Love Her Madly

by Christie Ridgway

  Her brows came together. “Keep your voice down,” She glanced around, her gaze lighting on the two people in question. “Are you talking about Alexa?”

  “Of course I’m talking about Alexa. You promised to introduce her to a nice man and you hit upon the bright idea that might describe Reed?”

  She glared up at him. “You big fat liar. You were spying on us that day in the bridal salon after all.”

  “Cilla,” he said. “Reed Hopkins is a bestselling author of novels for kids and teens.”

  “I know that.”

  “Horror novels.”

  “That doesn’t make him horrible.”

  Bing flicked a glance at the other man. Hop Hopkins had three sons: Beck, Reed, and Walsh, each named after a famed rock guitarist. Beck was an adventure writer, freelancing for magazines about exotic locales all over the world. Walsh, who’d been one of those kids who regularly blew shit up with his chemistry set, had developed some kind of personal high-tech weapon that was so hush-hush it required he travel around training black ops teams in its use. Too secret to commit the knowledge to training manuals.

  Reed was the original still water. On the outside, he’d seemed like any other of the male Lemon kids, at too young an age found hanging around the outskirts of coked-up parties with half-naked—or all-naked—babes. But when he left the compound—as soon as possible, like the rest of them—he’d holed up somewhere no one knew about and started writing books.

  “Have you read any of them?”

  Cilla made a face. “I own them all, but you know me. I don’t like things that go bump in the night.”

  The series was set in a military school that was constantly beset by every monster imaginable. Since Reed had spent a year at just such an academy—though presumably without the fantasy creatures—it hinted to Bing that it hadn’t been a happy time for him. “Yeah, well, they’re wildly popular, but Walsh once told me Reed doesn’t do author appearances because the parents of his readers are afraid to let him meet their little darlings.”

  His sister glanced over at the other man. “Nonsense! He’s very handsome—”

  “They’re not afraid of his looks. They’re afraid of what goes on inside his head. What kind of man imagines that shit? Is that your definition of nice?”

  His warning only got him an extravagant eye-roll from her before she flounced away.

  Reminding himself he shouldn’t—didn’t—care about Alexa, he shoved the fruit on the table and headed for the back of the line. When Reed and Alexa joined him there, he grunted in response to their greetings, trying to ignore both them and the way thoughts of them together annoyed the hell out of him.

  Thoughts about Alexa with anyone were irritating.

  Especially irritating was that insight he’d had, that she had a wild side that needed to be unleashed. It was projection talking, he decided now. He was hot for her and it was convenient to think she might be his type under her ribbons and bows and white lace bridal career. She’d understandably rejected playing that way with him because she was actually the straight arrow she appeared to be.

  Good. Understanding that meant he wouldn’t ponder what could—couldn’t—be again.

  He was experienced at cutting off deep-thinking. He’d learned the practice early on in his life—fourteen or so. Don’t feel weird about catching your dad feeling up some woman in the pool. Don’t think it strange that the next day she’s feeling you up in the hot tub. Then, at eighteen, when the worst had happened, the only way to get through the aftermath was not examining and re-examining it so much of the time.

  He was Teflon. Shit bounced right off of him now.

  At the far end of one of the long tables, he ate his meal. The women did most of the chatter, though Ren looked far easier in his skin than he ever had and spent a lot of his time teasing Cilla and making her laugh. He talked to his sister Cami often too, and when the food was mostly gone it was he who brought out her guitar case.

  She worked in a salvage yard owned by her brother, Payne, by day. Many nights she hit the L.A. music clubs and was gaining a following with her throaty voice and blend of country, bluegrass, and folk rock songs.

  Bing kicked back, ready to enjoy a little entertainment. In her jean cut-offs and cowboy boots, she climbed up onto the table and cradled the instrument close. Then she said his name and tossed something his way. Without thinking, he caught the object, just as she began strumming the opening to John Hartford’s “Gentle on My Mind.”

