Love Her Madly

by Christie Ridgway

  “Hey.” She introduced him to her cousin, Kyle—not Nico—and asked for a margarita when he inquired about her drink order.

  As he made his way toward the bar, he could feel a dozen pair of eyes on him. That meant, he supposed, that the older generation had passed on to the younger that Alexa had a new man in her life. Turning with drinks in hand—her marg, his beer—he caught the speculative expression on more than one face. People were wondering if it was really true.

  He wanted to gnash his teeth. Fine. He was going to have to sell this. Somehow appear devoted while keeping his distance.

  Damn Brody.

  She’d selected a table and left a spot open for him. Bing slid her glass in front of her then pulled out his chair. Her smile faltered when he tapped his bottle against her glass.

  To Bing getting what he’s been aching for.

  That’s what he’d said the last time they’d toasted. He sucked in a quick breath, trying to clear the lust attempting to overtake his thought processes. A bluebird the size of a bee was winging over her pert left breast and he wanted to press his mouth against it like crazy. Give it a little bite.

  “Bing…” She took a quick sip of her crushed-ice concoction and then had to lick some crystals of salt off her upper lip with the tip of her tongue.

  He swallowed his groan.

  “…are you okay?”

  “What makes you say that?” he asked, tipping his bottle for a long draw of beer.

  Cool fingers brushed his forearm. He slid away from her touch. Distance.

  “You look a little tense,” she said.

  “Meeting new people makes me nervous.”

  Her forehead wrinkled, then her gaze shifted from his face to a spot over his shoulder. “You’d better brace yourself then, because here comes my cousin Drea.”

  Cousin Drea was sharp elbows, brittle wrists, and a face that was pretty but with over-spiked lashes and pointed cheekbones and chin. Her hand shot out and she popped a smile that burned the retinas like a photographer’s flashbulb. For a little thing, she had a manic grip.

  “I know Brody,” she stated, squeezing his fingers like they were an uncooperative bottle of ketchup. “You’re not him.”

  “Bing,” he said, yanking his hand free. “His twin. Alexa’s…” Shit. Alexa’s what? Date? Boyfriend? Rebound man? That last thought pissed him off until he recalled that in real life he wasn’t Alexa’s anything. Only in family wedding-life were they a couple.

  Lex cleared her throat and her small hand landed on his shoulder, light, like one of those birds on her dress. He felt it to the bone.

  “He’s my…” A label seemed to elude her as well.

  A cat-smile turned up the corners of her cousin’s lips. “Hmm.” Her mouth opened, but then someone hailed her from another table. She spun, spun back. “I’ve got to go, but we’ll talk later, Alexa’s…” She let it lie there just like they had. Then she was gone.

  Lex slumped in her chair. “She’s seen right through this already. Through us.” Then she straightened, and sent him a glare. “Thanks a lot.”

  He frowned at her, his lousy mood smoking along the edges with temper. “How’s it my fault?”

  Her voice lowered in a half-ass imitation of his. “Alexa’s…” She rolled her eyes. “You couldn’t even say it.”

  “Say what?” he asked. “What did you want me to claim? Are we dating? Are we in a relationship? Or are you merely the girl who lets me do nasty things to her in bed?”

  “Shh!” She glanced around, a blush making her cheeks rosy. “Do you have to say things like that?”

  When I want them to be true. “Sorry, but you’ve got the bad twin.”

  “I think I made a bad mistake,” she muttered.

  He could smell her perfume. It was slightly sweet and slightly spicy and it made him think of hot sun, warm honey, and what she might taste like when she opened her thighs to him. He gripped his hands around his beer, trying to shove the thought away, but in his mind’s eye it still played out…Alexa on her back, her knees up, her legs spread, her fingers tight in his hair as he went down on her.

  Cursing himself, he scooted his chair another inch away from hers.

  She went still. Then she jumped up and stalked away from him, her hips swinging.

  “Shit.” But he let her go, because the farther away she was, the better he could keep his promise. Devotion would have to be shown some other way.

