Take a Chance on Me(39)

“Not really. He died in a plane crash.” The small Cessna had gone down in the Pacific. Nothing but the black box had survived.

“And then what happened?”

“The charges were dropped. Thomas had taken his records with him. There wasn’t enough evidence to convict me. There wasn’t enough evidence to clear me, either, so in the end, my name was still mud.”

Maddie met his gaze. “What happened to Sara?”

“She died with him,” Mitch said, his voice flat. Maddie was quiet for several minutes, staring down at the comforter as though it held the answers to all of her unanswered questions. Finally, she raised her head. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me too,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say. “But it was my fault. I was stupid and arrogant, and I paid.”

A heavy silence filled the bedroom. She picked up a corner of the comforter and started playing with it. “Was Sara beautiful?”

He tensed on instinct as she uttered the question every male in the universe hated. He wanted to lie, but couldn’t. “Yes, Maddie, she was very beautiful.”

“What did she look like?” She tilted her head.

Seductive and glamorous. The killer red dress she’d worn to the benefit the first night they’d been together was burned in his brain. It was almost always how he remembered her. In a sea of black, he’d spotted her from across the dance floor. Most of the other women had worn their hair up in some complicated arrangement like they were flowers instead of women, but not Sara: she’d worn her straight, midnight glossy hair down.

He’d smiled at her and she raised her glass in a toast. Their eyes had locked, and he’d known right then that she’d be under him.

Mitch sat straighter and looked at Maddie, cross-legged on the bed and decked out in her cotton tank top and shorts, red hair a tumbled mess around her cheeks. She managed to look cute and sexy in a way Sara would never have been able to pull off.

He cleared his throat. “She was tall, with long black hair and really blue eyes.”

“What was she like?”

“She was . . .” He paused, hating the conversation, but for some reason, Maddie wanted to hear this and he couldn’t deny her. Not after her painful story about her father’s death. It made his ordeal sound shallow. Insignificant. He sighed, continuing, “She was vivacious and charming. She had that ‘it’ factor and could pretty much have anyone eating out of the palm of her hand.”

“Did she have a job? Or was she a socialite?”

“She was a corporate attorney.”

“So she was smart and beautiful?”

Her cunning wit had been part of the attraction. “Yes.”

“Did you love her?”

He braced himself and told her the truth. “Yes, I did.”





Maddie wasn’t surprised. She’d known by the tone of his voice, by the shadows that crossed over his expression while he spoke, that he had.

Of course she’d been beautiful. He was beautiful. Even though Maddie had never seen Mitch in anything other than jeans and T-shirts, she had no trouble picturing him moving with Chicago’s elite.

Propped against the headboard, the white sheet a stark contrast to his golden skin, he watched her. The qualifiers gleamed in his eyes, but he was too smart to add them.

Talking about her father’s death had left her vulnerable. As much as she didn’t want to hear about the married woman Mitch had had an affair with, she trudged on. That time in his life was obviously painful. He’d lost everything, just like she had.

“Do you still love her?” Maddie forced her expression to neutral, surprised and worried that his answer mattered. How ironic. She’d been professing her love for Steve since she’d met Mitch, so she shouldn’t be bothered if he said yes. But that was different.

Both of them knew she didn’t love Steve the way she should.

His brow furrowed as his mouth turned down. “No. I haven’t thought about her in a long time.”

She kept quiet and waited, not allowing him the easy answer.

He ran his hand over his jaw, then sighed. “She’s all mixed up with my past. I think we were infatuated. Addicted to each other so we thought we were in love. But looking back, I doubt any of it was real, and even if it was, we’d never have lasted.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “She would have hated Revival, and I had to leave Chicago.”

“Do you hate Revival?” She’d wondered. He hadn’t kept up this gorgeous house and didn’t seem to care about the bar, but tonight, with his friends, he’d seemed right at home.

“No.” He shook his head as though the words weren’t convincing enough. “Not anymore. I thought I’d go crazy when I first got here, but after a while I adjusted.”

“And are you happy now?”

A small smirk curved over his lips. “I’m about as happy as you are.”

She nodded. The subject of happiness seemed too big to tackle right now.

Silence fell like a heavy blanket as they were once again caught in the awkward place between strangers and intimacy. She glanced around the room, her attention settling on the door. “I should go back to bed.”

“Stay.” His hand tightened on her leg. “Please.”