“You’re ready. You look great,” he said, stepping closer and cupping her cheeks before Lyla even had a chance to evade him. He pecked her softly on the lips, then murmured, “You look like a dream come true, as always.”
Lyla pulled back and spun away, flustered by his unexpected show of affection. “My ride’s going to be here in an hour and a half. I have to—”
Tate laughed, “I hate to break it to you, but I’m your ride, Slick.”
“Red,” Lyla growled.
“Yes. But don’t be too mad at him. He let me borrow his new car for the weekend, so I could pick you up.”
Lyla’s eyes flew wide and she turned back to Tate, stunned. “The Alfa Romeo?”
He held out his fist to bump hers. “You know it, sweetheart. You’re going to love it, too. Rides way smoother than my brother’s truck.”
Lyla shook her head, trying to clear it of everything that did not matter in the grand scheme of things. “Be that as it may—” she began.
Tate just waved her off. “Don’t worry. This shouldn’t take long.”
She frowned at him. “I’d ask what you meant by that, but I already saw your little visual aid through the peephole. Do I even want to know where you got a copy of The Last Man Standing? It’s not even out of editing yet.”
“Where do you think?”
“Red.” Lyla groaned. “Again.”
“I’m sorry, Lyla,” Tate said. “He may be big, but his bark is worse than his bite these days. Piper’s turning him into a regular romantic down there.”
“It’s like her freaking superpower,” Lyla muttered with a scowl. She’d hate the woman if she weren’t so damn likable.
“I mean, hey—she’s gotta go with her strengths, right?”
“I would like her to not be so strong at that.”
Tate straightened up, suddenly saying, “Speaking of strengths, I meant to tell you the security in this building is pretty weak. You know that doorman, Joe? He just let me stroll on by, before—didn’t even want to know why I was here. We should talk to him about that.”
“Tate, he remembers you. You’ve only been gone for a month,” Lyla retorted in exasperation. One month—and it had felt like a year.
“That’s plenty of time to turn bad if you ask me.”
She groaned, “Okay, enough. I don’t believe for one second that you’ve turned bad, so why are you here?”
“I’ve come to make peace, Lyla. If you’ll let me.” Tate took a couple of steps toward her and held out his hand.
Lyla stared at his handsome face and felt her heart throb painfully in her chest at his words. She wanted to have him back like she wanted to keep breathing, but if Tate thought he could simply roll in here and shake hands, then live happily ever after as friends, he was about to get a real education in scorned women.
Still, like a lovesick floozy, she put her palm in his. As long as he was standing there, she couldn’t resist the impulse to touch him again.
Tate smiled tentatively at her, and that’s when the angry red scratch on his cheek finally registered. Lyla reached out to touch it gently, asking him, “Is this from your fight with Brett? It still hasn’t healed?”
“Uh, no,” Tate sneered. “You think I’d let that fucker have a go at my face? Come on, Lyla—my smile may as well be my livelihood.”
She rolled her eyes. “I see your ego is still intact. But if it’s not from then, what happened to you?”
“Would you believe a fraternity reunion gone awry?”
“You were in a fraternity? I’m surprised.” Fraternity boys would forever be linked with the likes of Brett Jones in her mind, so it was hard to picture Tate as one, too.
“Small group, only three members,” he grinned.
Oh, brother. “Let me guess,” she said, catching on. “Red, Luca, and—”
“Me. Correct.”
“And what did you name yourselves?”
“We didn’t pick it, but people called us TDH. Have you heard of us?”
“Can’t say that I have,” Lyla said wryly. “And I am very afraid to ask what it stands for.”
Tate chuckled. “Nothing skanky. Only, Tall, Dark, and…” he waggled his eyebrows knowingly at her.
“Heroic?” Lyla guessed.
“No. Handsome,” Tate corrected her. “Obviously.”
Obviously. She asked him, “And the flesh wound?”
“So…fun fact—Red is kind of amazing at darts when he’s tanked,” Tate explained. “And, some Wall Street dickheads took exception to it during his bachelor party the other night.”
