I opened my mouth to retort and she went on. “Love first and live later. Life will be more worth it when you’re not searching for the first.” She pursed her lips. “Just because you’re with him doesn’t change who you are. You’re still you. Just a little fuller of love.”
Let’s just get all out on the Hallmark mood here. “I don’t have room for him in my life. I don’t have time and energy to devote to figuring out what’s going on with him and gauging if what we have is real.”
“Because you’re not already doing that?”
I squinted at her. “No.”
“Bull.”
“Because you’re too stubborn to admit you’re just scared of change?”
“No!”
“Bull.”
Dammit. She was arguing back rapid-fire like Violet sometimes did, but Felicia was an adult. By age, at least.
“Look.” She held up a hand. “I know you think I’m some entitled, millennial brat…”
Gee, what gave it away?
“But I’m not wrong on this. After this whole weekend, what does your heart tell you?”
“That I hate cupcakes.”
She groaned. “After that.”
“The Vandellas can drink me under the table.”
Another wave of her hand to prompt me on.
“Never buy a moss-green tent manufactured by the West Erie Camping Company.”
Another hand roll, plus a deadpan.
“Hey, did you guys hike down that part of the trail with the Christmas trees in a row or along that rockier ledge?”
She frowned as if thinking back. “The part with the spruces. That ledge wasn’t a trail.”
I. Knew. It.
“Come on, Carly.”
I sighed. “I’ve learned that Mav is the best I’ll ever have.”
For sex. For laughs. For toughing out crappy travel accommodations. For surviving the wilderness. For…everything I’d want or need from a man. My instincts had been spot-on that very first time I’d met him and when he’d asked me out. I’d said no because he’d be the sort of man I’d fall for. Turned out I was right anyway. All that wasted time…
Having Felicia drag that admission out of me stung. I was so angry on the way to LA, I hated myself for what had happened. How the whirlwind of intense attraction threw me so far out of control of my life.
What could I have done differently?
Wear a fanny pack in New York to eliminate chances of a theft?
Watch MacGyver more to know how to bolster a tent pole in a rainstorm?
Take up compass reading and train myself to know how to track trails?
Whatever could have made the weekend more bearable, I knew without a doubt I couldn’t have resisted Mav. And I hadn’t wanted to.
And I’d been the one to point my finger at him.
I rubbed my forehead, feeling about two and a quarter inches tall again.
“Then you better be planning a hell of a take-me-back speech.” She settled back into her seat, as though her work was done. “We’ve got a half-hour until landing.”
False. I pulled out my phone and texted Richard that I needed to head back to Kentucky to be with Lexi. I had this flight, plus another one, and then one more back to Florida to mull over my groveling entreaty. “You know, I’m surprised you’re—”
“Pointing out that you might be an idiot?”
I worked my jaw then said, “That you’re encouraging me to go after him. Aren’t you supposed to be hip and preach that I don’t need a man? Progressive feminism and such?”
“Yeah, like I’m not wearing a ring from a dude who’s old enough to be my dad,” she challenged. “I don’t know much about you, but I can tell you don’t take shit from men and you’re holding down a job while raising your daughter. You don’t need to repel a guy just to maintain your independence and worth. When the chemistry is right, and the feelings are mutual, you’re co-dependent with stupidity and lying to yourself.”
I let that sink in for a moment. Or I tried to. Huh? But I got her point. Maybe she wasn’t as much of an airhead as she seemed to be. “You admit you’re marrying Richard for a transaction then? An arranged marriage?”
She shrugged and picked up her phone to scroll down something more worth her time than talking to me. “It’s just for names and legal matters. Who says I’ll actually have to be there to marry him?”
I narrowed my eyes at her. That seemed very…stubborn and noncommittal. “I am not delivering you to a wedding.”
Eighteen
Mav
Carly didn’t show up for work. She hadn’t come home, either. I hadn’t been waiting in the hallway, spying through the peephole, but she lived next to my place. I’d hear her coming down the hall at least.
