Kiss the Girl (48 page)

Not that it changed anything.  He could take that speech he’d just given her and give it to himself, because no amount of love could convince him
to
do
this.  T
o
launch heedlessly into an affair with
a w
oman whose first priority had always been--would always be--
her
endlessly demanding public
.   
  

He closed his mouth and walked out of Nixie’s bedroom.

He grabbed his jacket from her awful couch and let himself out of the apartment
, but stopped in the doorway.  He hated himself, but knew he had to ask.  There was more at stake here than his heart.

“The gala?” he asked, and her lack of surprise sliced at him.
  She’d expected him to ask.  Had been waiting for it.

“
Don’t worry
,” she said, her voice distant
and blank
.  “
I’m a pro. 
Pimping my personal life is SOP, right?  The gala’s in five days.  I’ll do it to
keep your clinic alive
--
I owe Mary Jane that much
--
but that’s the last thing I’ll ever give you
.” 

She turned her back on him.
 

He
le
t himself out of her apartment.  Out of her life.
 
It was for the best, he told himself.  For both of them.  But he stood in the hallway outside her door for a long time before he could force his feet to move toward the elevator.
  Toward what he knew he had to do next.  The only thing that could keep him safe from Nixie and her
dangerous
claim on his heart.

Mary Jane was numb.  The
kind of
all-over
dullness
that made her think of Novocain, infomercials and the first time she’d broken up with Ty.  How many times had she done that now, anyway?  It was hard to keep track.  Half a dozen?  A dozen?  Most of her twenties, certainly.

But this time felt real.  Permanent.  She poked around the fresh hole in her heart but only found that queer missing sensation.  Not pain precisely.  But something deep and grievous and serious.  Something that was going to hurt like hell when her system realized the loss it had sustained.  But right now?  Nothing.  Just
the
dread of what was coming. 

The doorbell rang and she looked at the clock.
  Nearly midnight.  She should
be curious, shouldn’t she?  What if it was Ty?  But she knew it wasn’t. 
She’d seen his face when she’d walked out of his life.  He understood the crushing finality of this decision, too
. 

Still, doorbells at midnight couldn’t be ignored.
 
She rose from the couch, muted the Home and Garden channel and
looked through the peephole.  Then she opened the door and let Erik in.

“Hey, Mary Jane.”

“You look like hell,” she said.

“Thanks.  You, too.”

“Thanks.”

He stuffed his hands into the pockets of rumpled khakis and said, “I’m sorry it’s so late.  I just had something I wanted to ask you and it couldn’t wait.”

“Okay.”  Still
no curiosity.  How very strange. 
Mary Jane
in Wonderland.  “What is it?”

He drew his hand
from
his pocket and held out a black velvet box.  Small, square.  The kind rings came in.  “Will you marry me?”

She frowned at the box.  “Why?”

He lifted his shoulders with a kind of bewildered helplessness.  “I love you.  I always have.  You’re my best friend.”

“Right.”  She nodded.  “I love you, too.  But as my best friend.”

“I know.  That’s what I want.  I want to marry a woman I know and trust, a woman I respect and can be easy with.  I don’t want the rest of it.”

“The rest of it?”  Mary Jane eyed the little box and prodded herself to feel something. 

“You know.”  He shoved a hand through hair as rumpled as his pants.  “True love, soul mates, matches made in heaven?  It’s a field of fucking landmines, and I don’t want to walk through it
anymore
.  I want this.”  He took her hand, pulled her into his arms and rested his chin on top of her head. 

“Ah.”  Mary Jane closed her eyes and let the simple comfort of a friendly hug seep into her aching bones.  Relief washed through her, a balm on all the bruises and scrapes of the day.  He wanted what she wanted.  Just a friend to come home to.  Somebody to care
about
, but not deeply enough or passionately enough to hurt.

He pulled back and looked down at her very seriously.  “Will you, Mary Jane?”

“Yeah.  I will.”

He handed her the box and she flipped it open.  It was a lovel
y ring
--
simple, tasteful, with a whopper of a diamond front and center
.  Probably antique.  She wondered who he’d picked it out for.  Still, she slid it onto her own finger and handed the box back.  He
pushed
it into his pocket and smiled at her.  If he looked unutterably weary and sad at the same time, she didn’t let it worry her too much.  She probably looked the same way. 

