Truth or Dare (26 page)

He said it as if there were no other possibility. And more than that, when she looked into his eyes, she could see he believed it. Believed in her.

This thing with Leo was
good.

Her motives for calling him that first night after meeting Royce may not have been entirely pure, but her reasons for saying yes to the next date and the ones after had been different.

Being with Tyler had changed something inside her. He’d given her a taste of the intimate connection she’d been avoiding for years, one that went beyond friendship. He’d made her love again when she’d thought it impossible. But Tyler wasn’t the right guy for her. Something he’d warned her about from the start.

And now she wanted the
right
guy, the
available
guy, to make her feel the way Tyler had.

To make the hurt in her heart go away.

For once, she wanted to set herself up for success instead of failure. Pick the smart path to a happy future, instead of the dead end she’d refused to accept wasn’t the way.

And being with Leo was smart. He was such a decent man, with deep roots in the city she called home and little to no emotional baggage preventing him from making a commitment. He wanted to be there for her, and the only other woman in his life was a sister who couldn’t be more excited he had a woman he enjoyed taking out.

He was easy. Comfortable. Stable. Grounded.

Available.

Leo was everything she should want.

And yet her belly tensed, because she saw the shift of his focus to her mouth and knew what was coming next.

The kiss was soft. Sweet. Simple. Just long enough to ensure there’d been time for her to let go of the knob behind her and put her hands on him…if she’d wanted to.

When he pulled back, she smiled at him and he brushed her cheek with the back of his knuckles.

He wanted more. It was there in his eyes, but he didn’t press.

Maggie half wished he would, because no matter how much she wanted to give him a chance to prove things could be as right between the two of them as they’d felt between her and Tyler, she just couldn’t make herself invite the next step.

For the first time in nearly a year since she’d signed on to Ava’s pact, Maggie truly understood what it meant to be open to the possibilities. And she understood that even now, when she so desperately wanted to be, she still wasn’t.

At least not tonight.

But maybe next time.

M
AY

“You’re mad at me,” Gina pouted through the line, causing Tyler to roll onto his back and glare at the ceiling.

“I’m not mad.”

He wouldn’t let himself be. He couldn’t afford to let anything real muck up the drama he was letting play out with Gina. She needed to be the victim, and any hint that he saw her as the villain would undermine everything he’d been working for.

“But you don’t think I should have gone on vacation with him.”

Tyler let out a sigh, figuring there were enough ways to interpret it—jealousy, frustration, heartbreak, whatever appealed to Gina’s ego in that moment—that she wouldn’t pick up on the impatience behind it. With his words, though, he needed to be careful.

“It’s not that I don’t think you should have gone…it’s that
I wish you hadn’t.
” Sitting up, he looked out his bedroom window, angling just right to catch a glimpse of that sliver of sky visible from between his building and the next. “Gina, what are you still doing with this guy? I know you thought you loved him, but you’re calling me from Las Vegas because you had a fight at the blackjack tables and he took off. Again. He belittles you, abandons you, and doesn’t make you happy. And it’s driving me nuts, because
I know
I could. You and me and Charlie. We could have it all.”

Silence. And then, “What are you saying?”

Suddenly all his senses were on alert, because the tentative quality to that question was different than anything he’d heard from her before.

He swallowed, pushed away the image of Maggie that rose in his mind, and ignored the lead weight in his gut. This was what he’d been working for.

So concentrating on the last time he’d been with his boy, on the feel of his chubby arms clinging to him, the warm weight of his little body against his chest, his silky hair buried in Tyler’s neck, he pulled his next words from the depths of his heart. “I’m saying you could be with me. That this time we could make it work. Let me take care of you.”

That was the key. The lure.

His attention was important, but what got Gina where it counted were things like a maid. Shopping for whatever she wanted. Being taken out and shown off.

She knew he could provide all that. He had before.

God only knew what it was she’d thought she was going to get with Ray when she left, but she’d had enough time to see the life she’d be signing on to for what it was. The drinking, the women, the late nights, and the indifference to a woman who demanded attention had to have been a rude awakening. No doubt Gina thought she could turn it around. But after all this time, had she finally given up?

He could hear her breathing on the other end of the line, and while he wanted to demand an answer, do something to keep this conversation moving because it was as close as he’d ever been to success…he knew better.

“I need to think, Tyler. I need a few days. I’ve made so many mistakes. And…I don’t want to make any more. Can you understand?”

“Of course, I do.” He understood she was two days into a weeklong vacation and she wanted to wait until it was over before she broke the news to Ray. Who, by all accounts, would be relieved. “But if you need anything. Me to fly you home—hell, me to fly out and get you myself, or just someone to talk to—anything, Gina, I’m here.”

“What crawled up your ass?” Sam slammed the back door of the portable toolshed that was his van, scowling at Tyler, who’d quite possibly snapped at the guy like a total dick.

He was about to jump out of his skin, waiting for the minutes to tick by so he’d be one day closer to hearing back from Gina.

This was it.

Finally, he was going to get his son back. Be able to give his boy all the things Charlie had been missing without him. He’d make it up to him. Make sure he never wanted again.

Christ,
he could be tucking Charlie into bed within the week. Listening to his little boy’s belly laughs and upside-down squeals. He could see his smile and know,
know
that Charlie was getting what he needed. The love, the attention, the security.

Until then, he needed to take it down a notch.

“Sorry, man. Wound a little tight is all.”

Sam shook his head, offering a pitying look. “This because of Maggie?”

“What?” he coughed, the question catching him off guard.

“Dude, I know you guys had a thing and now she’s getting serious with Hot Doc.”

