Call Me Irresistible (45 page)

The car was still right behind her, its headlights yellow smears on the wet asphalt. Rain had soaked through her canvas sneakers, and she pulled the purple trench she’d found at a secondhand store more tightly around her. Security grilles barred the windows of the sari shop, the Korean discount home-goods store, even the dumpling place—all closed for the night.

She walked faster still, but the steady hum of the engine didn’t fade. It wasn’t her imagination. The car was definitely following her, and she had a block to go.

A police car sped by on the cross street, siren blaring, red light pulsing in the rain. Her breath came more quickly as the limousine pulled up next to her, its dark windows menacing in the night. She started to run, but the car stayed with her. Out of the corners of her eyes, she saw one of the back windows slide down.

“Want a lift?”

The last face she’d ever have expected to see peered out at her. She stumbled on the uneven pavement, so dizzy she nearly fell. After everything she’d done to cover her tracks, here he was, framed in that open window, his features shadowed.

For weeks, she’d labored deep into the night, focusing only on her work, not letting herself think, refusing to sleep until she was too exhausted to go on. She was ragged and empty, in no condition to talk to anyone, let alone him. “No thanks,” she managed. “I’m almost home.”

“You look a little wet.” A shaft of light from a streetlamp cut across one molded cheekbone.

He couldn’t do this to her. She wouldn’t let him. Not after all that had happened. She started to walk again, but the limo stayed even with her.

“You really shouldn’t be out here by yourself,” he said.

She understood him well enough to know exactly what lay behind his sudden appearance. A guilty conscience. He hated hurting people, and he needed to reassure himself that she wasn’t permanently damaged. “Don’t worry about it,” she said.

“Would you mind getting in the car?”

“No need. I’m almost home.” She told herself not to say any more, but curiosity got the best of her. “How did you find me?”

“Believe me, it wasn’t easy.”

She kept her eyes straight ahead and didn’t slacken her pace. “One of my brothers,” she said. “You got to them.”

She should have known they’d cave. Last week, Dylan had taken a detour from Boston to tell her Ted’s calls were driving them all nuts and she needed to talk to him. Clay sent her a stream of text messages.
Dude sounds desperate,
his last one said.
Who knows what he might do?

Worst-case scenario?
she’d replied.
He’ll miss a 4-foot putt.

Ted waited until a taxi passed before he replied. “Your brothers gave me nothing but trouble. Clay even told me you’d left the country. I forgot he was an actor.”

“I told you he was good.”

“It took me a while, but I finally realized you wouldn’t accept money from your parents anymore. And I couldn’t see you leaving the country with what you took out of your checking account.”

“How do you know what I took out of my checking account?”

Even in the dusky light, she could see him raise his eyebrow. She moved on with a snort of disgust.

“I knew you’d ordered some of your jewelry materials on the Internet,” he said. “I made a list of possible suppliers and got Kayla to call them.”

She stepped around a broken whiskey bottle. “I’m sure she was more than willing to help you out.”

“She told everyone that she owned a boutique in Phoenix and she was trying to find the designer of some jewelry she’d spotted in Texas. She described a few of your pieces—said she wanted to carry them in her store. Yesterday she got your address.”

“And here you are. A wasted trip.”

He had the nerve to sound angry. “Do you think we could have this conversation inside the limo?”

“No.” He could deal with his guilt all by himself. Guilt didn’t add up to love, an emotion she was done with forever.

“I really need you to get in the car.” He grunted out the words.

“I really need you to go to hell.”

“I just got back, and trust me, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Damn it.” The door swung open, and he jumped out while the limo was still moving. Before she could react, he was dragging her to the car.

“Stop it! What are you doing?”

The limo had finally braked. He pushed her inside, climbed in after her, and slammed the door. The locks clicked. “Consider yourself officially kidnapped.”

The car began to move again, its driver hidden behind the closed partition. She grabbed the door handle, but it didn’t budge. “Let me out! I don’t believe you’re doing this. What’s wrong with you? Are you crazy?”

“Pretty much.”

She’d delayed looking at him for as long as she could. Any longer, and he’d see weakness. Slowly she turned her head.

He was as dazzling as ever with those tiger eyes and bladed cheekbones, that straight nose and movie-star jaw. He wore a charcoal gray business suit with a white shirt and navy tie. She hadn’t seen him so formally dressed since his wedding day, and she struggled against a dark tide of emotion. “I mean it,” she said. “Let me out right now.”

“Not until we’ve talked.”

“I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to talk to anybody.”

“What do you mean? You love to talk.”

“Not anymore.” The interior of the stretch had long seats running up the sides and tiny blue lights edging the roof. An enormous bouquet of red roses lay on the seat in front of a built-in bar. She dug into her coat pocket for her cell. “I’m calling the police and telling them I’ve been kidnapped.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“This is Manhattan. You’re not God here. They’ll send you to Rikers for sure.”

“Doubtful, but no sense taking chances.” He snatched the phone away and shoved it in the pocket of his suit coat.

She was an actor’s daughter, and she produced a bored shrug. “Fine. Talk. And hurry up about it. My fiancé’s waiting for me at the apartment.” She pressed her hip against the door, as far away from him as she could get. “I told you it wouldn’t take me long to forget you.”

He blinked, then reached for his bouquet of guilt roses and set them in her lap. “I thought you might like these.”

“You thought wrong.” She flung them back at him.

As the bouquet hit him in the head, Ted accepted the fact that this reunion wasn’t going any better than he deserved. Kidnapping Meg had been one more miscalculation on his part. Not that he’d planned to kidnap her. He’d intended to show up at her door with the roses and a heartfelt declaration of everlasting love, then sweep her off into the limo. But as the car turned onto her street, he’d spotted her, and all his common sense had vanished.

