My Curvy Valentine: A Perfect Fit Novella (21 page)

*

Alex’s back was to her when she walked into the kitchen. His body was tight, his hands were pressed to the stainless steel counter. He looked like he had just seen a ghost. Maggie walked toward him, not sure what she was going to say, but she had to say something. They had spent the last few weeks not talking about where their relationship going. It was time they did. Too bad, it seemed like it was too late.

Just as she was about to reach him he abruptly turned around. “You trying to sneak up on me?” He gave her a soft smile, but it dropped quickly. His eyes studied her face and there was an emotion in his eyes that she couldn’t read. “You’re pale.” He touched her face with both of his warm, sugar-scented hands. “What’s wrong, baby? You’re not feeling good?”

Her mouth dropped opened.
No, I’m not feeling good
, she wanted to say.
I just saw your girlfriend outside
. But she didn’t say that, because she wanted to hear it from him. She wanted to hear how he was going to explain the reappearance of his ex in town.

It wasn’t his fault Roya was here. She knew he hadn’t planned it. Hadn’t meant for it to happen, but she was here and Maggie was hurt.

“Maggie May?” he said when she didn’t respond.

“I’m…” She shook her head. “How was your day?”

“Better now that you’re here,” he said without missing a beat. “I’ve been waiting for you to get home all day.” He kissed her forehead. “I wanted to go out, but I don’t think you’re up to it.”

“You don’t want to take me out anymore?”

His eyes widened, and she knew her voice was sharp, but she wanted the first words out of his mouth to be about Roya. Instead he was pretending like nothing happened. “Of course I want to take you out. I made plans for us. I’ll shower and change and we can go. But judging by the look on your face it seems like you might want to stay in.”

He wasn’t going to say anything, was he? Not until he figured out what to do with the former love that had walked back into his world. If he loved her it would have been an easy decision for him. He would have told Roya about her immediately. There would have been no choice to make. But apparently there
was
one to make for Alex, and Maggie didn’t want to stick around to hear about it.

“You’re right. I think I do want to stay in. I’m going to go back to my place.”

“Okay. I’ll be up in a minute. I’ll fix you something to eat.”

“That’s okay. I’m not hungry. I think I want to be alone tonight.”

Chapter 13

Alex stood on the stairs two days later waiting for Maggie to come down for work. It was like she had flicked a light switch on them. One day they were burning bright, the next day she had shut them off and shut him out. And he was dumbfounded by it. She ignored his calls, wouldn’t answer her door, and the only thing that kept him from breaking it down and barging into her apartment was that he could hear her through the walls. He knew she was physically okay, if nothing else.

Finally the upstairs door opened and he heard her heeled footsteps on the stairs. His heart pounded faster as she came into view. Her coat was in hand and she wore a baby-doll pink sweater dress and the black tights he always loved seeing her curvy long legs encased in. He got turned on just by looking at her, even though he was pissed at her for shutting him out.

“Hey,” she said awkwardly as she walked toward him. “You’re waiting in darkened stairways for me?”

He shook his head at her bad attempt at a joke. “What the hell did you think would happen? You’ve been avoiding me for the last thirty-six hours.”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “I have.”

“I want to know why. We need to talk.”

“I know.” She sat on the landing, draping the coat over her lap, her hands fidgeting with the buttons, her eyes studying the fabric as if she had never seen it before. She refused to look him in the eye.

“What’s going on with you, Maggie May?”

“What’s going on with you, Alexei? You’re the one whose girlfriend came home from England to be with you.”

She knew. He had suspected that she had somehow seen or heard about Roya’s reappearance, but he couldn’t imagine why that would upset her. Roya had nothing to do with them. He wanted to make his life with Maggie. And he’d been all set to tell her that before Roya showed up at his bakery shocking the shit out of him. He could barely string two sentences together when he saw her. She had given up a high paying job. She had moved continents. For him. And it was sad, because he wouldn’t do the same for her. He had liked her, but seeing her walk back into his life didn’t make him feel a tenth of what he felt when he saw Maggie walk into a room.

“So what if Roya’s back? That doesn’t change what we have.”

