Lying in Your Arms Read online

  “Here you go,” she said, pushing a small sheet of paper across to him. It contained a number marked “cell,” and another marked “parents in Florida.”

  He carefully folded the paper and tucked it into his wallet, right next to his license and certification cards. No way would he lose it. Hell, he’d probably be digging it out to call her within an hour of landing at O’Hare.

  They finished their drinks, not saying much, both stealing glances at the clock. Until, finally, knowing he couldn’t delay any longer, Leo got up and held out a hand to her. She rose, too, sliding up against his body. He felt her, even though an inch of air separated them, vibrating with life and passion. He felt her magnetism even when they weren’t touching.

  “Soon,” he demanded, a wave of want washing over him, the way it always did when she was near.

  She nodded. “Soon.”

  Before he could say more, they were startled by raised voices. A large crowd of people had gathered at this end of the terminal. They stood right outside the bar, which was open-air, separated from the main section of the airport by only a half wall. That might explain why it was so damned loud.

  He hadn’t been paying attention, but now all those people—most carrying cameras—came to life and began shouting questions and snapping pictures. “What the hell?”

  “Angelina and Brad are flying out this morning!” someone at the next table whispered, peering around and out into the main terminal.

  He rolled his eyes, not interested in the celebrity stuff and only hoping the rolling out of the red carpet didn’t delay his flight.

  Hell, what was he thinking? This could go ahead and delay it indefinitely, as long as Madison’s was delayed, too. Of course, with their luck, they’d each be on their respective planes when the delay happened.

  “Think they’re following us?” he asked her, laughter on his lips.

  It died when he saw her expression. Her eyes were wide and glassy, her mouth rounded in shock. She was staring at the crowd gathering a couple of yards away and he could actually hear her harsh exhalations as she struggled for breath.

  “Mad, what is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered. She spun around, burying her face in his neck, hugging him tightly and mumbling, “We should go.”

  “You going to walk backward?” he asked, placing a gentle hand on the small of her back.

  She looked up at him and now he didn’t just see shock, he saw something that resembled panic. “I mean, you should go. They’ll be boarding your flight any minute,” she said, suddenly jerking away from him and giving him a push. “I have a little more time.”

  He couldn’t understand her sudden change in mood, but she was right. They would be calling for his flight soon and he still had to get through security.

  “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to get rid of me.”

  “I shouldn’t have come here with you,” she said, casting quick glances over her shoulder. “I should have taken a cab to the other airport.” She looked at him, her eyes wide and wet. “I never dreamed they’d find... Oh, Leo, please forgive me. I was being selfish, I just wasn’t ready to say goodbye. Now I’ve exposed you to...”

  “Madison, whatever it is, it’s okay,” he told her. Dropping his hands to her hips, he pulled her close, so their bodies touched from thigh to chest, and dropped his mouth onto hers. He kissed her deeply but gently, saying goodbye and reminding her of all the things they’d be missing until they saw each other again.

  He usually didn’t make out in public, but kissing Madison always made him a little crazy. He deepened things, liking how she clung to him, kissing him back, wildly, hungrily.

  They didn’t break apart until they heard someone calling her name.

  “Madison!”

  Then another voice.

  “Over here, Miss Reid!”

  And another.

  “Is he the guy, Madison? Is this where you’ve been all this time?”

  “Any chance you and Shane will reconcile?”

  “What’s going to happen to the house you two were sharing in California?”

  Looking down at her and seeing the utter misery in her face as she grabbed a sun hat and glasses and pulled them on, he could only stare.

  “What’s your name, buddy? Where are you from?”

  “Are you the one she cheated with?”

  “Come on, Madison, lay another kiss on him! The world wants to know who you prefer to Tommy Shane!”

  Tommy Shane? The movie star?

  His heart stopped and his stomach flipped. The room suddenly seemed to spin and it had nothing to do with the heat. He found it hard to think, hard to see, hard to process much of anything except those voices and those snapping cameras.

  And the guilt on her face.

  “Madison...?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you got dragged into this, Leo,” she whispered, tears falling from her eyes. “I didn’t want this to happen to you, I’d never wish it on my own worst enemy, much less...”

  Those awful, intrusive voices continued, digging into his brain like sharp, spiky instruments. “Madison, how did you two meet? When did the affair start? How’d Tommy find out?”

  Affair. Tommy.

  God.

  The pieces started to come together in his mind. Tommy Shane—everyone on the planet knew his name. And while he didn’t pay attention to Hollywood gossip or junk like that, he now remembered having heard something about a breakup. He’d been visiting his cousin Lottie. She’d just had her second child and he’d glanced through some gossip rags someone else had brought her to look at while nursing.

  She’d gone on an indignant rant about poor sweet sexy Tommy Shane, wondering how any woman could cheat on him. A woman who’d been engaged to him.

  This woman. The woman he suddenly wasn’t even sure he knew.

  She’d been engaged to one of the most famous men in America. She cheated. She’d been hounded by paparazzi. She cheated. She’d fled to Costa Rica. She cheated. And put another notch on her bedpost?

  She cheated.

