Crazy Thing Called Love (14 page)

Pretty cool trick for a guy who didn’t come up to Billy’s shoulder.

Billy didn’t look at Maddy, hating to see her dead eyes while he stood half-naked for the studio audience’s enjoyment.

Earlier in the segment, he’d gotten his hair cut and even he had to admit it looked good, short on the sides, longer on top, not the buzz cut he usually got twice a year.

Tim from the Man Room had scrubbed Billy’s face and put gunk on it and now his skin was pink and tight, the scar not quite so grotesque.

Skin care, go figure.

There had been an awkward moment when Tim had asked about the scar.

“Bar fight.” It was his standard answer and he didn’t elaborate. He never elaborated. The silence had echoed for a moment as everyone in the audience probably imagined the fight. It took everything in his guts not to look at Maddy.

Tim had quickly filled the awkward moment with talk of shaving creams.

Now, half-naked and freezing, he wondered if Maddy remembered the night he’d gotten that scar, or if she’d boxed it up like the rest of his things and left it out on the lawn like garbage.

From the corner of his eye he saw the monitor. The scars on his chest and back looked very red under the lights and his muscles looked very cut. He dared a quick glance at Maddy, and was gratified to see that she couldn’t hide her reaction.

While Tam took the measuring tape off his shoulders, and talked about shoulder measurements, and where
cuffs should hit wrists, Billy watched Maddy in the monitor. Her eyes were a different measuring tape, following Tam’s movement across his body. Tracing every curve and line and scar.

Tam dropped to one knee in front of him, stretching the tape to measure his inseam.

“Watch it,” Billy said, arching an eyebrow at Tam, who only laughed.

But Tam was a consummate professional and he jumped back up after taking his measurements.

“You buy pants that are too big for you, don’t you? Around the waist?”

Billy blinked. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Because of your sport, your thighs and butt are bigger than most men’s and getting a proper fit off the rack is difficult.”

“Tell me about it,” he muttered. Only one of the many reasons he hated shopping.

“It’s why God created tailors.”

“I thought it was why he created belts.”

The crowd chuckled and Tam shook his head. “I’ve had a few pieces tailored to your measurements and I think you’ll be amazed at the difference it makes.”

Tam turned to the audience, his black hair sleek and shiny under the lights. “Now the fun begins. This spring is all about tailored, light and luxurious fabrics that are both sensual and masculine. Billy, I swear to God, is going to be a new man.”

“Can’t wait for that,” Maddy said to the camera. “Come back after the break.”

The lights on the cameras went dark and Sabine, the woman who had walked in on him and Maddy kissing last week, led him offstage to dress him in some of those luxurious fabrics.

“You’re doing great,” Sabine whispered, quickly pulling
a white button-down shirt over his shoulders. She started to button it, but he nudged her hands aside.

“I can do that,” he whispered. He’d tried to turn the tempo of this game with Maddy this morning, but she hadn’t responded to his small talk. His questions about the show. Nothing. Until they got on the set, and then she livened right up. All sorts of false intimacy between them. Which rankled and left him off balance. He wasn’t very good at faking things.

And he didn’t want to fake anything with her.

But that’s all they’d have unless he played by her rules.

Sabine pulled a tan linen vest from a hanger while he finished with the shirt. The inside of the vest was red silk with big giant sunbursts of yellow and green on it. He’d never worn anything like it in his life.

There was even a little scrap of red silk in the pocket over his heart.

“You’re supposed to roll up the shirtsleeves.”

He did so and shrugged into the vest. It was tight across his stomach and chest.

“Jeez, Billy, careful. You’re going to pull off the buttons.” She pushed his hands aside and finished the buttons on the vest. He looked over her shoulder at the red exit sign above the doorway that led back to the offices.

“Sorry,” he muttered, though he really wasn’t. This thing with Maddy had him pissed off at the world.

“I’m sorry, about the other day. I didn’t know—”

We’d be making out in her office?

“It’s okay. Don’t worry.”

