by Lexi Ryan
Her eyes brim with tears. “Why are you doing this?”
“I see you out there, running like a woman possessed. Pushing yourself until your legs shake and you can hardly stand. Lizzy tells me you’re hardly eating. If you would just look at yourself. If you would see what I see and—”
“Stop.” She steps out of my grasp and turns her back to the mirror. “You don’t get to give me this speech, Max. Not you.”
“Why not?”
She crosses her arms under her breasts and lifts her chin. “Because it’s bullshit. We both know this isn’t about my so-called beauty. It’s about your guilt, but you don’t get to pretend anymore. I know the truth.”
My jaw hardens. “Pretend?”
“You know the truth. You know I’ll never be your type.” She pauses for a beat. Two. As if she needs a few seconds to remind herself to breathe. “And that’s okay. I’ve made my peace with that. But please don’t try to rewrite history and tell me that I was always the one you wanted.”
“I never said that. My biggest crime was being so hung up on Meredith that I didn’t see what was right in front of me. But I opened my eyes and realized what an idiot I was. I’d been on two, maybe three dates with you. I didn’t intend for anything to come of it. Then Meredith called me over—”
“I saw the texts,” she bites out. “I don’t need the play-by-play.”
“I went over to her house,” I growl, barreling forward. “And she kissed me. That’s all that happened. She kissed me, and I kept thinking about you. So I left.”
“So fucking noble of you.” She tries to push past me, but I grab her and wrap my arms around her, holding her tight against my chest.
“I’m done letting you blow me off. You’re going to listen to me this time. I left because I realized I wanted you.” She goes perfectly still in my arms, and I drop my mouth to her ear. “I know that doesn’t seem like much to you, but I’ve been in love with Meredith for years. And now she wants me for more than the occasional good time. She wants the life I wasted years dreaming she’d let me give her.”
“Then go to her,” she whispers.
“I can’t. I’ve felt real love with you. Good, healthy love. Love that makes me think about making babies and growing old. Settling in with someone whose hand in mine is the most comforting thing in the world. That’s what I want now, and I want it with you. All of it.”
“I don’t want a husband who sees me as the best companion. The best mother for his children. I want more than that. I want someone who wants me—physically—as much as you used to want Meredith.”
“I want you more than I ever wanted her.”
She scoffs. “Right.”
“I can’t believe how wrong I was.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I thought I was being the good guy by not pushing you about sex. I thought you needed me to be patient. To be okay with your rules, to be okay with you barely letting me touch you. But I was wrong. You needed to know. You needed me to show you how much I want you.” I drop my mouth to just above her ear. She smells so damn good. “I think about it all the time. My hands on your body. My mouth. The way you’d taste if you’d just let me kiss you everywhere.” I pull back, breathing heavily, fighting to keep myself from touching her, from kissing her until she listens to me.
She squeezes her eyes shut. “You’re confusing me.”
“Good. Maybe that means you’re finally listening to me.”
“Max…”
I step close, skim the shell of her ear with my lips “How can I prove it to you?” I whisper. “I’d think knowing how hard you made me when we touched might be enough evidence, but apparently not. Maybe you need more than that. Maybe you need to know how much self-control it took me not to seduce you. Or maybe you need to know that when you sucked my dick, the sight of your lips stretched over me turned me on so much that I had to close my eyes so I wouldn’t embarrass myself. Or maybe that’s not enough for you. Maybe I also need to tell you about what I think about when no one’s around. Maybe if you could see what I’m picturing when I jack off—if you had any idea how much I fantasize about driving inside of you, sucking those tits, making you come—maybe then you’d believe me.”
HANNA’S NAKED, sitting on the edge of my bed and staring at her phone.
I rub my eyes and look at the clock. It’s six in the morning. I came back to my room last night and found her waiting for me. I stripped her bare and kissed her until I couldn’t think anymore. Every day since my father’s death, I’ve felt myself sink a little further into the darkness.
Vivian doesn’t want Collin to be raised in LA, and I can understand that. Hell, I agree with her. But the week my father died, Vivian and her new husband started looking at houses in Tennessee. When Collin told me about it, he slipped and called Vivian’s husband “Dad.”
It was an accident, and Collin caught himself and giggled away his mistake. I tickled him and acted like it didn’t matter, but the slip ate at me. The fact that he said it by mistake and not deliberately proved something, didn’t it? And the more I thought about their move, their happy little new family, the more I realized I’ve lost my place in my own family again. Right now, I’m Collin’s second family, but soon, I won’t even be that. I’ll be tertiary. An afterthought.
Unwelcome at my own father’s funeral and soon to be an afterthought to my only son, I slipped deeper and deeper. The night I met Hanna was a bright spot in the darkness, and when I made myself say goodbye to her, it came back—suffocating me until not even the sound of Collin’s voice was enough to let me draw a full breath.
So I summoned my angel, knew I could climb out of the depths on the sound of her moans alone. I had her coming for the first time before we ever left the foyer, and by the time I had her in my bed, I felt like I could breathe again.
But I’m so fucking selfish that I didn’t think until now how much, by saving me, she’s tormenting herself.
