She remembered their first meeting. How she’d opened her eyes to find the man of her most deeply buried fantasies standing over her and how there’d been an almost cosmic, magical connection between them.
“Damn it, Felicity, tell me more about this business deal.”
She started. So much for connections, cosmic or otherwise. He’d already moved on and his only remaining interest in her was a practical one. Frowning, she glanced around the room. There wasn’t a clerk or any other shopper in sight. Still, she kept her voice at a whisper.
“The man I met with made a call to old Mr. Caruso. That’s who he asked his secretary to get on the phone, anyway, Cosimo Caruso. He left the room when it came through, but once he was back we made our agreement. My All That’s Cool Afternoon does a prominent, month-long sell of Caruso products in the late spring, and Ben’s debt is forgiven.”
Magee’s eyes narrowed. “That was actually promised?”
“In so many words. As a matter of fact, the debt is erased as of right now. To show my good faith, I’ll be previewing a few items of the Caruso line during the show we do here at the end of the week.”
“I don’t like it,” he said, shaking his head.
She gritted her teeth. “Give me some credit, okay? For your information, there are sharks in L.A., too. I know how to negotiate.”
“I don’t like it that you are involved.” His hand reached out and he stroked his fingertips along the curve of her cheek.
She held herself still, though she was unable to stop the goosebumps sliding down the side of her neck, toward the site of that silly, sexy, junior high hickey he’d given her.
He let out a soft groan as if he remembered it, too. “Lissie…”
Those prickly bumps rushed up her thighs, between them. She took a step toward him. Undeniable, that connection between them. Unignorable and…important. If she kissed him maybe she could understand it. If she kissed him, maybe he’d forget all about Ashley and be—
“I’m sorry,” a female said from the other side of the room. “I didn’t hear anyone come in. We were in the back and—Magee!”
The last two syllables were rife with delight.
As one, Felicity and Magee turned toward the voice. In a pair of black pants, a white shirt, and a red-checked apron around her waist, a young woman was gazing on him with a smile in her eyes and on her full pink lips. As she rounded the sales counter, her bouncy blond curls, twisted at the back of her head and then pinned in a tousled top knot at her crown, jiggled with the same enthusiasm as her full breasts.
“Magee,” she said again, coming to a stop in front of him. She put a palm on both of his lean cheeks and brought his mouth down for a juicy, noisy kiss. As he lifted his head, the woman smiled at him again. “That’s because I’m glad to see you.”
Smiling wider, she reached around and gave him a lusty pinch on his perfect butt. “And that’s because you broke my heart!”
Magee shook his head, a smile tugging at his mouth. “It’s been too long…” He hesitated, his gaze dropping to the tag pinned over her voluptuous right breast. “Tracy.”
Felicity rolled her eyes, cursing herself for ever imagining she’d had anything special with Magee. This woman had probably thought the same, and the jerk couldn’t even recall her name! Give him a month—a week!—and Felicity would be just another of his hazy memories.
While she’d remember him the rest of her life.
“Magee!” A second delighted, trilling voice echoed in the small shop. A second young woman wearing a red-checked apron danced toward him.
Not a second young woman. A twin.
Felicity’s jaw dropped. The whole scene played out again, the kiss, the pinch, the “You broke my heart,” followed by Magee’s sheepish smile, except this time it starred Tanya, not Tracy.
As he slipped an arm around each of them, Felicity backed toward the door. Twins. Twins!
Even the wild sex he’d shared with Felicity had probably seemed like a day at kindergarten to him. What had been exotic and erotic to her had been ho-hum, run-of-the-mill for Magee.
Tracy and Tanya were chattering away as Felicity slipped out. She’d get her Caruso products elsewhere.
Anywhere away from Magee.
She made it only as far as her car.
“Damn it, Felicity,” he said, striding toward her. “Don’t think you’re going to duck the rest of this conversation.”
She rolled her eyes. “Why not? Your actions speak for themselves.”
