“Dinner,” he said.
She frowned.
“I don’t have time to listen to your plan now. Let’s have dinner tonight. I can look at what you’ve come up with then and decide whether it can turn Dartmoor around and make a loan viable.”
A glow lit up her face.
“I’m not making any promises.” He just wasn’t ready to let her walk out of his life again.
The light in her eyes dimmed. “Of course not.”
“The Yacht Club?” His turf – and the opposite of romantic.
“Sure. What time?”
“Seven.” That would give him time to have a drink in the bar first. He’d need it. “Do you want me to send the limo for you?”
“No.”
He thought he heard an echo of disappointment in her voice. She couldn’t have expected him to pick her up. This wasn’t a date. It was strictly business. Suuuure it was.
“I haven’t had to sell the Ferrari yet.”
Her sad smile twisted his heart.
“Oh.” He’d refused to let her return his engagement gift after the wedding fell through. What would he have done with the damned car? And she loved it so much.
Her smile faded as they stared at each other for a moment too long. Long enough for the good memories to outnumber the bad. For him, at least.
Luckily his cell buzzed noisily before he could do or say anything stupid.
“I'll see you tonight.” Her voice told him nothing.
He nodded and took his call, all too aware of the door closing behind her as she left.
He couldn’t settle down to work after he ended the call. He walked to the windows and gazed down at the busy parade of people on Montgomery Street, the heart of the San Francisco financial district, several floors below. His father had preferred the office next door overlooking San Francisco Bay, but Jake had switched his office with the boardroom when he took over Carlyle's. The Bay was his father’s escape, an escape that eventually proved fatal and made Jake President and Chair of the Board before he was thirty.
The darkness of those days lingered. The tinge of Madison’s perfume that hung in the air was an aching reminder of how he’d longed to have her comfort and strength beside him through it all. But she’d made her choice. She’d chosen business school and left him at the altar.
Which is why Jake preferred Montgomery Street. It put the past behind him, where it belonged. The energy of the busy street below recharged him, motivated him, drove him. He needed all that and more after the scene with Madison.
When she first walked in – dark circles under her eyes expensive make-up couldn’t hide, pale-blonde hair twisted up on her head, wearing the same black suit she’d worn to her father’s funeral – he’d been stunned by the double whammy of tension in his gut and a pang in his heart. But before he could decide whether to take her in his arms or start raging about what she’d done to him, he realized how nervous she was. That one moment of sympathy had earned him twenty minutes of feigning the cold indifference toward her he wished he felt.
He’d avoided her for the last three years because he knew seeing her again would turn him inside out like this. A need that was far more than physical still gnawed at his gut.
Every time she’d traded verbal jabs with him the way she used to, his libido had jumped into overdrive. It had been all he could do not to grab her and take her in every way a man could.
Madison had always had that effect on him. Erotic memories flooded his mind, hardened his body, before he could stop them.
He banished them in an instant with the memory of standing at the church door, where her father had told him in a red-faced rage, “The little bitch isn’t coming. She says she’s sorry. Sorry! After all the money I threw away on this fiasco.”
Then her father had taken Jake’s arm, dragged him to the altar, and made him stand there while the preacher announced to the hundreds of people in attendance that the wedding was off.
Now Madison expected Jake to loan her mother money because he was “a fair man”. She’d been pushing the limits to expect him not to throw her bodily out of his office the minute she appeared in the door.
So why ask her out to dinner? He had no intention of loaning her, or her mother, a penny. And he certainly had no intention of letting her flaunt her plan – a product of the MBA, which had been so much more important to her than he was – over dinner.
She’d hurt him so badly the scars hadn’t completely healed three years later. The impulse to hurt her back pounded through his brain, but he wasn’t that kind of man.
No, he hadn’t asked her to dinner to get his revenge. He’d done it simply because the idea of not seeing her again was more than he could bear.
Madison’s hands were shaking so hard she could barely get the key into the ignition of the beloved vintage Ferrari that was the last remaining sign Jake Carlyle had once loved her.
If you could call it love when he couldn’t understand why she wanted to get the education she’d need to build a career at Dartmoor, the way he had at Carlyle & Sons.
In any case, love surely was not the reason behind his dinner invitation. A sincere concern for her mother’s welfare, if not her own, maybe.
Or simple lust. As if she’d hop back into his bed after everything that had happened.
She started to hand the parking attendant a credit card before she remembered her new rules and pulled a ten out of her wallet instead. The car behind her honked at the delay.
She took her time collecting her change before she drove on, then refocused on Jake’s dinner invitation. She didn’t know what he had in mind, but she did know how angry he’d been when she didn’t show up for the wedding. And how humiliated. Her father had described it all in great detail, along with his own disgust, before he’d cut her out of his life for good.
Jake was probably out for revenge, and yet she’d said yes. The remote possibility that he might loan them the money had only been part of it. An hour or two with the only man she’d ever loved, with or without the loan, had for one weak moment seemed worth whatever revenge he planned to take. Besides, what horrible things could he say to her that she hadn’t already said to herself a hundred times?
Maybe once she survived this dinner and he’d had his revenge, she could forgive herself and get on with her life. Still, the prospect of life without Jake had never looked more bleak.
“Ms. Ellsworth.” The maître d’ at the Yacht Club greeted Madison with genuine warmth. “It’s been quite a while since you graced us with your presence.”
Three years, to be precise. After the non-wedding, she’d stayed away for fear she might run into her father, until he’d given up his membership and sold the yacht. Then she hadn’t had any reason to come here at all.
“It’s nice to see you again, too, Marcel. I’m here to meet Jake Carlyle.”
Marcel was a true professional. The only sign of surprise was a momentary widening of his eyes. “Of course, Ms. Ellsworth. I’ll let him know you’re here.”
None of the people who passed through the lobby in a range of attire from swimsuits to thousand-dollar business suits gave her a second glance. Apparently she’d struck the right fashion note