It’d been good enough to earn her the title of vice president of sales. Zach hadn’t earned that title. He was just an associate broker who had a higher level of certification and experience than a basic real estate agent. Granted, he worked hard, but she was family. Even if her father thought they both had worked hard and saw the need for a tiebreaker, wouldn’t blood win out in the end? How could he potentially pass her over for an outsider?
“Excuse me,” said a guy who was part of a large rowdy group a few tables over. “Mind if I take a couple of these chairs?”
“I do mind,” Maddie snapped, but tacked on a smile to ease the bluntness of her words. “I’m expecting friends.”
Did he really think she came here by herself on a Friday night to have a beer alone at a table for four in the middle of a busy pub? Obviously so.
“Sorry,” he murmured. As he turned to walk away, she called him back.
“On second thought,” she said. “You can have them. I don’t think I’m going to stay much longer.”
“What about your friends?” he asked.
Apparently, they’re not coming. They’d either been in and out of the place before she’d arrived or she was the only agent with free time on her hands on a Friday night. She could do the solo-girl bit at home, where she was more comfortable and looked less lonely.
“I guess they’ll just have to fend for themselves.”
The guy’s concern lasted about as long as it took his biceps to bulge as he lifted two of the three chairs like he was curling dumbbells. “Cool.”
As he walked away with the chairs, someone else came up behind Maddie and put a hand on one of the chairs. Without looking up, she said, “Sorry, someone else is using that chair.”
“Who?” asked a familiar voice. “Did you bring a date?”
Her gaze snapped up as Zach sat down in the chair before the guy could return to claim it.
“No, I didn’t bring a date,” Maddie said. “I gave away the chairs since no one showed up tonight. He’s coming back for that one, too.”
“He can’t have it. I’m using it,” he said. “Where is everyone else?”
“Since I’m not the one in charge of this week’s RSVPs, your guess is as good as mine.”
Zach flinched and she realized she sounded snarky. She didn’t mean to. He didn’t deserve it.
“Do you want to talk?” he said.
“Talk about what?”
He arched a brow at her in a knowing look and she got the feeling that his patience wasn’t infinite. That was fine. She didn’t need the charity of his good nature. They were, after all, competitors.
She’d told Zach to bring it on.
Ugh.
One of them would win and the other would lose. It was that simple. Anything she divulged—including how unfair, how sexist, how messed up this whole situation felt—would just be tipping her hand. She would be confessing her own self-doubt and that would give him a big advantage.
She wouldn’t say anything, but that didn’t stop her from feeling every bit of outrage and disappointment. Nor did it stop the endless loop of inner monologue that played in her head.
On top of that, she was mad at herself for letting Zach get under her skin.
Winning should’ve been enough of an incentive to stay focused, to not let him get to her. But here he was with his sexy eyes and those adorable dimples and he was just making things worse. She should do something to take back her power—something that would give her no choice but to channel all her angry, petulant energy away from those lips and into winning.
“Are you sure there isn’t something you want to talk about?” he asked.
As if he didn’t know.
“What’s there to talk about?”
He laughed. “Okay. I get it. You don’t want to talk about it. But just an hour ago in the office, you seemed fine. Now you seem angry.”
“I’m not angry. Why would I be angry?” she answered as a server came to take his drink order. The petite twentysomething blonde took on a dreamy quality when Zach smiled at her. Maddie couldn’t blame her. Zach had that effect on most women under the age of ninety-five.
“I’ll get this round,” he said. “What are you drinking?”
“Don’t you have a date tonight?” Maddie reminded him.
“A date?” he said as if he didn’t understand. “I have plans later, but I don’t know if I’d call it a date. What do you want to drink?”
She asked for another beer and Zach ordered the same along with a basket of the restaurant’s homemade sweet potato chips.
A Mumford & Sons–type band took the stage and started playing a loud folksy British-sounding tune. A group of four women stood up and began singing along and clapping with their arms over their heads. Someone in the room let out a long, loud whistle.
Maddie was looking around the room, everywhere but at him.
When the server left, she asked, “Are you meeting a woman?”
“Does it matter?”
“Well, I know I wouldn’t appreciate it if a guy showed up for a date with beer breath.”
“Good to know. I’ll use some mouthwash.”
“So, it is a date, then,” she said, as if she’d tricked him into the confession.
“So, it does matter to you, then,” he answered, a wide grin overtaking his handsome face.
The words were on the tip of her tongue. She tried to bite them back, but she was too late.
“And what if it does?”
In a split second, everything happened in slow motion. Zach’s jaw dropped... and she leaned in and kissed him.
It was a whisper of a kiss, so unexpected—even to herself—that she felt his surprise as she braced her hands against his chest. But then, like sweet milk chocolate melting in the heat of the sun, his hard mouth softened and he kissed her back. He took control of the kiss, slowly at first, with lips and hints of tongue, his arms on her back.
