Extreme Bachelor (21 page)

With a mental groan, Michael picked up
another fry. “I didn’t go back until two years ago.”

“Did you look for me?” she asked, her eyes
narrowing.

Being totally and completely honest was
shaping up to be a real bitch. “No,” he said quietly. “I didn’t
think there was a point. I thought if you were still there, you
wouldn’t see me. And I thought you were probably with someone else,
probably even married. Either way, I didn’t want to know.”

She frowned. “So what made this different?
Why is L.A. the place you’ve decided to unearth it all again?”

“Because I saw you,” he said instantly.
“From the moment I saw you on TV, I didn’t care who you were with,
I wanted to talk to you. And when I saw you lying there on the gym
floor—”

“Okay, okay,” she said, motioning with her
hand for him to speed past that part.

“When I saw you, I couldn’t help myself or
the rush of all those feelings I still had for you.”

She looked skeptical.
Michael pushed the baskets away and extended his hand, palm up,
silently asking for hers. She didn’t take it at first, just stared
at his hand until he said
please
, and then she very
reluctantly put hers in his, and he folded his fingers over hers,
holding her tightly.

“I made a mistake, Leah. I don’t know how to
impress on you how sorry I am for it. I would bring down the stars
one at a time and hand them to you on a silver platter, and it
still wouldn’t be enough. I’ve known for years that it was a
mistake, almost from the moment I left, even when I was working to
convince myself it was the right thing to do. Unfortunately, as
time went on, the more I realized how bad the mistake was. I loved
you, and I made a huge fucking mistake and I didn’t know how to
make it right. But then I saw you—”

He paused, looked
heavenward for a moment, trying to put a word to all the emotions
he’d felt that morning when he saw her. Hope. Dread.
Love
. More hope, and a
strange twisting in his heart, like the thing was cranking up after
five years.

He lowered his gaze to her
crystalline blue eyes and said softly, “It’s just that . . . I
never lost your taste in my mouth. I never lost your scent. I never
lost the feel of your body on my hands,” he said, lifting his palm
up to her. “And when I saw you that morning, more beautiful than I
remembered, your smile more golden than it had ever been, I knew I
had to try. I had to do it for me, because I
knew—
know
—I won’t
ever feel this way for another woman again in my life. And even
though the odds are stacked against me, I have to try, because I
still love you. I always have.”

She didn’t say anything for a long moment,
just held his gaze, her eyes full of myriad emotions and tears.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“I never had the guts to say it before,” he
confessed.

“It’s hard to know what to say,” she
admitted. “What happened that night was the worst thing that has
ever happened to me in my life. I wanted to die. I felt like I’d
lost a physical part of me. I felt like a fool, like I’d been used,
like I didn’t matter.”

Those words burned like acid, and he sagged
backward against the back of the chair.

But Leah sat up, leaned toward him. “The
thing is, there was a time . . . a long period of time . . . that I
would have fallen on my knees and given everything I had for you to
take me back. But . . . but you disappeared, and I didn’t have that
option, so I had to bury it,” she said, gesturing to herself. “Just
. . . bury everything, because everything had died. All the love
and trust and faith I had in you just died, and I buried it, and I
can’t resurrect it now. I don’t think I have the strength to even
try. It’s really asking too much of me.”

That was it, then. He’d hoped, and he’d
lost. “I understand,” he said wearily. With another sigh, he
reached down to the small bag he’d brought inside, and put it on
the table between them. “I got this for you.” He shoved the bag
toward her. “Just a small reminder . . . that I love you.” His
voice trailed off, and he leaned back, unable to finish his
thought. Now everything seemed like a reminder of how he’d ruined
her life.

Leah took the bag and opened it. Her face
lit up at the sight of the little origami bird, and she carefully
extracted it from the bag and put it on the table. “Oh my God,” she
said softly. “It’s beautiful. Where did you find it?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said sullenly.

