When the Lights Go Down

Toward the end, when matters were unfolding with an astonishing rapidity and teams of people were sweeping in and out of rooms with drill-like precision, Maxie found herself mostly holding hands: Addy’s, Sarah’s, Addy’s husband Spencer’s, her mother’s. Sarah’s husband, J.D., didn’t do handholding but his calm-under-pressure attitude kept them all from getting too overwhelmed. Watching from the sidelines as her sisters found their way without much help from anyone, she felt at once useless and amazed. Addy cursed when she heard that Sarah had already delivered, giving a last enormous push that sent a squalling, sloppy baby into her doctor’s waiting hands.

Maxie burst out of the hospital doors at 3:00 a.m., hugging herself and wondering how it wasn’t broad daylight. There should be a parade and confetti. Maybe even fireworks.

The street outside the Galter Pavilion of Northwestern was empty. The rest of her family had left an hour ago, but she hadn’t been able to tear herself away from the quiet rooms where her sisters were resting with their new families. She wondered how she was going to find a taxi. Or, for that matter, get her truck back.

While she was debating the likelihood that Nick would answer her call in the middle of the night so she could pick up her truck, a familiar black Lincoln Town Car slid to a halt in front of her. Seconds later, the friendly face of Tommy the driver popped up to smile at her across the roof of the car.

“Mr. Drake thought you might need a ride.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, and then gave up and climbed into the backseat of the car, muttering all the way.

“It’s enough to make you suspicious, how that man thinks of everything.”

“He doesn’t miss much, no, ma’am.”

“And you’ve just been, what, waiting here?”

“Nah. He asked your brother to let us know when the babies came.”

Which still meant that he’d been parked outside for an hour while she was lingering upstairs. She felt guilty about that for a moment and then reminded herself that there wasn’t any way she could have known.

The cellophane-wrapped bouquet of roses on the seat should have charmed her, especially since it was pinned with a card that read, “Congratulations, Auntie.”

For some reason, she was just annoyed. Being outmaneuvered, even when it was to her benefit, made her cranky.

Enough so that when Tommy reeled off her address and asked if that was where she wanted him to drop her off, she had a better idea. Conveniently enough, her destination was not at all far from the Gold Coast hospital complex.

* * *

The insistent electrical trill of his cell phone tugged Nick from the depths of sleep even as he buried his head under a pillow and tried to ignore it.

Unsuccessful, he slid a hand across the bedside table, groping in the dark. Once he found it, he dragged it back under the pillow, tapping blindly until something connected.

“What?”

“James Robinson and Elizabeth Ann.”

“Wrong number.”

“Personally I was rooting for Esmerelda and Diego. I love how sexy that name sounds. Diego—you know what I mean? But I suppose the parents know best.”

He shoved the pillow off his head and sat up in the dark.

“Maxie?”

“You said to call with the good news.” Her laughter rumbled through the phone. She sounded so close, whispering in his ear in the silence of his room. He glanced at the digital glow of the clock next to his bed.

“It’s three o’clock in the morning. Where are you?”

“Downstairs, having a chat with your doorman.”

After calling the desk to okay his late-night visitor, Nick managed to drag on a pair of dark jeans and a gray T-shirt. In his kitchen, he set a coffee mug, a water glass and a wine goblet on the counter.

That’s when the solid knock landed on his door.

He pulled open the heavy wooden door and then stepped back, looking at her framed in the light from the bright hallway. Her clothes were wrinkled and her eyes were tired, but she was bouncing on the balls of her feet, probably still riding an adrenaline high that would have her crashing any minute. He turned to the side, motioning her in.

She didn’t move.

Chin lifted, she stared at him, an almost visible shimmer of energy rising off her skin.

“I don’t sleep with people I work with. Or for.”

An interesting opening line.

“You know, you don’t really work for me.” He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and leaned one shoulder against the doorway. He’d thought about this quite a bit in the week during which he’d kept himself away from the project. “I’m more of an outside consultant.”

Her slow grin slid over him like tiny, licking flames.

“See, that’s just what I was thinking.” She stepped inside and closed the door.

Chapter Four

The sparkling Chicago skyline sprawled in front of the wall of windows in the living room. The distant reaches of Lake Michigan merged seamlessly with the dark sky, a horizon that couldn’t be seen, only imagined.