His mouth tasted of mint and it fused with the hoppy flavor of the beer she’d been drinking. There was something else, an indefinable flavor that was uniquely him—something which she suddenly realized she’d been craving her entire life. She leaned in closer, not wanting the kiss to end. As if reading her mind, he slid his arms up to her neck, and opened his mouth, deepening the kiss, pulling her closer and sliding his hands into her hair.
The kiss faded into a gradual—almost reluctant—parting of lips, a tentative reclaiming of personal space, a cautious oh, Scheisse, what do we do now?
In the seconds that followed, she realized that the one kiss that she thought would cure her wasn’t working that way at all.
She pressed her fingers to her lips.
As it turned out, kissing Zach to get him out of her system might not have been the cure-all she thought it would be. In fact, it might have opened Pandora’s box.
Clearly, she hadn’t thought this through as carefully as she’d thought she had; she’d simply reacted, followed her instincts, allowed the pin that held her heart together to be drawn to the steel magnet that was him. If she’d thought it through, common sense would’ve stopped her from doing something so imprudent. Something so deliciously, divinely, toe-curlingly stupid.
She took a deep breath and reminded herself that now the die was cast. With one kiss, she’d sealed their fate: she had to win and he had to go.
Maddie stood up. “I have to go.”
No, he has to go. I have to leave.
“No, you don’t,” he said. “Because we have some things we need to talk about. You can’t just kiss me and run away.”
She grabbed her purse and fled the bar like Cinderella running against midnight.
* * *
“Maddie,” Zach said. “Don’t leave.”
But the noisy pub swallowed up his words before they could reach her. Not that it would’ve done any good if she’d heard him.
With her kiss fresh on his lips, he had to go after her. He stood and pulled a twenty out of his wallet and handed i
t to the bemused waitress who’d come with their drinks. “Keep the change.”
He took a few steps away from the table and scanned the area between him and the door. The place wasn’t that big, but he didn’t see her.
Madeleine Fortunado was a complicated woman. She was well-bred, but she had a fiery temper. She was fluent in three languages, but she drank American beer from a bottle—in an English pub. She wore very little makeup but she dressed in expensive classics. She had all the quiet tells of a woman who had been raised with every advantage, but she rarely called attention to herself.
Except when she was spontaneously kissing him.
Sure, she was fun to flirt with and, on a very superficial level, he’d thought about dating her, but he’d ruled it out just as fast because she was the boss’s daughter. But damn...he’d never wanted her in a physical way. Until now.
Until she’d leaned in and kissed him and thrown his equilibrium and everything he thought he knew about her out the window.
She wasn’t at the bar. It was a safe bet that she’d already made it out the door.
He made it outside just as she reached her car.
“Maddie, wait.” He sprinted toward her.
He was always in charge of himself. Usually, he had the upper hand with women. The bottom line was he had to so that he didn’t give the women he saw the wrong idea. He had no room in his life for a relationship right now. Maybe someday, but not right now. That’s why he never let it get that far. That’s why he never got emotionally involved. He walked away before anything could take root. Maybe it was a chicken and egg thing. Maybe he could walk away because nothing had taken root. Not in a very long time. But that was another lifetime ago, before he was who he was now. That relationship had only reinforced the importance of not letting himself get too deeply involved. He’d learned that with his family when his folks died. His family had never been there for him.
He reached her just as she fished her keys out of her purse.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
She looked at him like he was crazy.
He should’ve let her go.
He should’ve just let her get in her car and drive away.
“I’m leaving?” she said like he was a dolt. And he was, for trying to make her stay.
He needed time to think, needed to put together the right words. But standing there with the taste of her on his lips, he couldn’t think. All he could do was feel and that was a dangerous thing.
“Don’t go,” he said over the merriment of a group of people who looked like they were ready to party as they made their way toward the building. She shot him a questioning look that was half surprise and half question. What do you want from me? She hitched her purse up onto her shoulder.
“Let’s take a walk,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Night had already fallen on downtown Houston and the air had turned chilly. Maddie crossed her arms in front of her and was rubbing them.
“Are you cold?” he asked. “I wish I had a jacket to offer you. If you’re uncomfortable, we don’t have to walk.”
She arched a brow. He read her expression to mean that the kiss had made this an uncomfortable situation. Yet here they were, neither of them acting very anxious to make an exit.
“What do you want, Zach?”
“I want to talk about what just happened in there.”
She opened her mouth as if to say something, but stopped and shook her head.
“I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
Now he was the one who was at a loss for words, when he should’ve said, Yeah, and I shouldn’t have kissed you back.
Maddie took a step forward. “I suppose walking might help warm me up,” she said over her shoulder at him.
Zach could think of several other ways that he could help her warm up, but none of them involved activities the two of them could do in public. God, that kiss really had done something to him. But it was just a kiss, he told himself.
