She's So Over Him (Mills & Boon Modern Tempted) Read online

  Maddie nodded, felt a hand on her arm and turned to face Jim. She leaned into his tall, stodgy frame, briefly seeking support. Over the years this man and his partner had become her best friends, and had rented and eventually sold her the flat above theirs in the small block they owned across the parking lot of the Laughing Queen. As a result, and also because she hated cooking and loved their company, she’d made the LQ her second home. They were a strange little family: two gay older men and their wayward neighbour slash emotional ward.

  ‘Why don’t you take a break?’

  Jim ran a hand down her arm and Maddie caught the piercing look he sent Cale.

  ‘I’ll take over for a while.’

  Maddie shook her head. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Jimbo. All suspicious and speculative. Been there, done that, fumigated the T-shirt.’

  Cale saw Bernie to the door of her flat and deftly sidestepped her blatant offer of sex disguised as coffee. At thirty-five he required a little conversation with his sex, some intellectual connection.

  Back in his car parked on a side street, Cale leaned his forearms on the steering wheel and stared down the mostly empty road.

  Madison Shaw—all grown-up and looking fine—was the last person he’d expected to see serving drinks from behind a popular bar in Simon’s Town. Cale tapped the steering wheel with his index finger, staring into the inky night.

  Oliver would get such a kick hearing that he’d met up with Maddie again… Habit had him reaching for his mobile to call his twin, and he cursed when sharp pain slashed through his chest. Two years dead and he still automatically reached out to him… Would the complete reality of his passing ever sink in?

  Don’t go there… Cale took a deep breath and forced his thoughts away from Oliver and back to Maddie. At eighteen she’d been mature and so smart, with a wicked sense of humour. Compared to those breathy, earnest girls who’d made no secret of their availability, Maddie and her reticent and sarcastic attitude had been a breath of fresh air.

  For months he’d listened to his instinct and common sense—honed from twenty-five years of trying to keep Oliver under control and out of trouble—that told himself that getting deeper involved with Maddie, getting involved with any woman, was a train wreck waiting to happen.

  But at one of Oliver’s legendary parties the combination of one too many tequila shots consumed and Maddie in a very brief pair of denim shorts lowered his IQ and he’d taken her to bed.

  He’d kept her in it for eight tumultuous weeks.

  Madison. Five-feet-four of pure attitude. She’d flipped his life upside down and he still wasn’t sure what it was about her that had had him, Mr Cool, chasing his tail like a demented puppy.

  Accustomed to calling the shots with women, Maddie had turned him inside out. He’d had no idea how to handle her, no clue how to deal with those weird sensations she’d pulled to the surface. He had known that she expected more from him than he could give—his time, his attention, a large chunk of his soul. But his time had been split between his work and his studies, his attention was always half on Oliver, trying to anticipate trouble, and his soul had never been on offer anyway.

  He’d known he’d lost her even before she’d frightened the hell out of him with that pregnancy scare. He’d panicked and reacted in comprehensive fear… throwing his pizza into the wall and storming out to get hammered. Yeah, nobody had considered awarding him a prize for his maturity.

  Cale rested his forehead on the steering wheel, wincing at the memory. When he’d returned she’d waved the negative result in his face and proceeded to strip ten layers of skin off him. Her brutal rejection had been swift and non-negotiable and had left little room for hope.

  Petty enough to want to punish her, he’d ignored her calls. Two weeks later, when his emotions had subsided into a dull roar and he’d had a vague plan of action for how to talk her back into bed, he’d found out that Maddie, as she’d said she would, had dropped out of his life. Nowhere to be found.

  He’d been young enough, arrogant enough, to shrug her off and shove any hurt away, choosing to concentrate on his PhD, his career, his racing, revelling in his single status.

  Time passed, then his twin had died from cancer, and for months it had been a sheer battle just to get through the day.

  He knew intellectually that he was still grieving. He knew how the process worked, the phases he had to get through. In every death there were unresolved issues, but he had a shed-load when it came to his twin’s life—and death—and he wasn’t nearly ready to deal with them.

  Psychologist heal thyself… yeah, right.

  What he also knew was that depression had gone but guilt, regret and responsibility were still his constant companions.