  Every instinct he had rebelled against the idea, but he could think of no other explanation. She wasn’t screaming at these people that they were liars. She looked utterly ashamed. Guilty as sin.

  His sweet and sexy Madison had betrayed the man she’d promised to marry and had used Leo to lick her wounds while the scandal died down. It was the only thing that made sense.

  What he couldn’t figure out, though, was what had happened to her lover. Considering she’d lost Shane over the man, he had to be pretty damned important. Which made Leo wonder what the hell she’d been doing slumming around with him for the past seven days. She’d cheated on a man who women threw themselves in front of.

  So why had she just spent a week here with him, a regular guy?

  “Leo, please, let me explain,” she insisted, raising her voice to be heard over the paparazzi.

  “How about starting with the basics. Were you engaged to Tommy Shane, the movie star?”

  She nodded slowly.

  He thought he’d been prepared for the answer, but considering he thought he was going to puke, he guessed he hadn’t been.

  “You lived with him. That’s why you’re between addresses now.”

  “Yes.”

  It got better and better.

  “And you came here to get away from all the bad publicity you were getting because of your breakup.”

  “Yes, but you don’t understand,” she said.

  His whole body rigid, he stepped away from her. “Speak up, I’m sure everyone would love to hear the story.”

  She closed her eyes, shaking her head in sorrow and regret.

  He wanted to shake her, wanted to yell at her for lying to him.

  Only she hadn’t, not really, except by omission. She’d never said anything about a broken engagement or an affair. She’d kept her secrets well. He’d just been stupid enough not to see the truth.r />
  Again.

  Christ, what was it with him picking women who couldn’t be faithful? Was it some character flaw he had?

  Part of him screamed at the very idea of putting Madison in the same category as his ex. But in the end, they weren’t much different, were they? In fact, Madison’s affair had been a whole lot more public.

  “I’ve gotta go,” he said, trying to be heard as the photographers and reporters who’d struck out getting the good stuff on Brad and Angelina pressed inside the bar and swarmed them like flies on meat.

  “Yes, you should, get out of here before this gets worse.”

  “It can get worse?”

  “You have no idea,” she said, her tone bleak.

  He was angry. Furious, in fact. He wanted to walk out and leave her here to deal with her own mess.

  But he just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t walk away and leave her in the middle of this feeding frenzy to be chewed up by these animals, even if a part of him thought she probably deserved it.

  “Come on,” he ordered, grabbing both their carry-ons. He dropped a possessive arm over her shoulders and pulled her along with him, elbowing people out of the way with every step.

  The barrage continued.

  “Just tell us your name!”

  “Do you have anything you want to say to Tommy? Do you feel bad about stealing his woman?”

  “Are you two living together somewhere?”

  He ignored them. So did she. Together, fighting for every step, they pushed through the crowd. Leo threw a few elbows at those who wouldn’t move voluntarily. Finally, they reached the security area, through which nobody without a boarding pass could come. He waved theirs and jerked a thumb toward their pursuers. “I don’t think they’re passengers, and they’re harassing us.”

  The guards immediately stepped in, ushering them into a secured line, leaving the crowd behind. Still the shouts continued, and Leo could practically feel the cameras taking pictures of the back of his head.

  That finally struck him. It wasn’t just the shock and betrayal of her not being who he thought she’d been. He’d now been dragged into this. His picture was going to be plastered on their tabloids, his name, his home, his job, his family...everything was going to be thrown out there for public consumption if they found out who he was.

  Fuck.

  “Thank you,” she said as they finally turned a corner and got out of sight of the crowd.

  He immediately dropped his arm and stepped away from her.

  “If you can, please keep my name out of it, would you?” he bit out from a granite-hard jaw. “I don’t imagine it would go over very well with my lieutenant or with my family.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, watching him, tears falling freely down her face. “I never imagined that would happen, not in my worst nightmares.”

  He’d heard enough. He just couldn’t listen to any more. So when they reached the end of the first line and he saw that there were several checkpoints, each with its own separate queue, he watched her go into the closest one...and headed for one as far away from hers as he could get.

  He told himself it was because it was shorter and his flight would board soon.

  He knew the truth, though. He needed to think and to breathe. Needed to absorb everything that had happened in the past ten minutes and figure out what it meant and what he was going to do about it.

  He needed to get away from her.

  “Leo,” she said as he turned his back and began to walk away.

  He didn’t turn around, not trusting himself to look at her face. Instead, he called, “I can’t, Madison. Not now. I just can’t.”

  And he didn’t. He didn’t look back. He didn’t wait for her. He didn’t try to find her at her gate.

  He simply got on his plane and went home.

  11

  MADISON MADE THE trip home like a zombie, barely cognizant of her surroundings. She’d been able to focus only on the look on Leo’s face when he realized he’d been thrown into the deep end of the ocean by a woman he’d thought he could trust.

  Her father picked her up at the airport in Florida. As soon as he saw her by the baggage claim, he pulled her into his arms, hugging her tightly. “I’m so sorry, baby girl. So sorry, honey.”

  She clung to him, feeling tears well up further.