Lyla gaped at him. “By throwing a dart at you?”
“Well, to be fair, they threw it at Red. But Piper would’ve killed us if we’d returned her groom looking like Scarface. I had to leap on the grenade, so to speak.”
Tate looked a little sheepish as he told the story, and his expression was so familiar and so charming, it almost made her melt into a vaguely Lyla-shaped puddle at his feet.
She pulled herself together, slipped a hand around his waist to get closer, and was instantly rewarded by the feel of Tate’s arms closing warmly around her.
“You’re making it a bit of a habit lately, getting in the way of trouble. Aren’t you?” she asked softly.
Tate picked right up on her hint. “About that—Lyla, I’m really sorry about what happened. You shouldn’t have had to shoot a dude to protect yourself like that. I should’ve been the one doing it. I should’ve gotten the job done for you.”
“That’s a lot of shoulds, Tate.”
“I have others if you’d like to hear them.”
“I’ll pass, thanks. The few you used were lame enough.”
“Lame?” he squawked, but his gorgeous blue eyes were dancing.
“Yes, lame, you dope.” Lyla ought to have known he’d be blaming himself. “You’re recovering from a traumatic brain injury, Tate. You had to exert yourself in exactly the way you weren’t supposed to, but you did it trying to keep me safe. There’s no should or shouldn’t at that point. Your brain simply hated it, and it told you so.”
“But—”
“But, nothing. You were amazing and you probably saved my life. What you should be apologizing for is what you did next,” Lyla told him.
Tate dropped his forehead gently against hers. “I was getting to that part.”
“Was it going to be anytime this century?”
He grinned and pressed a hard kiss against her lips. “Lyla, I have missed your sassy mouth so much. And I am very, very sorry that I left without saying a word. It was shitty of me.”
“And for not letting me come see you in the hospital, too, I should hope. Because that was extra humiliating.”
“For that, too. Incidentally, did I bend your screen when I pulled it in through the window? If so, I’m happy to replace it.”
“Tate, the screen works fine. But most people would’ve just popped it out and let it fall into the alley. No—scratch that. Most people would’ve kept pounding on the door to get out, instead of tiptoeing along a ledge three stories up. What were you thinking?”
He looked perplexed. “I was thinking that Brett must’ve gotten in through the kitchen, and if he’d done it, then so could I,” he said.
“Except Brett only had to climb up the fire escape. You had to act like a freaking cat burglar to get to that window,” Lyla complained.
Tate shook his head. “It was only a few feet,” he said earnestly, “and then I jumped on the fire escape, too.”
“You could’ve plummeted to your death, you big lunkhead.”
“I don’t think it was quite that death-defying, but I’m sorry for that, too,” Tate smiled.
“I suppose your contrition is acceptable,” Lyla said grudgingly, even though her bruised heart was beginning to sing. “Why did you go, though? Why did you leave that way?”
Tate sighed deeply. “I didn’t think I’d be able to, otherwise. And I was laboring under a series of misconceptions that, i
n retrospect, seem excruciatingly dumb now that I’m here with you.”
She could only imagine. “Like what?” Lyla smiled.
“Like, I’m not good enough for you, you’re better off without me, and I have nothing to offer you. Especially now.”
Now that her world was unexpectedly righting itself into a framework that made some logical sense, Lyla couldn’t resist the softball Tate was tossing over home plate to her.
“I don’t know,” she hummed, “those reasons don’t sound so farfetched.”
“Ha, ha. Very funny,” he griped.
“I hope you realize how completely ridiculous that all is. You do, right?”
“Whether it is, or it isn’t, Lyla—the fact remains that once I read your new book, I couldn’t stay away without knowing why you did it.”
And here they were. Tate had come back, and he was actually opening up to her, but that was only the first step. If Lyla wanted to keep him here, she was going to have to be honest with him in return.