Even from the rear, with her body enveloped in a long purple trench coat, her shoulders hunched against the rain, he’d recognized her. Other women had the same long-legged gait, the same determined swing of the arms, but none of them made him feel as if his chest had imploded.

The dim blue lights in the limo’s interior picked up the same shadows beneath her eyes that he knew had taken up residence under his own. Instead of the rustic beads and ancient coins he was used to seeing dangling from her ears, she wore no jewelry, and the tiny, empty holes in her lobes gave her a vulnerability that tore at him. Her jeans poked out beneath the hem of her wet purple trench coat, and her canvas sneakers were soaked. Her hair was longer than it was when he’d last seen her, spangled with raindrops, and bright red. He wanted her back the way she’d been. He wanted to kiss away the new hollows below her cheekbones and put the warmth back in her eyes. He wanted to make her smile. Laugh. Make her love him again as deeply as he loved her.

As she stared straight ahead at the partition that separated them from his mother’s longtime Manhattan driver, he refused to consider the possibility that he was too late. She had to be lying about the fiancé. Except how could any man resist falling in love with her? He needed to be sure. “Tell me about this fiancé of yours.”

“No way. I don’t want you to feel any worse about yourself than you already do.”

She was lying. At least he prayed she was. “So you think you know how I feel?”

“Definitely. You feel guilty.”

“True.”

“Frankly, I don’t have the energy right now to reassure you. As you can see, I’m doing just fine. Now get on with your life and leave me alone.”

She didn’t look as though she was doing just fine. She looked exhausted. Worse, there was an aloofness—a gravity—about her so at odds with the funny, irreverent woman he knew that he couldn’t make the pieces fit. “I’ve missed you,” he said.

“Glad to hear it,” she replied, in a voice as remote as those mountains he’d feared she might be climbing. “Could you please take me back to my apartment?”

“Later.”

“Ted, I mean it. We have nothing more to talk about.”

“Maybe you don’t, but I do.” Her determination to get away scared him. He’d witnessed firsthand how stubborn she could be, and he hated having that resolve turned against him. He needed a way to break through her ice. “I thought we . . . might take a boat ride.”

“A boat ride? I don’t think so.”

“I knew it was a stupid idea, but the rebuilding committee insisted that was the way to go with you. Forget I mentioned it.”

Her head shot up. “You talked this over with the
rebuilding committee
?”

That flash of temper gave him hope. “I might have mentioned it. In passing. I needed the female perspective, and they convinced me that all women appreciate the grand romantic gesture. Even you.”

Sure enough, sparks flared in her eyes. “I cannot believe you talked over our personal business with those women.”

Our
business, she’d said. Not just his. He pressed harder. “Torie’s really pissed with you.”

“I don’t care.”

“Lady E., too, but she’s more polite about it. You hurt all their feelings when you changed your phone number. You really shouldn’t have done that.”

“Send them my apologies,” she said with a sneer.

“The boat was Birdie’s idea. She’s kind of become your champion because of Haley. And you were right about not bringing in the police. Haley’s grown up a lot lately, and I’m not one of those men who can’t admit it when he’s wrong.”

His hopes rose higher as she clenched her fists against her wet coat. “How many other people did you talk to about our private business?”

“A few.” He stalled for time, frantically trying to figure out how to play this. “Kenny was worthless. Skeet’s still mad at me. Who knew he’d take to you the way he did? And Buddy Ray Baker said I should buy you a Harley.”

“I don’t even know Buddy Ray Baker!”

“Sure you do. He works nights at the Food and Fuel. He sends his best.”

Indignation had put some of the color back in those beautiful cheeks. “Is there anyone you didn’t talk to?” she said.

He reached for the napkin next to the champagne bucket, where, in a premature burst of optimism, he had a bottle chilling. “Let me dry you off.”

She grabbed the napkin from him and threw it down. He settled back in the seat and tried to sound as if he had it all under control. “San Francisco wasn’t much fun without you.”

“Sorry you had to waste your money like that, but I’m sure the rebuilding committee was grateful for your generous contribution.”

Admitting he wasn’t the one who’d made that expensive final bid hardly seemed like the best way to convince her of his love. “I sat in the hotel lobby all afternoon waiting for you,” he said.

“Guilt is your thing. It doesn’t work with me.”

“It wasn’t guilt.” The limo pulled to the curb, and the driver, following Ted’s earlier instructions, stopped on State Street across from the National Museum of the American Indian. It was still raining, and he should have chosen another destination, but he’d never have gotten her inside his parents’ Greenwich Village co-op, and he couldn’t imagine spilling his guts in a restaurant or bar. He sure as hell wasn’t saying any more in this limo with his mother’s driver eavesdropping on the other side of the partition.
The hell with it.
Rain or not, this was the place.

She peered out the window. “Why are we stopping here?”

“So we can take a walk in the park.” He hit the locks, grabbed the umbrella from the floor, and pushed the door open.

“I don’t want to take a walk. I’m wet, my feet are cold, and I want to go home.”

“Soon.” He caught her arm and somehow managed to get both her and the umbrella out onto the street.

“It’s raining!” she exclaimed.

“Not too much now. Besides, you’re already wet, that red hair should keep you plenty warm, and I have a big umbrella.” He popped it, dragged her around the back of the limo and up onto the sidewalk. “Lots of boat docks here.” He nudged her toward the entrance to Battery Park.

“I told you I wasn’t going on a boat ride.”