not alert the media bloodhounds that seemed to be attracted to her like flies to cow manure.
A sudden sharp rap against the back window startled Madison. She sat upright in her seat, her eyes popping open. At first glance, all she could see was the black tuxedo jacket of a man, as the cab had resumed inching its way down the driveway toward the street. Suddenly, the body outside the taxi lowered itself and she was astonished to find the handsome face of the man she had just been willing herself not to think about smiling through the glass at her. She blinked, looked at him with a dumbfounded expression, yet made no other movement. He rapped on the window again, and then wiggled two fingers in an up-and-down motion, indicating that he wanted her to bring down the glass that separated them.
“Yes?” she asked as she pressed the lever just long enough to allow for a two-inch crack through which warm spring air brushed her forehead.
“I was wondering if we could share a cab. It’s quite busy out here,” Steve said.
“Share a cab to where?” she asked sardonically, her eyebrows a knot of genuine confusion.
“Well, I could have the driver drop you off first and then take me to my destination. Won’t you open the door or are you going to leave a poor stranded foreigner out in the cold?”
He smiled that scorching smile again, the one that could melt a frozen block of dry ice in zero-point-two seconds flat and leave it sizzling like bacon over an open flame.
“First of all,” she replied slowly, “it’s not the least bit cold out there.”
Steve’s mouth turned into a boyish pout, and that look was twice as deadly as his smile. Madison could not stop the laughter that bubbled up from her stomach and spilled from her lips. She clicked the lock and slid to her left to allow room.
“Boy, are all American woman as immovable as you?” Steve asked once he was securely inside the vehicle.
“Don’t start or you’ll be bounced back out of this taxi and onto the pavement so fast that your visitor’s visa will feel the shock!” Madison warned.
Steve held up two fingers in the peace sign, beaming warmly at her.
“I find it amazing that for such a little thing, you move very fast! I ran out after you and barely caught a glimpse of those beautiful legs as you slid into the taxi. Another five seconds and I would have missed you completely.”
“Steve, what do you want from me?” Madison asked.
The old Madison would have had something twice as coy and cultured to say, but at this point, as engaging as this tall, dark and handsome man was, she was not in the mood. After the outrage of her encounter with the press, the cold shoulder she’d received from Mr. and Mrs. Elliott and the enraged outburst of her father, she’d had enough for one night. She was tired and annoyed.
“Why do you automatically assume that I want something from you?”
“That’s because most men do want something, especially the wild ones who chase women out into the street.”
“Touché. Okay, I do want something from you. I’d like an hour of your company—just one hour to be spent over coffee perhaps. I’d like to talk to you and listen to you and have a mere sixty minutes more of the pleasure I find in being in your presence.”
Just when Madison had believed that at the age of twenty-five she had heard every line from every guy, had memorized the instruction manual of the quintessential player trying to play her and could never again be caught off guard by anything, Stevenson Elliott entered her taxi and threw her completely off balance. This was especially true because of the fact that somehow she instinctively knew that the words he had just spoken were authentic and not just those of a smooth-talking Mac dropping sweet lines to hook some fresh catch.
Chapter 3
Sixty minutes turned into six hours. Those six hours were spent at a tall, round table for two, tucked in a back corner of a twenty-four-hour café sipping lattes and picking at powdered, sugar-frosted scones. Their conversation was slow and easy, straying from random subjects with the agility that usually came with time but had somehow been mastered by them instantaneously. Madison found Steve surprisingly candid, as he talked about his family and childhood. In addition, he was also as keen to listen to her speak as he was to talk himself, and she got the impression that he was genuinely interested in hearing her speak as opposed to simply trying to earn brownie points.
“I’ve been to England a few times myself…with my family. We visited London, of course, Buckinghamshire and Oxford. When my sister Kennedy was in high school she even entertained the idea of applying to the university there. I was struck by the beauty of the country, but I could never imagine living there. I mean, it was rainy most of the time we were there and the temperatures pretty much stayed the same all of the time. Have you ever thought about living somewhere else?” Madison inquired.
“Well, it’s not all that bad. I mean, it’s got a mixture of different types of people, great beautiful natural sights and besides, we’ve got two awesome football teams. I mean, it’s no New York City, but it’s nice.”
“I’m sorry, Steve. I didn’t mean to trash your homeland. I was just wondering aloud. I tend to open my mouth wide and stick my foot in it sometimes before I realize what I’m saying or to whom I’m saying it.”
“No, please don’t apologize. To answer your question, I have thought about living somewhere else. You see, I was not actually born in England.”
“Oh, no?” Madison asked, raising her eyebrows in surprise.
Steve’s clipped British accent was as authentic as any she’d ever heard. Secretly, the lilt of his words and the velvet cadence of his voice had already begun to do something to her. She found it hard to believe that he’d ever spoken any other language or dialect, so perfect was his intonation of the king’s language.
“No. I was born in the West Indies—St. Elizabeth, Jamaica, to be exact,” he confessed.
“I would never have guessed that,” Madison responded. “Do you visit home often?”
A noticeable shift in Steve’s relaxed features occurred and his eyes filled with something she could not discern, but could not deny existed. “Well, no, I haven’t been to Jamaica since I was five years old. It’s a long story, but once my parents made England our home, we pretty much left our earlier lives behind.”
Madison regarded Steve quietly, taking a long sip from her coffee. Though she’d only known him for a matter of hours, she could tell that the thing that cast a shadow over his words as he spoke about his birthplace was a profound sense of loss. As she didn’t know him well enough to push for more, she just reached across the table and placed her hand over the one of his that had absently begun drumming on the table.
“I know a little something about leaving the past behind. Sometimes that’s what you have to do in order to make way for a better future,” she said softly.
Their eyes met and held, and the flurry of emotions between them was combustible. Madison’s butter-pecan cheeks flamed, bringing color to her face and a glisten to her eyes.
“Someday you’ll have to tell me what that whole thing with the reporters was about,” he said at long last.
“Steve—”
