Always Loving You (5 page)

More tears fell now as she realized the truth of what he was saying. She had risked her life repeatedly and for what? To prove to Mac that she had a normal life with normal desires? When she really thought it through, it sounded absurd. She had been raped by her prom date, someone she actually knew after several dates together. Yet she had trusted complete strangers to spend hours alone with her in her home. God, she had seriously lost her mind. Even though she now
realized how bad it sounded, she felt the need to defend herself. “After the first few, I had a referral system of sorts. Most of the men in graduate school here are really broke. So they started telling their friends about me.” She didn’t add that one of them had accidentally let it slip that the other guys had said that the crazy cat lady from the bar would pay you two hundred bucks for a few hours to pretend to be her fake boyfriend. “They were actually nice guys. One of them fixed the drip under my kitchen sink and a few of the others repainted my kitchen. They even took the trash out when they left.”

Suddenly, Dominic’s body started convulsing in laughter. Ava watched him warily, wondering if she had pushed him completely off the deep end. It seemed unusual for a man whom she had rarely seen smile before today to actually fall against the table as full belly laughs erupted from him. “You’re . . . too . . . much!” he gasped out as his big frame continued to shake. She sat waiting patiently for him to catch his breath, wondering what the joke was. Finally, when she was getting ready to upend her Coke over his head, he managed to reel it back in. Taking a couple of deep breaths, he settled for grinning at her while shaking his head. “Mac should pack his shit and move to another state, because he’s never going to survive you. You know he’s going to blow his top when he finds out about this, don’t you?”

“So maybe I don’t tell him that part?” She had meant it as more of a statement, but it came out as more of a question.

He still looked vastly amused as he shook his head again. “Blondie, if you want to have a real relationship with Mac, then you have to tell him the truth. Trust me, as a man, I can tell you that he will be constantly dwelling on the fact that your bedroom seemed like the local Do-Drop-In for years. He’s got to be wondering why, if you’re screwed up by your past, you’re more than willing to sleep with a lot of other men, but not him. That’s actually pretty cold. Couldn’t you have found a less painful way to convince the man that you were functioning normally? Hell, even a pretend lesbian relationship or two would have been fine.”

Groaning, Ava rolled her head, trying to release the tension there. “Okay, it wasn’t my best idea. I just . . . wasn’t ready to be involved with anyone, and I didn’t know if I ever would be. It seemed like the only way to keep him at a distance, romantically, but still have him in my life. He didn’t push me for anything else as long as he thought I was . . . seeing someone else. Plus, it made it appear that I was capable of . . . you know, of sex.” Suddenly, it hit her that she was telling a virtual stranger all her secrets. Was this it, then? Was she so desperate for a friend that she had moved Dominic into the role of her own personal Dear Abby? Of course, she had talked to Emma and her friends at lunch, but that was different. Dominic probably thought a lot like Mac, which gave her some much-needed male insight.

Dominic started clearing off the remains of his food from the table, signaling the end of their meal. When he had cleared Ava’s place as well, she stood to follow him back out to the bike. “All right, Blondie, for tonight, I
think it’s enough that you just rode on the back of a bike. You need to get used to the sensation before you try to actually drive one.” Ava wanted to drop to her knees and thank him. She hadn’t been looking forward to her first lesson and was grateful to have a reprieve. When a couple of girls rolled past them on skates, Dominic pointed after their retreating backs. “Want another way to drive Mac crazy? Take up that hobby. Do your skating on the sidewalk in Garden City, though. Mac goes right through there on the way home every night.”

Her eyes brightened as she looked around at the other people skating down the boardwalk. Wow, it looked a lot safer than riding a bike, and if she could manage to make sure Mac saw her at least part of the time, it would be perfect. She gave Dominic an impulsive hug, saying, “Great idea! That’s exactly what I need to try next. Do you think you could text me when he leaves the office every evening? If I try to wait on him at work, I’ll never make it to the sidewalk in time.”

“Ava . . . babe, I was kidding. That looks kinda dangerous actually.”

“No, no, it’s brilliant. I could just stand around with the skates on. Like not really moving, but acting like I have been.” She jumped on the bike, pointing to the seat in front of her. “Hurry up. I’ll have time to stop at Walmart on the way home. They have everything there.”

Dominic gave her a hesitant look for a moment before shrugging. “There is no way this is gonna go well, but what the hell?” With those words, he climbed on
the bike, and soon they were heading back toward Danvers and her car. She was able to enjoy the ride back without fearing too heavily for her life. When Dominic dropped her off, she thanked him before hurrying to her car. She was determined to buy everything she needed for her next mission: Ava Stone, skating queen.