  With a little smile, he started accompanying her with the fist-sized egg shaker, the sound of the dried rice against the wooden interior keeping the beat in its shivery way. Cami nodded at him as she began to sing the tune about the traveling man who didn’t forget the woman who accepted him that way no matter how far he roamed or whoever else might come between them. At the last chord, he caught Alexa’s gaze on him. He avoided it, tossing the egg back to Cami before she moved on to a beautiful rendition of Adele’s “Someone Like You” and then Willie’s “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground.”

  He wasn’t surprised when she swung into “Motherless Children,” which had become a kind of signature piece of hers. The traditional gospel spiritual had been covered by dozens of singers, but Cami’s version had a special poignancy, he thought.

  Motherless children have a hard time

  When their mother is gone.

  Motherless children have a hard time

  When their mother is gone.

  Motherless children have such a hard time.

  As she sang the verses, the hair on the back of Bing’s neck lifted. He glanced over and saw that Alexa was watching him again with those big brown eyes. And those big brown eyes were filled with tears.

  Shit.

  She was looking at him as if she knew something about him. Something deep. The things he refused to think about. Pain. A hurt that wouldn’t go away. Motherless children.

  But his hurt was nothing about mothers. The pain was the pain he’d caused someone else. And he got away from it by going away. By not dwelling on it.

  As Cami continued singing, he slipped away from the crowd. There was a back gate to the compound, beyond the orchard of fruit trees, and the latch squealed as he pushed through. Though he hadn’t walked this way in years, he found his way easily to one of the sites of the treehouses he and Brody had built in the canyon’s crevices.

  He came to a stop at the roots of an old, gnarled oak, and looking up saw signs of the structure they’d built as boys. When he thought he still had a chance to stay above the dirt that came with a Velvet Lemons life.

  Another person’s presence brushed along his nerve endings and he stiffened. “You need something, Brody?”

  “It’s me.”

  Of course it was. He’d known it when she was a dozen feet away.

  “You following me, Lex?” he asked lightly, still not turning to look at her. He didn’t need to. Big brown eyes. Lush mouth. Ribbons and bows the color of summer strawberries. “What’s up?”

  “I didn’t know you…did music.”

  “Shaky egg, doll. Kindergarten skill.”

  She came nearer. He could feel her at his elbow, the warmth of her body reaching out to his. He closed his eyes.

  “Motherless children.”

  Was he perceptive or what? He’d known her mind had swung in that direction. “Yeah. The nine didn’t have much in the way of maternal influences.” There was no way to talk about the paternal ones without shocking the hell out of her.

  “Brody said she left when you were little.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” He didn’t want to talk about it. Not because the facts had the power to hurt him. “I hardly remember her.” But he wanted to protect Alexa from the truth. The woman who’d given birth to him and Brody and Cilla had been a band follower. She hung with their father, Mad Dog Maddox, for enough years to have the three kids, then she’d upped and left with the bass player of another group when Cilla was a baby. The woman had died when t
he tour bus of the new band had overturned one dark night.

  It sounded sordid and he didn’t want sordid to even put a fingertip on Alexa Alessio.

  He didn’t want another man to put a fingertip on Alexa Alessio either.

  There. The truth. Irrefutable. Inescapable.

  Despite whatever lies he’d tried telling himself, he cared about what she would be doing and with whom. It didn’t matter whether or not she was his type. Though he only did sex one way, dirty, with wild girls who knew the score and knew he wouldn’t stick long enough to tally the hash marks, he still wanted Alexa with every fucking fiber of his being.

  And he didn’t see that changing anytime soon.

  Chapter Seven

  Traditionally, June was crazy in the wedding business. But at Bella Bridal, all months and all seasons were equally busy. As the calendar page turned to July, Alexa should have been too harried to notice the male presence that showed up in the shop at odd hours.

