Julie Leto – Exposed (страница 3)

But completely focused on her goals, Ariana had waved away Charlie’s suggestion. She didn’t need a date with anyone but her architect and her loan officer, and those were strictly business.

Of course, now all the blueprints were authorized and the financing was signed, sealed and delivered. She had to face the fact that she had a whole empty week ahead of her, a fascinating city all around her and an ignored libido driving her crazy.

Suddenly, crazy didn’t seem so bad—and it definitely wasn’t out of place in San Francisco. She fanned through the article, witnessing once again what this amazing, charming, insane city had to offer—with the right man and the right attitude.

MAXWELL FORRESTER SHOVED his platinum credit card back into his eelskin wallet and shrugged over the cost of his and Madelyn’s wedding-rehearsal dinner. He had more than enough money to cover the expense, but growing up poor had saddled him with a frugal nature he constantly battled. A day didn’t pass when he didn’t remember going to bed hungry, knowing the food stamps had all been used, all too aware even at the age of ten that if he wanted so much as an extra peanut butter sandwich, he’d have to go out and earn it himself.

As expected of a man in his current financial position, he’d told Charlie, his best man, to spend whatever was necessary to make the evening elegant for Max’s future bride, their families and wedding party. He should have known better than to hope Charlie, Madelyn’s favorite cousin and Max’s best friend, would even think of capping his spending.

“You ready to go?”

“It’s early yet,” Charlie scoffed. “You’ve got one more night of freedom and you want to call it quits at—” he pulled his sleeve back to read his watch “—midnight?”

Charlie’s argument lost some of its punch when even he realized that it was indeed late, what with the wedding less than twelve hours away.

Eleven hours, to be exact, Max realized. Not twelve. Not a minute more than eleven. Once he said, “I do,” he’d be stuck with his decision to marry Madelyn. He shrugged away the thought. He wouldn’t be any more stuck tomorrow than he was today. Max had already made a promise to Madelyn that was just as binding as a wedding vow. And though he considered himself an arrogant, driven son of a bitch who sought financial gain over just about anything else, he’d never break a promise to a friend.

“Marriage to Madelyn isn’t a threat to my freedom,” Max grumbled. He wasn’t lying. Madelyn couldn’t be a threat to his freedom when he’d really never had any in the first place. Max was a prisoner of his ambitions—he’d accepted that fact before he turned sixteen. But tonight the reality really rankled, partly because he was tired of this conversation with Charlie, and partly because as he scanned the crowd in the barroom off to the left, he saw no sign of a Greek fisherman’s cap bobbing behind the bar—or more specifically, the exotic dark-haired beauty who wore it.

“That’s only because you don’t know what freedom feels like, tastes like.” Charlie grabbed his jacket from behind the chair, but slung it over his shoulder instead of putting it on, a sure sign that he wasn’t ready to go. “You should leave that office of yours every once in a while—and not to jog through a city you don’t see or to show a property you don’t appreciate as anything but a potential sale. Heck, you and Maddie barely even date each other!”

Max attempted to tear his gaze out of the bar before Charlie noticed, but he wasn’t quick enough. Charlie’s grin annoyed him all the more.

“I don’t want to hear this, Charlie. Madelyn is your cousin. You should be supportive of our marriage. It’s what she wants.”

Charlie grabbed Max’s arm and tugged him into the bar. “Maddie is not just my cousin. She’s my favorite cousin. She’s the one person in the whole snooty family who didn’t write me off when I flunked out of Wharton or when I decided to try my hand at acting before I moved back home. I owe her.” He forced Max onto a bar stool and waved at the carrot-topped, college-age kid tending the bar. “She introduced me to you, didn’t she? Got you to give me a try selling real estate. And who was your top agent last year? For the third time? Who’s helping you become a millionaire more than any of the Yalies or finishing-school lovelies who show your listings?”