*   *   *

Mac threw his keys on the entryway table upon entering his home. He heard them slip off the table and onto the floor, but he continued without stopping. He was too pissed right now to pick up after himself. He had barely been able to contain his anger as he walked Gwen to her car. They were supposed to go somewhere for dinner, but she had made a last-minute excuse about needing to pack for her planned weekend away with her sister. No doubt, the thought of spending another hour with him in his present mood was more than she could take. He’d been so damn grateful for the cancellation that he had just barely caught himself before he thanked her. As it was, he was pathetically relieved that she was going to be gone for a few days. What did that say about the state of their relationship?

He wanted to strangle Dominic, who was supposed to be his best friend. What in the hell was he thinking having Ava on his bike? And he planned to teach her how to ride it? Un-fucking-believable. Mac wanted to call and chew his ass out, but he didn’t want to risk distracting him. Damn it, his friends knew how much Ava meant to him. He’d never thought he had to worry about any of them putting the woman he loved in
danger. Was that the worst of it, though? Was Dom interested in Ava? Things had sure looked friendly enough with their bodies plastered together on that damn Harley. Seeing her slender arms gripping Dom tightly was enough to make Mac lose his shit. He would probably have done something completely stupid and careless like taking off after them if not for Gwen standing there looking as though she was putting two and two together and coming up with a solid four.

He stalked into his bedroom, jerking a pair of basketball shorts out of the laundry basket sitting on the floor. He might not be the best housekeeper, but he figured he got points for the clothes at least being clean. He made quick work of jerking off his usual work attire and pulling the shorts on. After a quick stop at the door to put on his running shoes, he made his way across the sand and to the nearly empty beach beyond. As his feet hit the wet sand, he quickly found his rhythm. He desperately needed an outlet for the anger coursing through his body, and it was either run until he dropped or go kill his best friend. Not much of a choice there at all.

Ava hadn’t thought about it being the weekend when she concocted her master skating plan. Mac wouldn’t be on his regular schedule today, which would make it a little trickier to get him to notice her on the streets of Garden City. She had also had a moment of panic when she thought that maybe he might not be alone. What if Gwen was with him? She’d already had the other woman staring at her on the back of Dominic’s bike last night. After she calmed down, she realized that she had one ace in the hole; she knew that Mac took his mother to breakfast almost every Saturday morning without fail. She had gone along with them a few times, and Mac always met his mother at nine. Therefore, at eight thirty she was on the practically deserted streets of Garden City in a bright pink tank top and black running shorts. She had her new speed skates, which the gum-popping teenager in the sporting goods section of Walmart had recommended. She had looked at the safety gear, but realized that Mac wouldn’t recognize her in a helmet. It didn’t really matter; she just intended to stand around, not actually do much skating.

The only thing she hadn’t taken into account was the fact that skates tended to roll even without you trying, and coupled with the incline on the sidewalk, things happened . . . fast. She was sitting on a bench when she saw Mac’s black Tahoe turn the corner. She jumped up quickly, hoping he saw her before he passed. As it turned out, she didn’t have to worry about catching Mac’s attention, because she caught the attention of everyone within a two-mile vicinity as she flew wildly down the sidewalk before wrapping briefly around a N
O
P
ARKING
sign, then ultimately running into the bumper of a Dodge Neon and finally falling backward spectacularly onto her ass.

Birds were tweeting above her head like something out of a
Tom and Jerry
cartoon as she lay there stunned. “Honey, are you okay?” someone asked helpfully before yelling down the line of onlookers, “She’s conscious but has some road rash.”
What does that even mean?
she idly thought as she lay there wondering if anything was broken. Seemed she would have been better off on the damn Harley after all. She now hoped fervently that Mac hadn’t seen her. This was way too humiliating.

“Ava?” She blinked like an owl when she heard her name uttered in a familiar voice. She moaned as she turned her head to the right, blinking against the glare of the sun. Mac stood in the middle of the crowd looking as if he’d seen a ghost. His mouth was moving, but nothing appeared to be coming out of it. Maybe some silent swearwords. She was sure she’d seen him mouth something that started with an
F
. He seemed to shrug
off whatever trance he had fallen in and jumped into typical Mac damage control. Kneeling beside her, he took inventory of the scratches on her body. “Where does it hurt, baby?”

She choked back a hysterical laugh before trying to pull herself up. “Where doesn’t it hurt would be a better question,” she muttered before her feet flew out from under her and again she landed backward on her sore ass. “Shit, that hurt.”

He put a hand on her stomach, holding her down. “Avie, let me take these damn skates off before you kill yourself. What in the world were you thinking?”

She looked at the crowd still standing around them. “Can we please save the lecture for when we’re alone? Just get me out of here.”

At that, Mac looked around, seeming to finally realize that they were creating quite a spectacle. He quickly removed her skates before leaning down to scoop her up effortlessly into his arms. “Wha . . . what are you doing?”

