Match Me If You Can (Chicago Stars #6)(87)

“This whole time you’ve been laughing at me.”

“Yeah, sort of. When I wasn’t laughing at myself.” He pushed her into the recessed doorway of a shabby flower shop with a dirty window. “I told you what you needed to hear if the two of us were ever going to have a chance.”

“Lies are your idea of how to start a relationship?”

“They’re my idea of how this one needed to start.”

“So this was all premeditated?”

“Now, there you’ve got me.” He rubbed his thumbs over her arms where he’d been holding her, then let her go. “At first I was jerking your chain because you pissed me off. You wanted a stud, and I was more than happy to comply, but it didn’t take me long to start resenting being your dirty little secret.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “You wouldn’t have been a secret if you’d told me the truth.”

“Right. You’d have loved that. I can just imagine how you’d have paraded me in front of your friends, letting everybody know that my mother and Colleen Corbett are sisters. Sooner or later you’d have found out that my father’s family is even more respectable. Old Greenwich. That would have made you real happy, wouldn’t it?”

“You act like I’m some terrible snob.”

“Don’t even try to deny it. I’ve never known anyone as frightened of other people’s opinions as you.”

“That’s not true. I’m my own person. And I won’t tolerate being manipulated.”

“Yeah. Not being in control scares the hell out of you.” He ran his thumb down her cheek. “Sometimes I think you’re the most frightened person I’ve ever known. You’re so afraid you’ll come up short that you’re making yourself sick.”

She shoved his hand away, so furious she could barely speak. “I’m the strongest woman you’ve ever known.”

“You spend so much time trying to prove how superior you are that you’ve forgotten how to live. You obsess over all the wrong things, refuse to let anybody see inside you, and then you can’t figure out why you’re not happy.”

“If I wanted a shrink, I’d hire one.”

“You should have done that a long time ago. I’ve lived in the shadows, too, babe, and I don’t recommend staying there.” He hesitated, and she thought he’d finished, but he went on. “After I had to quit football, I had a big problem with drugs. You name it; I tried it. My family convinced me to go into rehab, but I told everybody the counselors were *s and left after two days. Six months later Heath found me passed out in a bar. He banged my head into the wall a couple of times, told me he used to admire me but that I’d turned into the sorriest son of a bitch he’d ever seen. Then he offered me a job. He didn’t give me any lectures about staying clean, but I knew that was part of the deal, so I asked him to give me six weeks. I put myself in rehab, and this time I paid attention. Those counselors saved my life.”

“I’m hardly a drug addict.”

“Fear can be an addiction.”

Even as his poisoned dart hit home, she refused to blink. “If you have so little respect for me, why are you still around?”

He slipped a gentle hand into her hair and pushed a curl behind her ear. “Because I’m a sucker for beautiful, wounded creatures.”

Something broke apart inside her.

“And because,” he want on, “when you let down your guard, I see someone who’s brilliant and passionate.” He brushed her cheekbone with his thumb. “But you’re so afraid to lead with your heart that you’re dying inside.”

She felt herself coming apart, and she punished him in the only way she knew how. “What a bunch of crap. You’re still around because you like to f*ck me.”

“That, too.” He kissed her forehead. “There’s a hell of a woman hidden away behind all that fear. Why don’t you let her come out and play?”

Because she didn’t know how.

The tightness in her chest made it hard to breathe. “Go to hell.” Pushing past him, she took off down the street, half walking, half running. But he’d already seen her tears, and for that, she would never forgive him.



Bodie heard the sound of a baseball game coming from his television as he let himself into his Wrigleyville condo. “Make yourself right at home,” he muttered, tossing his keys on the mission-style table that sat in the foyer.

“Thanks,” Heath said from the big sectional sofa in Bodie’s living room. “Sox just gave up a run in the seventh.”

Bodie sank into the armchair across from him. Unlike Heath’s house, Bodie’s was furnished. Bodie liked the clean design of the Arts and Crafts period, and over the years he’d bought some good Stickley pieces and added Craftsman-style built-ins. He kicked off his shoes. “You should either sell your f*cking house or live in it.”

“I know.” Heath set down his beer. “You look like shit.”

“A thousand beautiful women in this town, and I’ve got to fall for Portia Powers.”

“You set yourself up for grief that first night when you blackmailed her with that bodyguard bullshit.”

Bodie rubbed his hand over his head. “Tell me something I don’t know.”