He shook his head. “I don’t know what else to say besides I’m sorry.”
He picked up the photograph again, studying that mix of him and Claire, as well as something so bright, it was all her own.
He was aware of Claire studying him just as hard. And he got now why she looked like that, eyes widened in fear. She probably thought he was going to swoop in and steal her kid or something. His kid, he corrected quickly. Their kid.
God, this was confusing.
But he didn’t even know how to talk to anyone under the age of twenty, let alone what kind of toys to buy. His own dad had been so absent, he had zero models for how to not fuck up stuff like that up. She seriously had nothing to worry about.
And yet there was no way he could put down that photograph, tell Claire how nice it was nice to see her, and be on his way.
“When can I meet her?” he said before he lost his nerve.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Ryan—”
He held up a hand. “I’m sober now, Claire. Completely. I know it doesn’t change the past, but you don’t have to worry about me”—he looked around, not sure what to say—“doing anything stupid.”
She took a deep breath. “I’m very happy to hear that.”
Ouch. He knew he didn’t deserve anything more than that. He was being impulsive. Crazy. But if she thought he could look at that photograph and just walk away, she’d clearly never known him at all.
“We should at least talk about it,” he said.
“We are talking.”
“I mean later.”
She shook her head. “I’m booked all day.”
“Tonight,” he countered immediately. “Let me buy you a drink.”
Please, he thought. He had no idea what he was doing or what he thought was going to happen. But he wasn’t going to leave Gold Mountain without at least laying eyes on his own flesh and blood. Another giant wave of holy shit rolled through him.
Claire rolled her eyes. “You just told me you weren’t drinking. Or did you already forget?”
“That’s not what I meant. Come to the hotel where I’m staying. You’ll have a Chardonnay, I’ll have coffee, and we’ll get dessert.”
“That’s not fair,” she said.
He felt his eyes softening as he looked at her. Didn’t she understand? “I don’t care if you have something when I don’t. I’m a big boy. I can handle it.”
“I mean, it’s not fair to bribe me with chocolate.”
He knew he didn’t always smile for real. It was hard sometimes to feel it all the way. But this was one grin he couldn’t tamp down.
“Still got a sweet tooth?”
“What hotel are you staying at?” she asked, completely sidestepping his attempt to remind her how well he’d once known her.
“The Cascade.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Your label is putting you up there? Square One must be doing well.”
He couldn’t deny that part was sort of true, but he had to shake his head.
“This one’s on me. I was supposed to be in Seattle last night, flying to Chicago today.”
There. The truth.
He could see how much it stunned her to realize he’d stayed for her—and was still staying for her. And for Maya. He could also see how quickly she tried to recover.
“So you’re saying it wouldn’t be very nice of me not to see you tonight,” she said.
“And you, Claire Collins, are still the sweetest girl I know.”
He leaned over the desk. To put the photograph back, sure, but also to get close enough to remind her that he was no stranger. That once, all she’d wanted was to put her hands on him—and not nearly as chastely as what had just happened in the massage room. She couldn’t let him get on that plane without granting him this one small thing. A chance to meet his daughter and to show Claire he wasn’t the man he used to be.
And a chance for him to see first-hand the life he’d missed out on before he’d understood all he was throwing away.
Chapter Seven
Claire stared at the contents of her closet—which were now the contents of her bed—and tried to figure out when in her life she’d managed to accumulate so many clothes.
And how come, in the entire pile, she didn’t have a single outfit that said “Dessert at a swanky hotel restaurant with an unbearably hot ex and the father of her child, whom she hadn’t seen in years and had less than zero interest in, no matter what her heart rate suggested at just the thought of him.”
“Go casual,” Mack said, pulling out a pair of jeans. “Don’t even change. You barely know him, and he’s leaving soon, anyway. There’s no reason to put in the effort.”
“Go big,” Abbi countered, flipping a streak of purple hair behind her ear. “You’re not the girl he left behind anymore. Show him that.”
“I left him,” Claire reminded her, putting down the jeans Mack had tossed her and picking up a black pair instead. “And he’s already seen me now. Twice. So it’s not like I can show up with rainbow highlights and act like I suddenly got cool.”
“You are cool,” Abbi protested. Which was sweet but…come on. Claire knew her limits.
Which was why she’d called this emergency meeting in the first place.
“Go so sexy it kills him,” Sam piped up. She went straight for a low-cut number Claire immediately vetoed. “Don’t you dare tell Austin, but that’s totally what I would do.”
“I can’t pull off killer sexy even if I wanted to.”
“You’re raising a smart, curious future president into adulthood and running your own business. That’s hot, Claire.”
“I’m also getting ready to tell him that he can’t meet his own daughter because he gave up that right when he told me he didn’t want anything to do with us. I might as well be honest and just wear black and carry a pitchfork.”
Abbi winced. “He actually said that?”
“It’s not a direct quote. But that was the basic idea.”
“On second thought, I’m with Mack. Don’t even shower.”