She leaned forward, examining the intricate
folds. She spied the rolled-up note he’d lodged beneath the bird’s
wing, and carefully extracted it. Now Michael groaned—in a flush of
dreamy love, he had penned a godawful poem, just like he used to
do. It was a joke between them. He’d write awful poems and leave
them on Post-It notes around her apartment and his, or call up and
recite them into her voice mail. In hindsight, it seemed completely
moronic.

She unrolled the note and
read it, and Michael winced.
Roses are
red, Violets are blue, I would walk over fire to come back to
you
. God, how lame. He honestly had not
realized he could be such a sentimental jerk. He turned in his
chair and looked out over the parking lot, unwilling and unable to
see her laugh or roll her eyes, whatever she did when she read that
lame note. He was five years too late for this crap, and as soon as
he figured that out, they’d both be a lot—

“Michael, it’s so sweet,” she said.

Wait a minute. That was sincerity in her
voice. He risked a look at her from the corner of his eye. She was
holding the origami in her hand, admiring the craftsmanship. “It’s
beautiful,” she said. “Absolutely beautiful.” She put it down and
showed him the rolled up note, which she tucked into her sports
bra. “You always did know how to make me smile,” she said, and
smiled fully then, knocking him back on his heels with the force of
it. “Okay, look. I don’t want to go back . . . but maybe we could
at least be friends?”

Whoa. Was she serious? Hope picked itself
up, brushed itself off, and spoke carefully. “Maybe we could try
and hang out a little? Just a little. And if it’s too
uncomfortable, or it looks like you can’t find your way back . . .
then at least we can say we gave it a shot.”

She thought about it a moment, and after
what seemed hours rather than moments, she nodded. “I guess we
could try that.”

He felt a wave of relief. “How’s this,” he
said, his heart pounding with sheer delight. “We could start with a
really good date. One date. There is a movie premiere Friday night,
which is a little unusual, but they are accommodating James
Cameron’s schedule.”

Her eyes widened. “James
Cameron?
The
James Cameron, the director?”

“Yep, the same James
Cameron. We worked his film,
The
Hero
. So I’d love to take you to dinner
and a movie premiere.”

“Oh, wow, Michael,” she said, smiling
broadly. “That’s great . . . but I don’t have anything to wear to a
movie premiere.”

“I have something for you to wear.”

“You
have something for me to wear?” She laughed again. “You’ve
changed in ways I hadn’t imagined.”

“I have a friend who does costuming for
major motion pictures. She has several gowns, clothes that didn’t
make the movie for whatever reason. I know she could put you in
something that would knock L.A.’s socks off.”

“Really?” she asked, her eyes lighting up at
the thought of it. “Oh man, I don’t know,” she started, but he
reached across the table and grabbed her hand.

“Just . . . just give me a chance, Leah.
Give me a chance to prove to you how much I want you.”

Her eyes roamed his face, and then a slow,
but definite smile spread her lips, and for the first time in five
years, she squeezed his hand. “Okay.”

For a moment there, Michael believed he
could soar.

They talked about movie premieres and stunt
work as they polished off the last of the fries. Michael took Leah
home after that, and felt like he was walking on air, or had just
shot down class-V rapids, or had leapt from a plane into thin
air.

When they reached her house, Michael walked
around to her side of the car, slipped his arm around her waist
like old times, and walked her to the door.

“You want to come in and officially meet
Brad?” Leah asked.

He smiled, touched her nose with his
knuckle, and shook his head. “It’s probably best we do this one
step at a time.”

“You’re probably right. That’s a little too
much for one day—reconciliation, Brad, and a stack of pancakes.”
She laughed.

Michael did, too, but before she could step
away, before she could speak, he touched his lips to her cheek and
heard her catch her breath. He kissed her forehead, the bridge of
her nose, and then lowered his head to kiss her lips.

Leah turned her face up to
his. He slid his arm around her waist and pulled her into him,
smoothed a strand of errant blond hair from her temple, and then
slipped two fingers beneath her chin, forcing her gaze up so that
he could see her, could see the glittering eyes that had haunted
him for five long years. Leah smiled, touched her hand to his
cheek, and whispered, “
I remember,
too
.”

