that bakery in Melville. We’re in the back booth; join us when you have a break.’ Nat planted a kiss on her mouth and tapped her nose before melting back into the crowd.
Maddie dropped back to her feet and sent Cale a bland smile, ignoring his narrowed eyes at her not so subtle jibe.
‘Sorry, what did you want? A Chardonnay and a—?’
‘Draught beer.’ Cale sent her a feral smile. ‘Still a chronic flirt, Maddie?’
Maddie shrugged and reached for a bottle of house wine. ‘Well, I did learn at the seat of the master. You taught me so well.’
‘I—’ Cale’s mouth snapped shut when his companion laid her diamond-encrusted fingers on his sleeve and leaned forward, so that he had a perfect view down the continental divide in her shirt. She whispered something in his ear before sliding off the seat and walking towards the restrooms.
Maddie uncorked the bottle of Chardonnay and glugged the contents into a sparkling glass. ‘So, I see that you still do all your shopping at Blondes R Us?’
Maddie caught the quick grin he couldn’t hide and wistfully remembered how he’d loved her dry sense of humour. Even if it was at his expense. ‘She’s… sweet. Not really my type, but sweet.’
‘How can she not be your type? You always went for the tanned, stacked blondes.’
She clearly remembered the long-legged, longhaired creatures who had followed Cale, his twin, Oliver, and their sports-mad friends around, their tongues dragging on the floor.
Judging by what she’d read and heard over the years, he still seemed only to date a wide variety of the fairer section of her sex.
It was a point of pride—or idiocy—that he’d once broken the mould with her.
Maddie sent him a sly smile. ‘Okay, I’ll play… If she’s not your type, why are you buying her a drink and allowing her to bat her eyelashes at you?’
Cale stared past her shoulder and Maddie thought she caught a flash of embarrassment whip across his face. ‘She’s an… obligation I have to fulfil.’
Maddie’s curiosity was piqued. He wasn’t the type of man who felt obligated easily. ‘Did you lose a bet? A blind date? A favour to a friend?’
Cale scowled at her. ‘I haven’t seen you for ten years. Can’t we find something else to talk about other than my love-life?’
‘Why, when your love-life helps fill the social pages every week?’
‘It was three times in three months, not every week. I just wish they’d leave me alone.’
‘They would if you got your pretty face off TV and out of the public eye.’ Maddie leaned across the bar and condescendingly patted his hand. ‘And maybe if you stuck to one woman for more than a month nobody would actually care who you are dating!’ Maddie countered his annoyed glare with a wide smile.
‘Are you quite done?’ he demanded.
Maddie shrugged as she put a beer stein under the tap and pulled the lever, feeling her face heat as he watched her. He still had the ability to make her skin prickle…
Cale tapped his finger against the bar before taking the beer she slid across the bar. He ran a blunt finger around the rim. ‘It’s been a long time.’
Maddie nodded as she took an order for a margarita and a Cosmopolitan from two slick women who were happily drunk and singing along with the house band in the corner. Maddie waited until they’d moved off before flashing Cale a searching look, even as she kept serving drinks, knowing that she couldn’t afford to take a break on a busy Friday night.
‘What are you doing in this neck of the woods? Or have you moved to this side of the mountain?’
‘I’m still in the same house. I heard about this place a while ago and thought I’d try it out. Can you stop for a minute so that we can have a non-interrupted conversation?’
A burly man shouted his order at Maddie and bumped Cale’s shoulder at the same time. Cale sent him a look that caused him to step back a pace. Cale, Maddie noticed, still radiated harnessed power. It made men wary and women hot.
She brought her attention back to the conversation. ‘Sorry, can’t do that. This place is going to start pumping soon.’
Cale looked around in astonishment. ‘It’s already full!’
‘This is nothing!’ Maddie shouted back as a roar went up from a rowdy group of students in the corner.
When the worst of the shouting fell away, she placed her elbows on the bar and leaned closer to Cale. She couldn’t ignore it any longer. She had to say something. Even if they’d had nothing more than a brief acquaintance, common decency dictated it. What words to use? What did you say to someone who’d lost his twin so horribly?
She decided to keep it simple. ‘I’m so, so sorry about Oliver. He was an utterly amazing man.’
Privately Maddie had always thought that Oliver was a modern-day Icarus—a wild, impetuous free spirit who flew too close to the sun. His death hadn’t surprised her; the fact that it had been due to cancer had.
Cale looked past her shoulder and she saw the muscle jump in his jaw, a heavy curtain fall in his eyes. His eyes dropped to look at her hand, clasping his thick tanned wrist. ‘Thanks.’
He was warm and strong, and she could feel his steady pulse under the ridges of her fingertips.
‘Hey, Maddie!’
Maddie jerked her hand away and turned to look at Dan, the other bartender. ‘Yes?’
‘We’re running short on house wine. Can you cover me while I get more?’
Maddie thought that a supply run would be the perfect excuse to recover her shaky equilibrium and to break the intensity of the last minute. Who would have thought that Cale could, a decade later, still accelerate her hormones with one navy-eyed look? She was still obviously—and sadly—a sucker for his hard body and attractive face.
It was just chemistry, she decided hastily. A normal reaction to a very sexy man—which in itself was vastly reassuring. She hadn’t felt the tug of attraction, the prickling of feminine awareness for too long. This was good, given her lack of interest in men and sex these past three years. Hell, she was practically a nun! Well, except for no habit and the lack of devotion…
His was a good-looking face and a sexy body. That was what she was responding to. Nothing else. She’d grown out of her infatuation with sporty womanisers ten years ago.
Probably.
‘I’ll go. I need a bathroom break anyway,’ Maddie told Dan, and turned back to the bar and lifted her hands in a gesture of apology. ‘Five minutes, guys.’
Steeling herself not to look back at Cale, she stumbled through the door that led to the kitchen and hooked a left to the staff bathrooms of the Laughing Queen.
Jim, owner of the LQ, good friend and entirely too curious about her love-life, bustled