“The view on the forty-sixth floor just oozes wealth, doesn’t it?” She drifted over to the windows. “My view is of the Cigarettes Cheaper across the street.”

He didn’t have any response to that. He wasn’t about to deny enjoying his home.

Having decided to come inside, Maxie seemed unable to settle in one spot, pacing around the room like a cat. She stopped to run a hand over the back of the leather couch, rest a fingertip on the roughly carved surface of the stone obelisk on the large low table in front of the couch, click her fingernails against the floor-to-ceiling glass.

He thought about what it would be like for her to take such a delicate, thorough inspection of him instead of his condo, and wished she’d stay still for a moment.

“Tommy brought you here?” The silence needed to be broken.

“Yes, but I knew where you lived.” She turned and started flipping idly through the pages of a coffee-table book—graceful photographs of architectural details, enlarged to lose all resemblance to reality—and looked up at him through dark lashes, her eyes giving away nothing. “You’re not the only one who can run a background check.”

“Excuse me?”

“I figured that out because you knew where I live. I work pretty hard to keep that info off the web, you know.” She dropped the cover of the book and walked back to the window. The room was dimly lit and her silhouette showed as negative space against the city lights. “Do you have any idea how likely actors are to turn up on your doorstep at 3:00 a.m. with a broken heart, looking for beer?”

“It’s past 3:00 a.m. now. If you tell me you’re here because you’re broken-hearted and looking for a six-pack, I’ll be hugely disappointed.”

She laughed and swung around to face him. The lights behind her left her face in darkness.

“No six-packs in your fancy condo?”

She was needling him. Why? The fancy condo insult from any other woman might have led him to believe that she was uncomfortable with his penthouse. It was a pretty goddamn visible display of wealth. But he couldn’t imagine Maxie Tyler, chameleon extraordinaire, being out of her element anywhere.

He wasn’t about to start apologizing for the family fortune he’d rescued through long hours of hard work. He took a deep breath and Maxie froze, as if bracing herself for the sarcastic comment she’d tried to provoke. He decided on a different tack.

He kept his voice mild as he moved into the open kitchen that unfolded off the living room. “I have beer, if that’s what you’d like. Or celebratory champagne. Coffee?” His waving hand took in the lineup of glasses on the marble countertop.

She stayed silent for a long minute.

He could wait.

Finally, she shook her head and walked toward him. The sway of her hips as she strolled was a powerful prod to the imagination. He wondered if it was unconscious or for his benefit.

“Just water, thanks.”

He’d expected her to stop on the far side of the counter, the wide stretch of stone between them, but she circled it and stepped onto the terra-cotta tiles of the kitchen floor, stopping several feet away from him.

When he handed her the tall, cool glass, she stretched out an arm to take it. Her fingers avoided his on the glass.

Seeing that ratcheted the tension up anyway.

She lifted the glass to her mouth, eyes locked on his, and only broke the connection when she tilted her head back, her throat working as she drained the glass dry and set it back on the counter with a clink.

“What are you doing here, Maxie?”

He could read her face as she ran through a dozen different responses and discarded them all.

In favor of the honest truth.

She shrugged.

“I don’t know.”

He gave her an out.

“Do you want me to call you a cab? I already told Tommy to go home for the night.”

“I don’t want you to do anything at all for me, Nick.” She tried to jerk away as he caught her slim wrists in his hands and gently pulled her toward him.

“Maxie.”

Staring at his shirt, she refused to meet his eyes. He rested his chin gently on the top of her head, her curls tickling his face. After a moment her arms crept around his waist and he was glad she couldn’t see his smile.

“Make up your mind, Maxie. You can’t be pissed at me and want to go to bed with me at the same time.”

Her voice was muffled but clear.

“Wanna bet?”

A hard pinch on his stomach was her answer to his silent laughter. Then her hands slid under his T-shirt and stroked up and down his back, warm fingers on skin that suddenly felt hot. When her face tilted up to him, her mouth was right there. She sighed into his kiss, opening to him, and he wasn’t laughing any longer.

He brushed fingertips down her cheek, smoothing over downy softness before stroking down the strong column of her neck. Her mouth was cool and wet from the water and her tongue teased his, dancing with it for a moment before pulling away as she tilted her head to the other side and changed the angle of the kiss.