  Kyle, the cousin he’d first met upon arrival, dropped into the chair on Bing’s other side. His dark hair was worn long and he tucked it behind his ears. “I’m here to get the dirt,” he announced in a cheerful tone. “They always assign me stuff like that because I’m so accommodating. I’m the good-natured Alessio.”

  Bing raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? Tell me about the other ones.”

  Kyle looked around at the crowd, then nodded at a young woman standing nearby, one leg wound around the other. “That’s my sister, Yvonne. Very excitable. Always looks as if she’s on the verge of wetting her pants.”

  The comment surprised a laugh out of Bing.

  “Don’t tell her I said that.” Kyle’s smile was easy.

  “I’ll refrain from inserting that into conversation.”

  “Then there’s CeeCee.” He gestured with his thumb to a young woman with platinum hair that was in stark contrast to her dark eyebrows and red lipstick. “She’s rebellious. It’s going to be hard getting that nose ring out of her for the wedding ceremony.”

  “But she’ll do it?”

  “If anyone can make that happen, it’s Drea. She’ll either issue a dramatic demand or go all teary so CeeCee feels guilty. Our bride-to-be’s the manipulative Alessio.” The guy hesitated. “What about you?”

  “What about me…what?” Bing asked.

  “Most of us have met Brody. Like the guy. How’re you different?”

  We come from the same bubbling swamp of decadence and licentiousness, of adrenaline and sin, but I don’t paper over my dark places. He shrugged. “You probably need to ask someone else.”

  “Nico has nothing nice to say about you.”

  “What?” Irritated, Bing took another swallow of his beer. “I’ve never met the man.”

  “That’s him,” Kyle said, gesturing again with his thumb. This time he aimed it at a guy lounging against the bar in too tight pants and a striped shirt that made him look as if he should be poling gondolas around Venice canals.

  Maybe he was good-looking, in a studied, slick, see-me-in-the-movies way. “Why’s he talking about me?”

  “About you. About you and Lex. He seems to think it’s just a little too convenient that she finds a lover in her best bud’s brother.”

  “It should make perfect sense to him,” Bing said, “since he dropped his fiancée for her first cousin.”

  “I know.” Kyle shrugged. “But that’s Nico for you. Mostly I think he doesn’t like the idea that Alexa could get over him so easily. Or ever.”

  “Well, his ego sounds insurmountable anyway.”

  Kyle laughed and pushed back his chair. “I can report to the family you’re funny. But this thing with you and Lex…”

  Bing stopped listening when he noted Nico straightening from his slouching, male-model pose at the bar. His head lifted as if scenting his mate—or prey—and Bing followed his gaze to Alexa who was slipping through a doorway in the direction of…somewhere.

  The other man started after her.

  Bing’s chair tipped as he pushed out of it.

  Though he moved as quickly as he could through the crowd, by the time he tracked down the pair, they were in conversation in a darkened side room that was probably used for big groups. He hesitated in the hall, feeling his hackles rise as the other man loomed over Alexa, a half-smile on his face. She stared up at him, her own expression frozen.

  Maybe he should leave them alone, he thought. Perhaps they had things to say to each other. Maybe she wanted to lay a slap on that pretty-boy face. Maybe he needed time
to beg her to take him back.

  A burn rose from Bing’s gut, but he forced himself to remain the observer. She could tell the bastard to back off, if she wanted. And it didn’t seem like she wanted. Instead she was continuing to stand there like a delicate statue, her eyes trained on Nico’s face as he spoke to her in an undertone.

  But then Alexa took one step back and the ego-inflated ex put his hand on her shoulder. Her head jerked and she glanced down in revulsion, as if a big, hairy spider was perched there.

  And Bing was on the move.

  Nico must have sensed an extra presence in the room because he glanced over his shoulder. “Man, we could use a little privacy, capiche?”

  Bing ignored him, his eyes on Alexa. “Lex—”

  “We got words to say to each other,” the other man said, his voice going hard.

  Bing’s gaze didn’t leave her face. It had gone expressionless again. “Lex, you want to hear anything from him?”

  “No,” she said.

  “You want to say anything to him?”

  “No,” she repeated.