Richard didn’t seem out of sorts either. He wasn’t entirely needy on Carly to survive his days. We usually had the weekends off, except for emergencies, but Carly was his right-hand woman in the offices during the week. If she was missing, he would have been inquiring about it.
Maybe she’d called off for a personal day. To get away from me. Or maybe she’d stated she needed time out of the office. To contemplate leaving?
“Goddammit,” I muttered as I trudged home after catching up in my office at Young, Inc. all day. A six-pack and a bag of carry-out from the local Almatto’s Deli and Bakery were in my left hand, and with my right, I replied to texts with Amber. Camp was still fun. She and Violet were having a blast.
So whatever Carly was up to, she hadn’t told Vi. Which meant…what? It was nothing important? She was just at home sleeping in? She wanted to tell Violet in person that she wanted to move and quit her job? That a spider cornered her in her bathroom and she was trapped without a way to call for help?
I wasn’t cut for this kind of overthinking and analyzing. I’d been with women before, but none of them had ever come close to mattering like Carly did. It was giving me a freaking ulcer. If she could just send out a smoke signal that she was okay…fine. Then I could try to move on for the rest of my life.
And when did I become so dramatic?
When I got to my door, I set the beer and food on the ground. I stood to insert my key into my door when the elevator pinged an arrival.
I turned to see who had come up.
Carly.
Finally.
I swallowed hard as she slowly stepped off the elevator and down the hallway. Her movements were dragging as though she hardly had the willpower to keep her head up. Yet she did. And she looked right at me.
Her hair was a mess of curls, like she’d run her hands through them too many times before it could dry. Wait, no. It was still wet? Or was that some new kind of styling product? Because it was…it had a pearly glint to it. The flapper dress shimmered in the soft light from the elevator’s ceiling. On her feet were the muddy, rugged hiking boots she’d bought from the sporting goods store in Colorado. And trailing behind her, like a carcass of glitter, lace, and ribboned cotton, was the cupcake costume with its life sucked out.
I waited for her to force herself over the distance to her apartment but she went right past it and came to me.
Lowering my arm, I hesitated. Catch her before she fell over? Offer her a wave hello? Crush her to my arms and kiss her? I swallowed hard instead and gave her all the time she’d need to speak up.
She never was great with silence and the waiting game. “I am never, ever going near a cupcake again.”
I quirked a brow and stuck my hand in my pocket.
“Can we—” She looked at my door and brought her baby-blue stare back to my eyes. “Can I come in?”
“What if I have cupcakes in there?”
She turned her head halfway to the side and back. “You…wouldn’t dare. You don’t bake, anyway.”
“I can buy them at the bakery.” I held up the Almatto’s bag and she recoiled from it. “I might have had the craving for something sweet after this weekend.”
She barked a laugh with too much self-pity. �
�Which I’m not.”
Oh, fuck. Her eyes shone too damn bright, getting glossier and glossier. Carly crying. Yeah, she’d said some harsh things to me but I’d never want to see her cry. She was sweet. And spicy. I loved both. If she could figure out a compromise…
“I don’t. I don’t have any cupcakes, Jesus,” I hurried to say as I unlocked the door. I grabbed my things from the floor and entered my apartment.
If she was going to break down, I could give her the privacy to do so in my place.
She followed me in and when she turned to shut the door, the costume was still stuck in the doorframe. I reached back to open it for her and she yanked the material inside. Then threw the heap to the other side of the room. And flung out her middle finger to where it landed next to my couch as well.
I stood still, watching her pant at the exertion, and then offered, “Want to burn it, too?”
She turned too quickly to me. “We can have fires here? On the balconies?”
I doubted it. No, I was pretty sure we couldn’t. Which only showed how exhausted and delirious she had to be if she couldn’t even return my joke with a ready comeback.