He frowned. “And what do you mean by that?”
“Twins,” she muttered.
“So that’s what has your panties in such a tight twist.”
She shot him a look. “Admit it. You’re a deviant.”
“And that’s exactly what you like about me.”
She froze. Then, damn it all, she laughed. Leaning against the side of her car, she crossed her arms over her stomach and let the helpless laughter bubble out. What could she do? The man did know her much too well.
But it was time for her to move on, too.
“I suppose I do like you,” she finally managed to get out. “However…” Straightening up and then lifting to tiptoe, she grabbed his face between her hands and transferred a noisy, juicy kiss to his mouth—a kiss just like the twins’.
“That’s because I’ll be glad to see the last of you,” she said, striking a friendly, it-was-fun-but-now-I’m-done tone. Then, as she beamed up a carefree smile, her hand shot around his hip to administer her own cheeky pinch. “And that’s because you broke my heart.”
Her sassy smile died. And that’s because you broke my heart, replayed in her head. Oh, God, no.
No.
Magee’s gaze swept over her naked face. “Lissie,” he whispered, as if what he saw pained him. “Sweetheart…”
She spun away, fishing through her purse with her back to him. “Leave me alone,” she croaked out, desperate for her car keys.
“Lissie—”
“Leave me alone.”
Only then could she convince herself she hadn’t just spoken the truth.
Magee knew the exact instant Felicity realized he was following her car. The Thunderbird slowed for a second, then the vehicle jumped forward.
Crazy woman. As if he could leave her alone after seeing her stricken expression. Was he responsible…?
No. He couldn’t have hurt her, not really. Not Felicity Charm, with her L.A.-sized ego and her short, strict list of acceptable men. For God’s sake, she would have been crossing him off herself in less than a week. Her annoyance came from the fact that the situation with Ashley meant he’d beaten her to it.
Still, he had to make her understand why he didn’t wait for her to leave him.
Between the Caruso offices and wherever the hell she was heading was the turnoff for the wilderness area they’d visited the day before. At the last second, she surprised him by taking it, the back end of her car fishtailing.
“Shit!” He shot past, then braked. Cursing again, he shoved the Jeep in reverse, then forward, his gaze trained on her speeding car and the rooster tail of dust she was kicking behind her. She had a hell of a head start on him now—and she was barreling toward unforgiving desert that didn’t house a single sign of civilization.
In minutes he went from pissed to near-panicked. But then he found her car where they’d parked yesterday, and then he found her footsteps, and then, finally, he found her. In the distance he saw her moving along Devil’s Torch, the name of the path leading to the top of Devil’s Peak. Though the area was rarely visited, the Boy Scouts had established and maintained a decent route. It wasn’t much more than a moderate hike—unless, that is, you were wearing a skirt and city sandals and were without a hat and water.
Or common sense.
To hell with explaining himself and why he was marrying Ashley. Felicity better have a good reason for this stunt!
With a water bottle and the ball cap he kept stashed in the Jeep, he set off afte
r her. When he reached the trailhead, he could see she was moving steadily upward, making decent progress. But any second could mean a turned ankle—a sprain or a break—not to mention the rattlers and scorpions that would find nothing between their teeth or stingers and her sweet, soft skin.
His anxiety rising, he abandoned the idea of following her along the switchbacked route, and hurried toward the perpendicular slab of rock that would be his shortcut. Getting up it meant he could intercept her well before she made it to the top of the peak.
He clapped the ball cap on his head, shoved the water bottle in the waistband at the back of his jeans, then bent to dust his hands in the powdery dirt at his feet. Without a chalk bag it was the best he could do.
He took a moment to study the slab’s features, his gaze leapfrogging from one likely hold to another. Then he bent his knees and jumped. As if it had been eighteen hours instead of eighteen months, his fingers crimped down and the toes of his running shoes wedged into a crack. Just like that, he was once again playing kissy face with warm, solid rock.
