to leap from your window?”
“No, I just...” She cleared her throat and made her voice loud enough to be heard. “Just a second, Roxy. I’m just now getting up.”
Scrambling from the bed, she stripped his shirt from her chest and tossed it at him. “You. Dressed. Now!”
Maddy dragged her clothes on as fast as humanly possible, not caring that it was the same outfit she’d worn yesterday. Then she yanked her fingers through her tangled hair. “Coming.”
She didn’t stop to check whether or not Kaleb was doing what she asked; she simply whisked through the bedroom door, pulling it shut behind her. As long as she could keep Roxy—or, worse, Chloe—from discovering that Kaleb McBride had spent the night in her bed, she would be fine. She hoped.
The man had to have known he rocked her world. No one had made love to her like that in...well, forever. There were no comparisons, and that scared the hell out of her.
She strolled down the hall and into the living room, wearing the biggest smile she could muster. “Hey, you two...”
Her voice died. Because, yes, Roxy and Chloe were there. In fact, her daughter launched herself into her arms and hung on tight. But standing just behind them was someone she hadn’t expected.
“Mom? What are you doing here?”
Keeping one arm around Chloe, she glanced back at the bedroom, hoping against hope that Kaleb was not going to pull that door open and let everyone know he was there.
Roxy, she could handle; her sister had had her share of lovers over the years. Not so much recently, but in their younger days. Maddy could have even come up with some kind of funny explanation for Kaleb being here—although nothing sounded particularly humorous to her at the moment.
But her mom?
Oh, no. She would see right through the ploy. She would know. She always did.
Her mom laughed and came over to kiss her cheek. “I’m happy to see you too, dear.” She glanced around the room. “You’ve been trying to get me to come out here for a visit for a while, and after...well, what happened with Matthew, I wanted to see where you lived. I would have come for your birthday yesterday, but Roxy told me she’d promised you a night alone.”
Oh, Lord. She’d definitely not been alone. Not then. And not now.
“Mommy? My head hurts.”
The words came from Chloe, and while she did her best to concentrate on what they meant, she was still trying to figure out why her mom had really come. Today of all days. How was she going to get Kaleb out of that room?
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Maddy said. “Do you need some medicine?”
“No. It’s not a sicky headache, just a normal one.” Chloe got migraines from time to time, but it had been months since her last one. She always wondered if she’d handed her daughter some kind of defective gene. If maybe her asthma had passed itself off as migraines in Chloe. Ridiculous. She knew it was, but there was always a tiny shard of guilt every time her daughter suffered through one of her bad headaches.
She decided she was going to have to enlist her sister’s help if she was going to get through this. “Chloe, how about if you show Nana your room? Jetta was sleeping on your bed last time I saw him. Maybe he’s still there.”
So what if the last time she’d seen the cat was after midnight, just as Kaleb was carrying her to bed after making love to her in the bathroom? Maybe the cat really was still there.
“Sure! C’mon, Nana. It’s right down this hallway.”
Her mom threw Maddy a quick frown, but followed her granddaughter. As soon as they were out of earshot, she grabbed Roxy’s arm. “You’ve got to keep them in there for about five minutes.”
Her sister tilted her head. “What are you talking about?”
“There’s no time to explain.” She half dragged her down the hallway. “Just do it. Please.”
Maddy stopped with her hand on the doorknob to her bedroom. Her sister’s eyes got wide. She whispered, “You...you’ve got a man in there.”
That struck her as insanely funny for some reason. “Well, it’s certainly not a pony.”
“Oh, my God, Maddy. You are so going to spill when this is all over.”
At this point, she didn’t care what she had to do. So long as Kaleb was on his way out of her apartment before her mother came out of that room.
Roxy hurried down the hallway, her voice much louder than necessary. “I haven’t seen good old Jetta in ages. Can I join in?” Her sister threw Maddy one last grin before disappearing into the room.
Before she could turn the knob on her own bedroom door, it opened so fast she practically fell inside.
“You have to leave,” she whispered. “Right now.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do.” His voice didn’t sound nearly as friendly as it had a few minutes ago. “What’s wrong with Chloe?”
“Wrong?” She tried to hurry him along, thanking God they’d had the foresight to throw his jeans into the dryer last night. She did her best not to remember how those same jeans had felt scraping over her legs as he’d climbed into the tub.
“She said her head hurt.”
“Oh. Yes. She gets headaches periodically. She’s fine.”
Kaleb’s face unexpectedly blanched, turning a sickly white. Probably worried about getting caught, just as she was. She wouldn’t be surprised if her own face was rather pasty right now.
They made it to the front door, and she quietly opened it. “Thanks for everything.” She closed her eyes for a minute. “I mean... Well, you know what I mean.”
“Yes.” He stepped outside the door and paused. “Have you had them looked at?”
“Sorry?” She was doing her best to keep her voice down to a whisper, but she was running out of time. And patience.
“The headaches.”
“We’ve already been to a couple of specialists.” She did her best to smile. “I really, really don’t want my mom to find you here. Sorry.” With that, she shut the door with as soft a click as she could and prayed he hadn’t left anything lying...
Yanking in a quick breath, she raced through the hallway and glanced into the bathroom. Nothing there, thank God. She tiptoed back a few steps to peek into her room. Unmade bed, but that was to be expected. It was barely—she glanced at her watch—eight o’clock.
Just then she spotted two towels beside the bed. She went in and grabbed them, hoping she could hurry to the bathroom and throw them over a towel bar. Just as she came out of the room, her mom and the rest of her entourage appeared. And two pairs of adult eyes swung to her hands, which clutched one blue towel and one white towel. Her mom’s eyes slowly shifted back to hers, a question in them Maddy had no intention of answering.
