.
“Is that you?” Simon’s voice popped the bubble that Maxi had happily been floating in.
“Um…what…?” She glanced over at him.
“Your phone.” Jana pointed to the clutch that Maxi was holding.
“Oh, right.” Lifting the flap she saw a number that made her heart slam into its ribs.
This was the call she’d been waiting for all day.
“Sorry, I have to take this.” Moving around Billy, she pushed her front door open again. When her bodyguard tried to follow, she pushed her palm to his chest. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
His nostrils flared like a bull that was about to charge, but to her surprise he backed off and she was able to close the door.
As soon as the lock clicked in place, she answered the phone. “Hello.”
“Is this Maxine Rizzo?”
The palms of her hands dampened. “Yes?”
“This is Officer Ryne from Statesville Correctional returning your call regarding inmate seven-eight-six-two-nine-three. His status has not changed since your last inquiry. He is still in our custody. His next parole hearing is set for the twenty-eighth of September.”
Relief washed over her. He was still in prison. He wasn’t out on the streets. It couldn’t be him that was harassing her. Which was good, except now she had no idea who was.
Finding her voice, she managed to say, “Thank you Officer Ryne.”
After disconnecting the call she took a moment to collect herself. For some reason, in the back of her mind, she’d kept thinking that it had to be him doing this. This was the third call she’d placed in the last month. Each time she got the same response, almost verbatim.
So now she had to face the reality that if it wasn’t Samuels, who was it?
The gravity of that question had her leaning back against the wall. When she did, she caught her reflection in the mirror above the table that sat in her entryway. Her skin was pale, like she’d just seen a ghost.
It felt like she had. Just hearing his inmate number caused a chill to settle over her. But whether or not he still haunted her, the reality was that Damien “The Smasher” Samuels was locked up, where he belonged. He wasn’t the one behind all of these incidents.
So why did it still feel like he was?
Blowing out a breath, Maxi pushed off the wall and rolled her shoulders back. As much as she wanted to crawl into bed and hide from the past and the present, she knew that wasn’t possible. She just needed to put one foot in front of the other. Keep on keeping on. She couldn’t let her anxiety or panic run the show.
I am strong. I am safe. I am capable. I am fearless.
Well, she was strong, safe, and capable at least. For now, that had to be enough.
After giving her reflection a sharp nod of renewed determination, she opened the front door to find two men staring down at her.
“Everything okay?” Billy’s deep voice caused a ripple of goosebumps to break out over her arm and a delicious shiver to chase down her spine.
Why? Why did just his voice have to feel so good to her?
“Great!” She plastered on a smile. “Everything’s great! Let’s go.”
“Actually, I invited Jana to join us, to even things out,” Simon commented nonchalantly. “She said she just needed a minute to change.”
All of the inner bravado that she’d been able to muster from her internal pep talk, deflated like a balloon with a hole in it. She loved her friend, but the thought of watching her fawn all over Billy, and him do the same, sounded about as fun as getting a bikini wax in the middle of Times Square.
Maybe he won’t fawn, a small voice piped up in her mind. But she shot that voice down. Billy was Billy. He might be able to tone down his Billy-ness for short periods of time, but just like any wild animal, eventually he would show his true stripes.
“Ready!” Jana chirped, as she stepped into the hall wearing a little black dress. Emphasis on little.
“You look beautiful,” Maxi told her friend.
Jana winked at her. “Back ’atcha babe.”
After locking her door, Jana threaded her arm through Maxi’s and double-timed it so that they were a few paces in front of the men on the way to the elevator.
“Okay, what’s his deal? Does he have a girlfriend?” She whispered as she practically drug Maxi along beside her.
A small forced huff of laughter escaped as she told her friend, “No. He doesn’t.”
Girlfriends weren’t Billy’s style.
When they arrived at the elevator, Jana’s hushed voice asked, “You guys aren’t…?”
“No.” Maxi assured her friend. “We’re not.”
That answer was met with a smile that was so big she was surprised it fit on Jana’s petite, heart-shaped face.
“I have an Uber waiting.” Simon’s hand settled on Maxi’s back as the four waited for the elevator.
She wished she got the same reaction to Simon’s touch that she did to Billy’s…you name it…look, smile, touch, voice, laugh. But she didn’t. When Simon touched her there were no wobbly knees, no goosebumps. Nothing at all.
“Cancel it. I’ll drive.” Billy’s firm tone didn’t leave room for argument.
If the statement seemed harsh to Simon, he didn’t let it show. Instead he shrugged and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Suit yourself.”
“So Billy, what do you do?” Jana asked, filling in the silence.
“I work in personal security.”
“Oh good, so you’re here because of the break—”
“He’s staying with me while he works on Ricco’s security detail.” Maxi cut in.