THIRTY-NINE
TATE REALLY HAD been annoyed when Lyla’s doorman waved him inside without hesitating, mainly because he couldn’t believe he’d never noticed how lax the guy was before.
But everything around him felt clearer now that he was officially out of limbo and moving forward again. Tate was noticing details he hadn’t before. He felt sharp. Ready.
However, when he’d knocked on Lyla’s door and then nothing happened—he began to doubt the wisdom of his plan. What if he’d botched things up between them irreparably? What if the measly words he’d prepared weren’t enough?
What if he couldn’t even get her to open the door?
Impatient and frustrated and conscious of the fact that they had a rehearsal dinner to get to and a lot to talk about before then, Tate had waved Lyla’s book at the peephole and shot her a look through the tiny piece of glass that could only be interpreted as what the fuck is this?
She’d opened the door. She’d looked perplexed. She hadn’t bothered with hello, how are you—and Lyla hadn’t said a word about her new book. She’d only wanted to know why Tate was there.
He was there because he’d been a fool to walk away from her. He’d been torturing himself for twenty-nine days with the dire outcomes that might result from him leaving, not the least of which was the fear that Lyla might meet some new man in this city of millions.
That she might fall for him, and he for her.
And, while the thought of any harm coming to her without Tate there as her first line of defense was enough to make his head explode, the notion of Lyla cuddling up to some other dude every night was a special, DEFCON-4 level of horrifying.
He’d realized, nearly too late, that Lyla was his—but more than that, Tate had figured out that he was hers, body and soul. He loved the woman standing expectantly in front of him like nothing else in this world, and it was about time he told her.
Before he could do that, though, they had to talk about her little story, and what she’d been thinking when she wrote it.
Tate pulled his phone from his pocket and once again cued up the pdf file that Red had sent him. Lyla eyed it warily, but she didn’t look terribly guilty. If anything, she only seemed resigned.
She said, “I didn’t think you would ever know about that.”
“Know? I’ve relived our time together a million times. But to read it…read it like this?” Tate sputtered, searching for clarity. “Either I talk in my sleep, or you read minds, because that is the only way this book makes sense to me.”
Lyla looked confused by his consternation. “I’m sorry—what?”
“God, you must’ve felt like you had a wolf slavering over you all that time. How did you stand it?”
“I don’t really think…”
“You did yourself a real disservice, by the way,” Tate told her. “You are far more beautiful, and clever, than this broad.” He waved his phone again half-heartedly.
Lyla peered at his clenched hand and then at his face, sporting a puzzled frown behind her cute tortoiseshell glasses. “If you don’t mind me asking, what exactly has you so worked up right now? Is it because you feel violated? Like I took something private and made it public?”
Tate paused. He hadn’t considered that aspect of this whole conundrum for even one second. He’d been too busy feeling embarrassed over his pathetic puppy routine and wondering how to overcome it in order to get her back.
“You do know that I’m the only person who has any idea that book isn’t complete fiction, right? Well, me and whoever gave that to you, anyway.”
Lyla held an arm out and stood aside, gesturing him further into her apartment so they could go sit on her couch.
Right. Because Tate had been so keyed up when he arrived, they’d hadn’t made it more than three feet past her front door.
He followed her and struggled to articulate what was so unnerving about The Last Man Standing. He had assumed he’d know what to say about it once he got here, but words were not his forte like they were Lyla’s, and Tate was faltering.
Plus, when Lyla didn’t even bother to deny it was really about them, it threw him even more off-balance.
He laughed at himself in contempt. “All that time we were together, I thought I was this impenetrable. I figured not even you could see through me—but I was transparent as hell, wasn’t I? Mooning around like a lovesick middle-schooler with his first crush?”
“Tate—”
“What?” he complained. “It’s humiliating. I might not be a real bodyguard, but I do have some training. I should’ve been able to conduct myself a little more professionally. But I couldn’t resist you. I couldn’t hold out for long at all before I was all over you like a cheap suit.”
Lyla studied him in astonishment, her eyes like saucers and her lips hanging open.