But Claire thought about the look in his eyes when he’d seen the photograph. The way everything hard in him had suddenly…softened. In that instant, he hadn’t looked like the Ryan she’d left.
He’d looked like the man she remembered from long before, the one who brought her flowers and breakfast in bed and made her laugh so hard her sides hurt.
And he’d looked completely different, too, like someone she hadn’t even met yet. Somebody totally new.
Somehow, she wound up not only showering but putting some sort of goop in her hair that was supposed to make it less frizzy. While she was getting ready, Sam ran home to bring over a black dress of hers that she claimed would be perfect.
Perfect for what? Claire wanted to know. But by that point, she was going to be late if she didn’t just go with it.
As soon as she walked into the hotel lobby, though, she felt like she should have gone for jeans. Her early years with Ryan had been so effortless. They’d seen each other across the room on a night when neither one of them was trying. They’d both been wearing T-shirts and Converse. They’d laughed about it. There hadn’t been all this hinting, all this mystery, trying to gauge intentions. All this history that hurt.
Ryan doesn’t want a family, she reminded herself. It wasn’t like her kid was suddenly going to be spending summers in Chicago, dividing holidays between parents. It was just the novelty that had made him look at Maya’s picture that way.
And she was never going to introduce Maya to Ryan—no matter how charming he could be. What was she supposed to say? “Hi, sweetie. This strange man you’ve never met before is your dad. Now that I’ve sent an earthquake through your world, he’s going back to Chicago, and you’ll probably never see him again. How about that Mom of the Year award?”
So really, she didn’t need to be here.
She didn’t need to be following the maître d’ across the restauran
t.
And she definitely didn’t need to be heading away from the tables in the center of the room, toward one of the large black sofas in the corner, lit only by a candle on the low square table in front.
But that was where Ryan was sitting, wearing dark jeans and a sweater, running a hand through his unfairly touchable hair. Just talk about how Maya’s doing great, say you’re happy his album is selling well, remind him that your lives are separate now, and get the hell home.
Too bad even the sofa was against her. It sank beneath her so that as soon as she realized she should have sat farther away from him, there was no way to move. Even worse, Sam’s dress rode up her thighs when she sat, and she couldn’t pull it down without drawing more attention to how much it showed.
“This is nice,” she murmured, glancing around the room.
“It’s gorgeous,” he said. But he wasn’t looking at the stylish bar. He was looking at her.
She tried to stay focused on why she’d come. She asked him about the tour, his new album, what living in Chicago was like. She told him about opening her massage therapy business and why she liked Gold Mountain so much. She had no idea where to begin when he asked her about Maya, though. There was so much to share—and so much to protect.
But he was listening so intently that it was hard to hold back. She could feel how close he was, the press of his thigh against hers. She could sense that it would always be easy to talk to him, no matter how much was left unsaid.
She was grateful when the waitress came over and they had to pull away. They hadn’t even looked at the menu yet. Maybe that would buy her some time, stop her head from spinning. She needed a chance to collect herself before she lost her mind. Ryan wasn’t just a sexy guy who looked at her the way he always had, like she was the only woman in the world and he’d been waiting his whole life to find her. He was the man who’d broken her heart, and she’d better not forget it.
But as soon as she opened the dessert menu, it was harder to stay composed. First on the list was the Chocolate Orgasm, a sinful-sounding molten cake topped with homemade whipped cream. Right now, flushed and heated, she didn’t just want the chocolate.
She wanted the orgasm, too.
To go, please, since sharing either of those with the man next to her was obviously a very, very bad idea.
Ryan must have known exactly what she was thinking because he leaned even closer than they’d been before the waitress came. “I know what you want,” he said devilishly.
“Cheesecake?” Her voice practically squeaked.
“Nope.”
“Tiramisu?”
“I’ve always thought of that as such a tease. Sure, it’s got chocolate, but barely. Why waste time with all that foreplay?”
Oh, please. Claire leveled her gaze at him. “You don’t believe in foreplay?”
He reached over and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. She could guess it was all over the place, no matter how hard Abbi had tried to tame it. She never should have given Ryan a chance to talk to her more. She never should have come. Now here they were, so close to each other, as though no time at all had passed.
“On the contrary,” he said, and then his voice dropped. “But that doesn’t mean every taste shouldn’t be the real deal.”
His eyes locked with hers, the gray darkened to the deep blue of a midnight ocean in the corner where they sat. Was he always like this, so impossible to resist?
She looked away, scanning the rest of the menu frantically, trying to come up with something other than what she obviously wanted. What he knew she wanted. What under any other circumstances, with any other person, she might even have let herself have.
“I think I’ll get the carrot cake,” she said lamely.
That grin again. His lips moved only a little, but his eyes shifted, the gray lightening. A flicker. A tease.
“Now, why are you so hell-bent on denying yourself? The Claire I knew was fed up with being good.”
“The Claire you knew was practically a kid.”
Dammit. She shouldn’t be bringing up the K-word.
But he only pressed his lips together. “So, is this Claire all grown up now?”
