Hold Me Close Page 18

  Moira grabbed her arm and led her back to the living room. She pushed Maggie onto the couch. Maggie watched as Moira got a blanket from a hall closet.

  “You know anyone who’d wanna date me?”

  Moira shook her head. “You don’t want me to play matchmaker.”

  “Why not? You know me. You know what I like.”

  She put a pillow against the arm of the couch and spread a blanket out. “Not that I agree with everything Shane said, but I don’t think you should rush into anything. Take your time. Don’t worry about sex until you find a guy you really like.”

  “I know. But I miss sex, Moira.”

  “I know.” She gently guided Maggie until she was stretched out.

  Maggie sighed and closed her eyes. This week was full of renewed firsts. Hopefully, she’d have more in store soon. She was ready to take on life.

  CHAPTER 13

  Shane stopped by Maggie’s apartment before work the following morning, but she didn’t answer. Her car wasn’t parked outside either. She hadn’t come home. The thought sank in his gut. In their last conversation she’d mentioned dating. She couldn’t have found a date already, could she?

  He brushed the thought aside. She wasn’t the kind of person to just not come home, so she was probably with one of her siblings or her friend Olivia. It wasn’t like she had to check in with him.

  While driving to work, he thought about his life. Tonight, he’d get his computer back from Maggie so he could look for other departments that might be hiring. He hadn’t considered going anywhere else, which was narrow-minded on his part. If Maggie could be brave enough to explore her options, so could he.

  Once in the basement with his dad, he looked around. The job was almost done, then they would be on to something else. As much as he liked working with his dad, he didn’t want this to be the rest of his life.

  “You okay?” his dad asked.

  “Yeah,” he answered, not liking the lie but not knowing how to tell the truth.

  “Cara said you stopped by last night. What did you need?”

  “Dinner.” The quip was enough to make his dad laugh and move on to work.

  They worked side by side, and Shane knew they wouldn’t have too much more time together like this. While he would miss it, it was time to move on.

  By the time he drove back to his apartment, he was beat, but he had a plan. He dragged his feet up the stairs and was shocked to see Ryan O’Leary standing at his door. “Hey.”

  Ryan turned. “Just the guy I was looking for.”

  “What’d you need?” He walked past Ryan and unlocked his door.

  Ryan followed him in. “I know you’ve been pretty much working every night Maggie is and I said I couldn’t hire you when you wanted your old job back, but I was hoping you’d work, for pay, this weekend. With it being Saint Patrick’s Day, we’re going to be slammed. Maggie is insisting on working.”

  “I know. Yeah, I can be there.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it.” Ryan held out a hand and Shane shook it. “She’s doing better, right? I’m not imagining it?”

  “She is doing better. Better than we all give her credit for, I think.” Shane turned toward the kitchen. “Want a beer?”

  “No, thanks. I have to head to my other bar.” Ryan took a quick stroll through the place. “It looks good in here. You’ll be done soon, huh?”

  “Yeah. I probably would’ve been done this weekend, but not with the holiday.”

  “No rush. Don’t kill yourself to get it done. It was just wasted space anyway.” He turned away again. With his hand on the door, Ryan asked, “Thanks again for everything.”

  “No problem.”

  Ryan left and Shane grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. While he guzzled the water, he checked his e-mail on his phone. His heart stuttered to see one from the police department. He clicked it open and read. His eyes skimmed over it too quickly, so he started again at the top, wishing he had his laptop to read this on. It was a letter letting him know a detective would be doing a home visit. Shit. He hadn’t changed his address.

  The CPD would still have his address with Joe on file. He’d need to get that corrected. It was a good sign that he was moving on to the next step in the hiring process.

  Then he looked around his apartment. Ryan had been impressed because he knew what the place had started out like. A detective probably wouldn’t be too impressed with unpainted walls and exposed electric in the ceiling. As tired as he was, he put his job hunting plan on hold and opened a can of paint.

  Time to make sure his apartment looked like it was livable. He worked for a few hours until his already tired body screamed at him to stop. His stomach grumbled and he figured it was as good a time as any to get some dinner. He washed up, and before heading to the bar for dinner he knocked on Maggie’s door again. Still no answer.

  He walked down and went through the back door of the bar, waving at the kitchen staff as he went. No one ever questioned his presence.

  He took a spot at the bar and ordered a beer and a burger. While he waited, he glanced around. This place was almost always busy. Maybe not insanely so, but the O’Learys had a good thing. He took a sip of his beer, and movement off to the side caught his attention. He turned to see Maggie flip open her order pad.

  What the hell was she doing? She hadn’t been on the schedule to work. She smiled at the guys as they ordered. When she came toward the bar, she pulled up short.

  “Shane. What are you doing here?”

  “Having dinner. I didn’t know you were working tonight.”

  “I took an extra shift for Karen. She wasn’t feeling well.”

  He wanted to weep. He was too fucking tired to think about pretending to work tonight. But the bar was full and Maggie was working.

  “You look beat. Tough day?”

  Looked like it was about to get tougher. It didn’t help that she was pretending their argument hadn’t happened. “Yeah. I finally got a coat of paint on the walls in the apartment, though.”