  But then, for all of his life with Oliver those three stooges had never been far away. Guilt for the utter frustration he’d frequently felt towards his reckless, completely unaccountable twin. Regret when he’d been unable to keep him from doing something that had hurt either himself or someone else, and a feeling that he was always responsible for his brother. During his life and at his death.

  Oliver had been more than a rebel, more than a free spirit. On more than one occasion, when he’d been comprehensively fed up, Cale had suspected that he might be a touch psychotic.

  Guilt, regret and responsibility. Grr, indeed.

  He knew how to treat his clients’ hang-ups, but it was far easier for him to operate on the surface of his own life. He could meet, flirt and even have the odd sexual encounter with women. He wasn’t interested in emotional entanglements. He didn’t have the time or the energy… and even less inclination.

  And he wasn’t nearly ready to be in any conceivable way responsible for another person; he’d played that song all his life and he was sick of it.

  So the thrill he’d felt at meeting Maddie again was just a flashback to those crazy feelings of his youth—a reminder of a golden time in his life when he’d thought he was so clever, that he’d had life under control. He’d had no freaking idea.

  What could it hurt to share a drink with Maddie?

  They’d catch up, have a laugh and walk away as friends. After all, he was older and smarter, and now he knew it was when he allowed people into his head—like brothers and lovers—that life tended to become chaotic. And God knew he’d dealt with enough chaos to last a lifetime.

  The trick was keeping it all under control. And he’d earned his PhD in that as well as the real one on his wall.

  After living with crazy Oliver it would take more than a tawny-eyed woman to upset the equilibrium of his life.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MADDIE rested her arms on the railing that ran the length of the restaurant and stopped the unwary or the intoxicated from falling into the harbour. The inky, oily water lapped the wooden pylons below, and Maddie tried to concentrate on the sounds and scents of summer morphing into autumn. Her tawny eyes drifted over the marina, idly noticing that a new catamaran now occupied the berth at the end. Hadn’t Cale once dreamt of owning such a vessel?

  Maddie removed the clip that kept her riotous hair off her neck and felt the heavy curls tumble down her back. The bar had quietened down and, since Dan was fully able to cope with the remaining patrons by himself, she’d called it a night.

  Lord, she was tired. Even the short walk across the parking lot seemed a mission, and climbing the stairs to her third-floor flat seemed impossible. She knew she needed to rest, yet she knew that sleep—never easy—would be scarce tonight. Her mind, so used to shoving Cale into a box labelled ‘Do Not Open, Stupid,’ was skipping from memory to memory.

  ‘Maddie.’

  Maddie turned slowly and had to smile. With the sea breeze ruffling his hair and the shadows hiding his flat, hard eyes, for a moment he looked like his old devil-may-care self.

  ‘Hi.’ Maddie stepped away from the railing and nodded to the empty glass and the open bottle of wine. ‘Help yourself.’

  Cale picked up the bottle and dumped a heal
thy amount of Merlot into his glass. He lifted it in a salute and a smile pulled the corners of his mouth up. ‘She won a dinner with me at a bachelor auction. Longest three hours of my life. I saw the question in your eyes.’

  ‘Ah.’ Maddie’s eyes laughed at him over the rim of her own glass. ‘She’s very… um… sexy.’

  ‘Very… except that I’m not sure how much of it is real or out of a silicone tube,’ Cale said, placing his elbows next to hers on the railing.

  She could feel the heat from his body, smell his soap, citrus and Cale-scent mixing with the brine from the sea.

  Cale pointed his glass at the new catamaran and whistled. ‘What a boat.’

  ‘It’s new. At the marina, I mean. It docked today.’

  ‘It’s new in every sense. Twin screws, dual engines—obviously—and its finer bows give it a nearly forty-five-foot waterline.’

  If he said so, Maddie thought, not having a clue what he was talking about. ‘I have no idea what that means,’ she admitted when he looked expectantly at her.

  Cale grinned. ‘It significantly improves the up-wind and overall sailing ability of the yacht.’ He sipped his wine.

  ‘Didn’t you sail somewhere once?’ Maddie wrinkled her nose, trying to remember.

