Meet Your Mate (A Good Riders Romance Book 1) (12 page)

He and
Shawntel
sat
cozied
up to one another.
Thank heavens I made
the right decision and didn’t sleep with him.
He had the attention span of
a gnat. How mortifying it must be to occupy just another space in his long line
of women.

“Let us know how the award thing
turns out,”
DeSean
said as they headed toward the
elevator and stairs.

“I’ll text you after the ceremony,”
she promised. “And good luck with your interview on Friday,
DeSean
.”

“Thanks, Ms. Morgan, but I won’t
need luck.” He grinned. “I’m good enough without it.”

“Absolutely, but be sure to use me
as a reference if you want to.”

“I won’t need that either.”
DeSean
threw a salute to someone behind her. “Max knows the
owner of the record company. He said he’d call and put in a good word for me.”

“He did, huh?” She shouldn’t resent
his offer to help. Very generous, but for some reason, she felt like he’d
purposely upstaged her. “Well, then, you’re a shoe-in.”

When Howard stopped to talk to
Shawntel
, Annabel decided to confront Max about making
promises he didn’t intend to keep. Just as she reached his side, he cursed.

“Sorry,” she said, stung by the
show of displeasure. “I guess this isn’t the best time to talk.”

He checked the screen on his phone.
“I need to take this call. I’ll be right back.” He touched her elbow, squeezed
the bimbo’s knee, and strode to the other end of the hall with his cell phone
in hand.

Annabel sighed and turned to
Howard, ready to herd him back to work and leave all thoughts of Max Williams
behind. Charley
Asherton
, the manager at Max’s
television station, had arrived at some point and now sat beside
Shawntel
, vying with Howard for her attention.

“Good of you to be here,” Charley
said to the bimbo. “Not every woman would want to be publicly identified as one
of the patients in Max’s series.”

Annabel gave herself a mental ka-
thunk
to the forehead. Of course, the D-cups on display had
been surgically enhanced.

“That was you?” A mix of curiosity
and sympathy softened Howard’s voice.

“I didn’t want everyone to know my
identity, but I’d do anything to help Max,”
Shawntel
explained to the two men. “If it hadn’t been for him, that butcher would still
be running loose, pretending to be a competent surgeon, disfiguring other
women.”

“Just the botched surgeries should
have been enough to have his license revoked,” Charley said. “But the shoddy
implants he performed on you and other women after living through the horror of
mastectomies… Well, that was more than incompetence. It was criminal
negligence.”

“I wasn’t getting anywhere with the
proper legal channels,” she explained. “If Max hadn’t done his series, it might
have been years before my case got in front of the medical review board and the
courts.”
Shawntel
looked at Annabel, who cringed
inwardly. She felt like a prize idiot. Again.

She had dismissed Max’s series as a
forum for strippers and showgirls who wanted to increase their chest size. Why
hadn’t she realized the piece was about breast cancer patients? How Max must
have laughed at her narrow-minded, ill-informed attitude.

“At first,”
Shawntel
continued, “he didn’t want to use my specific case in the series, but I kept
after him. You know how he is about family. He can never refuse any of us
anything.”

“You’re family?” A sharp sense of
relief pricked the back of Annabel’s brain, mixing with even greater
humiliation.

Shawntel
nodded. “We’re cousins. Didn’t you know? Everyone used to say we looked alike.
I guess that was before I became a blonde.”

“Yes, of course.” Waves of shame
from her unkind and suspicious thoughts swamped Annabel. “There’s a definite
resemblance.”

“How’s your health now?” Charley
asked
Shawntel
. “Max said you’re still in remission,
and your last reconstruction surgery was more successful.”

“Ye-
es
.”
She bit her cotton candy pink lip. “But I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Of course, just being here is
bound to wear you out.” Charley patted her hand. “Have you gone back to work
yet?”

“Part-time.”
Shawntel
smiled brightly. “The sick leave policy at the library is excellent. The
library administrator has been very understanding about letting me work shorter
hours until I get back to full strength.”

“You work at the library?” Oh, dear
God, just kill me now.

Shawntel
nodded. “I’m a reference librarian at the Oakley branch. Be sure and call me if
you ever need something researched. I’m always happy to help a friend of
Max’s.”

Annabel was spared the task of
finding her voice as the door opened again and one of the committee members
peered out.

“I thought Mr. Williams was here,”
the woman said. “We’re ready for his presentation.”

“I’m here, Dottie.” Max strolled up
as if on cue. “Everybody ready?” As he went to
Shawntel’s
side, his solicitous attitude toward his cousin took on a whole new meaning.

Just when Annabel thought he’d
ignore her completely, he stopped in front of her. “Too bad we didn’t get a
chance to have that talk you wanted. See you around, I guess.”

“Max...” Annabel began as he turned
away. “Will you call me later?  There’s something I want to discuss with
you.”

His smile turned up the heat. “Did
you rethink your position about what’s missing in your life?”

She should have known he’d think
that. “No, it’s not about that. I’d like to talk to you about something else.”

“Sure, Morgan, I’ll call you.” Not
much warmth in his gaze. She could hardly blame him.

“You just sit by the phone and
wait, all right?”

Right.
Her heart sank as she
watched him walk away.

That night at the gym, Max moved
through a set of crunches, trying to remember the last time a woman had turned
him down flat. Just because none leaped to mind before Annabel didn’t mean it
hadn’t happened. And he normally made a point of not hitting on women who found
him repulsive.

He moved through each stage of his
workout trying to remember he had bigger things to worry about than the fact
Annabel Morgan refused to sleep with him. But thoughts of her kept intruding.

