Wanna Be Yours Read online

  “I’ll walk you out, if that’s okay. Make sure you get to your car,” he said.

  She neither agreed nor disagreed. She turned toward him when they reached her car. She held out her hand. When he took it, she tugged him so he took a step closer to her, bending.

  He wanted to kiss her but didn’t dare. Instead, he let his gaze travel over her mouth. He didn’t let go of her hand. A brief struggle of emotion played over her expression before she gave her head the barest shake and stepped back, letting go of his hand.

  “I think,” she said, “that you and I are going to be very good friends.”

  “I hope so,” Eric said.

  “Perhaps I’ll see you next week,” she said. “Goodnight.”

  Seven

  Backyard barbecues were such a thoroughly American sort of party, and Madeline adored them. She’d grown up in a home much like the one Alex and Olivia shared, a ranch house with a nice back yard shaded with trees and a picnic table. They had moved to England to be closer to her maternal grandparents when Madeline was thirteen. She’d gone to Tokyo with her mother and father when she was seventeen. After that, she’d been married. She and Izumi had hosted many parties, most lavish and elaborate, and not a one of them as much fun as a barbecue.

  “Hello, gorgeous.” Alex greeted her as she entered the back yard through the wooden gate. He wore an apron on which a huge-breasted and bikini-clad form had been printed and waved a pair of grill tongs at her. “You’re late.”

  “I was icing your cake.” She held the plastic container aloft. “You did request dessert.”

  Alex’s wife, her dark hair wound in small braids and pulled into a topknot, held up a platter of cut fruit she’d been carrying from the kitchen. “Madeline! Hi. C’mon with me, you can put that over here.”

  “Kiss first,” Alex said.

  Madeline laughed and offered her cheek to Olivia. “Certainly.”

  “I meant me,” he said with a frown that made both women laugh.

  Olivia kissed his mouth, holding the platter between them. “Let her get a drink first, at least.”

  He pointed at Madeline with the tongs. “Fine. Bring me a beer, baby, would you?”

  “It would be my greatest pleasure. What I live for, really.” Olivia tossed this over her shoulder as she led Madeline toward a folding table covered with a festive cloth set up near the small fish pond. She grinned at Madeline. “He’s something, isn’t he?”

  Madeline settled the cake next to the other plates of dessert. “He is.”

  Olivia gave him a fond look as she put down her fruit and bent to dig through a cooler of ice to pull up a bottle of beer. “I’m so glad you made it. I kept telling Alex to invite you over for dinner, but with my work schedule I haven’t had a weekend off in forever. The trials of working for myself, I guess.”

  Olivia had her own photography studio and gallery. Madeline had seen lots of Olivia’s work. Alex was a very, very proud husband and liked to show her off.

  “Alex mentioned you were trying to get away from doing weddings.” Madeline accepted the bottle of beer Olivia handed her.

  “Yeah. I want to do more portraits, more stuff for myself…weddings pay the bills and get your name out there, but honestly, they are so much work.” Olivia sighed and cracked the cap of her bottle and sipped. “…Madeline?”

  She’d been working at getting the top off her own bottle when she looked across the yard to see Alex talking with a familiar man. Tall. Lean. Shaggy dark hair.

  Eric.

  “How do you know him?” Madeline tipped the bottle toward him.

  Olivia turned. “He’s one of Alex’s friends. I think they met at the gym. Why?”

  “I know him, that’s all.”

  Olivia made a small noise, and Madeline looked at her. The other woman gave her a wry grin. “That explains it. He told me he was inviting Eric on purpose. I guess…for you?”

  “Your husband needs a good spanking,” Madeline said with a frown and drank some beer. It was crisp, cold, clean and good, but it wasn’t going to chase away the sourness on her tongue at the idea that her friend had set her up this way.

  Olivia laughed. “Don’t I know it. I’d say he does, too. If I’d known it was going to upset you, I wouldn’t have let him do it.”

  “I’m not upset. Just…” Madeline shook her head. “It’s just going to be a bit awkward, that’s all.”

  As she spoke, she saw Eric turning in her direction. He’d spotted her. She couldn’t escape now. He was heading toward her.

  “Hi there. Olivia. Hey.” He nodded toward Alex’s wife, who wisely took her beer and one for her husband and left Madeline and Eric alone. He gave Madeline his full attention and a slow, easy grin hotter than the sun overhead. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  “Fancy, indeed. You know Alex?”

  Eric turned for a moment before focusing on her. “Yeah. Met him at the gym. We both used to live in the same area for a while, back in Pennsylvania.”

  “Small world,” she told him. “What a convenient coincidence.”

  He lifted his beer bottle toward her, waiting until she’d clinked hers to it before sipping. “Must be fate.”

  “Must be,” she said carelessly, casually, even though the idea of fate meant a lot to her and always had. She sipped her own beer, relishing the flavor of it. The scent of grilled meat had her stomach rumbling.

  She was suddenly very glad she’d accepted Alex’s invitation to this party.

  “How did you know we knew each other?” Eric asked Alex over thick slabs of chocolate cake that were topping off the burgers, dogs and chicken they’d already stuffed into their faces. “Me and Madeline, I mean.”

  “She mentioned you a few weeks ago, and I thought, how weird would it be if the tall, dark and handsome ER doc named Eric that she’d met was the same dude who worked out so hard at the gym? I mean, what are the chances, right?” Alex had lowered his voice to answer Eric’s question, but now grinned. “I figured that even if you weren’t the same guy, you still might like meeting each other. And if you don’t…well. How could you not like her? She’s amazing.”

  Eric didn’t try to deny the thrill that went through him at Alex’s answer. “She is. So…she mentioned me, huh?”

  “Yeah. But you don’t tell her I told you. Hey, Sassy, what’s up?” Alex interrupted himself to greet the woman who’d just joined them, a plate of cake in one hand. He nodded toward Alex. “Eric, this is my wife’s best friend. Sarah. Sassy, if you get to know her well enough.”

  “I’m Sarah,” she said and shook his hand, rolling her eyes a little at Alex. “I told you, I’m trying to grow out of being Sassy.”

  “You should never grow out of being Sassy,” Alex told her.

  “I just came to say that we’re going inside to play Cards Against Humanity. You want to come?”

  Alex nodded. “Yeah. I’ll be in.”

  Eric had glimpsed Madeline inside the kitchen through the sliding glass doors, but she’d just come out onto the deck and was looking around the yard. Looking for him? They’d spent most of the afternoon talking, but she’d gone inside a while back to use the bathroom and hadn’t come back out. She spotted him and smiled, heading that way.

  “Yeah, in a minute,” he said.

  Alex saw her and slung an arm around Sassy’s shoulder. “C’mon. Let’s go in.”

  “Watch the cake,” she protested, but the pair of them were already heading off by the time Madeline showed up in front of Eric.

  “I got waylaid inside. Sorry. Someone wanted to talk to me about their trip to Tokyo. Restaurant recommendations, that sort of thing. And to practice their Japanese.”

  “You speak Japanese,” he said.

  She looked amused. “Well…yes. I lived in Tokyo for years. And my father is Japanese.”

  “Why do I think there’s so much of a story there, waiting to be told?”

  She looked surprised, then taken aback. Then wary. He hated the sight of that shutter