Michael spread his fingers across her cheek
and lowered his mouth to hers. Her body instantly curved into his,
and his blood rose up, making his arousal almost instantaneous as a
familiar sensation of carnal pleasure began to build in him. It was
all he needed, to feel her in his arms, to taste her lips.

He could feel the tension slip away from
Leah’s body and touched the corner of her mouth.

He slipped his tongue inside her mouth,
tasted a little bit of salt and sweet breath, which aroused him
even more—desire was spreading through him too quickly. But he had
so longed to hold her, so longed to feel her in his arms that he
could hardly stand it now that he had her. With both hands he
cupped her face and deepened the kiss, his tongue slipping over her
teeth, against the soft skin of her mouth, twining around her
tongue.

Leah pressed hard against him. Her hands
slid up his arms, to his shoulders, into his hair, down his back.
That loose strand of hair fell again and caught between their
mouths, but neither of them cared. Michael was lost in the moment,
lost in the erotic pleasure of that kiss—

The door suddenly flung open, and Brad the
Pothead said, “Oh, hey. I didn’t know you guys were out here.
Sorry.”

Leah’s body fell away from Michael’s; her
hands fell away from his shoulders. “Hey, Brad,” she said.

“Okay,” Brad said, and shut the door.

With a laugh, Leah dropped her forehead to
Michael’s shoulder. But his body was raging, and he buried his face
in her neck. “Come home with me. Come home with me right now,” he
breathed.

She lifted her head and brought her hands up
between them, forcing his head up. Her eyes were shimmering with
pleasure and delight, a look that could entice a man to move
mountains. “I’ll see you later,” she said, and moved out of his
arms.

As she opened the door and stepped across
the threshold, she looked back at him once more, waved fingers at
him as she closed the door.

Michael stood on that porch, staring at the
scarred door for what seemed like ages before he finally made
himself turn and walk to his car.

CONTINUING problems with the film’s budget
kept Michael away for the first couple of days of boot camp that
week. Leah saw him in the mornings, when he would invariably greet
her at her car with a big smile and a bagel. He confessed to being
worried that she had enough fuel for the paintball practice. And
they chatted on the phone one night when Michael wasn’t swamped and
could talk about planning an extreme hiking adventure to the
Peruvian Andes for a group of Italians.

Leah regaled Michael with the ongoing tales
of boot camp, the highlight being when Jamie single-handedly
brought paintball to a grinding halt by screaming when she
accidentally got her finger stuck in the trigger of the gun.

“Did it hurt that bad?” Michael asked,
astounded.

“It didn’t hurt at all.
But it ruined an appliqué on her nail she’d paid big money for,
and
that
hurt.”

Michael sighed. “The guys were right. Women
and war don’t mix.”

“Just wait,” Leah predicted. “When we start
shooting, we will be one well-oiled machine.” She didn’t believe it
for a minute. And she didn’t tell Michael about Nicole Redding.
Everyone loved Charlene Ribisi, who had come for the required
paintball practice, but they all agreed Nicole was a pain in the
ass, unwilling to carry her own weight.

Michael also was true to his word and hooked
her up with his friend, Beverly, the costumer, and arranged for
Leah to visit Beverly’s studio Wednesday at lunch.

Leah talked Trudy into going with her—but
not before Trudy made her come clean about her relationship with
Michael.

“Dammit! I
knew
it!” Trudy shouted,
hurling her straw cowboy hat to the ground and punching her hands
to her hips. “I wanted him. He’s so hot, and he likes my style. But
girl, I have to be honest—I have a sixth sense about these things.
You really shouldn’t lie to your best friends.”

“I didn’t
lie
,” Leah said with a
laugh, and stooped down to pick up Trudy’s hat. “It really was a
long time ago. I haven’t seen him in years.”

“Oh yeah? So how do you go from not seeing
some guy for years to being an item?”