Rolling over, I brush my knuckles across her shoulder blades. “What is it?”
She doesn’t look up from her phone. “It’s Max,” she says softly. “He wanted to check in and make sure I’m having a safe trip.”
I tense. If I’ve ever been used before, I’ve never cared. But the idea of my time with Hanna all working to manipulate the ex? The idea grates on me.
“What does he think of you being here with me?”
With a click, she places the phone back on the bedside table. “He doesn’t know. Everyone thinks I got an out-of-town wedding cake gig.”
I want to reach for her. Last night, I was so wrapped up in my own grief and my own need, I was so busy running from my own demons, that I didn’t think to ask about hers. But now I want to touch the tight lines around her eyes and make it better. To trace my thumb down her cheeks until I find the tracks of the tears he made her cry.
“I almost didn’t expect you to come,” I confess. “I thought you’d be back with him by now.”
When she turns to me, there’s an apology in her eyes. “I kissed him.”
“Okay.” Her words have jealousy eating at my gut. And fuck that.
“It just happened.”
“You can kiss anyone you want, you know,” I say carefully. “You don’t owe me anything.”
“I know but…this is different for me. I’ve never…” She shakes her head.
I had no right to invite her here. I need to back off. Leave her alone. I’m not interested in being involved with a girl who thinks she can’t kiss her ex-boyfriend. So I have no idea why I ask, “What’s his hold on you?”
Standing, she shakes her head and turns away, blocking her face from my view. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”
“You’re a terrible liar,” I say flatly.
She releases a humorless chuckle. “Better than an accomplished one, I guess.” She’s silent for a beat, and I wait, knowing she’s building to something, collecting her thoughts. Finally, she lets h
er gaze meet mine. “He proposed. After I got home from St. Louis.”
I blink. I’m not even sure what to do with that information. I’m not one of those guys who claims all women confound him. I like to think Janelle taught me the basics of understanding the female psyche. It’s one thing for Hanna to keep me secret from an ex. It’s quite another for us to have a secret fling when she has a fiancé.
“I told him I couldn’t,” she says.
I don’t like the relief I feel. “But you wanted to say yes.”
“I don’t know.” She worries her bottom lip between her teeth. “He told me to keep the ring. To give it time. He said he’d wait for me.”
Something knots in my stomach at that. “And do you want him to wait for you?”
“I shouldn’t, but I do.”
“Then I guess I only have one more question. Why are you here with me?”
She flicks her gaze to mine. “Because I wanted to say yes, and you remind me why I need to say no.”
Oh, damn. Fuck, fuck, damn.
I’m not even sure what she means by that, but I do know it should have me running in the opposite direction. Instead, I find myself gathering her against me and whispering, “Come to LA with me.”
This sweet virgin from Nowhere, Indiana, gave me one night, and now she owns me.
OPULENT. THAT’S the word for Nate’s house. Marble floors, crystal chandeliers, soaring ceilings, walls decorated with paintings that would probably send Maggie into fits of envy.
I love looking at it, gawking at all the glitz, yet I can’t imagine living here. It would be like living in a museum. I’d rather have my tiny little rental house in New Hope with Lizzy.
“What do you think?” he asks me as we end our tour.
“It’s gorgeous. I’ve never seen anything like it.” By New Hope standards, my family is “rich.” But there’s New Hope rich, and there’s Hollywood Hills rich.
Nate sighs. “Yeah. I guess it is.”
“You don’t like it?” A strange question to ask a man about his own house.
He shrugs. “It’s a house.” Then he pulls me against his chest and crushes his mouth to mine in a kiss that has me forgetting my name. His hands find their way to my hips and ass.
“Well, isn’t this a cute picture?”
When I try to back away at the sound of a woman’s voice, Nate takes my shoulders and turns me around while still keeping me close. “Janelle,” he says. “I’d like you to meet my guest. Hanna, this is my sister, Janelle Crane.”
The second he says her name, I see her face, and my jaw comes unhinged at the petite raven-haired beauty in front of me. Maybe I should have known that Nate’s sister was actress Janelle Crane. He mentioned his mom was an actress the night we met, so it’s not much of a leap to think he might have an actress sister as well. If I kept up on those weekly gossip magazines like my mom, I’m sure I would have connected the dots.
“Uh…wow…um…” I blink at her and search my brain for those things, the, um…words. Yes. I need words. Maybe a few of them. In a row.
Janelle raises a brow and shifts her gaze to her brother. “She looks smarter than your usual conquests, yet she doesn’t seem to know how to speak in complete sentences.”
“Don’t be a bitch,” Nate warns, but his tone is light.
My cheeks burn. “I’m just…a fan.” I swallow so hard you can hear it in the quiet room.
She sighs heavily. “Roommates, right?” she asks, referring to the popular sitcom my friends and I watched through college.
I nod stupidly. I mean, I’m here with Nate Freaking Crane, a celebrity in his own right, but I’m going all speechless over his sister.
“Hanna is a twin too,” Nate tells Janelle.
I snap my head in his direction. “You two are twins?” The night we met, he said that his curiosity about my twin didn’t come from a sexual fetish. Now I understand what he meant.
