“I think you didn’t call me because you were too scared to admit that you still had feelings.”
Dammit, don’t look back and think you know what I was going through
.
“You don’t—you have no idea—” he continued when she didn’t answer. Raking both hands through his hair, he turned his back for a minute, and Maggie thought he might walk away from her once and for all.
“What were you planning on saying?” Maggie asked. “‘Let’s get back together?’ ‘Let’s give it another try?’”
Jack turned and stared at her, eyes dark.
“That decision—it was the right one.” She worked to keep her voice steady. “It wouldn’t have worked out any other way.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. Come on. Think back. You had everything ahead of you.” Maggie dropped her chin. “You didn’t need someone back in the States.”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it. I asked you to come to England with me. I wanted—”
“I know what you wanted.” She had to stop him. She couldn’t relive the conversation all over again. “But there were things about me you didn’t know back then.” There. She’d said it. “Things you still don’t know.”
He shook his head, and impatience filled his eyes. “‘Things’? Like what?”
“I…I can’t explain. It just wouldn’t have worked out between us. We were too young, anyway.”
“I wasn’t.”
Maggie wound her skirt between her fingers, exhausted. “Well, I was. End of story.”
He stared at her for a long moment. “Dance with me.”
“What? You’re crazy. No.”
Jack took her hand. “Listen, forget about Vegas, okay? You’re right. It’s over.” He shrugged. “But here we are, and it’s been a long time, so…why the hell not? One dance between old friends doesn’t have to mean anything. Or make up for anything.” He pulled at his collar and looked uncomfortable.
“Oh, hell,” Maggie said. “Fine. One dance. Then will you leave me alone?”
“I promise.”
It was a mistake from the start, and she knew it.
In slow motion she watched as his hand wrapped around hers, as if following a memory that hadn’t died but just slumbered for a long, long time. The music swelled, and they slipped into a space on the hardwood. Mingling into the other couples, they found a rhythm, their rhythm, after a moment or two.
I didn’t forget how we fit together,
Maggie marveled.
I didn’t forget how all our edges match up in the right places. And neither did he.
Warning bells went off inside her head, but she ignored them. She’d meant what she’d said—it was over, a long time ago—but it was so easy to slip back into Jack’s embrace, even after all these years. So easy to like the way her chest met his. So easy to remember the way his fingers closed around hers and felt like they belonged there always.
Damn
. She lowered her gaze and tried to remind herself what she was doing at the ball in the first place.
Dillon, remember? The money. The foreclosure
. She counted to ten. She scanned the room, hoping and not hoping to see her stepbrother cross the threshold. But against her will, she leaned into Jack’s embrace and let him carry her to the music. Suddenly, she wondered what moment in the night would be harder: having to leave his arms when she saw her stepbrother, or having to stay there and risk falling back into a place she’d left years ago.
Her hand shifted on his shoulder.
Say something
, she thought.
Make conversation. Don’t turn to mush like a girl at a high school dance.
“So what kind of business did you end up in?”
Jack pulled back slightly, and Maggie found space to breathe. “Well, I came back to the States…” He cleared his throat. “…after Oxford. Got accepted to the MBA program at Boston University and, after that, found a job working for a new company here in town.” He passed over the details without much embellishment. “You?”
“I opened my own business.”
His brows rose. “Good for you, Mags.”
“Well, not so good these days,” she confessed. “I’m in up to my ears in debt.”
He frowned. “Sorry to hear that. Anything I can do to help?”
She held her breath.
No. Double no. I didn’t care about his money back then. I sure as hell don’t want it now. Jack is the one person I can never, ever, be indebted to.
“No. But thanks for the offer.”
“So where are you living? Around Boston?”
“Small town in Rhode Island.”
“Nice area.”
“I know.” She wondered how much longer she could make small talk.
Jack drew her closer again. His hand tightened around her back, and waves of desire pulsed along Maggie’s spine.
Oh, God. I’m in trouble
.