“No? What do we have? I spoke to her the other night, you know. She didn’t know about us and when I spoke to you, you never mentioned her to me. That tells me a lot about us, Alex. I was upset at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I was okay with it. This was going to end. It was inevitable.”

He couldn’t process what she was saying.
What do we have?
His brain stopped there for a moment. This was going to end? That was the exact opposite of what was on his mind. “What are you trying to say?”

“Come on, Alex. We were just having a little fun. A fling.”

His whole body went tight at those words. A fling? Those were the absolute last words he would use to describe what they had. He had had many flings over the years. But what he had
with Maggie was something he couldn’t replicate with anybody else. He didn’t want to try to. He didn’t even want to think about trying to.

“What you just said was bullshit. Complete bullshit. This wasn’t a fling and you know it. Do you know how much you mean to me?”

“I’m your friend. You’ve known me forever. I’m here for you. That’s not going to change.”

“What do you mean, that’s not going to change? I don’t understand why you’re breaking things off.”

“Oh come on, Alex. Where was this going? Are you in love with me? Were you planning on marrying me? Or was I just here and convenient and somebody you were attracted to in the moment? Roya’s back and it’s okay if you want to be with her.”

“I don’t want to be with her! Where the fuck is this coming from? I have never given you any idea that things could start back up with me and Roya. It was over the moment she told me she was moving away. I’m with you now.”

“Then why didn’t you tell her about me? Or me about her. You said nothing.”

“I did! I told her that I couldn’t talk because I was waiting for you to come home.”

“You didn’t tell her I was your girlfriend, that you were seeing me. When she left here she went away thinking that you were single and you two were going to make things work.”

“But we aren’t, because I’m with you.”

“I think deep down you want to make things work with her, because if you didn’t, you would have told her. If you really thought of me as your girlfriend you would have said
something. There would have been nothing else to talk about. She wouldn’t have left here with hope in her eyes.”

“Why didn’t you set her straight then? I was so fucking surprised to see her I couldn’t think. All I heard was that she quit her job. You think I was expecting that shit to happen? You think I planned this? You could have told her you were my girlfriend right then and there and we wouldn’t be going through this right now.”

“How would that have sounded coming from me? You should have been the one to tell her. And I wasn’t sure what we were.”

“You’re being ridiculous. The whole damn town knows we’re together. Our families, my customers. We were a couple before we ever slept together. I never hid you away.”

“And that was fine until Roya quit her job and came back here for you. That’s love, Alex. She is in love with you and if you’re not touched by her gesture, you don’t have a heart.”

“Even if I am touched by her gesture, you think I would break up with you because she’s back? Is that what you think of me? You think I’m that kind of an asshole?”

“No.” She shook her head, but he wasn’t sure he could believe her words. “You’re a good guy. You wouldn’t purposefully hurt me. You probably wouldn’t even think the reason that we ended had anything to do with her. But it would have everything to do with her.” Her eyes went teary and he was torn between wanting to punch a wall and wanting to pull her into a hug. “We weren’t together that long. Six weeks will seem like a blink of an eye later. And it’s good that it ended now. Because I was this close to falling completely in love with you and that’s the last thing I wanted to do.”

“Close to falling in love with me?” She was lying to him, right to his face, and it pissed him off more than he could stand. She
did
love him. He felt it in every look, in every touch, in everything she did. “Do you want me to apologize for not telling her about you right away? I’m sorry for that, Maggie. I’m sorry if that hurt you, but I didn’t mean to. I haven’t talked to her since she stopped by that day because I’ve been so damn caught up in you, but I’ll set her straight. I tell her that you’re my girlfriend. I take out a billboard in the middle of the goddamn town.”

“No.” She stood up, leaning in close to him so that she could kiss his mouth. He grabbed the back of her head, deepening the kiss until she broke away. “It’s for the best. We’ll go back to being friends. It was better that way. We both know that.”

“You’re doing this. I don’t want this and you don’t either, because if you did you wouldn’t be crying.”

“I’ll miss you,” she said, and he knew she was telling the truth for the first time that day.