It smelled like he remembered—salty and clean—and he closed his eyes a moment, savoring the scent. Then he reached up for his next hold. Climbing in his Nikes sucked, but he was concerned for Felicity’s safety, not his own.
That became his focus during the climb, the particular fear that he stared down this time. In minutes, he lifted himself over the slab’s lip, just as Felicity came around the next bend in the path.
Catching sight of him, she eeked, her feet stuttering to a stop. But her slick leather soles lost purchase on the loose dirt and her legs went out from under her. She landed with a plop on her butt.
“You okay?” he asked, flexing his fingers as he advanced on her. The muscles in his forearms burned like a bitch, but now that Felicity was safe, he relished the way the blood was pumping through his body. Only one other activity made him feel more alive.
She pressed her knees together and pulled down on the hem of her stretchy skirt. “H-how did you get up here?”
“You saw me. I climbed.” He held out his hand to help her up.
She ignored it, scrambling to her feet on her own. With her bulging purse secured under her arm, she approached the trail edge and peered over. Her eyes were wide as she glanced back at him. “You don’t have any equipment!”
“Neither do you, dollface.” His temper reigniting, he whipped out the water bottle from his jeans and waved it back and forth. “Never go traipsing through the desert without this.”
When she didn’t respond, he moved toward her. “What the hell were you thinking?”
Instead of answering, she grabbed the water bottle from him and used her teeth to pop open the stopper. Then she squeezed the bottle, and the thick stream of liquid caught her unawares. While she got some of it down, a mouthful or two dribbled over her bottom lip to her chin and from there ran down her neck.
Her tongue came out to swipe at the moisture on her lip. “I thought you didn’t climb anymore.”
His gaze dropped from the wetness of her mouth to the now-transparent spot the dampness made in the thin knit at the throat of her white shirt. “I don’t climb anymore.”
She unfastened the buttons right over that wet mark. Lifting the clinging fabric away from her skin, she glanced over the edge of the path again. “That sounds like a good idea to me, since it appears you can’t be bothered to take even the simplest safety precautions.”
He snorted, and forced himself to stop staring at the pulse he could see thrumming at the notch of her throat. “Safety precautions aren’t guarantees.”
She shot another squirt of water into her mouth. “I suppose that’s the point, though, right? You want risk and you don’t want guarantees. That’s why you climb—or used to climb.”
“Sorry, but it’s my turn for questions, dollface,” he said, swiping the water bottle back. “Why are you out here?”
She lifted her eyebrows. “I don’t owe you anything, Magee. Least of all an explanation of my behavior.”
“Bullshit, you—” He broke off, the anger he’d been using to disguise his guilt evaporating. “Oh, hell, fine. You’re right. I do owe you an explanation.”
“I’m listening.”
Sucking in a long breath, he glanced away from her face, then forced himself to meet her gaze. “Last night, after finding out about the gambling, when I…talked to Ashley, I wasn’t thinking about you.”
“Oh, well,” Felicity said, her voice dry. “Now I feel so much better.”
“C’mon. You can see Ashley needs someone.” He tried to reason with her. “And we both know what we had was a temporary fling—”
“Which you ended in a manner straight out of an episode of The Jerry Springer Show.”
She was pissing him off again. “I never claimed to be perfect,” he muttered.
“Oh, please.” She glared at him. “Imperfect is dropping towels on the bathroom floor or putting the empty ice-cream carton back in the freezer. You, Magee, are such a perfect degenerate that while you were having sex with me you got yourself engaged to my cousin!”
“I promised Simon.”
“Not only that, but—” Her mouth closed on the rest of what she was going to say and she stared at him. “You what?”
“Don’t think that it means I don’t actually care about Ashley and Anna P. I do, very much. They’ve always been like family, which is why I promised Simon before every climb that if something happened to him I would take care of them.”