  ‘When I finished my Masters, I was sick of studying, so Oliver and I sailed a cat from here to Zanzibar. It was the start of two years of travelling. I’ve never been so physically scared or thrilled before or since—and that’s saying a lot because, well, I was Oliver’s twin.’

  Mad Oliver and his many crazy escapades. ‘That is saying a lot. What happened?’

  ‘We hit a cyclone off the Mozambique channel. Crazy winds, crazy waves…’

  ‘Crazy Oliver.’

  ‘Yeah. He whooped and hollered his way through it. We nearly capsized a dozen times, and didn’t sleep for two days straight, but it was a hell of an adrenalin rush.’

  In his eyes she could see the flicker of pain edged with laughter. She knew about the devastation of loss, and instinctively knew that Cale had visited more than one level of hell since his twin’s death.

  ‘I really am sorry about Oliver.’ Maddie heard her breath catch in her throat. Funny, wild, crazy, impetuous Oliver.

  ‘Yeah. Me, too.’ Cale took a healthy sip from his glass and nudged her with his shoulder.

  Maddie opened her mouth but stopped when Cale briefly placed his hand on hers.

  ‘It’s been a really long day. Can we not talk about him?’

  Maddie nodded and stared out at the ocean.

  ‘Please tell me that you don’t tend bar for a living.’ Cale broke the silence.

  ‘No, during the day I sell crack and turn tricks.’ Maddie grinned when he sent her a look of resigned amusement. ‘After we split up I worked here weekends for the rest of my time at uni. I still help my friends out if they’re short of staff or if I’m bored. I don’t normally work this long; usually they let me go home a lot earlier.’

  ‘It’s very late to be driving home.’ Cale glanced towards the parking lot and she could see his protective streak rise to the surface.

  ‘I don’t drive. I walk.’

  Cale straightened, and this time he looked genuinely horrified. ‘You what? Are you insane? Do you know what could happen?’

  Maddie laughed. ‘Relax, Grandpa.’ She nodded at the three-storey block of flats just across the well-lit parking lot. ‘Third floor—my flat.’

  Cale tugged on a long curl that lay on her shoulder. ‘Stop winding me up,’ he complained, without any heat.

  ‘But it’s so much fun!’ Maddie topped up her glass and held out the bottle to Cale, shrugging when shook his head.

  ‘So, apart from your less than legal pursuits, how do you pay for a flat in one of the more upmarket areas of the city?’ Cale crossed his arms and rested his glass against his bicep.

  Sexy arms, Maddie thought. What would he look like with his shirt off? Images from long ago flashed in her head. A wide chest, lightly covered in crisp blond hair, strong shoulders—and did he still have that washboard stomach? Her eyes brushed over his lower mid-section and drifted across his slim hips. Oh, yes, it was still there…

  Whoah, boy—chemical reaction.

  Maddie hauled in her breath, shoved an agitated hand into her hair and counted to ten. Then she counted to twenty, frantically thinking that she might have to go to two thousand and sixty-two to get her heart-rate under control.

  Damn him… If he ever gave up his day-job he could hire himself out as a defibrillator. Huh! That was a pretty impressive word for—she glanced at her watch—twenty to one in the morning.

  ‘Earth to Maddie?’

  Maddie was jerked out of her thoughts by Cale tugging on the curl again before allowing it to fall off his finger.

  ‘You took quite a mental side trip. What were you thinking about?’

  Your muscles under my hands…

  ‘Cardiac arrest and defibrillators.’

  Cale’s eyebrows lifted in surprise and he scratched his forehead. ‘I’d forgotten about your weird thought processes.’

  ‘You always said that I had a mind like a grasshopper,’ Maddie agreed. ‘It drove you crazy.’

  ‘Newsflash: everything about you drove me crazy.’

  Maddie’s glass stopped halfway to her mouth. She silently cursed when Cale turned his face away, leaving her with a very good view of his strong neck. What, for the love of all things bright and beautiful, did he mean by that? Was he joking? Being serious? Sarcastic? Unfortunately his neck and the back of his head didn’t give her a clue.

  Cale didn’t give her a chance to respond. ‘How are your parents?’

  ‘Uh… fine.’

  ‘And your grandfather Red? How is he?’