“Want a dri—”
She helped herself to it, marching across to my kitchen and snatching the bottle of whiskey from my drink shelf. After a long pull, she coughed, wiped her mouth, and then slammed the glass to the counter. With her hands braced on the granite, she heaved a deep breath.
“Liquid courage?”
She nodded.
“Where have you been? You didn’t come home last night. You didn’t come to work.”
And I’m proving my capabilities as a stalker…
“Kentucky.” She wiped at her mouth again. “Lexi had the baby.”
“Hey, congrats!”
She shuddered.
“Long labor?”
“Oh, that went fine. Give or take. Baby girl and momma are healthy and resting.”
I nodded my head toward the couch. Hell, if I was tired of being on my feet, she had to be too. She followed me over and instead of sitting on the sofa next to me, she lowered to prop her butt on the edge of my coffee table. Facing me, but to the side a little.
“I sense a but.”
“Oh, a big but.” She closed her eyes for a moment before opening them and saying, “Another woman just had a baby as well.” Then she faltered into silence again as though losing herself to not-so-fun memories. Her lips twisted into a faint grimace.
I leaned back and threaded my fingers behind my head. “Given she was in a maternity ward, I’m not shocked.”
“Right. Well, this woman wanted to do a newborn photoshoot with her baby girl, a child she had already nicknamed ‘her cupcake.’”
“Cute.”
She narrowed her eyes at me.
“There was a tray of cupcakes her mother had brought just for this picture crap. Like, gourmet, thirty-bucks-a-piece kind of things, not run-of-the-mill homemade PTA ones. They had it in a box on the check-in desk for the department. So. I was rushing to get there. Lexi’s water broke while I was flying from LA to here, and as soon as I landed, I got on the first flight to Kentucky.”
“We all know how you hate to be late.”
She blinked and tilted her head. “Yes. I mean, first babies usually take a while, so I knew I had time. And Jack hadn’t updated me with a call that she’d had the baby. Needless to say, I was hurrying. In this.” She brandished a hand at herself. “I’m not used to these damn boots. And I kind of careened around the hall too fast. And tripped on my bootlace. And…” She brought her hand to clap down onto the one resting palm-up in her lap. “And I landed in an opened box of cupcakes.”
“Face-planted?”
“Oh, yeah.” She tucked a likely still-sticky strand of hair back behind her ear. “It was a fucking frosting and cake explosion.” She gestured a bomb going off. “All over my face. Shot onto a nurse standing at the counter. I think some even flung onto their keyboard.”
I pulled my lips in to hide a smile. “I can only imagine.”
She nodded. “And the mom. Oh God, she was in tears. I’d ruined the photoshoot. Her mother was threatening to sue me.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know,” she drawled out like it was so ludicrous of an idea. “The nurses were trying to kick me out. Jack was helping to calm everyone down. Lexi—she wasn’t even stuck to the bed yet—she tried laboring-mama-splaining everyone into submission. I offered to put on the cupcake costume, an offer they did not appreciate at all. It was—” She grunted. “Can you please not do that?”
“What?” I brought my hands up from the back of my head.
“Air out the balls. Spread your legs. You’re just…” She flung her arms out and reclined, mimicking someone lounging spread-eagle. “I know what’s there. You don’t have to parade it for me.”
I grinned. “It’s just the way a man sits.”
“Then please cross your legs until I finish my story and get to my point of stopping by.”
Stopping by, then. Not staying. God, this woman could so easily slay me with minimal words.
“So cupcakes up my nose, in my eyes. I cleaned up. Apologized profusely, and got to be in the room to see Lexi have her baby girl.” She held up her hand. “No poop, FYI.”
“I really didn’t need to know that.”
“Well, Violet will sure ask.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s why I didn’t come home or report to work today. That’s why I’m only getting home now.”
“Why the flapper dress?”
“I was out of clothes. I didn’t have time to get any. LA to Kentucky to here. It was this or that demonic costume.” She pivoted to face me fully. “And as soon as I got here, I knew the first thing I had to do was apologize to you. I’m sorry.”
