Crazy Thing Called Love (18 page)

“No,” he laughed. “Not … not anytime soon.”

“Why are you laughing?” Luc asked.

“Because two weeks ago, I would have said ‘never.’ So, you know … progress.”

Someone stopped at Tara’s shoulder, distracting her, and Billy felt Luc’s eyes on him.

“I’ve never seen you like this before.”

“Dressed up?”

“Happy.” Luc clapped him on the back. “Looks good on you.”

“Hey, Billy?” Tara asked, turning around. “Now’s the time, they’re setting up the microphone.”

His stomach erupted with butterflies, battling it out with the crab cakes. “You sure it’s necessary?”

“Just say what you said to us that day on the patio.” Luc pushed Billy toward a little stage.

“Fine. Fine. Stop pushing.” He shrugged off Luc’s hands and jerked his jacket straight.

Always composed in front of a crowd, Luc stepped up to the microphone like it was no big deal.

Billy could feel the sweat beading in the small of his back and at his hairline.

“If I can have your attention, please,” Luc said. “I’d like to thank everyone for coming tonight, and for giving so generously to the New School. Ever since Hurricane Katrina, our city’s public schools have been running at capacity and the needs of many of these students—who were already behind educationally and who have suffered astonishing trauma—have not been met. The New School, in its efforts to educate students by integrating sports into standard curriculum”—Luc held a hand to his chest—“is, I think, a step in the right direction. Now, before we begin the silent auction, I would like to invite a friend to say a few words. Most of you know Billy Wilkins from his reserved seat in the penalty box—”

There was a chorus of laughs and Billy shook his head, taking the teasing good-naturedly.

“But the idea for the New School was actually his. Billy?”

Billy stepped to the podium and shifted the microphone with hands that ran with sweat. He almost lifted his arm to wipe his forehead with his sleeve but he remembered Maddy giving him a hard time about that and he stopped.

“I … uh …” The microphone buzzed and squealed and Billy pulled it away from his face. What the hell?

“Step away from the stand,” Luc whispered and Billy backed up and tried again, his confidence totally shaken.

“I grew up in a pretty tough neighborhood,” Billy began, “under … well, some pretty tough conditions.” A nervous tic, he touched the side of his mouth, the scar, and then dropped his hand, hoping no one would take too much note of it. “I went to school in the days before everyone understood, much less diagnosed, ADHD or post-traumatic stress disorder, but there’s no question that I had it. Sitting at a desk all day didn’t make sense for me. I honestly couldn’t keep my body still, or stay focused for long enough to absorb what my teachers were saying. But once I got on the ice, things made sense. And not just hockey. Math made sense, geometry. Science. I could think when my body was moving. Sitting still, I … I was lost. And I’ve known a lot of athletes over the years, not just hockey players, but across every sport, who had the same experience growing up.”

Everyone was staring at him and he tried to pretend they were in their underwear, but that made the butterflies even more restless. So he was staring over their heads, toward the back door, when a tall, beautiful woman in a purple dress walked in.

His brain was such a mess, it took him a moment to recognize her.

And when he did his heart filled his chest to capacity, and his lungs collapsed with pleasure and delight.

Maddy
.

Maddy winced and
slipped in along the side of the room. She’d come in during a speech and she didn’t want to distract the audience or the speaker.

“I … ah … I heard about this school in New York City using art to teach kids who had … special needs, I guess is what they call it,” the speaker said and her head snapped up at the sound of his voice.

Billy?

Quickly she crossed the empty space near the door, joining the small crowd around the stage.

It was. It was Billy up there. Speaking. In a tux.

The first time she saw him skate, she’d been ten or something. She’d gone to the arena after school to meet her father, and Billy had been on the ice, working drills with his team.

Skating in and around pucks and then sprinting up and down the length of the ice.

She’d sat in the stands, breathless with surprise. Awed by his talent. He was faster than everyone, more clever, quicker. The sound of the puck coming off his stick was like a gunshot. He’d been awesome in her eyes.

This moment was not all that different.

“And I wondered,” he continued, “if there wasn’t a way to use sports in the same way. Kids in parts of the city live through trauma every day. Trauma many of us in this room can’t even imagine. And if the kids can’t
deal with it, they get stuck. Lost. Like I was. I shared this idea I’d had running around in my mind for a few years with Luc Baker and Tara Jean Sweet, and they’ve found the people who can put the whole thing together so we can reach those kids. And …” He chewed on his lip, looking so uncomfortable but so earnest at the same time that the effect he had on the crowd, on her, was magical. She was so spellbound by him she couldn’t breathe. “I believe it can work. With the right help—and by
help
, I mean money.”

The crowd laughed and he smiled, his fingers brushing his scar. His nervous tic. She pressed her fist to her stomach, above the ruche fabric at her hip, just to remind herself of who she was, where she was.

He opened his mouth as if to say something else but stopped, smiled, and then laughed. Awkward. So damn cute she could barely stand it.

“Thanks,” he said and shrugged, looking for a place to put the microphone.

The crowd erupted with cheers and she felt the applause ringing through her body. He’d just shown these people the side of him she’d loved.

“Quite a speech, huh?”

She blinked and turned to find a man standing next to her in a suit that worked hard over the swell of his stomach. He watched her with warm, intelligent eyes from behind a pair of thick glasses.

“It was,” she said, smiling. He was the kind of guy who got smiled at. Like Santa Claus.

“I’ve been following that guy’s career for the last ten years and just when I think he can’t surprise me anymore, he does something like this.”

Buddy
, she thought,
you don’t know the half of it
.

