Extreme Bachelor (7 page)

After that awful night in
New York when he’d dumped her, she hadn’t seen him again. Actually,
no one saw him again. He just vanished. He’d gone off to Austria or
God knew where and her life had been completely shattered by one
simple phrase:
I am leaving and I’m not
coming back
.

It had taken Leah a long time to get over
him, but she really thought she’d done it—she’d been so sure she’d
done it—yet judging by the fact that she was having to remind
herself to breathe just now, it was impossible, even after five
years, to see the man she had once considered the love of her life
and not sink into despair with a sick sort of longing.

Seriously, if her heart didn’t stop
pounding, it was going to pop right out of her chest.

But
waitwaitwait
just a damn minute, she
thought as the world began to take sharper focus. This was totally
unfair! How in the hell could Michael Asshole Raney show up
here
? How was it
possible he could have made the leap from that successful career of
a hotshot financier and ended up in L.A. at all, much less on her
first feature film?

She abruptly looked at him again to assure
herself that she wasn’t hallucinating and that he really was even
better-looking five years later. Nope, she wasn’t hallucinating. It
was Michael all right, and he still had that same sexy, quiet smile
that used to reduce her to complete mush. And yes, apparently it
was possible to be better-looking five years later.

“I got this,” Michael said to Cooper,
without shifting his gaze from Leah’s face.

“Okay. Just drink some water, Leah, and
you’ll be fine,” Cooper said. “I think I’ll go have a chat with
Beth.”

Cooper walked away, leaving Leah alone with
Michael. She stared blindly at the court, taking big sips of water
to keep from talking. In the background, she was vaguely aware of
Jack talking loudly about teamwork and safety and how it wasn’t
very nice to fire dodgeballs at other people’s heads or something
like that, and how Beth wouldn’t be playing any more dodgeball
because of her disregard for the rules, but the whole thing was
fading to background noise.

She was still having serious trouble
catching her breath. It felt as if there was a vice around her
heart. All the things she thought she’d say if she ever saw him
again had vanished into thin air, and the only thing in her head
now was one question: Why?

She definitely wasn’t
going to ask him that.
Okay,
Leah
, she told herself,
do NOT be a wimp. So what if he is not seeing you
exactly at your best? This is YOUR film and YOU can do this, you
can do this, you can do this
, she chanted
in her head.

She wasn’t looking at him, but she could
feel him, every single inch of him, strong and hard and warm.

“Leah . . . I don’t know what to say,”
Michael said at last. “I didn’t notice your name on the list.”

Be fabulously successful!
Be nonchalant! Be someone who is glad she moved
on
! “Oh,” she said, finally forcing a
smile. “Well, that’s probably because it’s not Kleinschmidt
anymore.”

“No?”

“No,” she said, screwing the lid back on the
water bottle, her consciousness rousing from its fog of confusion
to take hold. She had shortened it because she’d gotten such a bad
rap for being a basket case after he’d left her, but that didn’t
sound very glamorous. “It’s Klein. I shortened it for my acting
career.”

God, that sounded even more stupid than the
real reason. She’d been on top of the world when she’d last seen
him, and now she could barely get a gig.

“It was a good move,” she
added, upping the stupid quotient to moronic.
A good move
? she yelled at herself.
Jesus, she couldn’t even
act
fabulously successful. No wonder her acting
instructor said she didn’t know the meaning of the word
spontaneous.

Okay, but it didn’t matter, because she
didn’t owe this man an explanation about anything. Not her name,
not her spectacular fall from the Broadway marquee—Nothing. If
anyone owed anyone any explanations at all, it was him.

“This is so weird,” Michael said again with
a funny little smile.

“Weird? I wouldn’t call it
weird,” Leah snorted. “I mean, granted, it’s not every day you run
into old, ah . . . okay, all right, you are definitely the last
person I expected to see here,” she admitted. “But it’s not
that
weird.”