She sputtered as he ignored her protests. He carried her to his Tahoe as if she weighed nothing. “Mac, my car is right over there. Just let me down.”

He continued to ignore her, shifting her weight on his hip to free his hand for opening the door. He settled her on the seat, slamming the door on her complaints. He stalked back through the crowd, picking up the skates and throwing them in the backseat before getting in the driver’s side. He turned the big SUV back toward his house before punching a button on his hands-free phone mounted on the dash. When Ava
heard his mother’s voice come through the speaker, she slunk down farther in her seat, hoping Mac wouldn’t tell her what had happened. Luckily, he just said that something had come up and he’d call her later.

They parked in front of his two-story beach house. “Stay where you are,” Mac ordered as he left his seat before coming around to her side of the car. One look at his tight face was enough for her to keep her mouth shut and let him carry her again. Normally, she would have taken a moment to appreciate the beauty of the rustic house with cedar siding that Mac had so painstakingly restored, but today it passed by in a blur. He refused to put her down while he struggled to get the key in the front door and disable the security alarm.

Finally, they made it into the spacious living room, where he sat her down gently on the couch. He left the room, coming back a few moments later with a first aid kit and the same scowl sitting heavily on his handsome face. Wow, he looked seriously pissed. He lowered his large form to the coffee table in front of the couch and barked out, “Take your shirt off.”

Now, that got her attention. “Um . . . do what?” Surely, she had heard him wrong.

“Take your shirt off. I need to see if you have any damage to your back or your stomach. It looked like you damn near fell on every single inch of your body.”

Ava sat silently for a moment, feeling the old familiar panic set in. Damn it, if she couldn’t even take her shirt off in front of the man she was supposed to love, then how would she ever convince him that she was ready for a real relationship with him? She was so tired
of being scared all the time. Taking a deep breath, she silently cursed the fact that she had worn a plain white cotton bra this morning. She dearly hoped he didn’t notice the slight tremble of her hands as she gripped the edge of her top and slowly pulled it over her head. He removed the shirt from her nerveless fingers, dropping it to the floor. His gaze seemed to zero in on the creamy swells of her breasts exposed by her no-frills bra, and she was horrified to feel her nipples hardening under his attention.

After a moment, he put his hands on her shoulders, and she groaned inwardly as she did a full-body shiver. Something about the feel of his warm hands on her bare skin was causing her pulse to rocket. The moment was broken, though, when he started mumbling under his breath before touching an area of her upper back that felt as if it were on fire. “Ouch!” Was he . . . ? Alarmed, she asked, “What are you doing with my bra?”

With obvious strain in his voice, Mac said, “Relax, Avie; I need your bra strap out of the way. You’ve got a nasty laceration back here. The asphalt ripped a hole in your shirt. You must have hit the ground even harder than I thought. You’re damn lucky you didn’t break anything.” Suddenly, his face was back in front of hers, looking her face over anxiously. “I didn’t see you hit your head.” His hands started roaming over her scalp, looking for signs of injury. “Shit, tell me you didn’t. I can’t feel anything. If there is any possibility of a head injury, we need to go to a hospital and have it checked out. I should have checked for that before I moved you. I just . . . panicked.”

Ava grabbed his forearm, pulling his hand back down. “Mac, my head is fine. I think most of the damage was to my butt and my pride.” When he looked down at her shorts, she knew what was coming next, and her cheeks were already coloring in response.

“Er . . . take your shorts off, then. I need to see what we’re dealing with.”

“No! I’m not taking my shorts off. I’m perfectly capable of looking at my own . . . butt later.” She might have caved to pressure to remove her top because truthfully the feel of the fabric against the scrapes on her back was painful. But there was no way she was removing her bottoms. She had worn her granny panties, and it’d be over her dead body that he would get a look at them. When she finally worked up the nerve to disrobe completely for Mac, she would be wearing something sexier than one hundred percent cotton. He looked ready to argue with her, so she shifted his attention back to her upper body by wincing and moving her shoulder. “Could you put a Band-Aid or something there? It hurts like the devil.” Now that she’d mentioned the pain, it seemed to be all around her. As her adrenaline dropped, her body started throbbing. Running into a parked car was damn painful. “Ouch!”

“Hang on, baby; let me get you some Advil before we clean all your cuts.”

Ava wanted to swoon when Mac called her baby. He had used the endearment a few times over the years, but that was twice already today. He mostly called her Avie, which had always made her feel special, but baby . . . yeah, she liked that a lot. Unless . . . did he call
Gwen that
?
She looked down at the couch she was sitting on. Had Gwen been here with Mac? Had they held hands, touched each other, had sex together . . . right where she was sitting? The thought made her physically sick, and she wanted to do nothing but run. She didn’t want to be anywhere that another woman had staked a claim to the man Ava loved.