Max glanced back at the door, knowing he should leave. He needed sleep. At least when he was sleeping, he wasn’t thinking. And tonight, he didn’t want to think. He’d promised Madelyn Burrows that he’d become her husband. They’d been friends since college. She’d helped him take the coarser edge off his Oakland habits, teaching him about designer clothes and fine wine and which fork to use at the country-club dinner. He’d repaid the debt by giving her a shoulder to cry on when she broke her engagement to P. Howell Matthews, her parents’ handpicked son-in-law. She’d wept, not because she’d loved the guy, but because her parents had treated her like a mass murderer rather than a woman scared to death of choosing the wrong man.

So instead, she chose a friend, her best friend. He and Madelyn shared a love for jogging and naturalistic art, and they both appreciated old buildings—she saved them, he sold them. They also had a mutual desire to marry for reasons other than love.

Max had nothing against love. In fact, he admired the emotion. Revered it, even. His parents loved each other, and they loved his footloose brother, Ford, and Max unconditionally and with all their hearts. But love hadn’t paid the rent on their tired Oakland apartment. Love hadn’t kept his father from working twenty-hour days driving a cab. Love had only marginally helped his mother endure the frustrations of teaching six-year-olds how to read and write when most of them were more concerned with getting their one, state-subsidized lunch, usually their only decent meal all day.

Love hadn’t been enough to keep his family together when his father was shot on the job. Unable to work, John and Rhonda Forrester had shuttled their sons from resentful relative to resentful relative. Eventually, the family had reunited, but the result was Max’s single-minded pursuit of wealth and, over time, power, which had led him directly to the eve of a marriage that had nothing to do with love at all.

And he wouldn’t even go into the havoc the emotion caused his brother. Ford was the most easygoing, likable man on the face of the planet, but he fell in and out of love quicker than Max unloaded a waterfront foreclosure. His younger brother had absolutely no idea what real love was about, and this was one lesson his big brother wasn’t qualified to teach.

He was certain of only one immutable fact—love was fine and good for people willing to sacrifice and suffer for it, but Max preferred to pursue success and financial satisfaction. Romance was a distraction. Until he’d met Maddie in college, he’d considered dating an unnecessary expense. Then she’d introduced him to her friends, girls with rich fathers and boundless connections. He’d dated the ones he liked, but drew the line at emotional involvement. So after graduate school, when Madelyn had suggested they “date” to keep her parents from fixing her up with another son of the country-club set like P. Howell Matthews, Max agreed. The ruse was born and had lasted all these years.

Madelyn was a pal. She understood his desire to make all of San Francisco forget that he was once a poor kid from Oakland—that now he was a force to be reckoned with in the lucrative business of buying and selling the most valuable properties in northern California. The marriage thing was more than he had bargained for, but Madelyn insisted the deal would work out for both of them.

Married to a Burrows, Max would have every door in San Francisco opened wide to him. Her father, her grandfather and her great-grandfather before him had all been prominent bankers with ties to every section of the diverse San Francisco community.

For Madelyn, the trade-off wasn’t so clear—at least, not to Max. She claimed that marrying him would not only appease her parents, but the union would give her more clout with the wealthy matrons who financed her building restorations. Personally, he thought Madelyn deserved better—a man who loved her like a wife and would give her the passion she deserved. And he’d told her so on more than one occasion. But he owed her so much, cared about her so much, that when she begged him not to worry and to trust her decision, he’d gone along.

Like Charlie, he wasn’t so sure he was doing the right thing. But he’d made his choice and he couldn’t betray Madelyn now because of a bout of uncertainty.

“You’re a real pal, Charlie, but Madelyn and I have discussed this over and over. I won’t back out.”

Charlie ordered two beers and shook his head. “You and Maddie are so blind. Neither one of you knows what you’re missing. Lust, passion, desire. Marrying a friend is all well and good, but without the fire…” Charlie’s words trailed off, his blue eyes glazed over.