by Virna DePaul
“Hey,” Max said, rushing to her side. “Look at me, Dixie.”
When she did, he cupped her face. “I am crazy about you. You have nothing to worry about with Elizabeth. We’re just friends.”
Friends who’d had sex with each other. Friends who’d been photographed in a passionate embrace just days ago. But it wasn’t like she didn’t have a past, too. And he’d so easily believed in her innocence against Logan Cooper’s accusations. She needed to believe in him, too.
“Okay,” she said. “So why do you look so worried?”
“Elizabeth was just about to board a plane to Vegas when she called and it’s probably getting ready to take off.”
Good Lord. Did this have to do with their plan? Had she called to arrange another photo op with Max? Because she knew Max wasn’t exactly hers, but she felt like he was. She didn’t want another woman’s anything on him, and she certainly didn’t want photos of it splashed all over the papers. “So you and she…” She waved her hand in a circle but he grabbed it and squeezed gently.
“This has nothing to do with our plan. She was upset. She said she’s about to cave and beg her cheating ex for another chance.”
“And she doesn’t have anyone else to go to?”
He winced. “I know it’s bad timing but…” Again he ran his hands through his hair.
“But she’s your friend,” she said.
“Yes. She is. But she’s just a friend. And you’re going to be so much more than that to me. You already are. If it makes you uncomfortable I won’t pick her up.”
She didn’t want him to go, of course, but the whole reason she was here with him right now was because she knew what a great guy he was. A great guy would be there for his friend. “You should go.”
“Are you saying you’re not uncomfortable with the idea?”
“I’m sayin’ I trust you, Max. That I wasn’t lyin’ when I said I wanted more than sex from you. I want… I want to build somethin’ special with you. Somethin’ lastin’.”
“I want that, too.”
She nodded and forced a big smile. “So how much time do you have?”
“How much time do we have. And the better question is how much ‘special’ can we fit into two hours?”
“I don’t know, but I’m lookin’ forward to findin’ out.”
“What about your breakfast?”
“I’ll take my eggs and coffee cold. So long as I get you while you’re hot.”
***
At Max’s request, Grace stayed at his condo after he left to pick up Elizabeth at the airport. He promised he’d be back in a few hours, after he had a chance to talk with her. Grace used the opportunity to visit Melina, who was doing great and would be going home the next day. She was just saying her goodbyes when Max called.
“Hey,” she said. “Everthin’ okay?”
“With Elizabeth? I’m hoping it will be soon.”
“Does that mean you’ll be back in time for a late lunch?”
“I’m not sure. Things are a little… complicated. But will you wait for me at my place?”
His serious tone finally registered. It seemed more than just serious because his friend was having troubles. It sounded like he wanted her to wait for him so he could have a talk with her about something she wouldn’t want to talk about.
She glanced at Melina and Rhys, whose heads were bent in conversation. She hadn’t told them about Elizabeth’s impromptu visit, just that Max had business to take care of and would be by later. Then she’d dodged Melina’s insistent questions about what was going on with her and Max. But she’d also blushed the whole time, making Melina laugh and only press harder until Rhys had said gently, “Ladybug, drop it. They’ll tell us in their own time.”
She caught them looking at her as she talked to Max and stuck her tongue out at them even as she turned away. The playful gesture, however, contrasted sharply with the worry Max’s demeanor and words had caused within her.
“Grace, will you wait for me?”
“Of course. But what’s wrong? You’re worryin’ me.”
She heard him exhale loudly, as if gathering his courage. “I told you, you have nothing to worry about as far as Elizabeth goes. Problem is, she got off the plane wasted and I’ve been trying to sober her up while at the same time keeping her off the radar.”
Poor Elizabeth, she thought. It was bad enough to be going through such a tough time without having to worry about bad press. “Anythin’ else?”
“She showed me a paper she bought at the airport. We’re in it, Grace. Someone took a picture of us kissing outside the baby store.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. That wasn’t great news, but it wasn’t horrible either.
“Grace, I’m sorry. I promised to keep things between us private and—”
“Max,” she said as she deliberately turned to face Melina and Rhys. “We kissed on the street.” Melina and Rhys grinned and gave one another a high five. Melina even did a little jig in bed, which made Melina nod and smile. “It’s not your fault. And I’m not upset. I mean, the two of us…if we’re goin’ to be together… People will find out. By the way, I just outed us to Melina and Rhys. They seem pleased as punch about it.”
For the first time, his tone lightened. “Good. Now I can kiss you wherever and whenever I like.”
“As if anythin’s changed,” she teased.
“I’ll see you soon, Dixie.”
“See you soon,” she said.
But hours later, even after wrapping up her visit with a very happy Melina and Rhys, visiting the gym and watching a movie from Max’s DVD collection, Max still hadn’t returned.
Now it was six p.m., about seven hours after Max left for the airport to pick up Elizabeth. She’d just put another movie into the DVD player when someone knocked on Max’s door.
