The Reckless Secret, Complete Series (An Alpha Billionaire In Love BBW Romance) (4 page)

D
eclan couldn’t handle
himself around Maggie Emerson. She lit him up like nothing else, burned through his blood and hammered into his heart, made him lose sense of himself and his composure, made him
desperate
.

He’d known she would be at this wedding, of course. It was her cousin’s event. And it was because of that, he’d almost decided not to come himself. Nothing scared him; nothing intimidated him. But several months ago, this woman shattered his defenses and put a crack in his heart that he hadn’t quite been able to forget. And he didn’t know how he would react upon seeing her again.

He’d wanted her for years. Ever since that summer she came home from college and had discovered a confidence and self-assuredness she’d been missing as a teenager. When she showed up to her family’s annual summer barbecue in a form-fitting sundress that showed off all of her delicious curves, allowed her wild hair to tumble down her back, barely a lick of makeup on her glowing face—and she was gorgeous. She was breathtaking.

Then she’d spoken to him—struck up a conversation about their studies, the differences between med and law school, what they both hoped to achieve in their careers, and the intelligence and passion that radiated from her had him captivated, had him wanting to hear more, listen to her speak for hours, ask her questions just to keep her going.

He kept his distance, romantically. Didn’t pursue her. For years he watched her from afar, watched her develop into a bright, ambitious, stunning woman—the kind who could take on her family’s expectations and crush them without fear, forge her own path in life. And while he didn’t share her desire to turn her back on money, he respected her ability to make her own way, to be exactly who she wanted to be.

She was perfection, but still, he didn’t pursue her. Because he wasn’t ready, not in his life. He had the burden of a legacy on his shoulders, his father passing and leaving the centuries-old Archibald estate to him; and he had his career to develop, determined to make it in law on his own merit, not allow the many zeroes in his bank account to open any doors for him. He was too busy to devote any real time to a relationship, and Maggie Emerson deserved all the time in the world.

But then things changed. His life settled; he established himself in law. His family and his legacy continued ticking along and expanding like they always would, and he found himself with time to enjoy some finer things in life.

He captured her attention at the Emersons’ beach party, and a few weeks later he asked her to dinner. He would not try to kiss her until the third date, he ordered himself, because he wasn’t blind to his reputation—yes, he’d spent some years playing the field, living up to his playboy status. And yes, perhaps he was known for his philandering ways. But Maggie was no one-night stand, no bit of fun on the side. She was Maggie Emerson, and he would show her that he was serious.

She wasn’t impressed by his wealth, of course, by the expensive restaurant or the luxury cars he drove. But she smiled at the sight of him, and her eyes glittered as they spoke over candlelit dinner, and maybe there was a chance she was impressed by
him
, at least. That perhaps she saw through all the public bullshit and found the man beneath.

He didn’t kiss her on date number one, and he didn’t plan to on date number two, either. Although there was something magical in the air on that second date, something that spoke of a connection, a pull between them.

He got called away before the second course, had no other choice, and he’d promised to call her the next day, see her very soon. He had no intention of leaving it too long before he could set eyes on that lovely face again.

She’d seemed fine about it, but hindsight was another story. He’d left her a voicemail the next day, and after spending the following evening at a charity event with his friend Trixie Lane, he’d tried calling her again. Nothing. For days, she ignored his calls, until eventually he grew worried enough to pay her a visit, desperately needing to see her in person and find out if they were still on the same page.

Only when he pulled up in her street, she wasn’t alone. She was leaving her apartment building with another man—a man, Declan later discovered, who was a doctor at Maggie’s hospital.

The doctor took her hand as they passed, and it wasn’t until that moment that Declan realized quite how intensely he had developed feelings through these past few years of admiring Maggie Emerson from afar.

He spent that night with a bottle of scotch and a whole lot of bitterness. All that time he’d been worried about his own reputation as a playboy, and all the while it would be Maggie who was more inclined to play the field. And it wasn’t as if he could even be angry at her. They’d had two dates—one of which ended early. She didn’t owe him a thing.

And yet…it stung.

Seeing her today at this wedding only cemented to him how much he needed her in his life, how he wanted to have a thousand conversations with her, look at her,
touch her
. How he
wanted
her, now more than ever. She was such a beautiful sight, such a radiant presence, that the moment he set eyes on her again, he didn’t ever want to look away.