She tried to think of bills she needed to pay or designs she needed to work on. She tried to remember the number of the Bay Bank, the colors of the lilies in her backyard, the price of gas at the pumps. Anything to keep her mind off the fact that being this close to Jack was throwing her into emotional chaos. The song, an endless rendition of “Stairway to Heaven,” carried them around and around, and with every sweep, his strong chest met hers. With every chorus, his chin brushed her forehead and his hand tightened around her own. Maggie tried to remember how to breathe normally and failed. She closed her eyes and willed herself to hold on until the song ended. Then she could leave. She could put some distance between them. She could escape, because apparently her emotions were about to betray her. She could—
The song ended. Finally.
“Thank you.” Before Maggie could stop him, Jack had brushed a kiss against her cheek, sliding his mouth down next to hers before pulling away. Ten thousand fireworks went off inside her skull.
She stepped away like she’d been stung.
“Ah, Mags.” He shrugged in defeat. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. It’s just…” He waved a hand at her, indicating the dress, the hair, her face. “You look terrific. And it’s so damn good to see you again.”
He ran one hand over his hair, messing it up. “Can we take a walk?”
She didn’t answer.
Jack pointed to the arboretum beyond the bar. “Just to talk. Please.”
Maggie wasn’t sure what to say. This didn’t feel like a good idea. Still, maybe he was right. Maybe getting things out in the open, once and for all, would remove the heavy band from her heart. Maybe she could forget Vegas and everything she’d lost there. Then she could move on. With a wave to Neve, who looked like she was having the time of her life, Maggie followed Jack across the room and through a small door near the restrooms she hadn’t noticed before.
“Wow.” Inside, a hush met them. Maggie looked around at the glass walls and ceiling. Tall trees arched above them. A variety of small trees and plants grew around them. All were thick with leaves and smelled like the heavy scent of summer. Outside, the rain continued to fall, a still, silent background. On the opposite side of the glass, the ball-goers danced, oblivious. She wandered around the space, not speaking. Jack sat on a bench and cracked his knuckles, the way he used to, she thought, when he was nervous. Or upset.
After a few minutes, she stopped pacing and sat beside him. “I never thought I’d see you again.”
He chuckled. “That’s an understatement.”
Maggie began to wind her hair into a knot.
“Don’t.” Jack raised a hand to pull her fingers away. “I thought you might have cut it short. You threatened to, you know.”
“We threatened a lot of things back then.”
“We were kids.”
“You make it sound like it was a hundred years ago.”
“It feels like it was.”
Is that regret in his voice?
she wondered.
Sadness? A resignation to the march of time?
Mere inches separated them, and the fabric of her dress brushed the one hand he pressed to the bench. “I wish things could have turned out differently,” he said, shifting and moving closer to her. “You have no idea how much I missed you after I got to London.”
Maggie nodded. She looked at her toes, the floor, the collection of flowers by the door. After a long minute, she dared herself to meet his gaze again, to fall into the memories that lay there and return the desire Jack wasn’t bothering to hide. The lights from the ballroom cast shadows inside the arboretum; the music, muted, floated inside.
“Mags, I…” He stopped. Raised one hand to her face. Ran his thumb across her bottom lip. And kissed her again.
Noses bumped. Breaths quickened. She pulled away. “I don’t think…”
But the draw of memory was too strong.
Jack placed both hands on Maggie’s cheeks, and she gave herself up to him. Their tongues twisted in pleasure, seeking, finding their way, filling hungry spaces between them. She gasped, feeling as if he’d slipped inside her and turned her inside out. One hand made its way from her cheek to her throat, down one bare shoulder and then lower, where it rested on a breast that ached for his touch. Maggie’s toes curled inside her shoes. Nipples rose under the memory of his caresses. She let her hands roam across his face, through his hair, plucking at his lapel and pulling him closer.
Ten years of lost passion spilled from them both. A whimper escaped her lips as Jack moved his mouth to her earlobe and down one side of her neck. He whispered something into the hollow of her throat, burying his face in her hair. For a crazy moment, she wanted to tear off her dress, peel away his tuxedo, feel his bare skin against hers and remember the way they’d moved together a hundred times. A monumental ache consumed her.