“Oh,” Jana’s head tilted to the side, and Maxi could see her friend trying to puzzle out what was going on. But when she couldn’t, she did what any good friend would do and dropped it. “Oh, okay. That’s great.”
Just like she was sure that Billy would have plenty of questions after this evening was over, she knew now Jana would too. Starting with why she hadn’t told Simon anything about the craziness that was going on in her life.
She and Simon had been seeing each other for about three months. Things were still new but that wasn’t the reason she’d kept it from him. Honestly, Maxi knew that it wasn’t going to last. The last two times that they’d gone out, she’d made excuses not to be alone with him. First, she’d faked a headache to get out of going back to his place, and then she’d lied about having an early morning meeting as an excuse not to invite him up to hers.
He was nice. And she kept telling herself that nice was what she wanted. Nice was good. Nice was predictable. Nice was safe. The only problem was, nice was boring.
Not that Simon would be boring to someone else. He was a great guy with a very diverse artistic knowledg
e and passion. It was just that she didn’t share his interest. His knowledge and passion did nothing for her.
Selfishly, with everything going on lately, she just hadn’t wanted to end things, even though she knew that they had no future. She’d been avoiding having to have the talk. But now she knew the time had come.
Note to self: Break up with Simon.
The ding of the elevator sounded just before the doors opened. When they did, Maxi was immediately greeted enthusiastically by Bonnie and Clyde. She was just about to bend down and say hello to her two new favorite neighbors when she found herself behind a wall of steel, otherwise known as Billy’s back.
She’d heard people say that things happened in a blur but never, ever had she experienced something happening so fast that it actually was a blur. One second, she was faced with very excited wet noses and sloppy kisses, the next she was plastered against a wall of muscle and being held in place by a strong arm that her body responded to a whole heck of a lot more than any other body part on any other man.
“Sorry,” Mr. 7G apologized. “They only act like that with her.”
Maxi didn’t really appreciate the way he’d said her, but she guessed it would be frustrating if you had well-behaved dogs ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time, and then one person was throwing off your one-hundred-percent perfect canine score.
Billy released his hold, after she assumed he’d deemed the area a no-threat zone. And she stepped out from behind him just in time to see him raise his hand, and then watch as both Bonnie and Clyde sat, staring up at him like he was God.
She totally understood the dogs’ response to Billy. He was alpha personified. He leaned down to pat them and just like Carter when he talked about Sabrina, she could practically see cartoon hearts floating around their heads. It was kinda adorable.
She shot a quick look at Jana and Simon and saw that her date couldn’t look more disinterested in the dogs, or Billy, but that Jana had a gleam in her eyes similar to Bonnie and Clyde’s as she watched the scene in front of them.
Hero worship.
Mr. 7G scooted past them and pulled the dogs with him.
“You were so good with them,” Jana commented as they all stepped into the elevator. “Did you have dogs growing up?”
Oh, no.
Maxi knew that this was a really sensitive subject. Billy had told her once, years ago, that he’d had a mutt dog who looked like Benji, named Bruiser, when he was a kid. But when he was thirteen, his mother had a particularly bad break-up and her ex-boyfriend stole all of their belongings, including Bruiser. At least that’s what she told him at the time. Later, he found out that she’d actually sold their stuff and taken Bruiser to the pound while Billy was in school.
Maxi’s heart still broke for him whenever she thought about it.
“One.” Billy smiled. “He was a good dog.”
They rode the rest of the way in silence and as they started to get off at the lobby, Maxi squeezed Billy’s hand. She just wanted him to know that she remembered.
“Miss Rizzo,” Carter rushed up to the group. “Thank you so much for the tickets.”
“I told you, it’s Maxi. And it’s no problem. Really.” Carter had been on an errand for another resident when she’d gotten home, so she’d left the tickets at his station. “We’ll need Mr. Marshall’s car brought up.”
Billy had given her such a hard time about parking it in the garage. It was like she was asking him to give up his first-born child. If you Googled “control issues,” she was sure that the image results would all be pictures of Billy Marshall. She’d almost laughed when he’d handed the keys to the valet and looked like he was going to throw up. Apparently, he didn’t deal with defeat well. Not that she’d ever seen him experience it. Personally or professionally. He’d never been defeated in the ring, and she couldn’t remember ever seeing him turned down in his private life.
Except by her. But she knew that he wasn’t serious. Flirting was in his DNA. And just like the splash zone at Marine World, any woman in his general area was in the flirt zone. She constantly reminded herself that she wasn’t special, just a female in his flirt zone.
As they waited for the SUV, Simon was on his phone. Jana was chatting up Billy, who looked to be engrossed in what she was saying, but Maxi noticed that his attention was elsewhere. Namely, on her and anyone who came near her. He was keeping an eye on the door, every resident that exited the elevator or entered the building.