  “That’s good.” She walked around the bar and tapped away at the computer screen, putting in the order she’d just taken.

  “I tried to catch up with you this morning, but you weren’t home.”

  “Checking up on me now?” she asked without turning.

  “No.” Not really anyway. “I wanted to talk to you. About our fight.”

  She turned slowly away from the register. “I can’t talk about that right now. I’m working.”

  “We need to talk.”

  “Later,” she whispered.

  He sighed, but let her go back to work. He nursed his one beer and then switched to water when his food arrived. He ate as slowly as possible since he wasn’t dressed for work and he couldn’t run upstairs and change without Maggie noticing. If she found out he’d only been pretending to work here, she’d be even more pissed.

  So he spent a few hours sipping on glass after glass of water and chatting with people who were half drunk. He felt Maggie’s stare on him throughout the night, but she said nothing.

  His muscles ached and longed for a hot shower. His eyelids scraped like sandpaper against his eyes. There was no way he’d make it to closing tonight. He felt like shit, both because his body was giving out and because he was failing Maggie.

  He watched what was left of the crowd. It was near midnight, so the bar would be open for a couple more hours. No one had paid extra attention to Maggie, and no one seemed obnoxiously drunk. The bouncers could handle this.

  Maggie will be fine.

  Shane slid from his stool, deliberately putting one foot in front of the other. He probably looked drunk. Leaning against the bar, he waited for Maggie to swing by.

  When she did, he said, “I’m going up to bed.”

  “Good. You look exhausted.”

  “Call me when you get home so I know you’re safe.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I think I can manage to walk up a flight of stairs alone.”

&nb
sp; “Do I need to ask one of the guys to walk you up?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Then promise you’ll call me.”

  “Why would you want me to wake you up?”

  He reached out and gently touched her jaw. “I need to know you’re safe.”

  “Fine.”

  She tried to look irritated, but he saw her eyes soften. He nodded and trudged out the back and up the stairs.

  He went to sleep with his phone in his hand so he wouldn’t miss her call.

  Maggie’s life was finally coming together. She practically skipped down the street toward her car. In her pocket, she had a list of community events she would photograph for the newspaper. The pay was crap, but she would have her name attached to pictures that were published.

  Now all she had to do was sell herself one more time to Moira’s friend who was doing the ezine startup. It would take a bit of juggling, but she could handle it in order to build a new career. Moira had done it. She’d worked small, going-nowhere jobs and then started freelancing.

  Maggie had already learned quite a bit from her big sister. She drove from the suburbs into downtown to meet Moira’s friend Tara at a coffee shop.

  Because she worried about being late, Maggie sped across town and ended up arriving early. She ordered a hot chocolate with extra whipped cream as a reward. She staked out a table near the front so she could see people arrive, but not too close to the door where the wind swept in.

  After draping her coat on the back of her chair, she settled in with her drink and her phone to play a little Candy Crush. After a few minutes, she felt someone looking at her. She glanced up to see if Tara had arrived and then scanned the room. Her nerves pricked. At the table to her right, a guy looked up.

  Their eyes met and he smiled. Maggie couldn’t help but return the smile. He was cute. His light brown hair was a little shaggy, and he had the scruff of a beard. He reminded her of a younger version of Ryan’s friend Griffin. She’d spent most of her childhood crushing on that man.

  She returned her attention to her phone, feeling a little silly now for playing a game. That same prickling sensation of being watched tickled her. She had to squash the negativity the feeling brought. Not every guy who looked at her was bad. From the corner of her eye, she saw him move. Then he was beside her.

  “Hi,” he said.

  Maggie immediately looked over her shoulder as if he spoke to someone behind her before realizing he was talking to her. “Hi.”

  “I’m Eli.”

  She smiled again. “Maggie.”

  “Can I join you?”

  “Um . . . I’m actually waiting for someone. It’s an interview, so I’m sorry.” She shook her head a little. If she wasn’t meeting Tara, would she have invited him to sit with her? For all her talk about wanting to date, she was woefully unprepared for it to actually happen.

  “I understand. I was hoping to buy you another drink. Since you’re busy tonight, can I have your number?”

  “Uh . . .” Damn. She was too out of practice. She couldn’t remember the last time she had a guy hit on her. At least a guy she didn’t mind. “Okay.”

  He held his phone in his hand and typed as she rattled off her number. Then he snapped a photo of her.

  Nerves tumbled through her. What if this guy was a predator? She covered the anxiety with a quip. “Afraid you won’t be able to remember what I look like?”

  “I’d remember.” He looked confident. “I like to have a picture with my contacts.”

  A moment later her phone buzzed.

  “That’s me,” he said. “You can save it so when I call you later to ask you out, you’ll know it’s me.”

  “But I’ll also know it’s you if I want to ignore you.”

  “I hope you won’t, but yeah, you could.” He extended a hand. “It was nice to meet you, Maggie.”

  She shook his hand and liked that he didn’t grasp too hard or too soft. He walked away, and when he got to the door, he winked at her as he held it open for someone. Tara strode in, blocking Maggie’s view of Eli as he left. Her cheeks were warm after the brief flirtation.