That was the thing, though. It hadn’t felt like just a kiss.
“Where do you want to go?” she asked when he stepped up beside her.
“Let’s walk to the Paisley.”
Her eyes widened for a moment, but then she visibly relaxed. “That’s a great idea. It’s just down the way.”
“I know.” He smiled at her. “It seems like neutral ground.”
She nodded and locked her car with her key fob.
They were different in so many ways—she was all about family and connections, while he was a loner by nature—but they connected via business. And kissing, it seemed.
They started walking down Main Street, keeping silent and maintaining a safe distance between them until they reached the construction site.
Maddie was the one who broke the silence. “I kissed you because you said you weren’t staying.”
“I’m staying if I win the promotion,” he said. “In all fairness, I should tell you I don’t intend to lose.”
“If you win, I’m not staying,” she said. “So, either way, it was a goodbye kiss.”
They sat down on the concrete steps leading up to the high-rise’s front doors. The building looked finished on the outside, but the builder was still in the process of finishing the inside. The building was located in a popular area with lots of downtown nightlife, so a steady stream of people filed by on their way to the various clubs and restaurants.
“You’d really leave your family’s business?” he asked her.
She slanted him a look. “Of course. How could I stay if my own father passes me over for a promotion? Never mind. You wouldn’t understand.”
She waved him away and crossed her arms.
“What makes you think that I wouldn’t understand?” he challenged.
She laughed. It wasn’t a condescending sound, more of a note of exasperation.
“Of course you couldn’t understand. I do appreciate your attempt at empathy, but you have no idea what it’s like when your father doesn’t take you seriously.”
She paused, but he sensed she wasn’t finished. So, he let her continue.
“Everyone takes Zach McCarter seriously. All you have to do is smile and people—yes, both men and women—are putty in your hands and you can mold them and form them as you see fit. My father included. Somehow you’ve managed to wrap him around your little finger.”
She blinked at him as if her words had surprised even herself.
“Are you finished?” he asked.
She shrugged.
“You have a point,” he said. “I don’t know what it’s like for my father not to take me seriously. My father died when I was thirteen years old. My mother died two years later. My brother was too angry at the world or too self-absorbed to want the responsibility of raising me. So, he gave me away and let me cool my heels for the next three years in the foster care system.”
Maddie’s face had gone ashen. “Zach, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t know. Not many people do. It’s not something I advertise, but I’m not ashamed of it either. That experience made me into the man I am today.”
Maddie looked down, and for a moment the two of them sat in silence on the steps of the Paisley. The sound of people on the sidewalk in front of them, the building that would determine their future to their backs.
Why had he just told her that? He’d never shared that piece of himself with any other business associate. In fact, the only person he could remember opening up to was Sharla Grasse, the only woman who’d broken his heart. All those years ago.
“You shouldn’t be ashamed of who you are,” Maddie said. “You can’t help it.”
They were quiet again.
“So, that’s another thing I didn’t know about you,” she said.
He nodded. “That means you’re up one. You owe me one.”
“Okay...” she said, drawing out the word as if she was thinking. “Something you don’t know about me is I’m
ashamed of myself for carrying on about my father. I must sound like an entitled brat to you.”
He turned to her and shook his head. “You’re human. I can imagine how it would be to be in your shoes. It would suck. You were expecting one outcome and you were disappointed by the way your father handled it. Something I do know about you is you’re a hard worker. You would be very deserving of this promotion. If—” He stopped and held up a finger as if to make a point. “Let me emphasize the word if—because I’m not giving up and I’m not letting up. If you get it, it will be because you earned it and not because your father handed it to you.”
She started to say something, but Zach opened his fingers and held up his palm to stop her. “Something else you don’t know about me is I think you have the advantage in this little contest we’re in. I don’t know that your father even knows it, but it’s true.”
She looked troubled.
“That’s not true,” she said.
“Maybe it’s not, but I think it is. Now I’m one up on you. It’s your turn to tell me something I don’t know about you.”
She laughed. “Well, whatever the case. Technically, that last one didn’t count as a something I don’t know about you. It was something you’re thinking, but not something truly about you. So, I’ll see you that one and raise you one. I think you’re an incredibly kind, caring person. I think you have an incredible outlook and love of life despite what you’ve been through.”
She had a small mole just below her right eye. How had he never noticed it before? It made her even more beautiful. Tonight, he’d noticed a lot of things about her he’d never taken the time to slow down and see. Those lips...those eyes...the fact that her teeth were perfect, but her nose was just slightly less than so. He drank her in greedily, wanting to commit to memory every single detail of how she looked at this very moment in the dusky May twilight, with her guard down. He wanted to lean in and kiss her—take one more taste, see if he remembered right and this time memorize how she tasted, how perfectly their mouths fit together, how the chemistry that had always buzzed between them turned into white-hot electricity when they kissed.
Maddie Fortune's Perfect Man Page 7