She was warm in his arms, and the slow drift of heat from her spread over him like a drug. Breaking the kiss, he dragged his hands up to frame her face, pushing back her dark curls. Lowering his mouth to hers again, he brushed his lips back and forth until she deepened the kiss.

Her palms slid up his chest and over his shoulders and he buried his face at the base of her neck, inhaling her dark, sweet scent.

He looked up and caught her snaking a hand up to cover her mouth, wide open in a giant, creaking yawn.

Ah, the death of the ego.

“Whoops.” He couldn’t believe she’d made him blush. “Sorry.”

Abandoning all hopes of wild sex in the moonlight, he wrapped one arm around her shoulders, tucked the other under her butt, and bumped her up into his arms. “Come on.” He headed down the dark hall to his bedroom.

She pounded a fist on his chest.

“Put me down. I can walk.”

“I know you can. I’ve enjoyed watching you do so on more than one occasion.”

Thump. Again.

“Put me down.”

“Shut up.”

He didn’t stop until his knees bumped the edge of the king-size mattress, where he deposited her on top of the rucked-up duvet. Glaring up at him, she raked the hair out of her eyes with one hand, using the other to push herself up. But her toes slid under the covers and he knew she was fighting a losing battle.

“I’m not sleepy.”

He gave her shoulder a gentle push, rolling her onto her back among the fluffy white pillows piled in front of the headboard. Sitting on the edge of the mattress, he held up a placating hand.

“If you can stay awake for five whole minutes, then I promise...”

Smoothing back her hair, he leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead, then brushed the tip of her nose with his lips, and the corner of her mouth.

The curve of her ear.

“I’ll ravage the pants off you,” he whispered. His words made her shiver.

She was determined. He’d give her that. She fought every millimeter, but as he stroked her hair, her lids fell inexorably shut. She curled up on her side, one hand tucked beneath the pillow. Even so, she muttered at him, “Not sleeping.”

“Of course not.”

“Pants off.”

“Absolutely.”

He stood up and stretched mightily. Considered the empty smoothness of the sheets in the guest bedroom at the end of the hall.

Oh, what the hell.

At least this way he’d have the memory of sleeping with her in his bed.

Stripping off his jeans and chucking them toward the door of the walk-in closet in the corner, he moved to the far side of the big bed and slid under the comforter. Leaving his T-shirt and boxers on would be his nod to propriety. She was curled up all the way across the mattress, her back to him.

That wouldn’t do at all.

But as soon as he wrapped an arm around her waist and tucked her against him, Nick realized his mistake. Her butt was snug against his crotch and she’d curled her hand around his, pressing his arm between her breasts.

He dropped his head on a pillow with a low groan and resigned himself to the wait for sleep to come.

Long before it did, his breath had slowed to match hers, almost imperceptible in the darkness next to him.

* * *

When she awoke, sunlight warm on her face and a tangle of sheets around her body, Maxie was alone in a strange bed.

She slid her hands across the luxuriously soft sheet beneath her, wrinkled now with the impression of two sleeping bodies. Not a strange bed, no. The enormous bed with its slate-colored down duvet, the sleek lines of the dark, low dresser and bedside table, the bare walls—all of it fit her picture of Nick Drake, captain of a financial empire.

That it did not remotely resemble the explosion of clothes, photographs and random souvenirs from past shows that distinguished her own bedroom shouldn’t bother her.

Should it?

Her midsection growled audibly. Introspection would have to wait. The last meal she’d consumed had been a Polish and some peanuts at the game the previous afternoon, not counting the various candy bars she and Grace had snagged from vending machines in the corridors of the hospital.

She ran her tongue over her teeth.

A toothbrush wouldn’t hurt, either.

When she emerged from the bathroom, she placed her feet carefully so as to make no noise in the silent apartment. She felt like a cat burglar and that was annoying, since she wasn’t sneaking anywhere.

She heard the clicking before she saw him and wasn’t surprised to find Nick hunched over the keyboard of a laptop computer on the coffee table, forearms resting on his knees as he leaned forward and typed with impressive speed.

His cheeks curved into a smile as she walked over to the large leather couch, so she knew he heard her, but he continued typing without looking up. He was dressed in yet another crisply tailored suit, ready for the day to begin. She ran her palms over her wrinkled jeans and felt half-dressed, and poorly at that, in comparison. He’d clearly been awake for some time already and she couldn’t say why this bothered her.

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