“Okay.”
“Was that a yes?”
He grinned. “I guess.”
She couldn’t help chuckling. “Where do you live?”
“Chicago. You?”
Hmm. Good question. She’d been raised in Florida. Then she’d moved to New York after grad school, determined to be a world-class journalist. Only, she’d realized she kind of hated journalists. That was when she’d started writing screenplays. And when she’d gotten engaged to Tommy, she’d moved to Southern California. Now, she honestly didn’t know where she was going to live.
“I’m sort of between housing right now.”
That dimple reappeared. “That was a pretty vague answer.”
“I suppose it was. I’ve been living in L.A. But I’m not sure what I’m going to do when I leave here. I might go back to New York.”
“Chicago’s got better pizza.”
Her jaw dropped. “You must be kidding. That loaf of bread with cheese on it that they serve in Chicago has got nothing on a thin, crispy slice of pepperoni from Ray’s.”
He drew up, looking offended. “My uncle and cousin run a pizza place with food that would make your taste buds decide to commit suicide rather than eat pizza anywhere else ever again.”
“With all due respect to your uncle and cousin, you’re mental cheese has obviously slipped off its crust. Because you’re crazy.”
“I challenge you to a taste test.”
“I don’t think we’re going to find very good examples of New York or Chicago style here in Central America.”
“When we get back stateside then.”
Implying they might see each other again after they left here? Oh, how tempting a thought. But she forced herself to concede, an impossible one.
“Maybe,” she murmured, quickly looking away. A sharp stab of disappointment shot through her because she knew she was lying.
She couldn’t see him again. Not at home. Not here. Once he got the room situation straightened out, she needed to avoid him altogether.
Maybe if he’d been the gigolo she’d thought him, she’d take a chance. Or if he’d been anything but the delightful, warm, friendly, protective man she’d already seen him to be. As it was, though, she couldn’t get involved with anybody like Leo Santori. Her life was too freaking messed up right now to involve anyone else in it.
“Well, guess I’ll head up to the lobby,” he said, as if noticing that she’d pulled away, if only mentally. “And I was serious, feel free to use the pool.”
She nodded. “I might do that. Thanks. Maybe you should take my room key, just in case I’m outside and don’t hear you knock.”
He picked it up off the dresser where she’d tossed it and departed. After he’d gone, Madison thought about his offer to use the pool. She had been serious about how appealing it sounded, though she wouldn’t swim the way she suspected he’d been about to. Judging by the towel he’d been oh-so-inconveniently holding, he’d been planning to skinny-dip. That sounded perfect, delightful, in fact. Letting her naked body soak up the breezes and the warmth was just about her idea of heaven.
Of course, she wasn’t quite desperate enough to strip out of her clothes and pose in front of the door the way he had. Even if she did have a very nice ass, if she did say so herself. Still, she wasn’t about to bare it for some stranger...a stranger she’d already decided she couldn’t have, no matter how much she might want him.
Now that he was gone, now that the room wasn’t full of his warm, masculine presence, she managed to pull the rest of her brain cells together. It wasn’t just that she couldn’t trust anyone she met to keep her secret; there was more to it than that. Coming here to Costa Rica had been about hiding out, licking her wounds, staying out of the limelight and being completely on her own. She needed to rediscover the Madison she’d been six months ago, before her crazy engagement, before she’d become chum for an ocean of avaricious sharks.
There was more, though. She just couldn’t do that to him...or to any man. Because, even if she could keep him in the dark about who she really was—and the scandal she’d hopefully left behind in the states—she’d be exposing him to a lot of danger, too. The last thing she needed was to get involved with some guy, then get tracked down by the paparazzi. Any man she spent time with would be subject to the same vicious scrutiny she’d endured, maybe even accused of being the mystery lover she’d cheated on Tommy with. The one who didn’t exist.
She just couldn’t put anybody else through that, especially not someone as great as Leo seemed to be. So, no. There was no room in her life for a fling with a hot fireman. None whatsoever.
Even if she desperately wished there were.
4
AS IT TURNED OUT, they’d both been wrong...and right. They were both in the correct room. Apparently, the woman who’d been at the front desk when Leo checked in was the only one who knew how to operate the hotel’s computerized system. She’d put Leo in the correct room, even though his key card hadn’t been coded properly. Then she’d gone on break, leaving a less-than-capable replacement at the desk. That man had put Madison in Leo’s room, too.
Leo couldn’t deny that it might be interesting—or, hell, fantastic—to share a bed with the beautiful brunette, but it seemed a bit soon to ask her if she wanted to become roomies.
Maybe by the end of the week...
He’d told the clerk that Madison could keep the room and he’d been assigned to another one. The woman got a twinkle in her eye and offered him a slight brow wag when she noted that Madison was traveling alone, too. Maybe she’d also heard from the bellhop that Madison was young and gorgeous.
Yeesh. He wondered if the clerk had been born a matchmaker or if it merely came with the territory when women reached a certain age. Lord knew there were a lot of them in his family. Of course, even his youngest female cousins seemed to have the gene, so he supposed aging had nothing to do with it.
Heading back to fill Madison in, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about her with every step he took across the grounds.
Madison Reid. She hadn’t supplied the last name, the front desk clerk had. He liked it. Liked the woman to whom it was attached, even though he had only just met her.
Leo wasn’t a huge believer in fate, but he couldn’t deny that this afternoon’s incident—them both getting assigned the same room, her walking in on him, him being there to catch her when she fell—seemed pretty out of the ordinary. Like it was meant to happen or something.
He’d come here to enjoy himself, as well as to put the final touches on the coat of I’m-totally-over-Ashley paint he’d been wearing for six months. Truth was, ever since Madison Reid had walked in on him, he hadn’t given his former fiancée a moment’s thought. And now, as her name crossed his mind, there was only the vaguest sense of recollection, like when he ran into someone he’d gone to elementary school with and couldn’t for the life of him come up with their name. He could barely remember what Ashley looked like, or why he’d ever thought he could be happy spending his life with her in the first place.
She’d been beautiful, yes. And pretty successful. But there had been a shallowness to her, not to mention a thin vein of hardness that he’d spotted from the start but had fooled himself into thinking was an indication of strength. Maybe he’d had it all wrong. Maybe the coldness had been a symptom of her weakness, her need to