  “There you go.” Bing strode closer to capture her hand and draw her away from Nico. Without looking at the man, he caught her face in both his hands and tilted her head toward him. “Okay? All right?”

  “Sure.”

  But he wasn’t okay or all right. That fire was still burning in his gut and he couldn’t erase the image of the ex touching her, the woman Bing…that Bing…that Bing considered… That Bing had pledged to help. Flicking his gaze at the clearly frustrated Nico, he gestured toward the hall with his chin. “Get lost.”

  “Alexa…” There was a sulky protest in the other man’s voice. “Lex—”

  “Get lost.”

  Her hands crept up and her fingers wrapped Bing’s wrists. “There’s no need—”

  “Yes, there is.” There was need, damn it. A need to wipe away Nico’s touch on her, a need to wipe away that frozen look on her face. A need of Bing’s to taste those full, lush lips. Ignoring everything but that imperative, he angled his head and crushed his mouth against hers. Her taste, cool and tart, exploded on his tongue. His hands slid from her face, to her shoulders, to her hips. He yanked them close, gathering her to his bigger body.

  His tongue touched the seam of her lips and her head fell back as her mouth opened to him. Finesse was for some other day as he filled the hot cavern and felt her hands clutch at his shirt. She was on tiptoe, crowding him, and he banded one arm at her waist to hold her there as the other hand wandered up her side, tracing the fragile ribs, the underseam of her bra.

  He couldn’t breathe so he broke the kiss to haul in breath. As he sucked in air, he drew his nose along the edge of her jaw and nuzzled the skin beneath her ear. She shuddered, and he bit the lobe to feel her do it again.

  “God,” he murmured, in praise or thanks or some damn thing. She was doing that candlewax thing again, melting sweet and warm in his arms. One of her small hands burrowed under his shirt to find the bare skin of his back and heat flashed over him and his cock pulsed like she was gripping him there. His mouth crashed down on hers again and his tongue plunged, the kiss going wild and greedy as their hands explored whatever, wherever they could reach.

  The sound of a gasp penetrated his consciousness. It wasn’t Alexa’s, she couldn’t make a noise like that with his tongue filling her mouth. She froze and he stilled.

  Light applause had his head whipping around. A small crowd stood in the hall, just outside the half-dark room. The clapping hands were those of the bride-to-be, Drea, who wore a big smile. She glanced up at her fiancé, Nico, who didn’t appear nearly as pleased. “It’s a real romance!” she crowed. “I had my doubts,” she said, now wagging a finger at the two of them. “But that kiss just put those doubts to rest.”

  Alexa stepped out of his arms. Bing let her go, giving her a sideways glance and almost gawking when he got a load of how she looked. In one word: ravished.

  Her hair was tousled, her lips were swollen and red, two buttons of the fairy librarian dress had come undone at the throat. One hung by a thread.

  She glanced at him, glanced down at her feet as the crowd began to move away. “Thanks,” she murmured, sounding breathless. “I think you convinced them.”

  Shit, Bing thought, scrubbing his hand over his face and into his hair. What he’d done was not meant to convince anyone. As a matter of fucking fact, he’d forgotten anyone else was there.

  His gaze returned to Lex’s flushed face and ravaged mouth. Worse, he’d also forgotten his solemn promise not to touch.

  And her taste? The way she’d come undone in his arms? He had a bad feeling he’d remember those forever.

  Chapter Five

  As Alexa exited her front door on her way to her mailbox, her gaze snagged on the shirtless man next door, standing on a tall ladder. Her feet stuttered to a halt as two waves of feeling ran through her: simple gratitude and a just as simple rush of feminine appreciation.

  Since the happy hour a few days before, the tension between Drea and herself at the bridal salon had lessened. Or maybe it was just that Alexa’s tension had diminished. No longer did her nerves twist into knots every time her cousin brought up her imminent wedding or each time she glimpsed her grandmother working on the fascinators.

  The new calm—Alexa’s new calm—was because the bride-to-be and the other family members who worked in the shop or drifted in and out of it all day long had ceased tiptoeing around her as if she’d shatter at any moment. Bing had done a good job. The kiss had served its purpose. They truly believed she’d moved on.

