Reason set in and he grasped his case. “I’d better go. See you anon.”
Outside, on the safe side of Maggie’s door, Alex stepped quickly back into the elevator. He needed to find his room, and then he’d find the gym. Every muscle in his body had tensed. He hadn’t expected to have feelings for Maggie, good, bad or indifferent. He’d been hoping to make sure their almost-sex-disaster-fest incident was all in the past. There was more than enough animosity between him and Nick without adding awkwardness with the stylist into the mix. The attraction that had flared up between him and Maggie was infernally inconvenient.
“Madly busy” summed up Maggie’s first day in Boston, which was just as well because it took her mind off Alex. Far from clearing things up and proving that they were both entirely different people at different places in their lives, meeting him again had given her an uneasy feeling that he wasn’t out of her system. She could fight it all she liked, but she’d been craving a little bit of Alex’s amazing sexual energy ever since he’d arranged her upgrade on the plane. That was ridiculous. She needed to focus on making him look great. Not that it would be a stretch. He was altogether too dreamy.
At noon she met Hannah, the photographer, at her converted warehouse studio, which was the base for the city shoot. After they’d discussed the brief, she put together the outfits, took Polaroid photos of them, and left everything ready on hanging rails.
She spent the rest of the day dashing around Boston picking up last-minute bits and bobs. Finally, she had a meeting with Natalie, the make-up artist, for a coffee and a quick chat about the looks she and Hannah were aiming for.
Anchored in a leather tub chair in a downtown coffee shop Maggie fought the buzz in her head planted there by Alex. The low hum of chatter filled her ears, and fresh aromas of newly ground beans swirled in the air. Normally she loved the smell, but she felt queasy. The prospect of working with the Wells brothers had turned into a witch’s brew of craziness that had set her nerves jangling.
“The magazine wants something dark and mysterious in keeping with the actors’ TV characters.” She took a quick sip of her decaf skinny latte. It tasted yuck, like she’d been chewing copper pennies. “It needs to be subtle,” she advised, setting down her cup and pushing it away. “Nothing too over-the-top.”
“Aw,” the make-up artist objected. “Let’s make ’em real spooky.”
“If you mean a trickle of fake blood dribbling from the corner of Alex Wells’ mouth, then no, I’m afraid not.” Maggie and Natalie laughed. “Pale and interesting is good, though. I have to warn you, it might be a bit of a challenge. I’ve met them already and they were both looking very tanned.”
Natalie was bursting with curiosity. “So what are they like? Have you worked with them before? I can’t wait.”
“I – um. No, I haven’t worked with them.” Natalie was so sweet and friendly that Maggie was tempted to tell her everything – all about how she knew Alex in a previous life.
Before he became famous.
Before she got a career as a fashion stylist.
Before she came to the conclusion that falling in love was much too risky, and that if she wanted a happy family, she was going to have to go it alone.
A sparkly, curvy twenty-something with flawless skin and a halo of dark corkscrew curls, Natalie popped a spoonful of froth from her cappuccino into her mouth. “Which one’s your favorite? Nick or Alex? I mean they’re both hot as hell, right? But if you had to choose?”
Maggie’s stomach did a somersault. Since this spur-of-the-moment styling job had come up she’d been preoccupied with work. So much so she’d lost track of days. It was over two weeks since she’d been to the clinic for the medical procedure that could change her life. She’d had artificial insemination with donor sperm. She had half a dozen pregnancy tests in her handbag and she hadn’t had the courage yet to do one. She was itching to find out the result. Was she pregnant, or wasn’t she? She had more important things to think about than discussing which of the Wells twins was the hotter.
“Oh I don’t know, Nick, I guess.” She mentally crossed her fingers against the white lie.
“No way!” Natalie picked up her coffee cup. She’d left a red lipstick print on the porcelain. “It’s Alex any day of the week for me. I’m dying to meet him.”
Maggie bit her tongue. Hitting the make-up artist with the details of her past connection with Alex would be ill-advised. She clearly had a bit of a crush on him. And as for announcing, “Excuse me, I just need to pop off and do a pregnancy test”? Well, that would be unprofessional in the extreme, and probably a bit off-putting.
Maggie steered the conversation back on topic, discussed colors, the clothes, the models, and the theme for the first shoot. Then she headed back to the hotel, feeling inappropriately light-hearted at the prospect of possibly running into Alex in the lobby.
Alex was nowhere to be seen. Maggie ended the day ordering room service and crashing out ready for an early start the next morning. She had a night of fractured sleep. Three times she woke up sprawled in the king-size bed thinking she should get up and do the pregnancy test. She didn’t. She had a mental block so strong it was as if something physical was preventing her from doing what she needed to do.
If the insemination was a success, it was because her donor had knowingly made a decision to create a life without being there. Her father hadn’t made that choice. He’d been a summer romance. Her mum was sixteen when she’d fallen in love with the golden-haired surfer boy from Australia. By the time she realized she was pregnant he’d left, and by the time she tried to tell him he was a dad, it was too late.
Her mother’s pregnancy had been a minor scandal in their seaside village. By the time her grandmother had got over the embarrassment, got used to the idea of her daughter being a teen mum, and decided that they should track down surf-boy Sam, he was dead. A seventeen- year-old adrenaline junkie, happy-go-lucky Sam had surfed a notorious point break two days after he arrived home. Taken out by a freak wave, he’d drowned on the reef. His parents sent a clipping from their local newspaper reporting his death. Maggie’s mum kept it in a shoebox under her bed with a load of photos and a heart-shaped pebble he’d given her. When she went to work in Spain she left the box behind, along with Maggie.
Technically, her father had been a sperm donor. So why shouldn’t a donor-sperm baby grow up to be as strong and independent as she’d learned to be?
Finally she fell into deep sleep. She always dreamed when she was jet-lagged, but usually she had a vague sense that she was asleep and only dreaming. This time the dream was so real that she woke up all spaced-out and it took a minute or so to register that the blissful scenario she’d been so immersed in hadn’t actually happened.
And she thanked her lucky stars it hadn’t. Because in her dream she’d slept with Alex, and her heart thudded, wondering if that embarrassing little gem was going to be written on her face the minute she set eyes on him. He’d stirred up a mess of emotions. She hadn’t just been a little bit in love with him, she’d been head over heels, and right when she’d not been able to resist him a second longer, he’d upped and gone and vanished from her world. She’d thought she was oh-so-over him, but the deep down, buried truth was that she’d gone on being hooked on him for much too long after he’d left. No one measured up to him. The guys she’d dated never stood a chance by comparison, because she didn’t allow them to. When she got anywhere near starting a relationship she let it fizzle out. Fearing rejection somewhere down the line, she pushed men away. Until Marcus. Marcus had taken her over, organized her, a self-appointed personal drill sergeant. She’d trusted him completely.
She felt raw. It didn’t help