“You don’t have to miss me. I’m not going anywhere. I want to be with you.”

“I was here when you needed me. We’re comfortable around each other. I am your friend. She was your love.”

“I’m sick of you telling me how I feel. You have no idea. So you don’t get to make this about me. If you want to break up, you put it on yourself because I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No, you just have the misfortune of having a beautiful woman in love with you.”

He rested his forehead against hers. “I don’t want this, Maggie. I can’t accept it. I won’t.”

“You have to, because it’s what I want.” She shook her head and gave him the saddest smile he had ever seen. “You know me, I don’t think I’m cut out for relationships anyway.”

No, he didn’t know that, because she was the best relationship he ever had and if she couldn’t see that, he wasn’t sure he could make her.

*

“Are you going to tell me what happened?”

Maggie looked over at her brother as he drove her to
Sweet Eats
. It was the day of Belinda’s baby shower and she was in charge of getting all the decorations from Alina and hanging them up before the guest of honor arrived. “Nothing happened. Why don’t you believe me?”

“Because you’ve slept in my spare bedroom for the past two nights, that’s why.”

“Do you mind?” She blinked at him. “I did your laundry and made you spaghetti with meatballs. I even vacuumed the whole place.”

“As much as I like having a maid, I know under normal circumstances you wouldn’t be doing those things. So I ask again, what the hell happened?”

“We broke up.”

Clay was silent for a long moment and he turned into the small parking lot behind her building. “Did he do something to hurt you?”

Maggie didn’t answer. She didn’t know how to answer that question because she knew Alex hadn’t meant to. She knew he would have never left her for someone else, but what if deep down he
did
want to be with Roya? The woman who gave it all up for him. Maggie didn’t want
to be the one who got in the way of his happiness. She kept thinking about her parents, and their love that had turned so sour. They were better apart. They were friends. Staying with Alex might make her happy on the surface for a little while, but she would always wonder if he secretly wanted to be with someone else. It would always be in the back of her mind that Alex had possibly let a great love slip through his fingers because he didn’t want to hurt Maggie’s feelings. She would always be waiting for the day when he decided he didn’t want to be with her anymore, the day when she wasn’t what he wanted. And that was no way to live. Self-doubt would eat her alive and she would hate herself for it.

“It was just better that we ended things. We’ve been friends for so long,” she said as he pulled the truck to a stop. “There’s a large crystal punch bowl that belongs to Belinda’s mother in the back of the truck along with some other glassware that’s kind of heavy. Could you bring it in for me?”

“I’ll bring it all in.”

“Thanks, Clay.” She reached over and squeezed his hand. “You think you could stick around today?”

“At a baby shower for a woman I don’t know?”

“Yes. Mom is going to be there and it would be nice to have you there to run interference.”

“You’ve got to talk to her, Mags.” He sighed. “You two can’t keep going on like this.”

“We’re talking. Kind of. I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to say to her. How are you so okay with this? Our mother allowed our father to treat her like shit because she felt guilty that she had an affair. Doesn’t that make you crazy?”

“It does, but it happened and we can accept it and move on, or bitch about how fucked up our childhood was and stayed fucked up.”

“How long before I found out did you know?”

“Right before they got the divorce. I went at it with Dad for being such a dick. I was going to kill him if Mom hadn’t stopped me. She told me then. She said they kept it a secret for so long because they didn’t want us to hate her, but that only caused us to hate him.”

“You told her to leave, didn’t you?”

He nodded. “You had to get out of there, Mags. You stayed there for her and that wasn’t the life you were supposed to live.”

“Thank you,” she said, leaning over to kiss his cheek. “I’m glad you’re home, Clay. I still need my big brother.”

“I know you do. Take the first set of things inside. I’ll bring the rest in after I make a call.”

“Okay.” She carried two large bags filled with handmade favors and decorations inside. Alex was standing in the middle of the bakery arranging the tables for the shower. It had been five days since she’d called things off and two days since she decided that living so close to him, seeing him every day, was too much for her. She had told him that they would still be friends but she knew they couldn’t be. It was too hard to go back.