“I’m not trying to interrupt your romantic weekend or anything,” Janelle says. “I just couldn’t take another minute in his house.”
I bite my lip to make sure I don’t nose in where I shouldn’t. But seriously, it’s all I can do not to tell her that I was totally Team Janelle through her nasty, way-too-public divorce from actor Tom Comer. (Okay, so maybe I do sometimes check out the headlines on Mom’s gossip rags.) Whatever. He was blatantly cheating on her, and if three out of four nationally distributed publications sold at my grocery store are to be believed, the ass thought she should be okay with his infidelity.
“Why don’t you just move in here for a while?” Nate says. “You can lie low. You know I have more than enough room.”
Most of the sneer falls off her face and her eyes fill. “You mean it? I don’t want to get in the way of…” Her scrutinizing eyes try to figure me out. “Whatever this is.”
“Oh, no.” I shake my head. “This isn’t anything. I’m just a friend. I’ll be out of here in a couple of days.”
Nate tugs me closer, holding me against his chest. “Of course I mean it. Make yourself at home.”
“Nathaniel Crane, you did not invite company into this house without even giving me a word of warning!”
The three of us turn to see a large, muscular man step into the foyer, his ebony face a mask of disapproval, his hands on his hips.
“Hanna,” Nate says, “this is Jamaal. He’s my groundskeeper and head of security.”
Jamaal rolls his eyes. “Fancy title, but it really means I pick up Nathaniel’s dirty underwear and keep the screaming fangirls from breaking in to steal it.”
Nate grunts. “Will you please show Miss Thompson to my room, Jamaal? I need to talk to my sister for a minute.”
Jamaal takes my bags, and I follow him up the stairs and through the long hallway to the west wing of the house. The room is as magnificent as the rest of the house, and I can’t help but take in all the little details—the crown molding, the polished wooden floors, the marble-faced fireplace across from the giant bed.
Too late, I realize Jamaal is watching me. “Sorry,” I mutter. “I’ve just never seen a house like this.”
He only grunts in response. It doesn’t take a genius to see that he doesn’t trust me. “How long do you plan on staying?” he asks, clasping his hands in front of his body.
“Only a couple of nights.” I told my family I was going out of town to make a wedding cake for a college friend whose baker had to cancel at the last minute. They bought it, but the excuse only buys me two or three days if I don’t want anyone finding out about Nate. And I don’t. He has to be my secret if Max is going to get that grant.
My stomach twists at the thought of Max, but it’s a different kind of tummy twist since he pulled me in front of that mirror and said those things to me. Did he mean what he said or is it all part of his plan to win me back? Is he still trying to give me that confidence boost he set out to give me in the beginning? He seemed so…sincere. And hot. Since when is the idea of a guy thinking about me when he jacks off so freaking sexy?
“She can stay as long as she wants,” Nate says from the doorway. Guilt has me spinning around and turning off my thoughts of Max. Nate grins at me as he enters.
“Right,” Jamaal says. “Please let me know if you need anything.” He turns to Nate. “Could we speak in the hall?”
Nate nods, and the two file out into the hallway. I’m not trying to listen, but I’m not trying to not to either.
From Jamaal, I hear “bad idea” and “dealing with grief,” and Nate spits, “This isn’t about him.” Then there are murmurs and the door is opening again as Nate returns.
“How are you doing?” he asks, closing the door behind him.
“What was that about?”
Nate shrugs. “Jamaal doesn’t trust people. He’s worried that you’re taking advantage of me at an emotionally vulnerable time.”
“How does he know I’m emotionally vulnerable?”
“Not you. Me.” He sighs and crosses to me.
&nbs
p; “What happened?”
He shrugs. “My father died a couple of weeks ago.”
“Oh my God.” I feel like an inconsiderate bitch. Not to mention self-centered. I mean, he’s a celebrity, so it’s probably all over the news, but I had no idea. “I’m so sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. I’m fine.”
Before I can say more, he’s gathering me against his chest and burying his nose in my hair.
I wrap my arms around him and squeeze. Because I’ve lost a father too, and I understand that grief isn’t always simple. Then something clicks in my head and I pull back.
“But you’ve been in the Midwest the last two weeks.”
“I have. Did you get enough sleep on the plane, or do you want to take a nap?” He grins as if he didn’t just change the subject from the death of his father. “I’ll join you if you’d like some company in bed.”
I don’t push it. It’s not my business, and he clearly doesn’t want to talk about it.
Yawning, I stretch my arms above my head. “Now that you mention it, I could use a nap.”
His hands find their way under my shirt. “Fantastic. I did mention my no-clothes-in-bed rule, didn’t I?”
His hands have found the hook on my bra when we hear a knock at the door and we both freeze.
“Yes?” Nate calls.
“He asked her to marry him,” Janelle says, her voice small. “He just called me to let me know she said yes. Does he really think this is what I need right now?”
Nate squeezes his eyes shut and curses under his breath.
“It’s okay,” I promise. “Go be with your sister. She needs you. I could use a shower anyway.”
By the look on his face, I might as well have told him I was going to torture his puppy. “Fine, but tonight I’m getting you naked and making you come so hard you can’t remember your own name.”