“I haven’t told anyone. Maddy was really worried about that.”

“I’m sure she was.”

“So are you guys, like …?”

He shot her a shut-the-hell-up look and it worked pretty quick. She silently handed him a pair of pants,
light brown and tight through the crotch and thigh. Utterly lacking modesty from years in locker rooms, he changed in front of her. “Holy crap, are they supposed to fit like this?” he asked, doing up the button and zipper.

The boots he slipped into were brown and worn but so soft they felt like butter.

“Do I look ridiculous?”

Sabine’s eyes were round in her face, her mouth open.

“Oh God,” he muttered. “This is a huge mistake—”

“No. No, Billy.” She stopped him from taking off the vest. “You look incredible! Honestly … incredible.”

Oh. He felt himself blushing and he ran a hand down the vest. It did feel nice, the fabric. And the pants. He turned to glance in a mirror beside the rack of clothes.

His package looked awesome! He shifted, not too bad in the butt department either.

“She won’t be able to keep her hands off you,” Sabine whispered and he caught her eye in the mirror.

“You think?”

She laughed, knowing and feminine.

That would certainly make the next step of getting back together with Maddy easier.

No kissing. God.

“Ten seconds,” Peter whispered from the edge of the set.

Billy was remic’d and one of Tam’s assistants gave him a few finishing touches, pulling and tugging and tucking. “You look great,” the man said, a pin in his mouth.

Billy ran a hand down his vest again, and now that silly scrap of red in the breast pocket didn’t seem so silly—it seemed kind of cool.

Maybe I do look good
, he thought, for the very first time in his life.

“Welcome back,” Maddy said from the stage, the bright lights hitting her face and hair, making her sparkle.
“For those of you who are just joining us, Billy Wilkins—hockey player, bad boy, and unrepentant fashion disaster—is backstage changing into the most stylish of this spring’s fashions.”

Tam started talking again about vests and V-neck T-shirts, and Billy, in the tight vest and the tight pants and the slick boots, felt the very same surge of confidence that he usually felt just before going out on the ice.

He felt like he could do anything and it was so weird that a new set of clothes would give him that confidence.

Gotta hand it to Tam
, he thought.

“Let’s bring him out here,” Maddy said and turned toward where he stood in the shadows.

Here we go
, Billy thought as he stepped out into the lights.

Oh. My. God.

That was the crowd’s reaction. That was the reaction in a million homes across the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. And that was the reaction detonating in Maddy’s chest.

Billy looked … delicious.

Menacing, sure, he was always going to look menacing with that body and that scar. He was a powerful, dangerous man, but he looked … sophisticated. Rough and urban at the same time.

In the last few years, after every failed or lukewarm date she would lie alone in her big bed and think about what kind of man she wanted, and it was impossible, utterly impossible, but Billy as he stood in front of her right now wasn’t far off the mark.

Utterly masculine with just the right amount of civilization.

Not like last weekend, she thought. He didn’t look a
thing like the ill-kempt and angry man who’d been in her house on Saturday.

And she’d been crazed for that version of him.

Internally her body clenched, as if holding tight to the memory of his fingers inside of her. His thumb against her. Rough and then gentle.

Maddy put her hand against the chair, trying to restore her balance, her equilibrium.

This version of him, cleaned up just enough—this Billy could ruin her with a look, a raised eyebrow, one of his naughty boy grins. There was no end to the dirty, depraved things she wanted from this Billy.

“How do you feel?” Tam asked him.

“I honestly can’t believe I’m going to say this.” Billy looked both vulnerable and strong at the same time and the reaction in the room was amazing. He was shrinking the studio down to an intimate space. Every woman in the room felt like he was talking just to her.

Including Maddy.

Especially Maddy.

“I feel different. Good. I really do,” he said, looking down at himself.

“This is a new look for you, isn’t it?” Tam asked quietly.