He’d known for years she found him
about as appealing as a slug, and he’d never bothered to improve her impression
of him.

When they’d first met, her
intelligence, her focus, and her single-minded attention to detail had
intrigued him. But when she’d turned her attention his way, she’d shown him
nothing but disapproval.

True, there’d been that unfortunate
incident with the intern and the rumors about him and
DeeDee
,
but Annabel had assumed the worst from the start. She’d treated him with a
prison warden’s lack of humor. All business, all the time. Which tended to
bring out the worst in him. Like an ass, he’d encouraged her poor opinion.

But now, her contempt tended to
rankle more than when the feeling went both ways. Now he knew she was more than
the frosty, unimaginative fishwife she presented to the world. When had he
first noticed that natural sexiness she guarded so carefully?

Saturday, maybe, at the concert. Or
Sunday, when she flew out of that swing and into his arms.

With his teeth clenched through his
second set of curls, he decided to ignore all of their dissimilarities and just
accept the attraction that rammed him in the gut like a sledgehammer. Hell,
life was a series of risks. What was one more?

But Annabel disliked risks.

She detested them.

Her life had been one big
restrictive cocoon. She’d done nothing but play it safe from the day she was
born.

And if she smiled and laughed more
with him than she’d smiled and laughed in the past twenty years, apparently
that didn’t impress her enough to tempt her away from her boring, safe,
confining existence. Somewhere in her personal code of conduct, Thou Shalt Not
Enjoy Life must be written in big bold letters. A needlepoint throw pillow with
that motto probably held the place of honor on her bed.

Well, so what?
He drilled
the punching bag with a punishing flurry of jabs. She wasn’t his problem.

Damn her. There were plenty of
women around who enjoyed getting naked and having fun. He should find one of
them, hit the town and party all night. He needed to get stinking drunk, make a
fool of himself on the dance floor, and fall into bed with a partner willing to
get hotter and sweatier than he was now. He’d done it all a hundred times before.
A thousand times.

And somewhere along the line, in
one of the many smoky bars, dark corners, or unfamiliar bedrooms, the frantic
activity had turned into a meaningless farce.

Maybe that’s why he was still
working out his frustration instead of responding to the admiring glances a
Spandex-clad cutie on the Stairmaster kept throwing his way.

In the locker room, as he stripped
down to bare skin before stepping into the shower, he decided to call Annabel.
She’d asked him to, after all. And he had a crazy idea he wanted to run by her.

But right after that, he’d head out
and find some action. He knew all the right or wrong places to look.

When clean and dressed, he pulled
his cell phone out of his gym bag as he made his way across the parking lot. She
answered on the first ring. For a moment, he flattered himself that she’d been
waiting for his call, just as he’d sarcastically suggested.

“Just a second,” she said, “I’m
talking to Carly.”

He dropped into the driver’s seat
of the newly repaired Porsche and floated in the limbo inhabited by people
placed on hold. Fiddling with the radio until he found the Reds game, he shoved
his seat back and reclined it as far as it would go. He considered hanging up
before her voice brought him back to earth.

“I’m back.” She sounded a little
breathless. “Sorry, but we needed to synchronize schedules.”

“No problem.” He’d called her, so
he supposed the ball was in his court. But she’d asked him to call, so she must
have something she wanted to say. “What can I do for you?”

“I like your cousin.”

Surprise, surprise. She’d realized
the truth about
Shawntel
. “Me, too.”

She cleared her throat. “I want to
apologize for the things I said and thought about your news series. I didn’t
realize—”

“Let me guess, you hadn’t seen it
and you figured I used the topic as a good excuse to show boobs on TV.” He
heard her sputter, but she didn’t deny it. “And now you feel bad since you’ve
discovered it does have some intellectual, social, and medical relevance after
all.”

“Well, yes.”

“Admit it. You jumped to the wrong
conclusion.” He waited a second to add, “Again.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.” No
excuses, no evasion.

Well, hell. He’d never been one to
carry a grudge, but he hated to let her off so easy. “Just like that? You think
you can judge me, my work, and everything about me, and all it takes is a few
words to make it right?”

“I hope so.” She hesitated. “Is
there anything else I can do?”

“Probably.” Now this was
interesting. He could think of a number of things she
could
do. But
would
she? “I’ll accept an IOU for a future favor.”

“You want an open-ended, blanket
IOU for a favor to be named later?”

“Yep.”

“Hmmm.” She took time to consider.
“We have to agree the favor won’t be for anything illegal, immoral, or sexual
in nature.”

“Now you’re
takin
’
all of the fun out of it,
darlin
’.” He should have
known she’d negotiate to keep all her familiar parameters in place. Exhaling
loudly, he released the last of his anger. “And you’re insulting my character
again. If you don’t stop, you’ll owe me another apology.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. Again.”

“Apology accepted.” He liked having
the air cleared up between them. “And not all your fault. The sexploitation
promos the station ran intentionally gave viewers the wrong impression.”

“They were pretty sensational.”

“Tell me about it. Anytime they can
link sex to a story, especially during a ratings period, they do. Eating Hot
Dogs Leads to Impotence. I hate those salacious leads.” He’d been fighting them
for years with little success.

“I know what you mean,” she said.
“And I’ve learned my lesson. You can’t tell a news story by its lead-in. I’ll
watch and judge for myself from now on. What have you got coming up next?”

Hopefully the equipment scam, but
he couldn’t tell her about that one. “A human interest story about a teacher
who’s trying to raise funds for a school her twin sister teaches at in Mexico.”