Okay, that was pretty good. Breezy, sort of
like an old school acquaintance, nothing more.

Michael chuckled. It was a warm, familiar
sound that slid all over her, trickling down her spine, reminding
her of how he used to chuckle in her ear when they were fooling
around. “You are definitely the last person I thought I’d see,
too,” he said, and smiled fully, his teeth still white and straight
and damnably sexy. “So how are you, Leah?” he asked, peering too
closely. He was probably trying to figure out what he saw in her
back then.

“Me? Great,” she said,
nodding enthusiastically. “Oh yeah, I’m doing great,” she said,
flinging one arm out to emphasize how great, and flashed him
an
I’m-doing-great
! smile before turning her attention to the dodgeball game
they had just started.

“I always knew you’d end up in Hollywood,”
he said quietly.

The soft timbre of his voice dredged up a
memory so deep that Leah’s heart sank a little deeper. She was
instantly transported back to one snowy night high above the
streets of Manhattan, when they had lain in his bed after making
love, their naked bodies entwined, talking about the future. “I
want to be a film actress,” she’d said. “Not Broadway. Film. Do you
think that’s crazy?”

Michael had stroked her hair and had said
easily, “Not at all, baby. If you really want to be an actress,
then we’ll move to L.A. so you can be one.”

His response had surprised her, and she’d
twisted around in his arms onto her stomach, propping herself on
her elbows to look at him. “Just like that?” she’d asked
incredulously. “You’d really give up your career and move to L.A.
for me?”

He’d laughed, had touched his knuckle to the
tip of her nose. “I can do my job there. And yes, I’d do it for
you,” he’d said, and slipped his hand around her nape, pulling her
forward. “I’d do anything for you.” And he had kissed her until she
really believed he would do anything for her.

She wondered if he was remembering the same
moment. Probably not. He probably hadn’t remembered it a week after
he’d said it. Just a lot of bullshit from a player.

She looked at him again,
the face that had betrayed her, stunned her, wounded her so deeply
that she was almost buried beneath her own bitter sorrow and
suddenly blurted, “Michael, what the hell are you doing here? How
did you end up here, of all places?” she exclaimed, her hand waving
at
here
. “You
never said anything about wanting to be in movies. You’re in
finance, for Chrissakes—so what the hell, you’re a stunt guy? Are
you the fourth stunt guy now? The
fourth
stunt guy? How is it possible
that you are a stunt guy?”

“Well,” he said, wincing a little as his
gaze dipped to her lips, “It just sort of happened.”

“No, no, no, something
like that doesn’t just sort of happen,” she said, stabbing her
hands in the air for emphasis. “And even if it did, how would it
happen on
my
film?”

“My guess? Karma.”

He had to be kidding. He
would chalk this up to something as stupid as karma after what had
happened between them? Try the devil. Or a hole in the cosmos.
Anything but karma. “
Karma
?” she echoed incredulously.
“You think this is karma?” And did he have to look at her lips like
that? “This isn’t karma, Michael, this is just . . . just really
really . . . un-freakin’-believable.”

For some reason, Michael chuckled. “You know
what, Leah? You look amazing.”

Leah instantly put a hand
to her hair. “I usually look so much better than this,” she
muttered and happened to glance down at her PF Flyers. Oh Jesus,
what lame run-into-your-ex shoes. They just screamed
loser
.

Not to mention the T-shirt
cropped at the waist that said
Tampa
Bay
in cursive letters across her chest.
She’d never even been to Tampa Bay—she’d picked this up at a thrift
shop along with the PF Flyers.

“I don’t know how much better you could
possibly look, because you look fantastic.”

He said it so sincerely
that the warmth of the compliment seeped under her skin, and she
couldn’t help smiling a little. “Thanks.
Ahem
. So, do . . .
ahem
. . . ah . . .
sodoyou.”

