Page 35 of BTW I Love You
It was way past time she put Maddy first for a change. It all made perfect sense. Or so she’d thought at the time.
She’d offered him a home-cooked meal because she loved cooking. It relaxed her. And inviting him to the cottage gave her the home advantage. She’d planned to be nicely mellow and totally in charge of the situation before they jumped each other tonight.
But what she hadn’t counted on was the crows of doubt swooping down and pecking apart her logic once the dizzying rush of lust from their nooner in Phil’s office had cleared.
What if she’d made a catastrophic mistake? Was she really capable of handling a man as overpowering as Ryan King? She had absolutely no experience of the kind of fling he was talking about, while he was clearly an expert at them. And how was overdosing on endorphins on a regular basis going to affect her common sense?
The first crow to appear had been Phil. She’d insisted on finishing her shift, hoping against hope that Phil would be too chivalrous to mention her and Rye’s twenty-minute disappearing act. No such luck. Although Rye hadn’t helped her chances one bit with the deliberately proprietary kiss he’d planted on her lips in front of the whole café—garnering a round of applause from the customers and a scowl from his manager—before he strolled out of the door, the hitch in his stride taking on a definite swagger.
Maddy had nipped off to the kitchen, but Phil had cornered her by the wait station ten minutes later.
‘Maddy, what the hell do you think you’re playing at?’ he’d demanded.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she replied, struggling for guileless but failing miserably with the heat throbbing in her cheeks after Rye’s kiss.
‘Don’t give me that. Knowing Rye, I can guess what you two were up to in my office.’
The denial clogged in her throat as the heat in her cheeks went nuclear.
‘Yeah, I thought so,’ Phil finished, shaking his head.
‘I’m sorry,’ she blurted out. Why did the liberating experience of ten minutes ago seem hopelessly immature and impetuous all of a sudden?
‘Don’t be,’ he said, resigned. ‘It’s not your fault. Rye has that effect on women. He always has. Even when we were in school. He could have any girl he wanted. The rest of us were in awe.’
Maddy swallowed. While she appreciated this insight into Rye’s teenage years, Phil wasn’t telling her anything she hadn’t already guessed. And, frankly, knowing about Rye’s success with women from such an early age was making her nervous.
‘But he never kept any of them,’ Phil said, his voice sombre. ‘And some of them tried really hard to hang on to him.’ He sighed. ‘Whatever he’s told you, whatever promises he’s made, he won’t keep them. I love the guy like a brother. But, when it comes to women, he’s about as dependable as Casanova on Viagra.’
The knots of tension in Maddy’s shoulders tightened. She really didn’t need to hear this.
‘It’s okay, Phil. I know what I’m doing.’ Or at least she hoped she did. ‘You don’t have to worry.’
Phil shrugged, looking resigned. ‘Fine; I guess I can’t stop you.’ He leant down and gave her a brotherly kiss on the forehead. ‘But make sure you don’t fall for him. Because the only one whose heart will get broken is yours.’
Maddy huffed out a laugh at the memory of Phil’s parting comment as she plucked the whisk off the utensils rack. Who would have guessed that Phil had such a romantic streak? She started attacking the lumps in her béchamel as the snakes in her stomach began to calm down.
Phil’s little speech may have made her a little too aware of the magnitude of what she had agreed to. And how much more experienced Rye was in bed. But, thank goodness, falling for her no-strings fling was one problem she didn’t have to worry about.
She wasn’t a romantic. And she never would be. She had seen what the ‘love delusion’, as Cal liked to call it, had done to her parents. Hadn’t they always professed to love each other while tearing each other apart?
She stared out of the window at the dusky evening light. She had no delusions about love. Because the experience of living through the carnage of her parents’ marriage had made her positive it didn’t exist.
Yes, one day she yearned to have a stable, steady relationship and make a home she could be proud of—with a man who respected her and cared for her. A man she could trust implicitly. In a way her mother had never been able to trust her father.
But she already knew Rye wasn’t that man and she wasn’t enough of a fool any more to think she could mould him into that man with enough time and effort and patience on her part.
Tonight would set the tone for the weeks to come. And the only reason she was so nervous was that she wanted to get it right. She wanted to be confident and in control, but also sexy and alluring and irresistible. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Which meant she had to relax.
She poured the still gloopy but just about passable sauce onto her lasagne.
Basically, she wanted to be Mata Hari. She layered the vegetables she’d roasted with the sheets of pasta. With a little pinch of domestic goddess for added flavour. She slipped the completed lasagne into the oven. Which was a tall order for any woman, especially a woman who’d spent most of her love life so far being Minnie Mouse.
Then she spotted the time on the oven clock.
Six thirty-five!
Whipping out the tea towel tucked into her jeans and dumping it on the counter top, Maddy dashed into the cottage’s shoe-box-sized bedroom.