She opened it to a nice looking man with curly dark hair. He wore a dress shirt and tie, a camera hanging from his shoulder, and a lanyard around his neck with some kind of ID. He was holding a pencil and pad of paper. “Ms. Sinclair, I’m Jeff Michaels with the Vegas Scoop.”
Grace moved to shut the door. Michaels stuck his foot into the doorway to block her.
Grace’s brows snapped down. “Move your foot. You have no business bein’ here.”
“You’re sleeping with Max Dalton, a celebrity around here, and he’s sleeping with Elizabeth Parker, an even bigger celebrity.”
She didn’t mean for it to come out. It just did. “Max is not sleepin’ with Elizabeth.”
Michaels smirked. “Sorry, but he is. I just came from seeing them check into a hotel near the airport.”
She lifted her chin. “I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. You think I’ll just take your word on that?” Besides, even if he was telling the truth, Max had said Elizabeth was drunk and he’d needed to take her someplace away from prying eyes. A hotel would certainly qualify.
Michaels held up his camera and showed her the screen.
He’d taken a picture of Max and Elizabeth in what appeared to be a full-on clinch, but could very well have been a hug between friends—if one of those friends was extremely upset. In the image, Max wore the same dark slacks and mint green shirt he had on when he’d left. And there was a little time stamp at the bottom of the screen indicating it was taken about three hours earlier, right around the time Max called her.
It would have been easy for her to jump to conclusions but, with the whole fiasco with Logan Cooper still fresh in her mind, she didn’t. Instead, she remembered Max saying it would be easy to fall in love with her and she focused on that.
She focused on the fact she already loved him.
The reporter, however, wouldn’t give up. “I followed the two of you here earlier. When Dalton left, I followed him. After I saw him with Elizabeth, I figured I’d come back and see if you were still here…”
“So you could hurt me? Sorry, you’ve failed. I know what kind of man Max is and that’s all that matters. You can print whatever you want about
him. I won’t think any less of him.”
Michaels finally withdrew his foot from the doorway. “Does that mean you have no comment about the story I’m about to break?”
“There is no story.”
“But there is. There’s the story about how Elizabeth Parker couldn’t keep her husband satisfied in bed and she’s venturing into new territories with an old boyfriend, only he’s cheating on her with a woman who likes sex so much, she harassed one of her students. A woman who likes sex so much she texted a naked picture of herself to Max Dalton’s cell phone.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Max’s Magic Rule #17:
Know when to pack up your things and get off stage.
Three days later
Grace closed the trunk of her car after shoving the last few things from her office inside. Before getting behind the wheel, she texted Melina the ruling by the university’s ethics committee. She copied Lucy and Rhys on the message. She thought about adding Max, as well, but ultimately didn’t.
She did, however, scroll to the messages they’d sexted one another during her Skype interview.
She should have deleted them. She didn’t. She couldn’t.
She hadn’t seen him since that day he’d left to pick up Elizabeth from the airport. Once Michaels had told her the subject of his article and that it involved information derived from her texts with Max, she’d driven back to her hotel, packed up her things then stopped by the hospital to say goodbye to Melina and Rhys, swearing she’d fly down as soon as the babies were born.
She didn’t leave Max a note. Didn’t phone him.
And although he’d been blowing up her phone since she’d left, she’d refused to answer.
She wanted to. She had to force herself not to because she was afraid she’d cave and beg him to give her another chance. But regardless of her feelings for Max, regardless of how much she believed he hadn’t betrayed her with Elizabeth, Michaels’ visit had clarified the real reason she and Max couldn’t be together.
It wasn’t that he was a playboy and wouldn’t want to have a relationship with her. It was because he was a celebrity, one whose private life would constantly be fair game to the media. He was also a man who made all the kink she’d been born with go into hyper drive.
That’s not what she wanted.
She wanted love. She wanted family. But most of all she wanted a normal life.
Now that she’d left Vegas, she was several steps closer to getting it.
For now, the fiasco with Logan Cooper was over.
The university’s ethics committee had ruled in her favor. In the end, they’d decided Grace’s behavior at the campus mixer had been unwise but not unethical. A huge factor in the committee’s decision was that, after Grace’s lawyer forwarded him the article Michaels had run in The Scoop, Steven LaBrecht had come forward to testify on her behalf after all. She and Steven had gone to coffee after he gave his statement to the committee, and Steven said the woman he was dating was sticking by him. Grace was glad.
There was still the lawsuit against the university to contend with, but her lawyer was confident that given Steven’s statement, it would eventually be settled or dismissed outright. And although she’d had to deal with a bevy of reporters trying to follow-up on Michaels’s story once she’d returned to California, they’d soon lost interest in her once they’d realized Max wasn’t going to show and that she refused to say a word about him. It helped that both Elizabeth and Max had seemed to disappear as well. There were all kinds of speculations online that they’d flown to the Caribbean to try to undo the damage Grace did to their budding relationship. Grace knew from Melina that was far from the truth. Elizabeth was holed up somewhere even Melina didn’t know of, and Max had gone off by himself to stay at his parents’ house.
At least he’d be able to spend some quality time with Houdini, she thought. That would be good for him. And she wanted what was good for Max.