  Tara waved before going to the counter to place her order. While Tara’s back was to her, Maggie swiveled to see out the window, but Eli was gone. This had to be the strangest day of her life.

  To her surprise, Moira came through the door a minute later. Maggie’s heart sank. Her sister was afraid she’d screw this up, so she came to run interference. So much for turning her life around. She bit back the sigh when Moira waved like a crazy woman.

  Moira and Tara hugged briefly. Tara waited for Moira to order and they approached Maggie’s table together.

  Maggie stood with her hand extended. “Hi, Tara. It’s nice to meet you.”

  “You too,” she said. They shook hands, and Tara took off her coat.

  Moira did the same, and Maggie widened her eyes in question. Moira answered with a smile.

  Once they were settled, Tara said, “I hope you don’t mind, Maggie, but I asked Moira to meet with us. I think between the three of us, we can come up with a game plan.”

  So this was Tara’s idea, not Moira’s. Moira hadn’t expected her to flop. She relaxed, and her lungs filled easily.

  “A game plan for what?”

  “My magazine. I want something along the lines of Chicago Magazine, but for a younger crowd. People in their late twenties and thirties aren’t subscribing to a paper magazine. We live in an online world. My vision is to create a destination they’ll come to daily.” She took a drink from her cup.

  Moira practically danced in her seat.

  “That’s where you guys come in. I know Moira can write. I’ve looked at your portfolio, and I think you’ll be a good fit.”

  Maggie’s heart started to race. Blood filled her ears, and she slowed her breathing so she wouldn’t miss anything. This sounded like the opportunity of a lifetime.

  “I want to take what Moira’s already doing with the social scene and expand it to include more youthful events. Not that the charity stuff doesn’t have a place, it does. But we can capitalize on a different market.”

  Tara spoke about investors and budgets. Although she spoke like a total businesswoman, her eyes lit the same way Moira’s did when she was on a story. They talked for over an hour. Well, Tara and Moira talked, and Maggie mostly nodded.

  More crap pay and lots of running around, but she felt like they were on the edge of something interesting and fun and exciting. Moira and Tara looked at Moira’s schedule and created a plan. Maggie would tag along and take photos until she got used to the expectations of the job. Then she’d start to branch out and work with other writers as they came on board.

  Maggie was almost floating as she left the shop. Even the cold air outside didn’t ruin anything. In fact, if she took a deep-enough breath, she was sure she could smell spring. Just a hint, but it was enough to keep any Chicagoan motivated after a long and miserable winter.

  She had been so excited about the work that she’d forgotten to tell Moira about Eli. She probably shouldn’t jinx herself by talking about a cute guy she’d just met, since they didn’t have plans for a date, but the whole day had set her buzzing. Sitting in her car, she wanted to tell someone about all her awesome news. She stared at her phone. Instinct had her thumbing Shane’s number up, but she paused.

  Things were unsettled between them. This was definitely the type of news she’d normally share with him, but she couldn’t talk to him about a cute guy who might ask her out. Especially now. He’d accuse her of rushing into things again.

  Instead, she called Olivia and made plans to meet at O’Leary’s. As soon as she walked through the door, Maggie decided she needed to find some new places to hang out.

  When Olivia arrived a short time later, all of Maggie’s news bubbled out of her. Excited didn’t begin to describe how she felt. After telling Olivia about the job stuff, she took a deep breath then said, “And while I was waiting for Tara, a cute guy asked me
out.”

  “That’s cool. Tell me everything.”

  “There’s not much to tell. We were both sitting there and then our eyes locked and he smiled. And I smiled. Saying it like that makes me feel like I’m twelve years old. But then he came over and asked if he could sit with me, which I declined because of Tara. So he asked for my number instead.”

  Olivia’s eyebrows wrinkled. “You didn’t make plans for getting together?”

  “No. I was just impressed that he not only came to talk to me but asked for my number. You know there are a lot of guys who won’t even get that far. Plus, I was nervous.”

  “Has he called?”

  “No. It’s only been a few hours, though. You think I should call him?”

  Olivia’s hand shot up. “God, no. You want a guy who makes the first move and takes initiative.”

  “I thought this was the twenty-first century. You know, where women could do everything a man does?” She drank her water while Olivia sipped a martini.

  “Of course, some guys like a forward woman, but you have to decide what kind of guy you like. Me, I like a man who takes charge.”

  Olivia’s words caused a ripple of sensation through her. Yeah, a man in charge was a definite turn-on. “It’s not like a phone call turns me into a dominatrix.”

  “No, but it sets the tone for the relationship. Make him come to you.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “Then move on.”

  “Sounds like a depressing race.”

  Olivia sighed. “Sometimes it is.”

  Maggie’s phone vibrated on the table. She glanced at the screen. “Oh, my God. It’s him. Eli.”

  “So answer, you goof.”

  Maggie waved her hand at her friend, and she accepted the call. “Hello.”

  “Hi, Maggie, it’s Eli. Is this a good time?”

  “Uh, sure.”

  “How did your interview go?” His voice was cool and warm all at once.

  “Good. Great, actually.”

  “Excellent. I was calling to see if you’re free for dinner tomorrow.”