Czytaj książkę: «Paper Wedding, Best-Friend Bride»

One

Lizzie McQueen emerged from a graceful dip in Max Marquez’s black-bottom pool, water glistening on her bikini-clad body.

Reminiscent of a slow-motion scene depicted in a movie, she stepped onto the pavement and reached for a towel, and he watched every long-legged move she made. While she dried herself off, he swigged his root beer and pretended that he wasn’t checking out her perfectly formed cleavage or gold pierced navel or—

“Come on, Max, quit giving me the look.”

Caught in the act, he dribbled the stupid drink down his chin. She shook her head and tossed him her towel. He cursed beneath his breath and wiped his face.

The look was code for when either of them ogled the other in an inappropriate manner. They’d agreed quite a while ago that sex, or anything that could possibly lead to it, was off the table. They cared too much about each other to ruin their friendship with a few deliciously hot romps in the sack. Even now, at thirty years old, they held a platonic promise between them.

She smoothed back her fiery red hair, placed a big, floppy hat on her head and stretched out on the chaise next to him. Max lived in a 1930s Beachwood Canyon mansion, and Lizzie resided in an ultra-modern condo. She spent more time at his place than he did at hers because he preferred it that way. His Los Angeles lair was bigger, badder and much more private.

He returned the towel, only now it had his soda stain on it. She rolled her eyes, and they shared a companionable grin.

He handed her a bottle of sunscreen. “You better reapply this.”

She sighed. “Me and my sensitive skin.”

He liked her ivory complexion. But he’d seen her get some nasty sunburns, too. He didn’t envy her that. She slathered on the lotion, and he considered how they’d met during their senior year in high school. They were being paired up on a chemistry project, and, even then, she’d struck him as a debutant-type girl.

Later he’d learned that she was originally from Savannah, Georgia, with ties to old money. In that regard, his assessment of her had been correct, and just being near her had sent his boyhood longings into a tailspin. Not only was she gorgeous; she was everything he’d wanted to be: rich, prestigious, popular.

But Max had bottomed out on the other end of the spectrum: a skinny, dorky Native American foster kid with a genius IQ and gawky social skills, leaving him open to scorn and ridicule.

Of course, Lizzie’s life hadn’t been as charmed as he’d assumed it was. Once he’d gotten to know her, she’d revealed her deepest, darkest secrets to him, just as he’d told her his.

Supposedly during that time, when they were pouring their angst-riddled hearts out to each other, she’d actually formed a bit of a crush on him. But even till this day, he found that hard to fathom. In what alternate universe did prom queens get infatuated with dorks?

She peered at him from beneath the fashionable brim of her pale beige hat. Her bathing suit was a shimmering shade of copper with a leopard-print trim, and her meticulously manicured nails were painted a soft warm pink. Every lovely thing about her purred, “trust fund heiress,” which was exactly what she was.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

He casually answered, “What a nerd I used to be.”

She teased him with a smile. “As opposed to the sexy billionaire you are today?”

“Right.” He laughed a little. “Because nothing says beefcake like a software designer and internet entrepreneur.”

She moved her gaze along the muscle-whipped length of his body. “You’ve done all right for yourself.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Now who’s giving who the look?”

She shrugged off her offense. “You shouldn’t have become such a hottie if you didn’t want to get noticed.”

That wasn’t the reason he’d bulked up, and she darned well knew it. Sure, he’d wanted to shed his nerdy image, but he’d started hitting the gym after high school for more than aesthetic purposes. His favorite sport was boxing. Sometimes he shadowboxed and sometimes he pounded the crap out of a heavy bag. But mostly he did it to try to pummel the demons that plagued him. He was a runner, too. So was Lizzie. They ran like a tornado was chasing them. Or their pasts, which was pretty much the same thing.

“Beauty and the brainiac,” he said. “We were such a teenage cliché.”

“Why, because you offered to tutor me when I needed it? That doesn’t make us a cliché. Without your help, I would never have gotten my grades up to par or attended my mother’s alma mater.”

Silent, Max nodded. She’d also been accepted into her mom’s old sorority, which had been another of her goals. But none of that had brought her the comfort she’d sought.

“The twentieth anniversary is coming up,” she said.

Of her mom’s suicide, he thought. Lizzie was ten when her high-society mother had swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills. “I’m sorry you keep reliving it.” She mentioned it every year around this time, and even now he could see her childhood pain.

She put the sunscreen aside, placing it on a side table, where her untouched iced tea sat. “I wish I could forget about her.”

