I hadn’t caught you, you would have cracked your head open. That tile’s pretty hard.”
She suddenly thought about everything that had happened before she’d tripped. The awkward conversation when she’d rejected his services. Services he hadn’t even been offering.
The way they’d drawn closer together, even while she’d been saying no, as if some unseen magnetic pull between their bodies was working them into close proximity.
Tripping over her own stupid feet. Falling. Him catching her.
The towel on the floor.
Gasping a little, she immediately looked down, not sure whether to sigh in relief or cry in disappointment that he wasn’t naked. At some point, he’d grabbed a pair of jeans and yanked them on. They weren’t even buttoned, as if he’d been in too much of a hurry to do more than zip. Maybe because he’d been busy lifting her onto the bed, fetching a cold cloth and water to revive her?
She swallowed hard, her mouth dry despite the water she’d been sipping. Because she had a mad impulse to grab the tab of that zipper and pull it down a little more, to see if he’d taken the time to put on anything else before the jeans. She suspected not.
“Well, you definitely seem to be feeling better.”
That deep, husky voice suddenly sounded more amused than solicitous. Madison realized what she’d done—jerking her attention off his face and ogling him like a stripper at ladies night—and gulped. She took a deep breath, then worked up the courage to look up. It was a slow lift of the eyes. She just couldn’t resist focusing on his body, so close, so big and warm and spicy smelling. She had to note the flat stomach rippled with muscle, the broad chest, wiry hair encircling his flat nipples. Those powerful shoulders, corded and thick, and on up the throat to the strong, lightly grizzled jaw.
And the face. Oh, lord, that face.
That smiling face.
“You done?”
She took a deep, even breath.
“I’m a little confused,” she mumbled, lifting a shaking hand to her head.
“Yeah, right.”
Well, damn, so much for her thinking he was a gentleman. He could at least have pretended not to notice she’d been struck dumb by his looks.
Then she remembered the way he’d swooped down to catch her, how he’d put her on the bed and tenderly taken care of her. She conceded he was definitely a gentleman. Just one with a sense of humor. Considering she’d accused him of being a male prostitute, that was a good thing.
“Am I really in your room?”
“I think so,” he said. Then he frowned. “Although, to be honest, I could be in the wrong one. My key didn’t work, so the bellhop let me in. He didn’t speak English very well...maybe we got our wires crossed and he let me into the wrong one.”
“Well, if that’s the case, feel free to stay.”
One brow shot up.
She flushed. “I mean, they can put me in another room. You’ve already settled in.”
“I really don’t mind being the one to move. You look like you need to stay right in this bed until tomorrow.”
Yeah, and she couldn’t deny she wouldn’t mind if he stayed in it with her. Well, she couldn’t deny it to herself, anyway. She’d deny it to her last breath if he accused her of feeling that way.
“Long trip?”
“You have no idea. I’ve been traveling for what seems like days.”
“From where?”
“Hmm, kind of all over,” she said, thinking about the crazy whirlwind her life had become in the past few weeks, ever since she’d become the woman who’d betrayed the beloved Tommy Shane. Whore, slut, bitch, user, taker, Jezebel—some preacher had lobbed that one from a pulpit—those were some of the names that had been launched at her.
So much for thinking she would escape the breakup unscathed. Could she possibly have been more naive? She’d never in a million years imagined that by becoming the bad girl who’d broken the heart of Hollywood’s golden boy, she would be loathed, vilified and reviled all over the freaking country.
She’d had paparazzi follow her wherever she went. People who recognized her from her picture on the cover of every tabloid on the newsstand greeted her with catcalls and jeers. Her life had been ripped to shreds on blogs and Hollywood gossip shows. A woman had even spit on her while she was grocery shopping.
So she’d taken off to northern California. Unfortunately, everyone knew she had a twin sister who lived in Napa, and she hadn’t been hard to find. Poor Candace and Oliver, who liked to live quietly, had come into the limelight, too.
Then it was off to Florida to visit her parents. Same story. She hadn’t stayed there long. It had been way too much to ask for them to play along when they saw how horribly she was being treated. They knew better than anyone that she and Tommy hadn’t had a real engagement, and her father had been dying to defend her. Or at least to punch a few photographers. Heaven forbid she be the cause of his next heart attack!
So distraught over the whole thing that he’d decided to come out, Tommy had planned a press conference. Madison had told him to forget it. What he needed to do was buy her a ticket to somewhere warm. Before long, she was headed for the airport again.
Costa Rica. It should be far enough away for her to regain her sanity. Lord, did she hope so. If this scandal hadn’t blown over by the time she went home, she didn’t know what she would do.
“Hello?”
She realized her mind had drifted. She cleared her throat. “What?”
“Where’d you go?”
“Nowhere I want to return to,” she insisted vehemently.
“You’re on the run, huh?”
“You might say that.” Something prompted her to add, “You, too?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“Not a bank robber, are you?” she asked, her tone light and teasing, even though the possibility that he was an ax murderer had flashed across her mind. Of course, if he’d wanted to chop her into kindling, he could easily have done it while she was unconscious. Besides, nobody with eyes as warm and kind as this man’s could ever be the violent sort. He looked and behaved like a real-life hero.
“No. I stick strictly to convenience and liquor stores for my life of crime.”
“Penny ante,” she said with an airy wave of her hand.
“What about you? Are you a secret double agent seducing your way into state secrets?”
She batted her lashes. “You think I could?”
“Honey, I know you could.”
The