“Well, I’ve got new socks, so yeah,” Billy joked, but then shook his head. “Most of my life has been dedicated to hockey. I’ve let everything else slip away, including who I am off the ice. And with my scar …”

Don’t
, she thought, wishing she could block out the words, the utterly human way he was relating to Tam, and the audience of women who were falling a little in love with him.

“Well, most people don’t see past it. But this?” Billy laughed. “I mean, holy shit, this is great.” He winced. “Can I say that on TV?”

Tam laughed. “My job here is done.”

“I’ll say,” Maddy chimed in, forcing herself to get it together. She looked into the camera “Join us next Friday for a new installment of the Billy Wilkins Project.”

For the life of her she couldn’t remember what the segment was; it was like the sight of Billy in that vest had short-circuited her brain. Fumbling slightly, she thanked Tam and as she did, Billy interrupted and shook the tailor’s hand with both of his. “Thank you,” Billy said, earnest and sincere, a combination that was utterly devastating with that face of his. “I mean it.”

Tam took the gratitude with poise and the red light on the cameras flickered off.

She pulled off her mic and left the stage. Rattled and flustered, she grabbed her water and went to her office.

Thirty minutes after the studio audience left, Billy bought all the clothes. The tight jeans, the vests, the sweaters with collars. He bought the button-down shirts and the T-shirts that were so soft they felt like he’d had them since Juniors.

And all the footwear. Even the loafers, though he doubted he could wear them without the team laughing.

And the pièce de résistance: the overcoat. Because it made him feel like an English gangster and he always wanted to feel like an English gangster in one of those Guy Ritchie movies.

“Oy, guvner,” he said, looking at himself in the full-length mirror.

So in love with his whole look, he wore it to Maddy’s door. If he was going to be a Gladiator dildo, he was going to be a sharply dressed one.

“Come in,” her voice called and it sounded exactly like the whistle before the puck drops at the beginning of the second period. One of the best sounds on the planet.

He pushed open the door.

She’d changed from the clingy sweater dress she’d been wearing to a pair of jeans and a plain white T-shirt.

It was his favorite look in the whole world, only slightly better than her wearing one of his T-shirts and nothing else.

The thought made his pants even more uncomfortable.

“Look at you,” she said, watching him over the top of her white laptop. Her smile was soft. Indulgent. Fleeting.

“I bought it all,” he said.

“You look like an English gangster.”

“You think?” He looked down at himself as if surprised and she laughed.

“Please, you’ve probably been practicing your cockney accent.”

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

The silence sizzled, electric awareness filling the small space.

“What are you doing here, Billy?” she whispered, stopping the pretense.

“I’m not giving up.”

She sat back, her arms outstretched. “This isn’t a game.”

“Now, that’s ironic, coming from the woman who is setting all the rules.”

She shook her head, his puck going wide.

“I’m not something you can win back just to prove you can.”

“You think that’s what I want?” It hurt that she thought his affection was so fleeting, but he realized she was telling herself these things as a way to keep him at arm’s length.

“Saturday was a mistake, Billy. Let’s just forget about it.”

“Not possible. Sorry, Maddy, I’ll go to my grave remembering how you felt.”

He shrugged out of the coat, because suddenly it was so damn hot in the small office. Suddenly it was a sauna.

“I have been thinking about you every minute. The way your skin felt, the way you smelled, how you looked when you came apart under my hands.”

This is what he’d come in here to say, the ball he was ready to set in motion. He wanted to change her mind about him, wanted to get back into her life, and the only way to do it was by following her rules. Otherwise she would keep them apart forever.

The buttons on his vest slipped open almost before he touched them. As if the English gangster clothes were in perfect accord with his plan for seduction.

“What …” She licked her lips. “What are you doing?”

“Whatever you want.” From his back pocket he pulled a foil-wrapped condom and tossed it on her desk. His vest hung open over the shirt hugging the muscles of his chest and stomach.

Silent, agonized, he waited. The seconds pulled and stretched, bleeding his courage, gaining him years.

Until finally:

“Lock the door,” she whispered.