“I know.” He couldn’t get his mom out of his head, either, especially the day she’d abandoned him, leaving him alone in their run-down apartment. He was eight years old, and she’d parked him in front of the TV, warning him to stay there until she got back. She was only supposed to be gone for a few hours, just long enough to score the crack she routinely smoked. Max waited for her return, but she never showed up. Scared out of his young mind, he’d fended for himself for three whole days, until he’d gone to a neighbor for help. “My memories will probably never stop haunting me, either.”

“We do have our issues.”

“Yeah, we do.” Max was rescued and placed in foster care, and a warrant was issued for his mom’s arrest. But she’d already hit the road with her latest loser boyfriend, where she’d partied too hard and overdosed before the police caught up with her.

“What would you say to your mother if she was still alive?” Lizzie asked.

“Nothing.”

“You wouldn’t tell her off?”

“No.” He wouldn’t say a single word to her.

“You wouldn’t even ask her why she used to hurt you?”

Max shook his head. There wasn’t an answer in the world that would make sense, so what would be the point? When Mom hadn’t been kicking him with her cheap high heels or smacking him around, she’d taken to burning him with cigarette butts and daring him not to cry. But her most common form of punishment was locking him in his closet, where she’d told him that the Lakota two-faced monsters dwelled.

The legends about these humanoid creatures varied. In some tales, it was a woman who’d been turned into this type of being after trying to seduce the sun god. One of her faces was beautiful, while the other was hideous. In other stories, it was a man with a second face on the back of his head. Making eye contact with him would get you tortured and killed. Cannibalism and kidnapping were among his misdeeds, too, with a malevolent glee for preying on misbehaving children.

The hours Max had spent in his darkened closet, cowering from the monsters and praying for his drugged-out mother to remove the chair that barred the door, would never go away.

He cleared his throat and said, “Mom’s worst crime was her insistence that she loved me. But you already know all this.” He polished off the last of his root beer and crushed the can between his palms, squeezing the aluminum down to nearly nothing. He repeated another thing she already knew. “I swear, I never want to hear another woman say that to me again.”

“I could do without someone saying that to me, too. Sure, love is supposed to be the cure-all, but not for...”

“People like us?”

She nodded, and he thought about how they tumbled in and out of affairs. Max went through his lovers like wine. Lizzie wasn’t any better. She didn’t get attached to her bedmates, either.

“At least I have my charity work,” she said.

He was heavily involved in nonprofits, too, with it being a significant part of his life. “Do you think it’s enough?”

“What?” She raised her delicately arched brows. “Helping other people? Of course it is.”

“Then why am I still so dissatisfied?” He paused to study the sparkling blue of her eyes and the way her hair was curling in damp waves around her shoulders. “And why are you still stressing over your mom’s anniversary?”

She picked up her tea, sipped, put it back down. “We’re only human.”

“I know. But I should be ashamed of myself for feeling this way. I got everything I ever wanted. I mean, seriously, look at this place.” He scowled at his opulent surroundings. How rich and privileged and spoiled could he be?

“I thought your sabbatical helped.” She seemed to be evaluating how long he’d been gone, separating himself from her and everyone else.

He’d taken nearly a year off to travel the world, to search for inner peace. He’d also visited hospitals and orphanages and places where he’d hoped to make a difference. “The most significant part of that experience was the months I spent in Nulah. It’s a small island country in the South Pacific. I’d never been there before, so I didn’t really know what to expect. Anyway, what affected me was this kid I came across in an orphanage there. A five-year-old boy named Tokoni.”

She cocked her head. “Why haven’t you mentioned him before now?”

“I don’t know.” He conjured up an image of the child’s big brown eyes and dazzling smile. “Maybe I was trying to keep him to myself a little longer and imagine him with the family his mother wanted him to have. When he was two, she left him at the orphanage, hoping that someone would adopt him and give him a better life. She wasn’t abusive to him, like my mother was to me. She just knew that she couldn’t take proper care of him. Nulah is traditional in some areas, with old-world views, and rough and dangerous in others. It didn’t used to be so divided, but it started suffering from outside influences.”

“Like drugs and prostitution and those sorts of things?”

“Yes, and Tokoni’s mother lived in a seedy part of town and was struggling to find work. She’d already lost her family in a boating accident, so there was no one left to help her.”

“What about the boy’s father?” she asked. “How does he fit into this?”

“He was an American tourist who made all sorts of promises, saying he was going to bring her to the States and marry her. But in the end, he didn’t do anything, except ditch her and the kid.”