She just knew what was good for her and that was for them to stay away from one another.
Michaels’s article wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Although it referred to her and Max sexting one another, it didn’t include any of the actual texts, or the photo she’d texted. In the end, it was just another tabloid article that could have been based in truth or completely fabricated.
Now Grace was headed home. She’d quit her job at the university as planned, but she’d also dropped Operation Baby. If she’d learned one thing during her time with Max, it was that she didn’t know what she wanted. Acting rashly by bringing a baby into the world under those circumstances was not okay.
Grace was intent on getting inside her car when she sensed movement behind her.
She turned and saw Max.
She nearly whimpered in combined excitement and regret. He looked good, but he also looked tired. Haggard. Worn-out and drained. Much the same way Rhys had looked when he’d rushed to the hospital the day Melina had those contractions.
Max’s expression never changed to joy or relief the way Rhys’s had. He stood several feet away, arms crossed over his chest, scowling.
She barely resisted throwing herself at him.
It had only been three days and she missed him. Longed for him. Every minute of every day, but especially at night, when she was haunted with memories of them being in each other’s arms.
She finally asked, “Melina’s okay?” even though she knew she was. If something was wrong or if Melina had gone into labor, Rhys would have called or texted her.
He didn’t reply.
“What brings you here, Max?”
Her words seemed to snap him out of a trance. He strode toward her. Then to her utter shock he bent low, put his shoulder to her belly and straightened, carrying her away from her car. It took several seconds before she could speak. “What are you doing?”
“Bringing you some place you can’t run away from me. I’m a magician. I have an assortment of ties and handcuffs. Too bad I didn’t know when I left my place to see Elizabeth that you were going to run. I would’ve tied you to the bed.”
Having reached his car and unlocked the doors with his beeper, he threw open the passenger door and stooped down to gently deposit her inside. “Stay,” he said, pointing at her.
As if she was freakin’ Houdini.
Fortunately for him and unfortunately for her, she was in such shock over what he’d just done and said, he was able to get behind the wheel and start driving before she recovered.
“Are you crazy?”
“Crazy pissed, crazy frustrated, crazy to have ever gotten involved with you. Take your pick,” he said.
That made her mouth snap shut. She knew it was stupid, but his comment hurt.
He seemed to get that. Sighing, he said, “In case you’re wondering, I’m also still crazy about you. And I know you’re still crazy about me.”
His bright hazel eyes lasered into her, holding so much resolve that she had to turn away and glance out the window.
“You’re wrong, Max,” she said quietly.
“No, you’re wrong if you think I’m letting you walk away from me.”
Her head snapped around and she stared at his profile as he drove. “‘Lettin’ me’? We’re not in bed, Max, and last time I checked, you no longer have any control over me.”
“I can change that.”
She shivered and her core began to throb. Max had always been more than his fair share of bad boy, but she’d never seen him this dominant before. She wanted to keep fighting him on principle, but she could plainly see how hurt he was just beneath the surface of his anger.
She’d done that.
She didn’t want to hurt either one of them anymore.
Time to try logic and honesty. Max was reasonable and they hadn’t been together that long. She’d just explain why this wasn’t going to work for her, like she should’ve in the first place, and he’d be reasonable. He had so many women who wanted to be with him. He didn’t need her complicating his life.
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“You’re right. I am crazy about you. But you can’t give me what I need. I want a family. I want stability. I want a nice, normal, peaceful life. As a visit from a certain reporter proved you come with drama, not peace.”
“You need some drama.”
“Not that much. Good Lord, Max, they crucified me in that article. The things they said… About the lawsuit... About those texts...”
“It was Jeremy. He took my phone during a performance one night. Read through it. He needed the money, and he knew Michaels worked for The Scoop. He called him. Thankfully, he knew better than to actually forward our texts to him.”
“Jeremy? Your landlord.”
“Ex-landlord.”
“Oh no, Max. You didn’t give up your lease for me, did you?”
“Are you serious?”
“No I—”
“Are you fucking serious?”
Stunned, she stopped talking.
He pulled the car into a strip mall parking lot and turned to face her. “Dixie, the guy stole my phone and used personal and private information to hurt you. Breaking our lease was the least of what Rhys and I did to him.”
Her eyes rounded and he shook his head. “We didn’t hurt him even though we really wanted to. Can’t take the risk of Rhys not being around for his babies. And I didn’t want to take the risk of not being around when you came to your senses.”
“I’ve retained my senses, Max. That picture I sent you…”
“I deleted it off my phone right after you sent it. Jeremy never saw it.”
“You deleted it but not the texts.”
“The photo… I didn’t want to risk someone seeing it and tracking it back to you. The texts I took a calculated risk on. Turned out to be the wrong decision and I’m sorry about that. But like I told you before: sometimes to live a full life, you’ve got to take risks and those risks are going to backfire on you. Doesn’t mean you stop taking risks.”
She wanted to believe that, but she couldn’t. “You and I won’t work. I wish that wasn’t the case, but if wishes were fishes we’d all cast our nets. You’re in the spotlight and I’m just a normal girl who craves family—”