And if the door behind them hadn’t opened just then, Maggie was sure she would have lost herself in Jack’s embrace for the rest of the night.
10:00 p.m.
A throat cleared. Jack jerked away. His mouth left the smooth skin of Maggie’s neck and his hands fell from where they lay buried in her hair. His mind whirled and the throbbing in his groin prevented him from forming any kind of coherent thought. Shit, he felt like he was sixteen again, caught in his girlfriend’s basement with one hand up her shirt and her mother standing on the stairs. He smoothed one palm over his lapel, not daring to look at Maggie. Whoever it was, whoever stood in the doorway, he’d deal with. He’d think of something to say, or some excuse to make everything all right. He always did.
Eden. Of course.
Jack felt the flush rise on his cheeks. Their old college friend leaned just inside the doorway. A knowing expression darkened her smile. She glanced from Jack to Maggie and back again. “Well. Time doesn’t heal all wounds, apparently.” Eden glanced back through the glass. The rest of the partygoers still whirled to the music, fifty feet away and completely unaware.
Jack felt Maggie inch away from him, trying to put space between them on the narrow concrete bench. He stole a glance her way, in time to watch her tuck her hair behind her ears in a nervous gesture he remembered from years past. He wondered if her heart had slowed at all. His sure hadn’t.
“Eden, listen.” He wasn’t sure how much she’d seen. Or what she’d tell. He was damn sure she knew about his engagement to Paige, though. The whole city did. He dropped his head, at a loss for what to say. A stranger, he could lie to. A business acquaintance, he could convince to keep quiet. But Eden? Any fib he’d try to tell, she’d look right through him and laugh.
Jack studied his palms. The bottom line was that he’d screwed up, big time. He wouldn’t blame Eden if she told Paige flat out that she’d caught him with another woman. Most of the women he knew in Boston stuck together that way. They revealed secrets. They told tales and dug in their nails for the hashing and rehashing. A sharp pain stabbed him just below the breastbone. Problem was, Maggie wasn’t just another woman. She was the one who’d gotten away. The one he’d never really recovered from. The one who sat beside him now, waiting for him to speak.
“Some of the guests have been asking about you.” Eden sank to a seat on the bench opposite them. “Neve is worried you’d disappeared,” she said to Maggie. “Thought maybe you’d come up with some other crazy way of finding Dillon and—”
With that, Maggie jumped up.
Don’t go
, he wanted to say.
Wait a minute. Let’s figure out what just happened here
. But she only mumbled something he couldn’t make out. A rustle of green, a banging of the door, and the room turned cold again. Empty.
Eden eyed Jack and hummed a tune he didn’t recognize.
“What exactly are you up to, Major?” Her voice, low and throaty, carried a note of warning.
He rubbed the back of his neck and stared at the ground. Near the door, the thick roots of two trees wound so tightly around each other that he couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began. “I don’t know,” he said after a minute. “I sure as hell didn’t plan for this to happen.”
“Don’t go down that road again.”
“Hey, we’re both adults,” Jack replied, hackles rising.
“Maybe you are.” She didn’t let him continue. “But you have a fiancée. A big-time job. You’re living a whole different life than back in college.” She crossed slim legs and pursed her lips, studying him. “A lot has changed since NYU. What the two of you had—it’s gone. Over. Maggie’s not here tonight to see you.”
Jack’s jaw tightened, and he gripped the stone bench with both hands.
“So don’t go kissing her in the corner, leading her on and making her think you can just pick up again where you left off. Or make up for lost time. Or have an affair on the side while you go on planning the wedding of the year like nothing’s changed.”
“I would never—how dare—”
She softened a degree. “Listen, I was there, Jack. I remember what happened. I know maybe you’re feeling like there’s something still left. Something still unfinished between the two of you.” She paused. “But it was a long time ago. Let it go.”