Fuck.
This was pretty much just what he didn’t need to hear right then. Like he didn’t need an answer to the question that fired out of his mouth before he could hold it back. “You think they’re serious?”

Sam pulled the garage door down, then secured it with a padlock and set the alarm. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he gave him one of those
c’mon, man, don’t make me actually have to say it
looks.

“Yeah, guess I sort of figured they were. But it’s really not about Maggie. I’m, uhh, waiting to hear back on something. This position I’ve applied for.”

He felt like an ass for saying it, and doubly so for trying to justify it in his head with excuses about his answer not being a total lie. But for one reason or another, he couldn’t bring himself to tell anyone else about what was going on with Gina. About Charlie.

Anyone but Maggie. Who’d been the one he wanted to talk to about it more than anything. The one he couldn’t.

“A new job? Is it around here?”

“Don’t know. Sort of depends on the hiring manager. But if it works out, there’s a strong likelihood I’d move pretty quick.”

“Back to New York?”

He nodded. “It’s been the plan.”

“When you supposed to hear back?”

“Not until Monday.”

“Look, I’m driving up to Ford’s cabin with him tomorrow to open it up after the winter. You should come. Follow us up, stay over a couple nights, and then drive home Sunday. Keep yourself busy, you know?”

They cut back through the narrow gangway between the buildings, Sam a few feet ahead. “It’s pretty excellent up there. Private lane, right on the bay, can’t even see the neighbor’s place. And Maggie’s got some wedding thing with Hot Doc in town here, so it’d just be the guys. What’dya say?”

He couldn’t believe he was even considering it. But man, he needed a distraction. “Can I get a signal for my phone up there?”

Sam grinned back. “Yeah.”

“All right then, I’m in.”

“Oh yay!” Maggie chirped. “You’re up.”

Ava, sporting nonsexy bed head and a pillow crease on her cheek, shot daggers at her through puffy eyes. “You know it’s five in the morning here. I know you know it, because I set my digital clock to California time and left it next to yours.”

“Mm-hmm, yeah, sorry about that.” She wasn’t.

“You don’t look sorry. Actually, you look sort of freaked.” The video feed spun, went dark, and then returned to Ava, now propped up against her extended-stay hotel headboard. “What’s going on?”

Maggie tried to swallow down her guilt, but finally let it go instead. “It’s the wedding. I thought I’d made the right decision, but—”

“Wait,” Ava snapped. “This isn’t about the shoes again, because the sun’s not even up here and, for cripes sake, I already told you twice, they don’t make you look like a hooker—”

“It’s not the shoes,” she cut in. “It’s—Leo asked me if I’d stay at the hotel with him. In his room…overnight…in his bed.”

Ava rubbed her eye with her wrist. “And you said no.”

“I said yes.”

“Yes?” Those puffy eyes went as wide as their sleepy state would allow. “What—you dirty little harlot! Finally, it’s about time! So what’s the problem?”

The problem?

“I’d only be doing it as some last-ditch effort, hoping he’d be able to coax me into feeling something I don’t actually feel.” About the last reason she’d ever want to fall into bed with someone.

“While Leo’s already
all in.
So if you do the deed, he’s not going to be looking at it like some relationship-po
tential litmus test, he’s going to think you’re all in, too. He’s going to believe you guys have moved to the next level.”

Maggie nodded, hating that she’d let things go this far already. That despite being upfront about not being sure she was ready for something serious, she was still going to hurt him.

“You know, Maggie. You could be honest about it. Tell him you want to try, but he needs to understand that it doesn’t mean—”

“I can’t.”

Ava stared, and then reached out for her phone, her fingers looking freakishly big as she patted the device. “Aww, honey. I’m sorry.”

So was Maggie.

Leo was her friend. An amazing friend. The kind she’d told herself she wanted Tyler to be—before she’d gone and fallen in love with the guy. Something she suspected had been happening from the first and, worse yet, she didn’t see changing anytime soon.

“Thought you were riding with Sam?” Tyler asked as Ford folded himself into the front passenger seat and buckled up.

“He’s tough to follow on the road. Even with the big van, he gets lucky catching the tail end of lights like nobody else and then assumes you’re still behind him until he thinks to check twenty miles later. I’ll ride along to give you directions. And Maggie’ll ride up with him.”

Tyler shot a look at the van parked in front of him and then back to their building. “Maggie?”

What the hell?

“Oh yeah. She’s coming, too.” Ford shrugged, scanning some list on his phone. “Change of plans, I guess.”

Just then, the woman in question came jogging out the front door, hair pulled up into a loose knot, wearing a cropped jacket in army green over a T-shirt, tie-waist khakis, and old Converses that really shouldn’t have been sexy but, God help him, were.

She swung open the door to Sam’s van and leaned in with her bag, then slowly leaned back out, her smile wavering for only a second as she cast a look back at Tyler.

Uh-huh.
So she hadn’t known he was going to be there, either.

But then her smile was restored, and with a friendly wave she hopped in the passenger seat. The van’s lights blinked and the tailpipe offered up a plume of exhaust as they pulled out.

Hands locked around the wheel, he stared out the windshield.

Bailing now would be bullshit.

They were both adults. And hell, Sam was right. He needed to get out of town.

Tyler put the car in gear and Ford pointed to the corner. “Up here, you’re going to want to take a right.”

The cabin wasn’t exactly the classic Lincoln Log–style, woodsy hideaway Tyler had been envisioning. Rather than the simple rectangular frame with a kitchen at one side and a couple of bunks at the other, Ford’s family cabin was about three thousand square feet of vaulted ceilings, exposed beams, modern appliances, and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the woods and bay beyond. And that was just the main building. There was a detached garage, two sheds, and when he followed the flagstone steps down to the water, a two-story boathouse and dock.