And now he was going to kiss her.
Finally
.

But first he had to be sure. Once and for all, he had to know that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

He pressed into her space, breathed in the perfection of her, settled an unsteady hand on her hip and looked deep into her liquid-blue eyes. She was visibly breathless with it all, and he couldn’t calm his racing heart.

“Can I?” he murmured, dipping in just slightly, tasting the scent of her in the air between them, allowing the muffled sounds of the party to disappear as every sense he possessed zeroed in on this woman his whole body was desperate for.

She licked her bottom lip, a tantalizingly brief swipe of a pink glistening tongue, and her eyes fluttered in the moments before she responded—an agonizingly long stretch of time that almost killed him in the anticipation. His hand tightened on her hip, fingertips pressing in, and he swallowed past a dry throat as she parted her lips and whispered, “Yes.”

It wasn’t a slow, gentle kiss—not after all this time. He kissed her hard and he licked into her mouth, and she gasped, and she whimpered, and she melted against him like she’d gone entirely boneless with it.

His blood rushed in his ears at the taste of her, his heart beating through his chest when he felt her press against him, his cock stirring ever so slightly and sending shockwaves of rich pleasure through his veins when her legs parted and allowed his thigh to slip between, and the heat of her brushed against him.

He buried a hand in her hair and tilted her head back a fraction, a better angle to kiss her deep, and she gave it back, all of it, gave as good as she got and fisted red-manicured hands in his jacket and pulled on him like she wanted to climb inside him, wanted to fuse them together.

He couldn’t get enough of her, didn’t want it to end, sliding a hand down the curve of her ass and bringing her closer, and it was that moment that she chose to pull away—all of a sudden and with a jolt, like she’d been electrocuted by regret.

Her cheeks were flushed red and her lips kiss-swollen and slick, and in that speck of time, she was the most desirable sight in the entire known universe. He drank her in, everything from her heaving breasts to her ravaged hairstyle, memorized the look of her in this moment because he got the horrible, bruising feeling that she would walk away now, and he’d never have it again.

It took her only a moment more to prove him right.

She sucked in a sudden breath, eyes going wide, and gasped, “I’m sorry,” in the instant before she shoved at his chest and slipped past him.

S
he couldn’t believe
what had just happened. What she’d
allowed
to happen.

Oh God.

She’d kissed him. He’d kissed her. There had been a kiss, and it was the kind of kiss to split the earth beneath her feet. It was…
electric
.

And she couldn’t cope with how it made her feel.

God
, she wanted him. Wanted him so badly she could hardly think straight. Struggled to clear the lusty haze in her mind enough to figure out her next move.

Grant. And home. She needed to get away from here and
think
.

Because it didn’t matter how much she wanted him—nothing changed the truth that he was still the man who’d pretty much ignored her for years, and then when he finally did decide to ask her out, abandoned her at the first opportunity. He had no real interest in her, not when he’d spent so many years working his way through a conveyor belt of thin, glamorous society girls, blonde heiresses, and bright starlets.

She was Maggie Emerson, the curvy, messy-haired woman who’d turned her back on money and society. She was the opposite of Declan. She didn’t fit his lifestyle.

And she needed to protect herself here.

“Oh, Maggie, dear.” Aunt Constance appeared out of nowhere as Maggie tried to locate her brother through the chaos on the dance floor. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Now?” Maggie asked, distracted. The last thing she needed right now was Aunt Constance’s interference.

Her aunt narrowed her eyes—always a danger sign. “Yes, dear, now. I need you take all of these up to my room.” And she gestured towards a pile of coats on a nearby chair. “We had them brought down but it seems your grandparents and the McKinleys have chosen to stay for the rest of the evening, and I can’t find that helpful gentleman…”

Maggie blinked at her. “You want me to take the coats back upstairs.”

“Yes. Are you deaf? What’s the matter with you? The gentleman who brought them down has disappeared.”

“But…the cloakroom…”

Aunt Constance stared at her. “You expect Sandra McKinley to leave a Prada mink-and-sable coat in a hotel cloakroom, do you?”

“Um—”

“I’ll help you,” a voice behind her murmured, a voice that simultaneously filled her with dread and set her heart racing with excitement.