  Completely.

  Twice—with a wink!—her cousin had accused her of daydreaming when she didn’t respond to some comment about the upcoming nuptials. The others in the shop had laughed knowingly.

  She didn’t disabuse them of the notion that she was something beyond busy with work. If they wanted to believe she was head-in-the-clouds over Bing instead of focused on the latest website build, so be it. Her pride was healing by the minute.

  Bing really was an excellent kisser, she thought, recalling the sure way he’d gone about it. Not that she hadn’t done her part too, which made her feel even more pleased. After their lips had unlocked he’d appeared a bit…staggered? Could she really have kissed well enough to rattle a man like Bing Maddox?

  Swaggering a little, she approached her neighbor’s side yard, ogling his half-nakedness. He wore a pair of battered white painter’s pants, which hung low on his hips. One of his arms, ropy with muscle, was hard at work scraping paint from the siding. Flakes of the pale gray stuff showered the tops of his wide shoulders and stuck here and there to the tanned skin that stretched over his back. A sheen of sweat glistened on his flesh.

  Her heart did a little flip in her chest. Whose wouldn’t? She was alive, wasn’t she? And if the memory of that decadent, delicious, nearly out-of-control kiss had crept into her thoughts during work a time or two… Well, it bore repeating: She was alive, wasn’t she?

  On a sawhorse beside the ladder sat his cellphone, a jug of water, and an open can of paint the same color that he was removing from the outside wall. Shading her eyes with her hand, she called up to him. “Hey there!”

  Bing glanced down and she beamed him a smile straight from her grateful heart.

  “What?” he asked, his tone surly.

  “Gee, you sound happy.”

  “I’ve got things on my mind,” he said. “And I’m not sleeping well. So what do you want?”

  Nothing was going to ruin her good mood. “Just to say ‘hey’,” she answered in a sunny voice that matched the day. “What’s wrong with the paint?”

  He’d returned to attacking it, his attention off her now. “It’s shit so it’s gotta go.”

  Alexa wondered about that. From observation, she’d learned that both Maddox twins liked to work with their hands when they were bored or in a temper. “I thought it was newish. Didn’t you paint when you moved in a year ago?”


  He grunted.

  His lack of communication didn’t deter her in the least. She continued to watch the play of muscles in his back and the bunch of his butt cheeks as he shifted his feet. Up that ladder, he was…safe. All those months when she’d not managed to get him out of her thoughts, she’d done her best to avoid him in person. But now here he was, in all his Bing-glory and—what the heck!—she was going to enjoy herself.

  “Why did you guys move here anyway? I see you in some swanky condo or in a bachelor pad at the beach.”

  Their neighborhood was a charming one, for sure, but it was kind of…normal for a couple of guys who’d grown up in legendary Laurel Canyon as rock royalty.

  “Good investment,” Bing said. “We got sweet deals through someone we know. Short sales. We’ll be gone in another year.”

  “Oh.” Disappointment had no business in her day.

  “You’ll be sad to see us go, Lex?”

  “No.” Yes. She’d lose her BFF that was a guy. Her running buddy, too. And…okay, it had to be admitted. The idea that the two wild boys of the canyon had landed in suburbia had given her the idea that they were ready…that they wanted…that they could…

  Settle down.

  Silly Alexa. That they were in her world wasn’t anything close to destiny. It was because they saw it as a good investment, nothing more, nothing less. Shaking off the melancholy that was trying to cling to her, she reminded herself the sun was out and life was good. No blues today!

  “Alexa.”

  At her name, she glanced around to see Marty crossing the grass.

  “Hi,” she said, smiling. “You look nice.” His Dockers appeared brand new and he wore them with a dress shirt that his mother had ironed so that the short sleeves had sharp creases down the centers.

  “Thank you.” He stood there as if he’d forgotten what he came to say.

  “Is there something you wanted?” she asked.

  “Um… How about dinner tonight? Do you have any ideas?”

  Her brow creased. “Did you need a recipe?”