Ava winced as she tried to move off the couch. Agony raced through her body as she leaned down to pick up her discarded shirt. She needed to get out of here . . . now. She was balancing unsteadily on her feet when Mac walked back in carrying a bottle and a glass of water. He looked surprised to see her standing there, with her shirt gripped tightly in one hand. “Mac . . . I’m just going to . . . I mean, I need to get back to my car.”

He shook a couple of tablets from the bottle that he was carrying out before setting it down. He handed them to her along with the glass, waiting until she had taken them before commenting on her sudden need to leave. “Avie . . . sit down, please. I need to patch you up before I take you back.”

She stood there uncertainly before asking, “Could we use a kitchen chair? I, um . . . just don’t want to sit back down on the couch.” No doubt, he thought she was cracking up, but after a moment’s hesitation, he walked toward his kitchen and returned seconds later with a wooden chair. She was so glad that he hadn’t questioned her aversion to his leather couch. What could she possibly say? “Oh, sorry. I’m afraid that you had sex with your girlfriend on it and the thought of
sitting there makes me want to puke”? Nothing strange about that statement at all. Especially when she had handed him to Gwen on a shiny platter with a damn red bow attached to it.

Mac picked up his first aid kit and started cleaning her abrasions with an antiseptic wipe that stung bad enough to bring tears to her eyes. Having his hands gently touching almost every exposed inch of her skin was torture for a different reason. She only hoped that he thought the few times that she hadn’t been able to stop herself from flinching was from the pain and not the foreign feeling of his warm hands touching her body. She both feared and craved his touch. How many nights had she lain awake wishing he were there, lying next to her? Wishing she were a normal person who could wake up in the arms of the man she loved—without remembering another man’s hands on her body, holding her immobile and stripping away her innocence? The one thing she had wanted to give Mac from the moment she had started to see him as something more than her brother’s friend. It was always supposed to be him and only him, and that had been brutally stolen from them both. They could never get that back, but if she continued on the path of avoidance that she had taken for so many years, then the bastard who had raped her was still ruining her life, and she didn’t want that. She wanted to be free. She wanted to know what it felt like to be touched by someone who cared about her. It had to be Mac, as it was always meant to be.

“Avie . . . what’s going on with you? First, you go
roaring off on the back of Dom’s bike, and next you’re flying down the streets of Garden City wrapping yourself around a car. This isn’t you; this isn’t the woman I know. I mean . . . is there something I need to know about you and Dom?”

Ava held her breath, wondering if Mac was aware that he had stopped treating her injuries and was now stroking a fingertip along the sensitive skin of her arm, causing an involuntary shiver. If he noticed, he gave no indication. He continued to touch her while waiting for her answer.

“Would it bother you?” she asked quietly. She knew it was juvenile to insinuate that there was something romantic between her and Dominic, but she wanted—no, she needed—Mac to care.

Mac expelled a breath before his hand moved from her arm and glided up to her neck, lingering on the pulse beating wildly there. “You have no idea, Avie. He’s my brother, and I’d give him everything I have . . . but not you, baby. Never you. You. Belong. To. Me.”

His hand rested against her neck, and their eyes locked. His expression was wild and fierce and for the first time she wasn’t scared. She wanted to taste his lips more than she wanted her next breath. Without allowing herself time to think, she raised her other hand, reaching up to pull his head lower. A hint of uncertainty flickered across his face just before their mouths connected and then her body sizzled with awareness of him. Unlike with their other kiss, Mac seemed to wait for her to take control, to deepen the contact. She tentatively touched her tongue along the seam of his lips,
wanting to taste him. He groaned deep in his throat before opening his mouth and tangling his tongue with hers. In that moment, she understood for the first time where the inspiration for every romance novel and romantic movie came from. It was this . . . feeling as if you were on the verge of unlocking all the infinite secrets of the universe with just one kiss.

Time seemed to stand still as she experienced her first real kiss as a grown woman. Mac had kissed her one other time, but her fear had kept her from truly getting lost in the moment. This time, she was more than a willing participant. She took the lead in kissing him. She explored every corner of his mouth, tasting coffee and the minty flavor of his toothpaste. As his hands threaded through her hair, pulling her closer, she felt a small trickle of unease. She reminded herself that this was Mac. He’d never hurt her, never force her. She murmured a protest when his lips left her mouth only to kiss down her jaw, then her neck. “Mac . . . oh, Mac . . . please . . .” Something was buzzing on the table beside them, cutting through the haze of desire she was in. Mac cursed under his breath before pulling back. Almost in sync, they both looked over to see his phone lighting up and on the screen in bold letters it said C
A
LL FROM
G
WEN
.