Can't Buy Me Love (18 page)

“I have a list.” Cole reached in his pocket and pulled out a lined sheet with rough edges, as if torn from a spiral notebook

“A list?” Meg cocked her eyebrow.

“Of the reasons you should forgive me.” Cole cleared his throat and Meg crossed her arms over her chest. He couldn’t wheedle his way back into her good graces. He couldn’t make her smile or giggle or feel happy to see him. Damn him and damn his list.

“Number five—”

“Going from the ground up, I see.”

Cole took a deep breath and started again. “Number five. Everything you know about business you learned from me.”

“Really? My MBA had nothing to do with it then? My professors might argue that point.”

“Number four,” Cole continued, unflummoxed by Meg’s commentary. “I am willing to learn from my mistakes.”

Meg caught Cole’s gaze.

“Number three.” His voice softened. “I can’t sleep in my damn house without you.”

Meg turned away and looked out the window. She would not cry, damnit. She would not cry.

“Number two, I am the biggest fool in the world and while this may not seem like a reason to forgive me, I do believe my ability to recognize this flaw speaks volumes about my ability to be rehabilitated.”

Meg bit down on her lower lip. She couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry.

“And number one. The very best reason of all—well—I…Meg.” Cole reached out and placed his hand on her shoulder. “Meggy, please?” Slowly, softly he turned her toward him. “Meg, I absolutely, irrevocably, love you. I do, I love you. Could you ever forgive me? Please forgive me.”

Her gaze latched onto his, and the longing mirrored her own. The sleepless nights, the countless hours of wondering where and what the other one was doing. Wondering how they might find each other again after the words that were said. The accusations of betrayal.

“I never did anything” —Meg’s voice choked over the words—“unseemly. I never would…I couldn’t, not to you…not—”

His lips were on hers. His arms wrapped around her tight.

She sank into Cole’s kiss. In this moment, this one true moment, she knew. Knew that Cole Jackson had made the biggest mistake of his life and wanted her forgiveness. Needed her forgiveness. Needed her in a way he’d never needed anyone or anything.

When they finally drew apart, Cole looked at her with all the vulnerability of a man in love. A man willing to give his heart fully, to trust 100 percent, to believe that she could and would love him on their terms. Together. As equals.

“Can you give me another chance? To try and make this right between us? Can you—”

Meg pressed her finger to his lips, and a slight smile curved over her mouth. The warmth of this moment filled her.

She could. She would. She wanted to.

“You’re a businessman,” Meg said. “You know there’s always room for negotiation until both parties sign on the dotted line.”

The End

About The Author

Maggie Marr was born and raised in Illinois. After practicing law for four years, first as a guardian-ad-litem for abused children and then as a prosecutor in domestic violence, she made the move to Los Angeles with her husband, who is an actor. Her first job in entertainment was pushing the mail cart at ICM, where she eventually became a motion picture agent. She now splits her time between writing and producing.

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http://www.maggiemarr.com
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Other Books by Maggie Marr

Coming soon from Maggie Marr:
Hollywood Girls Club
and its sequel,
Secrets of The Hollywood Girls Club
, available as individual titles, and as a bundled set, Spring, 2012.

Also coming soon from Maggie Marr:
Courting Trouble
, available Summer, 2012.

Excerpt From Courting Trouble

Courting Trouble
, coming July 2012, another contemporary romance by Maggie Marr.

Chapter One

Savannah McGrath pushed open the Jeep door and the shriek of old cold metal tore through the frigid mountain air. A gray pall hung heavy in the sky—no sun—no blue—not even the scent of snow. Her legs shivered sending a quake up her spine. The shiver shifted and hardened in her belly—a thick sick feeling. Her hand tightened around the butt of the Winchester 1897 and her thumb caressed the initials carved into the heavy wood stock nearly a century before by a dime-store pocket knife.

Grandma Margaret always said the only difference between an opossum and a man was that the opossum hissed before you shot it. Savannah’d seen an opossum hiss—this morning she intended to find out about the man.

Savannah’s breath, like puffs of smoke, drifted into the early morning sky. She trudged across the Hopkins’ front yard—a foul looking patch of dirt and rock—past a rusted snowmobile missing both skis that waited on cinder blocks for a rescue that would never arrive. She climbed the porch steps. Rickety and rotted the wood creaked beneath her. On the porch crumpled beer cans lay scattered beside a ripped green leather sofa. The Hopkins didn’t take much interest in caring for things, including their family.

Anger surged in Savannah. Anger fueled by seventeen years of neglect. Anger fueled by her daughter. Anger fueled by Bobby Hopkins. An anger that rushed through her head and caused a pounding within her brain nearly as loud as her fist pounded on Bobby’s front door.

“Bobby, you get your no good ass out here!”

A shadow flickered on the other side of the picture window, but no face emerged.

“I know you’re in there!” Savannah yelled. “I’m not leaving until we settle this. You hear me Bobby?”

She pressed her nose against the cool glass of the picture window. Silent images flickered across the unwatched TV in the darkened living room. Her heart hung heavy in her chest with the emptiness of the room, with the squalor of the house, with the absence of Bobby and his continued cowardice toward their daughter.