Jack shook his head. He didn’t care how long ago it was. He didn’t care that Eden might be right. In kissing Maggie again, in touching her and breathing her in, he’d glimpsed a part of himself long put away. A part of himself pushed to the side after years of forging his way in the corporate world. Six years ago, when he first met Paige, he’d figured that grown-up relationships came with a different set of emotions. He’d figured that love meant steadiness and responsibility. Not tumultuous passion. Not heartache that kept you up at night.
It was what I needed back then
, he thought,
to get off that damn roller coaster Mags always had me on
.
Yet with one kiss tonight, he’d fallen through a loop in time. He’d remembered how he used to feel—like he was flying and grounded all at the same time. Like he could scale any mountain and then slide down the other side into Maggie’s arms. Like he would willingly walk across hot coals just to fold himself inside her embrace and rock together with her until the sun came up.
God, I missed that
.
A flash of guilt slapped Jack across the face. What the hell was he going to do now? What was he going to tell Paige?
Eden rose and glided back to the door, reading his mind. “She’s here, by the way. Arrived about ten minutes ago. And she’s been looking for you.”
A sour taste rose in Jack’s mouth, a combination of guilt and regret and the beginning of an explanation all at the same time. He straightened his tie. He wiped the edges of his lips, steeled himself for the inevitable, and stood. He’d figure something out. He’d think of what to say to his fiancée. Anyway, whatever happened now, he had it coming.
The rush of noise caught him off guard as he re-entered the ballroom. For a moment Jack stood apart from the crowd, gaining his bearings and surveying the area. From this vantage point, all he could see was a whirl of black on the dance floor and a few tipsy guests stumbling into one another. A couple of familiar faces smiled over at him and he nodded in return, though his lips felt stiff as he plastered on a smile. Jack flexed his hands in and out of fists and waited as the music died. Spotting a break in the crowd, he worked his way through the tables toward the main entrance. A little fresh air, that’s what he needed, to cool his cheeks and silence the voice inside his head.
Paige found him before he’d gone ten feet. “Where on earth have you been?”
She curled into his right arm, hanging on like he was her damn life raft or something. She smelled, he noticed, like the heavy designer perfume she always wore for these events. Her dress was new, some sort of shiny black thing that he didn’t recognize. Guess she hadn’t gotten the red one from the cleaner’s after all. Ropes of pearls looped around her neck, and she’d twisted her hair up on top of her head.
She looked gorgeous, as always, flawless and current despite the late hour and the long day she’d put in. Jack, on the other hand, felt restless and rough, like all his polish had rubbed off and he stood naked in the middle of the ballroom. He bent to kiss her cheek, but his gaze moved beyond her shoulder, casting about the room and looking for a swath of green satin. Nothing. Nowhere. Something stuck in his throat and he tried in vain to swallow it away.
Paige nibbled at his earlobe. “Come on,” she said in a tone that left him no choice but to oblige. “There are some people I want you to meet.”
*
Jack resisted the urge to check his watch and see how much time had passed. He had no idea where Maggie was. He didn’t dare go and look for her. Instead, he stood in the ballroom without saying a word as the tenth woman bent over Paige’s outstretched hand and shrieked.
“It’s gorgeous! How many carats?”
“Two,” Paige answered with a small, smug smile in his direction, as if he’d had anything to do with picking it out. “The wedding band will have just over another full carat.”
The woman, no one Jack knew, cooed up at them both. He nodded hello and goodbye, a short, tight jerk of the head, and they moved on.
“Oh, there’s Sarah and Leslie, from the gym.” Paige pointed at two lanky women across the floor. Both were thin and muscular in a way that Jack found entirely unappealing. “I haven’t had a chance to say hello to them yet.”
Must be the only people here tonight you’ve missed
, he thought.
In less than an hour, Paige had spoken to more people than he had at the last two balls put together. Jack rolled his shoulders and willed away the tightness. He supposed he’d have to put up with the same kind of social posturing at their wedding. And at next year’s ball, as a newly married couple. And at the million other events lined up in his life as a result of putting that ring on her finger. His head ached at the thought.