  “It didn’t help, huh?”

  Had her trip helped? Well, the majority of her week hadn’t just helped, it had been downright magical. But the ending had been like something out of her worst nightmare.

  “I’m okay, just tired,” she said, knowing he would see right through it. Her emotions were spinning wildly, and if anybody would recognize that, it was her wise, attentive father.

  “Listen, why don’t I get your bag? You duck behind the escalators, I’ll grab the suitcase and go get the car. Once I’ve pulled up to the front, you can dash right out.”

  Distressed that he had to go to these lengths, especially considering his recent heart attack, she said, “I shouldn’t have come here. I should have just gone back to California.”

  “Forgedaboutit,” he said. “Come on now, get on over there. I’ve always wanted to play James Bond.”

  “Did you bring weapons?” she asked, heavy on the sarcasm.

  “No, but I brought a new secret-agent-mobile that none of those cockroaches will recognize.”

  She gaped. “You got a new car?”

  “I wanted to be less noticeable when you came back. Traded in the old jalopy.” His smile said that hadn’t been a hardship.

  “You got the SUV you’ve been bugging Mom about.”

  “Yup.” He hugged her again. “Thanks for the crisis, honey.”

  Knowing he was trying to cheer her up, she forced a laugh.

  “Oh, and if it’s okay with you, we’re going to head over to the condo instead of the house.”

  Her parents lived inland, but had bought a place on the beach as an investment years ago. She supposed it was possible they’d planned a beach trip, but she doubted it.

  “The reporters drove you out of your house?”

  “Are you kidding? You know your mother. She’s gotta have those ocean breezes. Can’t keep her away.”

  Probably an exaggeration, but she didn’t call him on it. Her parents were doing what parents did, taking care of their kid in her moment of need. Even if the kid had screwed up royally by getting in a situation she hadn’t been prepared for and making a decision she’d pay for until the end of her days.

  She wasn’t just the woman who would go down in infamy as the cheater who’d broken Tommy Shane’s heart. She’d also lost the one man who’d ever made her feel as though she was capable of loving someone with every fiber in her being.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” her dad said. “You can pay me back for the ride by making me one of your chocolate cakes...your mother tries to sneak zucchini and wheat germ into hers.”

  “Ick,” she said with a soft laugh, then murmured, “Thanks, Dad.”

  Their plan worked. He picked her up outside and she didn’t hear anyone demanding answers that were nobody’s business. They arrived at the condo, which was gated, making it difficult for them to be harassed if anyone tracked her down.

  Nobody did. And for the next several days, Madison began to heal.

  There was never a sign of a photographer, and while she saw the photos of herself and Leo on the cover of a tabloid at the grocery store, she didn’t see his name. She prayed they hadn’t discovered who he was, and so far it appeared their luck was holding.

  She couldn’t imagine how he was explaining it to his colleagues, or anyone in his family, but hoped they were trustworthy enough not to sell him out to the Tattler.

  Her mother had seen the pictures, too. They’d been standing in line at Publix, and her mother’s gasp had cued her in. But being just as supportive and protective as Madison’s dad, she didn’t say a word. She instead reached up and accidentally spilled her cup of iced coffee on the cover of
the tabloid.

  She hadn’t even asked Madison to explain who it was she’d been kissing in Costa Rica, as if realizing the hurt she was feeling might have more to do with that than with what had happened out in L.A. Not for the first time, Madison acknowledged she had the best parents in the world.

  She was loved. She knew that. She’d never doubted it. And out of the spotlight, at the small beach town, she began to find peace, to think about her future and figure out what to do.

  Calling Leo had been on her mind a lot. A whole lot.

  She couldn’t begin to count the number of times she had picked up her phone, looked at his numbers in the address book and thought about dialing.

  Would he answer? Would he listen? Would he hang up on her?

  Did it matter?

  Because, even if he would listen, how could she explain? She couldn’t tell him the truth without revealing the nature of her engagement to Tommy. Couldn’t drag Tommy out of the closet to someone he didn’t know when he’d tried so hard to stay in there for the rest of the world. She had seen her sister go through the exact same dilemma when Candace had fallen in love. She’d just never thought it would happen to her, too. Who could ever have imagined a Leo coming into her life?

  Besides, he obviously didn’t want to talk to her. She kept her phone nearby but he never called. She checked for messages even though it didn’t ring. But nothing. He hadn’t tried to reach her.

  She didn’t blame him. He was too decent a guy to be dragged into her garbage. She should never have let herself forget that.

  Sitting on the balcony of the condo, watching the waves churn one evening after she and her parents had shared dinner, she began to drift off to sleep, lulled by the ocean and the call of the seabirds. In that lazy place between asleep and awake, she replayed all the lovely moments the two of them had shared.

  Their first meeting. The room mix-up. The lovemaking on the beach. The stupid snake in the pool. The zip-lining tour. The long bus ride back when they’d talked about a lot of nothing.

  A lot of...nothing.

  Her eyes flew open. “Oh, my God,” she muttered.

  “What, honey?” asked her mother, who’d been sitting nearby doing a Sudoku puzzle.