Read Online Crazy Thing Called Love by Molly O'Keefe - Free Book Online

memories Billy chose to treasure.
    She did not step past the stone foyer, instead, she braced herself there and waited.
    The music stopped and Billy came back down the dark hallway, toward her. Still no shirt, but he ran a towel over his head and down his face, leaving his silky brown hair a mess.
    The past threatened to swamp her and she looked away. Focused instead on the view out of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the great room.
    It was an ocean of green out there. Apparently he’d never heard of the water ban.
    “Sorry,” he muttered. “I was working out. Can I … can I get you something? Water? Beer?”
    Beer. If he knew how long it had been since she’d had a beer, he’d probably die.
    “I’m fine.”
    “Okay.” He threw the towel over his shoulder andbraced his hands on his waist, his fingers catching on the elastic waistband of his gray workout shorts. Briefly pulling it down over that thick ridge of muscle at his hips. She used to kiss that muscle. Test her teeth against it until he groaned.
    She yanked her bag up higher on her shoulder. “We need to talk.”
    “Yeah. I’m sorry about that meeting,” he said.
    That took her aback, made her recalculate her route.
    “I didn’t mean for it to go that way.”
    “Really? How did you think it was going to go?”
    “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t think that far ahead.”
    “Classic Billy. Tell me, why are you doing this show?”
    “My image. You heard Victor—”
    “Oh please, Billy. You don’t give a shit about your image. You never have.”
    “A guy can’t change?”
    “Not if he’s you.”
    That grin, macabre and strange, pulled and twisted by the pink knot of his scar.
    She knew there were millions of people in the world who believed the scar made him ugly. In her eyes, however, it was one of the most beautiful things about him. Maybe because she knew how he’d gotten it. She looked at that scar and remembered him leaning out the window, telling her everything was going to be fine.
    “It’s been years, Maddy. I might surprise you.” He walked away, down the beige steps into the great room and then through it to the kitchen.
    “What are you doing?” she asked, her purse falling from her shoulder.
    “Getting a beer,” he yelled back, out of sight. “Come on in.”
    She stared at the carpet, the stacks of athletic shoes by the door, as if they were snakes waiting to bite.
    The feel of her colleagues’ eyes—Ruth’s eyes—staringat her with horror and fascination in that meeting had kept her up for three nights.
    Like a knife at her back, the memory forced her to walk into his kitchen, even though everything in her gut told her to leave.
    It was getting darker outside, the brilliant blue of the Texas sky bruising at the edges, and the kitchen was shadowed when she stomped into it. Billy sat at a round mahogany table, his body a muscled curl. He looked so brawny in his clothes, but naked he was sleek.
    She used to love touching him. Could run her hand down his back for hours.
    The memory started unpleasant fires in places in her body that had grown used to being cold.
    No
, she thought, resisting, denying him and his brute appeal.
Not him. Not again. We like sophisticated men
, she told her unruly hormones.
We like men with class and dignity. Men who like art and culture. Who drink wine and wear shirts
.
    Her hormones weren’t listening.
    He held up a beer, at home in the surprisingly warm kitchen with its granite countertops and pretty red tile backsplash. His house looked surprisingly like a home.
    “You sure you don’t want one?”
    “I’m not here to drink.”
    “You changed your name.”
    She blinked at the sudden shift in subject. “Baumgarten isn’t exactly made for television.”
    “You were Maddy Wilkins.”
    “Did you think I would keep your name?”
    His indifferent shrug sent her into some dark, angry places. He’d used that indifference against her for the last year of their marriage, making her feel