I quirked my lips. “It wasn’t all your fault. It was mine, too. It was both of us doing our best to simply get through a weird weekend.”
“Weird?”
“It wasn’t a normal one, for sure.” She scooted closer and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and holding her hands steepled together.
“It was dangerous. Illegal at times. And…fun.”
“The hiking, huh?”
She shook her head but smiled. “The you and me part was fun.”
“The sex? Glad I could be of service.”
She nudged my knee aside until she sat directly in front of me. “Pretty sure me cleaning off maple syrup from you was me pleasuring you, that time. But no, not just the sex. Just…you and me. Together.”
“Even in the tent?”
Her smile was small and then bashful. “Especially in the tent.”
She inhaled a great breath before continuing. “I wanted to come here to tell you that I was afraid. And when it seemed like I was losing control of the boundaries I’d set up in my man-free life, I felt threatened. I’d spent too much time protecting myself from getting hurt by a man that I couldn’t even listen to my instinct that you might be different. It was so fast and sudden, being away together, and it was hard to keep up with the changes.”
“And now?”
“I can admit and work on my fears.” She shrugged. “Open up to you, be your…your something, if you want me. If you’ll be mine, too. I kept trying to insist that you—no guy—could belong in my life. Which was a moot point. You already were in my life.”
“And I can stay there?” I sat up and scooted to the edge of the couch. She mirrored my gestures and slid into the space between my legs, so close I could spot the sprinkles dangling in her tresses.
“With a few adjustments, yes.”
“Such as?”
She slid to the very edge of the coffee table until I was inhaling the sweet scent of her. And buttercream icing.
“I want you to be right next to me. Always. No matter how much we might make more war and less love in any given day.”
“For better or worse,” I agreed. “That’s it? Just next to you?”
She frowned. �
�I want you with me. I want to be with you. Direct enough? I’m not poetic.”
“What about…under you?”
Her lips curved in a mischievous smile. “Of course.”
“Over?”
Her hand slid along my forearm, pulling me toward her. “Hell yeah.”
“Behind—”
She stole a kiss and I felt my world tilt right again. Her sigh fanned my chin as she said, “Any and every way possible.”
“How about right now?” I asked, reaching for her waist.
Instead of melting under my suggestion, she stood up. “I need to shower!” She shook the dress at me. “I’m a roaring twenties sugar mess. I wanted to get here and grovel before I cleaned up. Give me ten minutes and I’ll—”
I stood and took her hand, leading her to my bathroom. “I think we can do that much better with some good old-fashioned teamwork.”
Teamwork. Both of us needed to work to make us a success. “And I’m sorry, too, Carly. About the alarm, the trail. Hell, I’ll even shoulder the blame for the spider.”
“I know. I get it.” She stepped into my bathroom and turned her back to me.
I reached for the zipper and tugged it down her body. Finally acting on the fantasy that had me riled since New York.
“We’ll both need to know how far to push each other,” she stressed.
I loved that she wouldn’t agree to stopping. We’d bicker and quarrel. It was a given. “But at least we’ll always catch each other.”
She winked at my reflection in the mirror. “That we will, Mav. We most definitely will.”
I’d love to know what you thought of Carly and Mav.
Please consider leaving a review.
Acknowledgments
For editing, I thank C.J. Pinard at www.cjpinard.com. For the cover design, I thank Kellie Dennis at Book Cover By Design at www.bookcoverbydesign.co.uk.
About the Author
Amabel Daniels lives in Northwest Ohio with her patient husband, three adventurous girls, and a collection of too many cats and dogs. Although she holds a Master’s degree in Ecology, her true love is finding a good book. When she isn’t spending time outdoors, or wondering how to negotiate with her mightily independent daughters, she’s busy brewing up her next novel, usually as she lets her mind run off with the addictive words of “what if…”
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