“Oh, how awful.” Lizzie’s voice broke a little. “That makes me sad for her, living on a shattered dream, waiting for a man to whisk her away.”

It disturbed Max, too. “She kept in touch with the orphanage for a while, waiting to see if Tokoni ever got a permanent home, but then she caught pneumonia and died. The old lady who operates the place told me the story. It’s a private facility that survives on charity. I already donated a sizable amount to help keep them on track.”

She made a thoughtful expression. “I can write an article about them to drum up more support, if you want.”

“That would be great.” Max appreciated the offer. Lizzie hosted a successful philanthropy blog with tons of noble-hearted followers. “I just wish someone would adopt Tokoni. He’s the coolest kid, so happy all the time.” So different from how Max was as a child. “He’s at the age where he talks about getting adopted and thinks it’s going to happen. He’s been working on this little picture book, with drawings of the mommy and daddy he’s convinced he’s going to have. They’re just stick figures with smiley faces, but to him, they’re real.”

“Oh, my goodness.” She tapped a hand against her heart. “That’s so sweet.”

“He’s a sweet kid. I’ve been wanting to return to the island to see him again. Just to let him know that I haven’t forgotten about him.”

“Then you should plan another trip soon.”

“Yeah, I should.” Max could easily rearrange his schedule to make it happen. “Hey, here’s an idea. Do you want to come to Nulah with me to meet him?” He suspected that Lizzie could manage her time to accommodate a trip, as well. She’d always been a bit of a jet-setter, a spontaneous society girl ready to leave town on a whim. But mostly she traveled for humanitarian causes, so this was right up her alley. “While we’re there, you can interview the woman who operates the orphanage for the feature you’re going to do on your blog.”

“Sure. I can go with you. I’d like to see the orphanage and conduct an in-person interview. But I should probably spend most of my time with her and let you visit with Tokoni on your own. You know how kids never really take to me.”

“You just need to relax around them.” Although Lizzie championed hundreds of children’s charities, she’d never gotten the gist of communicating with kids, especially the younger ones. A side effect from her own youth, he thought, from losing her mom and forcing herself to grow up too fast. “For the record, I think you and Tokoni will hit it off just fine. In fact, I think he’s going to be impressed with you.”

“You do?” She adjusted her lounge chair, moving it to a more upright position. “What makes you say that?”

“In his culture redheads are said to descend from nobility, from a goddess ruler who dances with fire, and your hair is as bright as it gets.” Max sat forward, too, and leaned toward her. “He’ll probably think you’re a princess or something. But you were homecoming queen. So it’s not as if you didn’t have your reign.”

Her response fell flat. “That doesn’t count.”

He remembered going to the football game that night, sitting alone in the bleachers, watching her receive her crown. He’d skipped the homecoming dance. He wouldn’t have been able to blend in there. Getting a date would have been difficult, too. As for Lizzie, she’d attended the dance with the tall, tanned star of the boys’ swim team. “It counted back then.”

“Not to me, not like it should have. It wasn’t fair that my other friends didn’t accept you.”

“Well, I got the last laugh, didn’t I?”

She nodded, even if neither of them was laughing.

Before things got too morose, he reached out and tugged on a strand of her hair. “Don’t fret about being royalty to me. The only redhead that influenced my culture was a woodpecker.”

She sputtered into a laugh and slapped his hand away. “Gee, thanks, for that compelling tidbit.”

He smiled, pleased by her reaction. “It’s one of those old American Indian tales. I told it to Tokoni when he was putting a puzzle together with pictures of birds.” Max stopped smiling. “The original story involves love. But I left off that part when I told Tokoni. I figured he was too young to understand it. Plus, it would have been hypocritical of me to tell it that way.”

She took a ladylike sip of her tea. “Now I’m curious about the original version and just how lovey-dovey it is.”

“It’s pretty typical, I guess.” He went ahead and recited it, even if he preferred it without the romance. “It’s about a hunter who loves a girl from his village, but she’s never even noticed him. He thinks about her all the time. He even has trouble sleeping because he can’t get her off his mind. So he goes to the forest to be alone, where he hears a beautiful song that lulls him to sleep. That night, he dreams about a woodpecker who says, ‘Follow me and I’ll show you how to make this song.’ In the morning, he sees a real woodpecker and follows him. The bird is tapping on a branch and the familiar song is coming from it. Later, the hunter returns home with the branch and tries to make the music by waving it in the air, but it doesn’t work.”

Lizzie removed her hat. By now the sun was shifting in the sky, moving behind the trees and dappling her in scattered light. But mostly what Max noticed was how intense she looked, listening to the silly myth. Or was her intensity coming from the energy that always seemed to dance between them? The sexiness that seeped through their pores?