“I’m sorry.” He switched his champagne glass to his left hand and held out his right. “I’m Dominick Murphy. My friends call me Dom.”

“Madelyn Cornish.”

“Oh, I know who you are. You’re the one giving Billy some soul on daytime television.”

She laughed, trying to downplay her pride in the show. “So far it’s just been some new clothes.”

“I like your modesty, but I think something big is happening on your show.”

“Thank you,” she said, not immune in any way to flattery. The guy’s crusty charm was pretty effective.

“This guy bothering you?” Billy appeared at her elbow, and the relief and happiness she felt upon seeing him made her awkward. She crossed her arms over her chest as if to make sure they wouldn’t touch.

“Not at all,” she said.

“Well done up there,” Dom said, shaking Billy’s hand in that hard, swift way of men. “I can barely recognize you in that monkey suit.”

“Thanks.” Billy rolled his eyes toward Maddy. “I think. And thanks for coming. So … what do you think?”

“I think the school is interesting. But what’s more interesting is you and your involvement in it. Those tough circumstances you mentioned—”

Billy held up his hands in surrender. “You don’t give up, do you, Dom?”

“No. Not on you, Billy. Here.” He handed Billy a business card. “If you change your mind, I promise I’ll be gentle with you.”

“I’ve heard that before. But here …” Billy took a pen from the inside pocket of his beautiful tux jacket, and Dom handed him another card. Billy wrote on the back of it. “This is my cell number and email address if you’re interested in talking about the New School.”

Dom took the card and lifted his glass in a salute toward Maddy. “You are even more beautiful in person,”
he said and then turned back to Billy. “I can’t say the same about you.”

“Very funny.” Billy shooed him away and as soon as the old reporter disappeared, Billy’s magnetism increased. Her body felt the distance between them and protested, trying to force her closer. An urge she had to work hard to resist.

“Who is Dom?”

“A freelance writer for a bunch of magazines, like
Sports Illustrated
and
Esquire
. He keeps harassing me to do a story.”

“About the school?”

“About me. My life.”

Panic skittered across her skin like bugs.

“About your past?”

About me?
That’s what she really wanted to say and he picked up on it, watching her carefully as if she might run.

“That’s probably part of it.”

Immediately the walls began to close in on her. Between this and the threat of his sisters showing up on her show, she felt her whole world slipping away. Everything she’d worked so hard for could be destroyed. By him.

“Hey, hey,” he said, touching her wrist and she wanted to jerk her hand back, protect herself, keep up the walls that allowed her to feel safe. And as if he read that, as if he knew, he dropped his hand. “I didn’t say I was going to do it.”

“It’s not just that story. It’s your sisters.”

“I’m tracking them down.”

That brought her up short. “You are?”

“I called my lawyer on Tuesday, and yesterday his secretary called me with the name of a private investigator. Don’t worry, Maddy. I won’t … I won’t let you get hurt.”

In all their years together he’d never said that. He’d never offered that to her. For so long, in so many ways large and small, she’d been his protector. The one constantly watching for hidden dangers. Rocks just under the surface of the water.

The temptation to lean back in that support, to allow him to care for her in that way, was bittersweet.

Their little corner of the ballroom was suddenly the most intimate place in the world. In the shallow curve of his neck she could see his heart beating and she imagined kissing him there.

“I like the way you’re looking at me,” he whispered.

“Billy.” That was all she could say in the face of his desire, her marshmallow arms were useless. Part of her—a larger part than she was prepared to admit—wanted to wrap herself around him and leave. Go to that surprising home of his and make love to him. Be made love to by him.

But again, he showed this surprising understanding—this heartbreaking empathy—and stepped back, granting her some distance.

He grabbed a glass of champagne from a passing waiter and handed it to her, giving her a second to pull herself back from that surprising cliff.

Half the glass went down in one swallow, something she’d regret when it hit her empty stomach, but it gave her the chance to get her feet back under her.

And once she did and the walls crept back into place, she remembered how she’d been duped.

“Wait a second. You’re behind the New School?”

He held out his arms. “Surprise.”

“Did you send the invite?”

“I didn’t lick the stamp—”

“You could have told me.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Yesterday in my dressing room.”

“If I had told you, you never would have come.”

There was no point in denying it. Because with forewarning, she would have done anything to circumvent this unwelcome attraction. And she thought he understood that. He was supposed to be playing by her rules.

This couldn’t be happening between them. Not now. There was too much that would be ruined if they were to take their tentative reconciliation any further.

The show.

Her identity.

“I told you we aren’t getting back together, Billy. Ever.”

“I know.”

“You say those words, but look at what you’re doing.” She gestured to the ice sculpture, the black-tie waiters, the glittering women and handsome men. “You keep trying. You keep pushing. The same old Billy.”

How foolish she’d been to think that she could keep her distance with him standing right next to her. Arm’s length? What nonsense.

She could lose weight, change her hair and her name, but none of it mattered. If Billy was around, she got sucked back into his orbit. A willing moon to his life.

It wasn’t him.

It was her. She was the one who couldn’t be trusted.

“I need to leave.” She put her glass down, and without looking at him again, she left.

This was not how this night was supposed to go
, Billy thought.

She was walking out.

Before she got too far, he stepped in front of her—not touching her, because that wouldn’t go well, but forcing her to stop. She huffed, her long hair blowing back.

“Listen. You can leave, but I want to answer your
question. I invited you because … I’ve been thinking that you might be right about something.”

Her laugh was loud and round. Several men turned their way, interested speculation in their eyes when they looked at her. A beautiful woman with a laugh like that? Priceless. He wanted to kick them.