He was here to protect her. Now all she needed to do was protect herself from falling even harder for him…
Chapter 7
“Wow.” Billy blinked. “I had no idea you had Wonder Woman’s quick change powers.”
When they’d returned from the longest three hours of his life—aka Maxi’s date—she’d headed straight to her room and emerged sixty seconds later in a Van Halen T-shirt, grey sweats, and large, tattered slippers on her feet.
She secured a haphazard knot of hair on the top of her head as she walked past Billy, who’d stopped in the kitchen to get a bottle of water. “From the second I put on a skirt and heels in the morning, the entire day is just a countdown until I can put on my sweats and slippies.”
Slippies? Damn, could she get any more adorable?
A satisfied moan filled the silent space as she flopped onto her couch and the sound shot straight to his groin. The man downstairs didn’t check with Billy’s brain before it sent the signal that what he’d just heard was sexual in nature. Blood rushed below his belt and his jeans grew uncomfortably tight.
After this thing was over, he really had to get some action that included another person. His hand had been handling things for months now. It obviously wasn’t doing the trick anymore, since he was popping wood like a teenager at a strip club.
Billy leaned against the counter as he tried to get his body under control. He knew that the natural, normal thing to do would be to join her on the couch, but until he powered down his pole position, he figured staying in the kitchen was safer.
His mission to rein in his body’s response to Maxi was made considerably harder when she lifted her arms as she stretched out on the cushions. Billy’s eyes automatically tracked her cat-like movements as her hands raised above her head and her “slippie”-covered toes pointed. Her back arched off the couch. A small sliver of sexy skin was made visible as the hem of her shirt raised and the material pulled taut against her full chest. It was sheer agony being this close to her, especially looking so soft and sweet, and not being able to touch her. To hold her. To kiss her.
She moved with unintentional sensuality, yawning and stretching, in what was playing out in his fantasy-riddled brain as video vixen on top of a car—but, in reality, was just her attempts to get comfortable. By the time she relaxed and laid down he was about ready to pop in his pants.
Oblivious to the seductive torment she was causing him, she peeked over the back of the couch at him with wide innocent eyes and patted the cushion beside her. “Sit. We need to talk.”
Shit.
When she turned her head around, towards the blank screen of her television after summoning him, he took a moment to adjust himself. It didn’t completely camouflage his situation, but at least it didn’t look like there was a tent in his pants.
Carefully, he sank down beside her and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. She wanted to talk, and he had a million questions running through his mind. Starting with what in the hell she saw in Simon and who the hell was on the phone when she’d excused herself to take a call and then had come out of the apartment looking like Casper the ghost. But, since this was her show, he waited to see what she thought they needed to talk about. After several beats of silence, he glanced over to see her looking at him expectantly.
Did she expect him to say something?
One way to find out.
“What?” He hadn’t meant to bark his question, but it seemed like all of the pent up frustration and fear was finding its way out.
<
br /> She drew back slightly.
Shit. He should be comforting her, not scaring her. He was on the edge. Emotionally and physically. He really needed to deal with his own shit so he didn’t inadvertently take it out on the one person that didn’t need or deserve it.
All night he’d been in a heightened state of awareness of not just Maxi but also their surroundings. The poetry reading that they’d suffered through had been held in a coffee shop that had three points of entry and exit. Front door. Side door. Back door. He’d spent the entire night keeping track of who was coming and going. Who stared a little too long at Maxi, who paid no attention to her at all. Sadly, one of the people in the paid-no-attention-at-all category happened to be her date for the evening. Simon had seemed much more interested in analyzing and sharing his thoughts on the poets performing than he was in Maxi, or Maxine.
It’d taken discipline that Billy hadn’t known he possessed not to call him out on his pretentious, douchebag behavior. He’d bitten his tongue so many times he wouldn’t be surprised if he had permanent teeth marks in it.
With a quivery breath, Maxi licked her lips nervously. Again the man downstairs decided to interpret the gesture as all systems go before getting the orders from his brain. His shaft pulsed heavily beneath his zipper as he watched her tongue slip between her full, pink lips.
His eyes shot to the blank television and he tried to think of anything other than how badly he wanted to pull Maxi onto his lap and take over her lip-licking activities.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was so soft—just like it had been when she’d come out of the room for her date—that he wasn’t even sure that he’d heard her correctly.
“What?” he repeated, this time his tone not quite as harsh.
“I know you’re mad at me and I don’t blame you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what was going on with me. I wanted to tell you…I just…I didn’t know how. And, honestly, I kept thinking that it would stop. I didn’t want anyone to know. I didn’t want my dad to worry. He’s seemed tired lately—”
All He Wants Page 6