Savannah turned away from the window her grim feelings like gravity on the corners of her mouth. She stomped down the steps. Her gaze locked on the window just above the garage and she backed into the front yard. Seventeen years before Savannah thought she discovered the cure to all that ailed her within that bedroom—a lover, a friend, a partner for her life—but what Savannah really discovered was a whole lot of sex and very little contraception.

“She is mine, Bobby!” Savannah called out into the early morning air. “Do you understand? I raised her! You ran your ass off to Alaska and I raised her!” Her cheeks were too cold to feel her tears. On her tongue the salt tasted bitter. “Damn you Bobby Hopkins.”

Her heart broke wide and pain thrashed out at her ribs and squeezed at her lungs—so tight and so hard that air burst from her lips and she struggled to draw in a breath. The pain wasn’t for her, the pain wasn’t for Bobby, the pain wasn’t even for Savannah’s long lost once upon a time young love—the pain—this pain—that crippled her and stole the breath form her body was for her nearly grown daughter, Ash.

Shame. Embarrassment. Sadness. She and Bobby conveyed those tokens upon their only child much like Savannah’s mother bequeathed to her. Savannah’s mouth clenched closed with a force that might shred enamel from her molars.

Dammit, Bobby would speak to her. Savannah raised the butt of the gun to her shoulder and sighted at the bedroom window. Her finger settled against the cold metal of the trigger. She wouldn’t let Bobby cower and hide like a cur. He would answer for what he did to her, to them, to Ash. He’d answer for what he did in the past and what he tried to do to now. She wouldn’t kill him, but she’d flush out the son of a bitch.

Savannah raised the shotgun’s barrel and sighted just over the roof. She squeezed tight on the trigger and the gun butt slammed into her shoulder. A shaker shingle exploded off the roof.

After the blast of two more shotgun shells and the eruption of two more shingles from the Hopkins’ roof a black and white SUV rolled to a near-silent stop. No flashers. No siren. Quiet and still just like that cold Rocky Mountain morning before Savannah’s shotgun blast.

Self-possessed and without fear Sheriff Jennings slowly stepped from his SUV, “Morning Savannah.”

“Wayne,” Savannah said. She didn’t turn. She didn’t lay down her gun. Instead she pressed the butt to her shoulder and considered whether she wanted to squeeze off another shot.

 “I’m gonna’ have to ask you to lay down that gun.”

Savannah closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Adrenaline pounded through her body. Her heart hammered within her chest to the righteous beat of a lover scorned. She pointed the gun toward the ground.

“No problem Wayne.” Savannah leaned forward and lay the gun on the ground as if settling a baby into a bassinette. When she stood she raised both hands in the air. Not because Wayne told her to, but because she figured that’s what you did when you got arrested.

“Thank you Savannah,” Wayne said. “Now I need you to back away from the gun.”

Savannah stepped back—away from Grandma Margaret’s gun, away from the Hopkins’ house, away from her anger.

“I hate to ask you to do this Savannah, seeing as you’re wearing nice pants and all, but you’ve gotta’ kneel on the ground and put your hands behind your head.”

With her hands raised, Savannah half turned toward Wayne. “Really,” Savannah asked. Her shoulders limp and slumped forward—the McGrath fight drained out of her. “Can’t you just come on over here and cuff me?

“It’s procedure,” Wayne said.

Savannah knelt onto the yard. The cold wet mud pressed through the material to her knees. With the click of closing handcuffs and the weight of cold steel on her wrists shame lodged in her heart. Savannah’s bottom lip quivered—what had she just done?

Her head hung low as Wayne led her to his SUV. She couldn’t meet the gaze of the looky-loos now gathered across the street on Linda Landry’s front yard. Her mass of brown curls fell about her cheeks—but she couldn’t hide—Ash couldn’t hide. Growing up Savannah and her sister endured taunts about their Mama’s bad behavior and now Savannah inflicted a similar humiliation onto Ash.

 “Damn it,” Savannah muttered.

“What’s that?” Wayne settled behind the wheel and met Savannah’s gaze in the rear view mirror.

“Just the hell to pay Ash will have,” Savannah said and looked across the street at the women wearing nightgowns and whispering behind cupped hands.

“Kids can be cruel,” Wayne said.

Savannah caught Wayne’s knowing gaze in the rear view mirror. Both Wayne and Savannah knew from experience just how cruel the kids of Powder Springs, Colorado could be to each other.

 Savannah fought the humiliation that settled in her chest and the tears that brewed in her eyes. “Wonder what Grandma Margaret thinks today?” As if she might erase the last ten minutes, Savannah closed tight her eyes and shook her head. “Me standing on Bobby Hopkins front lawn shooting at the sky?”

“She probably thinks you’re one strong McGrath woman standing up for your own.”

Savannah pressed her lips into a hard line and fought back the tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks. At least Wayne didn’t think she was half-cracked even if she was sitting in the back of his police cruiser with her hands in cuffs.

Savannah’s sister wouldn’t share Wayne’s sentiment. Tulsa would tell Savannah how dramatic she was, how bad for Ash that Savannah’s behavior was, how Savannah jeopardized custody of Ash to release her own anger.

That was, once Savannah told Tulsa, that Ash’s custody was even in jeopardy.

“Tulsa coming back from LA?” Wayne asked.

Savannah locked eyes with Wayne in the rear view mirror, “She is now.”