All these years, she’d secretly dreamed about one last kiss with Cash. One more chance to feel as if she were the most beautiful, the most wanted, the most desirable woman on the planet. Because that’s how his kisses made her feel. Like a drug that washed away all her inadequacy, stress, self-doubt, and loneliness, Cash’s kiss consumed her. If it lasted one second or a thousand hours, it was worth the loss she felt the moment they tore their lips apart.
Which was why she needed a reason to be angry at him. Anger would keep her from thinking about kissing him again. It would remind her why she couldn’t hand her heart over to this man. Being angry was her best defense against forgiving him for hurting her—it was all she had. And if the kitchen wasn’t done, she had the perfect excuse to let into him.
She moved to go around the man currently blocking the front door to her new house.
James stepped to the side, making sure he was between her and the entry. “Congratulations on the wedding. And I’m real sorry, Mrs. Diamante, but Cash told me not to let you in the house until he gets here.”
Startled by the new name she’d picked up that afternoon, and yet strangely warmed by it, Maggie huffed and took a step back. James relaxed his guard-dog posture.
“Is he always this bossy?” she asked while trying to figure out a way to get around him. He was loyal; she’d give him that.
James grinned. “Well, he’s the boss, so …”
Maggie smiled, liking the kid already. Okay, not really a kid. James was in his early twenties. He had the air of someone who was ready to climb ladders—both the figurative kind and the literal kind. She turned and moved to sit on the top step. James hovered behind her.
“You can sit down.” She patted the spot next to her. She’d driven fast, hoping to get here and clear her head before having to face Cash again. She figured she had at least another ten minutes before his elderly truck caught up.
James didn’t sit; he lounged on the stairs, leaning an elbow back on the landing and stretching his legs out in front of him. A brooding look in his eye seemed like the perfect accessory to his dark jeans and black tee shirt.
“Did you grow up here?” she asked. “How did you end up working for my husband?” She tried on the wordhusbandlike slipping on a swimsuit in January—it felt unnatural and out of season.Husbandwas a title that should be earned, not handed over on an afternoon whim. She’d have to come up with another way to refer to Cash.
This marriage wasn’t a passing fancy. It was strategic—for both of them. And after the way the guy at the city had practically swiped the house right out from under Cash, she was glad she’d gone through with it. That guy was a bully if ever she’d seen one, and she wasn’t about to let him run over the top of Cash.
He nodded. “I was in a rough place and started working for Cash as a gofer. He’d have me running to the lumber store or dropping plans off at the city for the inspector. I don’t know why he kept me around. I’d pop off at him for the dumbest things, talk back, and pretty much make his day miserable.” He glanced down at his feet. “He didn’t fire me, though. He just kept giving me things to do. Eventually, he gave me a small job to manage on my own. I screwed it up, big time.”
“You did?”
He swiped his thumb across his jaw. “Not on purpose. But yeah.”
Maggie looked out of the weed patch that should have been a yard. There was probably no way to save what little grass grew out there now. But Cash would try.
“Cash showed me how to fix it, what I’d done wrong. And then he gave me another job.”
Maggie smiled. That sounded like him.
“I swore I’d never make the same mistake, and I didn’t—I made new ones. But Cash didn’t yell or dock my pay. No one’s ever stuck with me like that, ya know?”
She stared at her bright red nails. Why? Why had Cash stuck it out with James and not with her?
“For the life of me, I don’t know what he saw inside of me, but I’m grateful for it.”
“He saw himself,” she said quietly. If James heard her, he didn’t say anything.
All the confidence she’d mustered to rent the convertible and wear leather pants to her wedding dripped away. There must be something missing inside of her—this magical quality that Cash found in James wasn’t in her makeup. She studied James out of the corner of her eye, trying to piece together what he had that she didn’t. What made Cash look past James’s flaws and not hers? Suddenly, she was seventeen and wondering what was so incredibly wrong with her that the man she loved didn’t love her back.
Cash’s pickup came down the lane, driving at turtle speed. She gritted her teeth. He was only going so slow to prove that he had control of the situation. His guard had kept her out of the house—just like Cash knew he would.
Her head start had been brought to a screeching halt. Ugh! He was so infuriating.
Standing, she brushed off her backside.
Cash parked, looked at his phone, rolled up a window, and then finally got out of the car. “What are you waiting for?” he asked as he made his way up the steps a cocky little grin on his face.
James looked back and forth between the two of them. “I’m gonna take off,” he said. And he did. He hightailed it to his truck, glancing over his shoulder like someone who couldn’t take their eyes off a train wreck.
She glared at Cash. “I thought you’d be a little more eager to carry me over the threshold.”
His chin jerked back. “I hadn’t thought of that.” He stalked forward, and Maggie suddenly regretted her flippant answer. Her stomach dropped to the ground so fast she felt like the rest of her was floating—like that time she’d ridden the Death Screamer roller coaster, lifting out of her seat.