Now his brown eyes were shining in a way
that was making her feel slightly woozy. She wondered how he could
possibly have that effect on her after what he’d done to her and
after all this time. Yet the pull was powerful enough that she felt
a slight panic and abruptly stood up. “So listen, I gotta get back
to work.”

“Are you sure?” he said, standing, too.
“Just take it easy, sit this one out.”

“No, really, I’m okay,”
she said, now suddenly feeling frantic to get away from him. “So
thanks for helping me and . . .”
What? And
WHAT? And nothing
. There was nothing she
wanted to say to him. She gave him a dorky little wave and jogged
back to her group, hating him for showing up here after all these
years.
Damn
him.

Once again, Michael Raney had ruined
everything.

SEEING Leah Kleinschmidt knocked Michael
flat on his ass—he’d thought so much about her, had lamented
leaving her more times than he could count—but this was so
unexpected and so shocking, he was not prepared to face her.

Not like this.

Unfortunately, it was too late, because he
had seen her, and now he had to get his shit together, because he
had to work, and before he did anything else, he had to kill Jack
for this little surprise.

Not before he got an explanation of how that
asshole had managed to pull this off.

Jesus, the moment he
realized he was seeing Leah, that it was
Leah
out there hurling red balls and
dodging even more of them, his heart had stopped beating and had
climbed right up into his throat. When their eyes met, and she was
hit broadside with a dodgeball and lost her balance, falling in one
ugly sprawl of arms and legs, all he could think about was whether
she was all right, and he had rushed forward without
deliberation.

Myriad thoughts raged through his head as
he’d sat next to her, thoughts he couldn’t quite grasp or put into
words. All the things he’d wished he’d said the night he’d ended
it, all the things he’d wanted to say over the last five years, how
incredible it was to see her now. He tried to make conversation,
tried to at least say hello without sounding like an idiot, but
frankly, when Leah had half-trotted, half-limped away, Michael had
felt relieved.

He wasn’t ready for this
at all. He needed time to get his thoughts together, to figure out
how to proceed, but it was proving impossible with her in the same
room. Hell, the same
state
. He couldn’t keep his eyes off
of her, and he watched her at the other end of the gym talking to
some women, her hands flying. He wondered where she’d been, what
she’d done . . . who she was with now.

His torch for her had never died. The very
moment he’d seen her and knew it was Leah, he’d felt a rush of all
the loose and fuzzy things that he used to feel for her bubbling up
inside him again. It was weird and intense—a feeling he’d only
experienced a couple of times in his life. At thirteen, he’d felt
it for Candace Flores, who was two years older than him and never
noticed Michael at all—except to call him a major geek one day in
front of several other kids and then laugh.

After that spectacular put-down, Michael
hadn’t felt this way again until he’d met Leah at a happy hour one
night in New York. There was something about her that felt familiar
from the very start, something that had caused the first ribbon of
desire to curl around his heart with no more than a hello from
her.

And here he was five years later, having
been the one to have ruined everything, feeling it all over
again.

She looked so good. The image Michael had
carried around all these years hadn’t done her justice. She’d let
her hair grow out—it was below shoulder-length now, but still the
color of corn silk. Her eyes were large and crystalline blue, and
her mouth still made the man in him squirm. She’d always had that
effect on him—when he saw her, the guy instinct in him wanted to be
with her, in every way possible.

She was wearing shorts and a tight T-shirt
that outlined her near-perfect shape. Her legs were long and
athletic, and she looked healthy, not anorexic like so many others
in the gym. She looked absolutely fantastic.

Get it together,
man
, he chastised himself. He couldn’t
stand at one end of the gym ogling her all day. They had a lot of
work to do, and this wasn’t exactly the time or place to pick up a
relationship he’d broken in half with a single blow to the gut five
years ago.

He made himself turn away, made himself
work, and somehow he managed to get through the morning session. He
took girls aside and tried to teach them how to play team dodgeball
by complimenting them and getting them to lighten up a little, to
laugh. His efforts, as usual, made him more than one friend among
his group.