Ignoring the feeling, he continued by saying, “The hunter has another dream where the woodpecker shows him how to blow on the wood and tap the holes to make the song he’d first heard. Obviously, it’s a flute the bird made. But neither the hunter nor his people had ever seen this type of instrument before.”

She squinted at him. “What happens with the girl?”

“Once she hears the hunter’s beautiful song, she looks into his eyes and falls in love with him, just as he’d always loved her. But like I said, I told it to Tokoni without the romance.”

She was still squinting, intensity still etched on her face. “Where did you first come across this story? Was it in one of the books you used to read?”

“Yes.” When he was in foster care, he’d researched his culture, hoping to find something good in it. “I hated that the only thing my mom ever talked about was the scary stuff. But I’m glad that Tokoni’s mother tried to do right by him.”

“Me, too.” She spoke softly. “Parents are supposed to want what’s best for their children.”

He met her gaze, and she stared back at him, almost like the girl in the hunter’s tale—except that love didn’t appeal to either of them.

But desire did. If Lizzie wasn’t his best friend, if she was someone he could kiss without consequence, he would lock lips with her right now, pulling her as close to him as he possibly could. And with the way she was looking at him, she would probably let him kiss the hell out of her. But that wouldn’t do either of them any good.

“I appreciate you coming to Nulah with me,” he said, trying to shake off the heat of wanting her. “It means a lot to me, having you there.”

“I know it does,” she replied, reaching for his hand.

But it was only the slightest touch. She pulled away quickly. Determined, it seemed, to control her hunger for him, too.

* * *

A myriad of thoughts skittered through Lizzie’s mind. Today she and Max were leaving on their trip, and she should be done packing, as he would be arriving soon to pick her up. Yet she was still sorting haphazardly through her clothes and placing them in her suitcase. Normally Lizzie was far more organized. But for now she couldn’t think clearly.

She hated it when her attraction to Max dragged her under its unwelcome spell, and lately it seemed to be getting worse. But they’d both learned to deal with it, just as she was trying to get a handle on how his attachment to Tokoni was making her feel. Even with his troubled past, being around children was easy for Max. Lizzie was terribly nervous about meeting the boy. Kids didn’t relate to her in the fun-and-free way they did with him. Of course her stodgy behavior in their presence didn’t help. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to change that side of herself.

After her mother had drifted into a deathly sleep, she’d compensated for the loss by taking on the characteristics of an adult, long before she should have.

But what choice did she have? Her grieving father had bailed out on parenthood, leaving her with nannies and cooks. He’d immersed himself in his high-powered work and business travels, allowing her to grow up in a big lonely house full of strangers. Lizzie didn’t have any extended family to speak of.

Even after all these years, she and her dad barely communicated. Was it any wonder that she’d gone off to Columbia University searching for a connection to her mom? She’d even taken the same journalism major. She’d walked in her mother’s path, but it hadn’t done a bit of good. She’d returned with the same disjointed feelings.

Her memories of her mom were painfully odd: scattered images of a beautifully fragile blonde who used to stare unblinkingly at herself in the mirror, who used to give lavish parties and tell Lizzie how essential it was for a young lady of her standing to be a good hostess, who used to laugh at the drop of a hat and then cry just as easily. Mama’s biggest ambition was to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize. But mostly she just threw away her writings. Sometimes she even burned them, tossing them into the fireplace and murmuring to herself in French, the language of her ancestors.

Mama was rife with strange emotions, with crazy behaviors, but she was warm and loving, too, cuddling Lizzie at night. Without her sweet, dreamy mother by her side, Elizabeth “Lizzie” McQueen had been crushed, like a bug on a long white limousine’s windshield.

After Mama killed herself, Dad sold their Savannah home, got a new job in Los Angeles and told Lizzie that she was going to be a California kid from then on.

But by that time she’d already gotten used to imitating her mother’s lady-of-the-manor ways, presenting a rich-girl image that made her popular. Nonetheless, she’d lied to her new friends, saying that her socialite mother had suffered a brain aneurysm. Dad told his new workmates the same phony story. Lizzie had been coaxed by him to protect their privacy, and she’d embraced the lie.

Until she met Max.

She’d felt compelled to reveal the truth to him. But he was different from her other peers—a shy, lonely boy, who was as damaged as she was.

The doorbell rang, and Lizzie caught her breath.