Felicity’s legs folded beneath her and she sat down on the dirt, hard. “But marriage—”
“I promised that I would take care of them just as he would.” Magee dropped beside her, but he couldn’t look at Felicity’s appealing, astonished face any longer, so he transferred his gaze to the sweeping desert vista that spread out just inches from their feet. “It’s why I’m taking the job that was supposed to be his, too. He was planning on giving up climbing, so I’m giving up climbing. He was moving himself and his family to L.A., so I’m doing that. I owe him that much.”
She was silent a long moment, and then she sighed. “You owe him your life.”
His gaze jumped to hers. “Yes. You get it.”
She shrugged. “The night we watched the documentary together you made it very clear.”
In his mind’s eye, he saw Simon’s grinning face on the TV in the Bivy’s office. Brash, brilliant Simon, the best friend a man could have. There was a big hole in Magee’s chest that he was certain would never be filled. “Damn Aussie,” he muttered, shaking his head.
Felicity looked out over the view. “The night I met him, he made me laugh so hard I cried. We got to the restaurant at six, and it was after one A.M. when they threw us out. By that time our waiter and the manager were sitting with us. I think the only reason they made us leave was because the cleaning crew showed up.”
Magee found himself smiling. “He could tell a damn good story.”
“I remember one about a friend who called three separate women from the summit of Mt. Whitney and told each of them he’d climbed it just for her.”
“The dog.”
She laughed.
Then they sat in silence, but it wasn’t tense or angry. Memories of Simon welled up and Magee let them, more at ease with the bitter sweetness they left behind. Probably, he thought, because he’d finally made the commitment to Ashley that Simon had wanted.
You’re such a dipstick.
“Did you say something?” Felicity asked.
“No.” He poured a stream of water down his throat, then offered her the bottle. “Are we okay now?”
She sighed again. “I suppose I…understand.”
He let more beats of silence go by, then he bumped her shoulder with his. There was still something he wanted to know. “So tell me why you came up here.”
She shook her head.
“C’mon.” He bumped her again. “Why?”
Another sigh leaked out of her. “If you really want to kno
w…” Her level gaze met his. “It was for a burial.”
At his shocked look, she laughed again. “Not of myself, if that’s what you’re thinking, Mr. Never-Ending Ego. I was looking for a final resting place for this.” She reached into the purse she’d set on the ground beside her and pulled out that statue she’d defended on the first day in her aunt’s kitchen.
He took it, cupping the beat-up figurine in both hands to study it. “I can see why you’d want to put it out of its misery, dollface. It’s butt-ugly.”
“It’s not! At least it wasn’t.” She reached across to stroke a fingertip over its dinged finish. “And it will be perfect again. I lost sight of that for a minute. But once I get back to L.A., I’ll find someone who can tell me how to smooth it out and give it a new finish.”
“Someone like your boss Drool?” He didn’t know what made him bring the man up.
Shooting him a dirty look, she grabbed for the statue. For some reason he was feeling mean, so he leaned away from her. Half-rising, this time she lunged, and managed to wrench the figurine away. But her fingers must have slipped, because it bobbled in her hand, struck a rock, bounced up, and then it was falling—over the edge of the mountain.
In slow motion, she dove for it, and he dove for her. His hands closed over her waist and heaved. They fell back onto terra firma, with him belly-up and Felicity sprawled on top.
It probably wasn’t that close a call, but try telling his heart that. It was slamming so hard and fast against the wall of his chest that he thought he might be sick. Needing something—something? needing her—he held Felicity so that her face was pressed against the bare skin of his neck and his was buried in her hair.
For just a second it had been the night they’d met all over again, including the wrenching possibility of a world without her in it. When he could breathe again, he pressed a silent, imperceptible kiss on the top of her head.
“Did you save it?” he asked, his eyes closed.
“No,” she croaked out. “It was too late.”
She rolled off him and lifted her hands. They were shaking, but each held a piece of that goddamn statue—in one was the shabby-looking figure, and in the other, the pedestal it had stood upon.
The Thrill of It All Page 21