Tate’s eyes dipped to that mouth he adored so much, and he abruptly realized what he’d blurted out moments ago. Lovesick. Love. Oh, Lord. This was not the way he’d intended to tell her.
He had rushed back to New York because he was in love with this woman, and yet here he was, freaking arguing with her about some book, instead of falling to his knees and telling her what she meant to him.
Tate was supposed to be telling Lyla why he was still so hung up on her every minute of every day. He ought to be saying he was here—despite deciding in very definite and unwavering terms that he was going to move on with his life and let Lyla do the same—because he couldn’t not be.
For heaven’s sake, he’d been an irritable bastard to all and sundry for a month, pretending like he was hunky-dory when in fact he’d been dying without her. The whole time, he’d been low-key scouring the internet for any little mention of Lyla Lawson to get him through.
He’d yearned for his girl so much.
My, my, my Delilah. There’d clearly been a part of Tate clinging to the hope that he’d get to have her again someday, maybe even permanently.
And yet, Tate was finally in Lyla’s apartment with her, and he was debating things that were so unimportant. All the wind went out of him just like that, and he slumped onto her couch.
He stared down at the phone in his hands in defeat. Yes, he was in love with her, but this was never going to work with a dunce like him at the helm.
Lyla was still watching him, Tate realized, but he couldn’t make himself meet her eyes. Not yet, anyway. Not until he figured out what to do next.
She stood firm and cleared her throat to get his attention. “Can we go back to the beginning for a minute?” she inquired gently. “I think I might need to clear a few things up.”
Tate nodded bleakly.
“You don’t talk in your sleep,” she stated matter-of-factly, “And I can’t read your mind.”
She studied him for a few moments longer, then continued, “I wrote that book very quickly, while we were together and in the first week or so after Brett’s attack. It was like…like a souvenir—a picture of a place we’d been, so I wouldn’t forget
it.”
Tate made himself focus on her, finally seeing past his own anxiety and noticing how nervous Lyla seemed, despite the determination in her voice. Didn’t she realize that she was the one holding all the cards here?
She said, “I thought…I wanted to hold onto us for a while longer. I wasn’t sure I should even be writing a book that personal, you know? But with Red Devil’s launch and Trident so eager to get my new series off the ground…I ended up taking the leap of faith anyway.”
Then she perched beside him gingerly, explaining, “The book tour—the part we got to, anyway—went really well, and people were getting excited about Red Devil because of it. The folks at Trident thought that if we could get this title ready to release quickly, having a second book published so soon would cement the series. They’re rushing it out, Tate.”
Surprise, surprise—Tate’s protective instincts kicked right in. He sat up and wondered, “You mean Red’s rushing it out? When you aren’t ready. Do I need to hurt him for bullying you, or what?”
“He’s not bullying me,” she assured him. “He’s simply…very persuasive. But that’s not important. What I want you to consider is this: if you are about as easy to see through as a piece of granite and I have no telepathic ability, then where did this story come from?”
For emphasis, Lyla reached down and tapped Tate’s phone screen.
She waited and waited, while Tate floundered and wilted under her scrutiny. When he couldn’t come up with a response that didn’t sound cocky as hell and he couldn’t stand the quiet a second longer, he grudgingly asked, “I don’t know, where?”
Sitting there like a dimwit student being grilled by his hot teacher, it dawned on him rather abruptly what Lyla was implying, though. Tate’s head snapped up and he searched her face.
“If you were sticking to the friends-with-benefits rules,” she asked, “Then which one of us, do you suppose, was the one who ended up too deep? Who was the one spinning unrealistic fantasies about an object of attraction who’d made their position on the subject exceptionally clear?”
Tate was, for one of the only times in his life, utterly speechless. He hadn’t stuck to the rules. Lyla Lawson could not have gotten his viewpoint more wrong, and she couldn’t possibly be telling him that she had fallen for him, too. It was inconceivable.
The Hero Was Handsome (Triple Threat Book 3) Page 35