She dashed to answer the summons, and there he was: Max Marquez, with his longish black hair shining like a raven’s wing. He wore it parted down the middle and falling past his neck, but not quite to his shoulders. His deeply set eyes were brown, but sometimes they looked as black as his hair. His face was strong and angular, with a bone structure to die for. The gangly teenager he’d once been was gone. He’d grown into a fiercely handsome man.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Sorry. No. I’m still packing.”

He entered her condo. “That’s okay. I’ll text my pilot and tell him we’re running late.”

Lizzie nodded. Max’s success provided him the luxury of a private jet. She’d inherited her mother’s old Savannah money, but she was nowhere as wealthy as he was. He wasn’t the only Native American foster kid in LA who’d made good. He remained close to two of his foster brothers, who’d also become billionaires. Max had been instrumental in helping them attain their fortunes, loaning them money to get their businesses off the ground.

He followed her into her room, where her suitcase was on the bed, surrounded by the clothes she’d been sorting.

He lifted a floral-printed dress from the pile. “This is pretty.” He glanced at a lace bra and panty set. “And those.” Clearly, he was teasing her, as if making a joke was easier than anything else he could think of doing or saying.

“Knock it off.” She grabbed the lingerie and shoved them into a pouch on the side of her Louis Vuitton luggage, glad that he hadn’t actually touched her underwear. As for the dress, she tugged it away from him.

“Did you really have a thing for me in high school?” he asked.

Oh, goodness. He was bringing that up now? “Yes, I really did.” She’d developed a quirky little crush on him, formed within the ache of the secrets they’d shared. But he’d totally blown her away when she returned from university and saw his physical transformation. He’d changed in all sorts of ways by then. While she’d been hitting the books, he’d already earned his first million, selling an app he’d designed, and he hadn’t even gone to college. These days, he invested in start-ups and made a killing doing it.

“It never would have worked between us,” he said.

Lizzie considered flinging her makeup bag at him and knocking him upside that computer chip brain of his. “I never proposed that it would.”

“You were too classy for me.” He gazed at her from across the bed. “Sometimes I think you still are.”

A surge of heat shot through her blood. “That’s nonsense. You date tons of socialites. They’re your type.”

“Because you set the standard. How could I be around you and not want that type?”

“Don’t do this, Max.” He’d gone beyond the realm of making jokes. “You shouldn’t even be in my room, let alone be saying that sort of stuff.”

“As if.” He brushed it off. “I’ve been in your room plenty of times before. Remember last New Year’s Eve? I poured you into bed when you got too drunk to stand.”

She looked at him as if he’d gone mad. But maybe he had lost his grip on reality. Or maybe she had. Either way, she challenged him. “What are you talking about? I wasn’t inebriated. I was coming down with the flu.”

“So you kept telling me.” He gave her a pointed look. “I think it was all those cosmopolitans that international playboy lover of yours kept plying you with.”

Seriously? His memory couldn’t be that bad. “You were tending bar at the party that night.” Here at her house, with her guests.

“Was I? Are you sure? I thought it was that Grand Prix driver you met in Monte Carlo. The one all the women swooned over.”

“He and I were over by then.” She wagged a finger at him. “You’re the one who kept adding extra vodka to my drinks.”

“I must have felt sorry for you, getting dumped by that guy.”

“From what I recall, it was around the same time that department store heiress walked out on you.”

“She was boring, anyway.”

“I thought she was nice. She was hunting for a husband, though.”

“Yeah, and that ruled me out. I wouldn’t get married if the survival of the world depended on it.”

“Me, neither. But what’s the likelihood of us ever having to do that, for saving mankind or any other reason?”

“There isn’t. But I still say that you were drunk last New Year’s, and I was the gentleman—thank you very much—who tucked you into this very bed.” He patted her pillow for effect, putting a dent in it.

“Oh, there’s an oxymoron. The guy feeding me liquor is the gentleman in the story?”

“It beats your big-fish tale about having the flu.”

“Okay. Fine. I was wasted. Now stop taking it out on my pillow.”

“Oops, sorry.” He plumped it back up, good as new. “Are you going to finish packing or we going to sit here all day, annoying each other?”

“You started it.” She filled her suitcase, stuffing it to the gills. She only wished they were going on a trip that didn’t include a child she was nervous about meeting.

“Are you still worried about whether or not Tokoni will like you?” he asked, homing in on her troubled expression. “I already told you that I think you’re going to impress him.”

“Because he might regard me as a princess? That feels like pressure in itself.”

“It’ll be all right, Lizzie. And I promise, once you meet him, you’ll see how special he is.”