She tried not to look at him. “I don’t need help,” she sniffed, and in a fit of stubbornness, hoisted all of the coats up into her arms while Aunt Constance simpered at Declan and then promptly lost interest and wandered off.

But Maggie had underestimated the sheer weight of extravagant outerwear. She let out a squeak in the staggering moment before she half collapsed to the side, back onto the chair, buried beneath the mound of fur. “Okay, fine,” she muttered into it, burning hot and mortified, and heard a deep, sexy chuckle in punishment.

The majority of the burden was quickly lifted from her arms, letting the light back in, and Declan’s smoothly amused face came into view.

Maggie looked away swiftly and stood, her share of the coats now hooked over one arm, and marched towards the doors with what remained of her dignity.

Then she stopped and grimaced in further embarrassment when she realized she’d forgotten—in her haste to appear as if she had her shit together—to get the room key from Aunt Constance.

She swallowed her pride and made to turn back, but the key appeared in front of her face.

“You might need this,” Declan grinned, and Maggie glowered at him before snatching it from his hand and continuing her march onward.

Declan followed her mutely, no sound but the tapping of their shoes across the marble lobby floor; he stayed one pace behind her all the way through the lobby as if wanting to watch her, and she felt it, that pressure of a gaze on the side of her head, the weight of his stare boring into her, making her heart stutter.

It wasn’t until they were waiting for the elevator that he spoke.

“So…that kiss.”

His reflection glimmered back at her in the closed elevator doors, and her pulse thrummed in her ears, the back of her neck tingling and flushed through with heat.

“Can we not talk about it?”

“Why?”

“It was a mistake,” she said at once, and then immediately regretted the harshness of her tone. She glanced sideways at him, but found him staring straight ahead as if entirely unaffected by her words…if it wasn’t for the tightening of his jaw. “I mean…” Frustration gripped her as she cast about for the right words, and then she huffed. “Look, I’m not the girl who goes around making out with randoms at weddings, okay?”

He looked at her then, his brow quirked in gentle disbelief.

“I’m not a random,” he said, and the elevator doors pinged and slid open.

They stepped inside and Declan pressed the button; then the doors swished shut, and all of a sudden they were alone in a very enclosed space, and Maggie half wanted to throw the coats on the floor and press this dangerously delicious man against the opposite wall.

Instead, what she did was mutter, “I don’t really know you,” and kept her gaze fixed firmly ahead.

“Maggie,” he said, tone completely flat, as if she’d just spoken utter bullshit.

“Well, I don’t! For years you were my brother’s asshole friend—”

“Asshole?”

“Yes, asshole. You were a jerk when I was a teenager. Always teasing and saying horrible things…”

“You know that thing about boys pulling girls’ hair?”

She looked at him, steadied her voice. “That doesn’t make it okay.”

His eyes, when he met her gaze, were sparking with fire. “No, it doesn’t. I was dumb back then. But we’re both different people now.”

“Right,” she said, feeling somehow validated and confused with it, her mind whirring with clashing thoughts and desires. The elevator came to a stop as she said, “And that means we don’t really know each other. You’re a random.”

And then the doors opened, allowing her to flounce out before coming to a stop in the middle of the corridor, her mind too muddled for her to figure out which direction she should go.

“This way,” Declan said quietly from beside her, briefly placing a hand on the small of her back to direct her and causing her stomach to flip over. “We dated,” he added, picking up the conversation, his voice measured now, considered. Like reasoning with someone hysterical.

“Hardly. We had one date.”

“Two.”

“I seem to remember you abandoning me during the second, so I don’t really count it.”

They stopped outside of Aunt Constance’s door and Declan put a hand on hers to still her as she swiped the key through the reader. He looked her straight in the eye and said quietly, with a soft kind of intimacy, “I didn’t want to leave.”

The lock clicked open, and Maggie swallowed the pressure swelling in her throat.

“Two days later, you were in the paper with Trixie Lane,” she muttered, pulling her hand from beneath his, “so excuse me if I don’t believe you.” Then she pushed open the door and marched inside.

Declan followed her.

“Trixie and I have been friends for a long time,” he said patiently. “We’re both patrons of the same charity. It was an event we had to attend.”