  Maybe if Bing’s arrival had been predictable—Tuesdays and Thursdays at two, say—she could have arranged her schedule to avoid him. But instead he’d arrive on Monday at ten or Wednesday at four and she’d tense in her office chair as she heard his now-familiar heavy step heading down the hallway toward the storeroom where he was installing custom storage for the bolts of fabric and spools of lace that were a staple of their business.

  What was predictable was how the sound of his voice made her scalp prickle and the edges of her ears turn hot. It would cause her to fumble her pen or knock a file off her desk with an elbow and sure enough she’d be head-down and red-faced as she tried to retrieve whatever item had done the floor-dive as he strolled by.

  “Morning, Lex,” he’d say, with barely a passing glance. Or he’d give her an “Afternoon” that was equally casual. The rest of the time he spent in the salon—that varied as well from a few minutes to a couple of hours—she’d force herself to stay in her seat, her gaze glued to her computer monitor until her eyes went dry. If she had clients in to discuss their website, she’d have to take copious notes and go over them more than once because she couldn’t reliably remember what had been discussed.

  It was a kind of torture. She thought about getting him alone—no!—or phoning him. Texting maybe. Somehow ask him not to come to the shop any longer. Surely some worker at his and Brody’s construction firm could finish the job. But Alexa’s grandmother was clearly pleased when he appeared and her mother laughed at things he said. Most of all, she couldn’t ask him to stay away because he was supposed to be her boyfriend so that the family didn’t pity her any more.

  No more poor, fat Alexa.

  No more jilted, heartsick Alexa.

  In their eyes she was now Alexa with a man. With Bing.

  So she suffered through the racing heart and the way he made her flesh go hot and soft when she merely caught a glimpse of his wide shoulders and the back of his dark hair. If her family happened to wonder aloud why she didn’t find excuses to hang with the man in her life when he was at the salon, she figured she’d tell them she was being professional. She told herself that surely he would finish the project soon.

  Not soon enough, apparently. Today, he’d shown up at eleven in the morning and an hour later her mother waylaid Alexa to insist she serve him some lunch. “We have that cold tortellini salad and the crunchy bread in the kitchen,” she said. “Roast beef. Make him a sandwich.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t like pasta. He might be allergic to beef.”

  Her mother looked at her in amazement and then narrowed her eyes. “Are you two in the middle of a fight?”

  “No, Mom.” Being in the middle of a fight would imply we actually are in a relationship that’s more than a fake, she wanted to say. Being in a fight would be a relief because it would mean that sometime before the fight he would have been close enough to do something about her racing pulse, her obsession with the curve of his biceps and the ropey strength of his forearms. It would mean that at one point he would have cradled her hot cheek in his wide, callused palm.

  It would mean she knew him as something other than a long-avoided, painfully unrequited crush.

  “I’ll make him lunch,” she said.

  Alexa put together plates in the kitchen, but cleared off the small table in her office so they could have the meal there. She didn’t want her family wandering around while she was eating with Bing. It seemed an intimacy that deserved privacy. Alexa and Bing eating together. Alexa and Bing playing at being a couple.

  She hoped she didn’t stare as he forked up pasta. For so long she’d avoided looking directly at him and if he was eighteen inches across a table she might forget herself.

  When the food was ready, she took a breath and headed for the storage room. He looked over as she stepped inside. Beneath her clothes, her body flashed hot. She tossed her hair over her shoulders to give herself a moment to get back in control.

  It was going to take more than a moment. He was in worn jeans, another T-shirt. Work boots that made her think of what he might look like wearing them alone.

  A tool belt. Her fingers curled into fists. It was worn, the saddle color darkened in places where his hands had passed over the leather on his way to a tape measure or the hanging hammer. The weight of that implement drew the strap down and to the left. The buckle was centered over the worn denim placket. She went a little dizzy thinking of what lay beneath there.

  “Lex?”

  Her gaze jumped up to his face, she could feel her flush move up to the roots of her hair. “You should let someone else…” She was distracted by the rising curve of his eyebrow.