He leaned down a pressed a kiss to her cheek.  “Thanks.”

“What are friends for, huh?”

“Do you want to make an announcement, or should I?”

She twisted the ring around her finger.  It was a little big, so she held it in place with her thumb.  “Why don’t we give it a few days to sink it?” she asked.  “Just keep it to ourselves for a little while?”

He shrugged.  “Okay.  Let me know.”

“I will.” 

They stood in awkward silence for a moment.  It occurred to Mary Jane that she should ask him to stay.  He was her fiancé, after all.  But relief was the only light glowing in her soul
when Erik finally said, “I should go.”

“All right.”  She opened the door for him, and even though all she wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep for two years, she reached out and touched his shoulder as he passed. 

“Hey,” she said.  “Do you want to talk about it?”

He looked at her, his blue eyes still and flat.  “About what?”

“About whatever happened that’s making you look like this
.
  All dead and
defeated.
  Because it’s not very you.”

He mustered up a smile and it was almost painful to watch.  Or it would be if she were capable of feeling pain at the moment.  “
Um, no.  No, thanks.”

“Okay.  See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah.  Okay.”

She closed the door behind him and went back to the couch, but she didn’t turn up the volume on the TV.  She twisted the ring around and around her finger and waited for it to start feeling like it belonged there.

Waited to start feeling anything.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Five
days later,
Nixie
slipped
her gala
dress over her head
and hauled up the zipper as far as she could. 
Crap.  Unless she was willing to dislocate a shoulder, she was going to need help with the last two inches between her shoulder blades. 
She glanced toward the Senator’s apartment
before she could stop herself. 

No. 
He
wasn’t there
,
of course. 
T
he separation of
the private and the professional
was the cornerstone of Erik’s own personal constitution,
mandating a gala guest list that conspicuously didn’t include the Senator
.  So
it wasn’t
like she’d risk running into him if she hopped over
to his mother’s
for a little assistance dressing. 

But hi
s rejection had detonated in Nixie’s
heart like a dirty bomb, and the kill zone was still smoking. 
She was too raw to s
mile her way through the kind of sharp-eyed, well-meaning
inquisition
the Senator would surely deliver
.

She twisted in the mirror, checking her rear view with a
dispassionate
eye.  B
ronze
silk fl
owed
from
her shoulder blades to
her ankles,
glow
ed
in the dying light of the day
.  T
he jeweled bandeau bodice ca
ught the golden light and shattered
it
into jagged bits of color that played on her beige walls
.  She stepped away from the mirror and the tiered hemlines swirled from her knees to her strappy bronze sandals, whispering
the
expensive nonsense
that
had
just a week ago
sent a thrill of girlie vanity straight through her.  She’d loved it.  More than that, she’d loved that
Erik
would love it.

Now she couldn’t work up even a glimmer of her former pleasure.  The dress was haute enough to please the
fashionistas
who kept detailed track of her professional wardrobe
but still
reasonably comfortable to sit in.  That was going to have to be enough, because even a cautious stirring of the embers that used to be her heart sent a wave of fresh, sparkling hurt dancing into the air.  
 

She
closed her eyes, pressed a thumb to the wrinkle between her brows and
blew
out a trembling breath.  God, she
’d been such a fool.  All this time she thought that maybe her job was the problem.  Maybe if she learned how to be something other than
Nixie Leighton-Brace
--
great, now he had her doing it; speaking her own name in italics
--somebody would take a chance on the woman inside.  Maybe some unlucky fool would fall in love with her.  She
herself
managed to fall in love against steep odds all the time.
  Surely it wasn’t a stretch to imagine that somebody else might, too.  Somebody driven, talented, intense.  Somebody intelligent, accomplished, dedicated.  Somebody like Erik.
 

It had never occurred to her that
,
no matter which way she went, she was screwed.  She could gi
ve up her name, her job, her place on the world stage,
or she could
use
every gift she had
in service of his dream.  It didn’t matter.  H
e could still look at the heart she’d offered up and simply choose not to love her back.