Maggie snorted, dumping the coats on the bed none too graciously. “It’s not like she’s the first.”

“What?” Declan said, sounding genuinely confused as he copied her, tipping his own pile of coats on the bed and then standing straight, turning to face her.

“I’ve seen you for years parading yourself around with one skinny little thing after another.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Look at me!” she huffed, spreading her arms to give him a good view of her frame in this tight gold dress. “I’m not exactly your type, am I? I don’t know why you asked me out in the first place.” Suddenly, she felt awkward—not because she’d ever had a complex about her weight, but because she’d just opened herself up to scrutiny from a skinny-obsessed playboy and she didn’t want to be found wanting. Folding her arms across her chest, she said grumpily, “Experiment, was it?”

“Experiment…” Confusion clouded his expression as he stared down at her body like he wasn’t really seeing it, visibly trying to catch her thread. “What are you talking about?” And then it hit him, his eyes going wide and snapping to look at her with total disbelief. “You can’t think—“ he said, looking almost angry with it all, and then he added in a sort of aggressive, growly fashion: “Maggie, you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.” He sounded entirely furious with her.

She couldn’t lie—her panties melted a bit. But, more than that, she wasn’t quite sure if she could believe what she heard.

“I—what?”

“You heard me,” he stated, brooking no argument.

A weird, vaguely hysterical burst of laughter bubbled out of her. “You don’t mean that. You’ve had too much to drink.”

“I haven’t touched a drop.”

Now, that she could believe. Grant had thrown her at Declan so early into the wedding reception that she’d be surprised if Declan even had time to catch a breath, let alone get himself a drink.

Which meant he was stone-cold sober right now. Which meant…he knew exactly what he was saying.

She swallowed thickly, because while it skyrocketed her up to cloud nine to know that he desired her as much as she wanted him, it didn’t change that not too long ago, when he had the chance to get close to her, he wasted no time in ditching her and then spending the following night with the leggy blonde.

The room had gone overwhelmingly silent in the moments she’d taken to wrap her mind around his statements, and he still looked at her now, unblinking, fiery-eyed, holding her gaze. She cleared her throat. “Then why…?”

“My mother isn’t well,” he said at once, as if he’d anticipated the question. “She doesn’t want anyone to know, but… That night, our second date, she needed me. I couldn’t say no. And Trixie—she really is just a friend. That was a charity event. I took her home and I called you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t understand what?”

She shook her head, frowning, her brain failing to believe what this all meant. “That’s not…”

“It’s not how you built it up in your head?” he asked wryly, eyebrow quirked. At her hesitant nod, the smile he gave her was almost shy. “I’ve been crazy about you for years now.”

It hit her like a brick to the gut and it winded her, and the floor lurched beneath her feet, and had he just admitted to wanting her for the past several years? Because in no universe would she ever have been prepared for that revelation.

She half considered pinching herself to check she hadn’t slipped into a sleep sometime during the wedding. Instead she blinked a few times, shook her head, failed entirely to make sense of whatever the hell was going on here.

For
years
?

“So you’re saying…” she said, her tongue feeling too thick for her mouth, her fingers twitching with the adrenaline suddenly racing through her veins—the overpowering delirium of knowing she could have this breathtaking man right now if she wanted him… “You’re saying you like me—”

“Jesus Christ, Maggie,” he snapped, and then he closed the space between them and kissed her.

It was hot, and it was deep, and she let him sweep her away in it for the length of a swelling heartbeat.

But it was too much. She wasn’t ready for this, didn’t know how to deal with it—didn’t even know what her own feelings were, not beyond the simplicity of base desires.

Because this sounded heavier than that. This sounded like it had weight, like it had history. Like it
meant something
.

That he wasn’t just trying to sleep with her.
Hit it and quit it.

It sounded like…well, it sounded like he had some kind of feelings for her. And that made it all too real.

Fantasizing about Declan Archibald from afar was one thing, but facing the very real possibility of perhaps letting him in, opening herself up to him,
trusting
him…

“No,” she said, breaking away, catching the look of distress on his face as she wrenched herself out of his hold and stumbled towards the door. “No, I’m sorry. This isn’t—no.”

She left before she could change her mind, every ounce of her being screaming at her to turn back, to give in, to take what she so desperately, achingly wanted.