Instead of pulling up behind her or alongside her, the van pulled in to one of the empty spots reserved for the disabled. Strange. Still, she didn’t relax, watching to see who’d emerge.
The driver’s-side door opened. A second later, so did the passenger side, and then the rear sliding door swung open, disgorging a man with a video camera, another with a microphone. They rushed over to her car, the man with the mic clearly a reporter of some sort.
Relieved and irritated, Maria took her foot off the brake and stomped the accelerator. Screeching out of the parking lot, she traveled the back roads, taking a convoluted route toward home.
Only once she was sure they hadn’t followed her did she turn down her street.
Safe inside her garage with the door closed, she sat in her car, teeth clenched, shaking. She’d only been with Ryan Howard once, and because of that, reporters were hounding her?
Slowly, she climbed out of her car and headed into the house. Should she cut her hair, change the color, make some attempt at disguising her appearance until this blew over?
Even having to consider such nonsense made her even madder. Why should she have to deal with this? Ryan Howard needed to make it stop. She suspected he had the power to fix it.
Digging his business card from her pocket, she decided to give him a call. She wanted this harassment to end, right now. The sooner she could go back to her normal life, the sooner she could get on with her quest to fulfill her destiny.
Maria Miranda had looked even lovelier than the last time Ryan had seen her. The instant she’d looked up from her desk and her caramel-colored gaze connected with his, he’d felt it like a punch to his stomach.
The way she’d acted had taken him by surprise. Damned if she hadn’t made him feel like some sort of creepy stalker. Embarrassed, ashamed and, yes, fuming, he paced the length of his beach house, glad that today, at least, the paparazzi had stayed away.
If it weren’t for them, Maria would never have learned who he actually was. It had been refreshing to find a woman who liked him for himself, rather than what he’d become.
The kind of sizzling chemistry between him and Maria could have been the start of something amazing. Corny as it sounded, even to him, he mourned its loss. Especially since they hadn’t gotten a chance to actually explore it.
He didn’t understand women—what man did?—but he usually got along with them well. He’d never lied to himself, well aware looks and money got him a lot further than he’d get if he wasn’t a multibillionaire. And though he didn’t usually mind, since he wasn’t looking for anything meaningful, the fact that the very things other women seemed to want had been what had driven Maria Miranda away felt like the bitterest form of irony.
He could practically hear his father’s voice, even though he’d been dead three long years. “Be good for you, boy. You needed taking down a peg.” And then the old man would have laughed, that crusty, congested sound from too many cigarettes and not enough exercise. Lung cancer had taken him, and not a day went by that Ryan didn’t miss him. His dad had been one of the few people he could count on to be honest.
These days he had no one but himself.
And if he were honest now, he completely deserved what Maria Miranda had dished out. She hadn’t asked to be around his baggage. While Ryan might have gotten used to the constant attention and disruption of privacy that came with his life, she clearly wasn’t, nor did she want to be.
Easily understood. Normally, under any other circumstances, he would have given her a silent salute and moved on.
Except he couldn’t get her out of his mind. No matter how he rationalized it, he still wanted her. Hopefully, he’d get over that in time. There were plenty of other beautiful women.
His cell phone rang. He grinned when her name popped up on his caller ID. He jotted the number down, intending to save it as a contact once they’d finished talking.
“Hello?” he answered, as if he had no idea who might be phoning him.
“Ryan, this is Maria Miranda.” She sounded out of breath. “I need you to call off the reporters.”
Stunned, he frowned. “I’m not sure I follow.”
“They followed me after I got off work today,” she continued, ripping out the words. “When I pulled into the grocery store, they tried to ambush me with a camera and everything. I have to ask you to please make it stop.”
“I wish I could. But I have no control over them.” Thinking fast, he seized opportunity where he saw it. “But since they already think we’re together, would you reconsider and have dinner with me?”
“No,” she snapped. “Maybe once they realize it’s over, they’ll lose interest and leave me alone.” She ended the call before he could respond.
Over. Stuffing his cell phone back into his pocket, he grimaced. Over before it had even started. Might as well forget her and get on with his summer vacation.
Except, as the days went on, he still couldn’t make himself stop thinking about her. And the fact that she’d wanted him, too, made it even worse. The kind of attraction that had sizzled between them kept him in a state of constant arousal.
The first week after her rejection, he went for lonely walks on the beach, telling himself he enjoyed the solitude. To keep from being recognized, he made various attempts at wearing a disguise. Mostly he wore a baseball cap, and once he even wore a long wig that made his head itch ten minutes in. With sunglasses, he figured this would be enough of a disguise to keep him from being recognized.
And it was. Strangely enough, the paparazzi seemed to have disappeared. Maybe they’d found other, more interesting people to follow, Ryan didn’t know. At least Maria had gotten her wish.
On the weekend of the second week, he found himself back at the Sea Dragon nightclub. Taking a deep breath, he went inside, unable to keep from hoping Maria might be there. If he could get her to talk to him, maybe she’d give him a second chance. He’d come up with a plan so simple he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it earlier.
But though he searched the crowd, she wasn’t anywhere to be found. He drank his beer slowly, keeping an eye on the entrance in case she came in, but eventually he admitted defeat. The repetitive noise had given him a headache, so he hurried back outside, down the concrete seawall and back to the sand. There, he breathed a sigh of relief, briefly considering kicking off his flip-flops but keeping them on, instead, when he realized even this made him think of Maria Miranda.
What the heck had happened to him? He hadn’t come to Galveston looking for a hookup, but then he hadn’t expected to see a woman as gorgeous as Maria. Not only that. There was something else about her, an elusive quality that fueled his need to explore all her secrets. Though he hated to admit it, the attraction seemed to be more than simply because he found her beautiful. Which so wasn’t like him. He preferred his life uncomplicated, without attachments or ties. Work and play, nothing serious. Ever.
Because he enjoyed his own company, he never got lonely; in fact, part of the appeal in coming to Galveston had been the idea of complete privacy. But since meeting her, he felt her