  How could he ask her that? Why would he ask her that? He had to have heard that Red had passed on… didn’t he?

  Maddie bit her lip. ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘That he eventually ordered that Russian mailorder bride he wanted?’ Cale asked, his voice teasing.

  Maddie stared at him. God, he really didn’t know. The mind simply boggled.

  Maddie turned around and leaned her bottom against the railing, crossed her legs at the ankles and ignored the stabbing pain in her sternum. Ten years? Sometimes it still felt like ten days.

  ‘Red is—excuse the rhyme—dead. The day we broke up.’

  ‘The day we… What?’ Cale ran a hand over his shocked face and swore quietly. ‘Mad, I’m sorry. What happened? Why didn’t you let me know?’

  Maddie walked away from him, boosted herself onto one of the wooden tables and placed her feet on the bench. ‘He fell down the steps in his house and broke his neck. And I did let you know… well, I tried to. I left messages,’ she stated, her voice devoid of inflection.

  Cale frowned at her. ‘What do you mean?’

  Maddie stared at the deck. ‘I found him that next morning. I called you… so many times. Asking you to help me. My mother was, as per usual, out of town, and my father hated Red. I never expected their help. But yours? Yes, I stupidly did. I didn’t need or want them. I wanted you. Not my lover but my friend, who I trusted would be there for me.’ Maddie’s voice wavered as emotion seeped through her flat tone. ‘But you kept dismissing my calls. I left messages asking you to come… There were so many questions. The paramedics and the police… the coroner. Where was I? Who was I with?’

  Cale rubbed his face with his hands and swore. ‘I don’t believe this…’

  Maddie shrugged. ‘It wasn’t a fun time.’

  Cale closed his eyes. ‘God, Madison. I thought that you were…’

  ‘Begging you to reconsider?’ Maddie’s eyes flashed molten gold with anger. ‘That I was so desperate for your delicious body, to have you back in my life, that I would call you twenty times and leave as many messages? How could you not think that something drastic had happened?’

  ‘I—Yes.’ Cale lifted his hands in a self-deprecating gesture. ‘I’m sorry. I wa
s stupid.’

  ‘Yes, you were. And cruel. You let me down.’

  Cale nodded. ‘I can’t apologise enough.’

  Maddie lifted her eyebrows in surprise at his confession. She’d expected him to justify his actions, to find an excuse. She’d never expected him so easily to admit to being in the wrong.

  ‘I made a lot of bad assumptions.’

  ‘Yes—like you’ve assumed that I’m a bartender.’ Maddie let out a small bitter laugh. ‘On that point: I got my honours degree in Marketing and Communication. I work as an event co-ordi-nator and PR specialist.’

  Cale rubbed the back of his neck and Maddie could see him mentally flipping through her statements. She glanced at the empty restaurant through to the bar, where Jim and Ali sat nursing a coffee. They both kept looking at her, openly curious about Cale.

  ‘I can’t believe it was a decade ago. It feels like yesterday.’ Maddie rubbed her hands over her face. ‘I was young and stupendously stupid but, by God, you were the worst boyfriend in the world.’

  Cale nodded his agreement. ‘I can’t argue with that. I was.’

  ‘You broke dates, rocked up late, didn’t call—’ Maddie was rattling on, but stopped when she registered his words.

  ‘I spent too much time with my friends and not enough time with you,’ Cale added. ‘Hell, Mad, I’m just surprised that you didn’t drop-kick me off a cliff sooner.’

  Maddie shoved her tongue in her cheek. ‘Oh, I kept you around for entertainment value. You could always make me laugh. Your excuses and explanations were legendary.’

  ‘And here I thought you kept me around for my skill under the covers.’

  ‘Dream on, dude.’ Maddie slapped her hands on her thighs, looked at the empty wine bottle and then towards her dark flat. ‘Look, I’ve got to get some sleep. So, again—good to see you.’

  Cale’s strong fingers on her arm halted her progress. ‘Maddie—’

  Maddie stopped and hung her head, closing her eyes against the flickers of heat that radiated up her arm, the corresponding curl of attraction in her belly. She couldn’t believe, after all this time, that he still had the power to turn her anger to lust, her disappointment to attraction. His physical effect on her was instantaneous, dangerous.