His question hung between them. Of course, she wanted to shout. All grown up with a mortgage, a business, an admittedly tiny retirement account—but hey, tiny was bigger than zero—and a five-year-old who made late nights, leftover pizza for breakfast, and twenty-four-hour Law and Order marathons feel like relics of the past.
But no, because she was pretty sure that wasn’t what Ryan meant when he gave her that heavy-lidded look. It was clear Ryan Thomas was all grown up, too. The way he held her eyes wasn’t just panty melting. It was full-blown incinerating. She was saved from combustion only by the return of the waitress just in time.
Ryan, true to his word, didn’t order a drink. And Claire, feeling awkward about it, declined as well. They settled on decaf coffee.
“Anything else?” the waitress asked.
Ryan looked to Claire, eyebrow raised expectantly, daring her to actually order the carrot cake if she was so determined to prove he didn’t know how to get to her.
But carrot cake wasn’t a dessert. It had carrots in it! It might as well be health food.
“One chocolate orgasm,” she said through gritted teeth, not letting herself look at him.
“That’s more like it,” Ryan said, sitting back with smug satisfaction when the waitress left.
“You win,” she said. “I don’t like foreplay, either.”
“You forget how much I know that’s not true.”
She flushed, heart pounding.
“But if one orgasm isn’t enough, you can always have another,” he went on, his voice dripping low enough to make her toes curl.
“Chocolate orgasm,” she corrected him.
“Sounds kind of redundant,” he mused.
On second thought, she definitely should have gone with rabbit food. Her rattiest pair of jeans. And a conversation on the phone—preferably from Fiji, with half the world between them so she couldn’t be swayed by the heat from his smoldering gaze.
“This is my treat. So don’t be shy.”
“I’m sure one is plenty,” she demurred.
“Only if it’s a really good one.”
Was it possible for the candlelight to show how red her face was? “We’re supposed to be talking about—” Us, she almost said. Maya.
But there was no us. And did she really want to bring up Maya again?
Thank God, their coffee arrived.
He took his with no milk, which he’d always done, and a heaping spoon of sugar, which he hadn’t. “Replace one addiction with another,” he said when he finished stirring.
“What?” Claire asked, confused but glad the distraction allowed her heart rate to come down—even if it was never normal with him.
“The sugar,” he said, letting the teaspoon rest on the saucer. “It seems I can’t cut out everything. But a little extra sweetness never hurt anyone.” He took a sip. “Four years, two months, and twenty-seven days,” he added, looking at her over the mug. “In case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t,” she said.
“Of course you were.”
“Okay, fine,” she admitted. “I was.”
It made a difference, didn’t it? It told her who, exactly, was making her pulse race right now. Was it someone who’d decided not to have a drink just for tonight? Or could she really trust he was different from the man she’d once known?
The dessert arrived. Claire dropped her spoon into the center so that when the cake broke, thick chocolate oozed onto the plate. She may have let out a small moan, although the talk of Ryan’s sobriety had been a good reminder to keep any feelings related to chocolate and orgasms bottled up inside.
“What happened four years, two months, and twenty-seven days ago?” she asked.
“Something tells me you don’t read Rolling Stone.”
She hesitated. But what did it
matter if she told him the truth? “I cut all that out of my life when I—”
“Cut me out. Yeah.” He held up a hand to stop her from worrying about her words. “I get it.”
“Things were complicated.”
“That’s a nice way of putting what I did to you.”
“I needed to move on if I was going to be there for Maya.”
“Well, had you been obsessively Google-stalking the lead singer of Little White Lie like half of America, or maybe just three-quarters of New York, you would have seen that he had a miraculous rise to stardom and then humiliatingly flushed it all away when his band broke up and deserted him.”
“Why?” Claire asked, the spoon hovering halfway between the plate and her mouth.
He gave a very wry, very Ryan smile. “Why do you think?”
She ate the bite on her spoon to give herself something to do, but suddenly she hardly tasted it. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly, even as she was mad at herself for saying it. Sorry for what? He was the one who’d been drinking. She hadn’t done anything wrong.
He reached over and brought his thumb to her lip.
“You have a little—”
“What?”
“There.” He wiped the pad of his thumb across her lower lip. It came away smeared with chocolate. She watched as he brought his thumb to his mouth and sucked on it. “All gone,” he said, never once taking his eyes from her.
But she had to look away. She couldn’t let herself turn to jelly because—what? He could make it through a meal without drinking in front of her? He fed her chocolate? He smiled with his eyes even when his lips barely moved?
Because he took her right back to all those years ago when, for the first time in her life, she’d felt like she was finally whole?
“Ryan,” she said. “We shouldn’t—”
“You’re so beautiful, Claire. A lot has changed since then. But clearly not everything.”
She didn’t remember when either of them had slid even closer on the sofa. Had that been his doing—or hers? She uncrossed her legs, then crossed them again. But that meant the leg on top brushed his shin, her bare skin against his jeans. In his eyes, she saw not storm clouds but something still tempestuous and ever-changing.
Make Me Yours (Men of Gold Mountain) Page 4