  “Someone else?”

  She made a vague gesture. “Do this.”

  “I like to work with my hands.”

  It shouldn’t sound as if he’d said I’d like to lick you all over. Except that it did, and she dug her nails into her palms to prevent a sex fog from taking over her brain.

  “Did you need something?” he prompted.

  Lust billowed between her ears. I need you. I want you. She blinked a couple of times, looked down and away. “I made lunch. I made lunch for you.”

  “Nice.” She heard the jingle of that sexual enhancement strapped around his hips as he undid the clasp and let it drop to the ground. “I appreciate it.”

  All completely innocuous words, she reminded herself as she led the way to her office. Polite. Something a near-stranger might say.

  Really, they didn’t know each other at all, which made it so weird that he could steal the air in the narrow hallway so she could hardly breathe. At her doorway, she gestured him forward. “I hope you’re not allergic to beef.”

  “No allergies at all,” he said.

  He didn’t sit until she’d followed him into the room and he’d pulled out her chair for her. She attempted to drop into it gracefully and busied herself with pushing a tall glass of iced tea his way. When he settled into his own seat, his knees bumped hers.

  Her legs jerked out of his way of their own accord. Pretending not to notice, she pasted on a friendly smile. “So, how’s it going?”

  “Fine.”

  His non-committal tone reminded her of that day at the canyon. Cami Colson’s beautiful voice, the tiny break in it as she sang about motherless children. Alexa had been watching Bing though, and when he walked away she couldn’t do anything but follow him. He’d been keeping to himself all afternoon and the goofy, in-throes-of-a-crush girl that she was had some idea that he would talk to her. That she’d learn something about him. About his feelings about a lost mother.

  It doesn’t matter. I hardly remember her.

  She played with her pasta salad as he seemed to enjoy his sandwich.

  “What do you do in your free time, Lex?”

  Glancing up, she saw him take a long swallow of his tea, his Adam’s apple moving as the liquid went down his strong throat. He had stubble along his jaw and more black-pepper bristles circled his mouth, drawing her attention to his lips as he set his glass ba
ck on the table. They were full lips, both soft-looking and hard at the same time. A mouth made for gentle kisses. Hard kisses. Lots of kisses.

  I like to daydream about you, she almost said, then stopped herself at the last minute. “I like to cook. To read. The running you know about.” She remembered him keeping the beat while Cami played the first song. “You like music.”

  He grunted and took the last bite of his sandwich.

  She tried again. “Brody says you draw too. Architectural stuff?”

  “Sometimes.” He pushed his plate away. “We have a couple of people in the office who draft the formal plans, but I often do sketches on site to give an owner some ideas of what’s possible.”

  Intrigued, she glanced around for a sheet of paper and pencil. “Show me.”

  He worked fast. Then he turned the paper toward her and she saw a low building with wide windows set in a lush, almost tropical landscape. It looked peaceful and comfortable. Casual, yet elegant.

  “Some place you’ve built?”

  “Some place I will build. I’ve got my eye on a piece of property a little north of Malibu.”

  No wonder he’d been so quick about it. He’d probably worked it over and over in his mind. Alexa closed her eyes, imagining the sand and ocean on the other side of all that glass. It would be like living on the edge of the world. The sound of the surf would be a lullaby at night. “Beautiful.” Opening her eyes, she looked at him again, to see he’d found another sheet of paper and was drawing for a second time, a little smile playing over his mouth. One big palm half-covered the paper to hide it from her.

  “What’s that?”

  After another minute he pushed it across the table.

  Alexa frowned. “I don’t look like that!” It was an illustration—a caricature—of her, it had to be, because the figure wore a dress similar to hers, down to the tiny ruffle at the hem. The woman had hair that waved toward her waist. A big, Minnie Mouse-style bow sat on the top of her head. That wasn’t so bad. It was the face.

  Heavily lashed eyes, a snub of a nose. Fish mouth-lips. “You make me look like a trout.”