Paige trotted over. She caught her gym friends at the edge of the dance floor and together they laughed about something that had happened in spin class. The women pawed at her diamond, ran admiring hands over her dress, and shot Jack knowing looks before ignoring him altogether.
He murmured an excuse and slipped off to the bar. There, he ordered another double bourbon and then, with Paige still preoccupied, snuck into the men’s room. He set his drink on the counter and stared into the mirror. Looking back at him from the glass was a guilty man with brooding eyes, a man who accused him of infidelity, a man who damned him. A man who dared him to go after Maggie.
Abruptly, Jack yanked on the faucet and let the hot water run until it burned his hands. Two men he didn’t know came in, used the toilets, and left without saying a word. He stalled for another five minutes, finished the bourbon, and left the empty glass on the counter as he made his way out.
Just in time.
“Shit.” Jack swore under his breath as the band moved into a sultry rendition of “At This Moment.” It was one of Paige’s favorite songs. He’d tried to explain to her once that the lyrics, about loss and breaking up, didn’t exactly make for a good love ballad. She said she was putting it on the play list for their wedding reception just the same.
For a moment, he didn’t see her anywhere, and he thought he might have a chance to slip outside and get his head straight. He wouldn’t even mind the nasty weather. But then she appeared from nowhere and encircled his wrist with one small, strong hand. “Let’s dance.”
What else could he do? They moved onto the floor, finding a spot and stepping to the beat. His fingers felt awkward around her waist, and as he lost himself in the music, a lump grew in his throat.
Maggie. Mags
. That fiery hair. That smile. Smooth skin under his touch. Classic rock playing as they made love in his dorm. Vegas. A mistake. A goodbye. Then nothing. Faster and faster the memories tumbled inside his head, until he thought they might explode into the room. For a moment he pictured his soul spreading itself onto the walls in rich color, exposing Jack and Maggie’s entire history to everyone at the ball.
“Jack?” Paige’s hand tightened on the back of his neck. “What do you think?”
He looked down at his fiancée. “I’m sorry. What?”
She dropped his hand and stepped away, though the song had barely begun. Her nostrils flared. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said all night.”
Jack stiffened.
I’ve heard it all
, he wanted to answer.
Every last word. I know where you want to honeymoon, what you want engraved on our rings, the kinds of wine we should serve with dinner. The truth is, I don’t care about it. Any of it.
Something clicked into place as he watched Paige’s mouth move without hearing the words that came from it.
His engagement was a sham. His life with Paige was a substitute for the thing that really mattered, that he’d let escape all those years ago. Amazing. He’d been skating along all this time, content in a relationship without complexity or color. He’d convinced himself that he was happy without risk, without passion, without that bottomless depth of devotion that he’d once felt with Maggie.
That he felt still, with Maggie.
“What’s going on?” The lines around Paige’s eyes deepened, and her mouth pushed into a pout. “Why are you acting like you’re a thousand miles away? Something happen at work?”
I’m just tired
, Jack started to say,
and ready to go
. He meant to say that, anyway, as she stood there waiting for a response.
“I can’t do this anymore,” was what came out instead.
Paige’s features pinched together in a frown. “You can’t do what? Dance with me? Make conversation with my friends? I’ve been working since six o’clock this morning. I’ve waited all day to enjoy myself tonight. At the very least, you owe me a good time.”
It’s always about you and what you want, isn’t it?
Jack marveled that he’d listened to Paige speak for almost five years and never noticed the lack of music in her voice.
“I’m not talking about the ball.”
She inhaled, and squares of light glittered inside her pupils. “You better not be saying what I think you’re saying.”
There was that tone again: impatient and demanding. It was what made her a stellar attorney, Jack realized, but not the person he wanted to spend his life with.
“Paige, I’m not sure that—” What did he mean to say?
I’m not sure that we should get married? That you’re the woman for me? That I can stand here for another minute and pretend to enjoy this ball?
He hadn’t ended a relationship since his days of graduate school and he’d forgotten how awkward and unpleasant it could be. No words sounded right.