Flirting with Fire Read online

  “Nice.” I shift my eyes from Luca to the girls.

  He sits down in the empty chair. “You can’t blame us, they were having a sex toy party.” He pushes his own long legs against the metal railing.

  “I don’t know why I did it, okay?” I don’t turn to him, but I feel his eyes on me. “I just… I’m done with girls who try to mold themselves into a version of a woman they think I’ll like. I knew she was different from the moment I met her at the auction. I mean it’s nice she doesn’t flaunt her amazing body. Truth is, before I approached her at the auction, I was excited that she bid on me. I can’t even describe my first impression of her other than that she was out of my league. Then I approach her and she can barely say a word or keep eye contact.”

  “Hard life when you turn women into babbling messes.”

  Luca doesn’t understand my dilemma or why I acted the way I did to Madison. He’s still in the ‘you’re hot, come home with me’ stage. The only thing he needs to know about her is that she’s of age and that one of them has a condom. It doesn’t matter if he knows whether she has siblings or not. He doesn’t care what her favorite travel destination is, or if she’s an early riser. Actually, he usually hopes she is an early riser so she wakes up and gets the hell out of his bed without expecting breakfast.

  “Stop judging me.” He points at me, like he could actually telepathically listen to my thoughts.

  “Just go find your Friday night girl.”

  He sits up, resting his elbows on his knees and stares over at me. “I get what you’re saying. You’re getting older and looking for a wife.”

  “I’m not looking for a wife, just a girl who will be herself and has a backbone and isn’t afraid to show it.”

  Luca just stares at me, confusion laced in his features. “Then I’d say the girl who used to write your name in her binder in high school probably isn’t your girl. But you still need to apologize for no other reason than the fact that I have to go on a date with her best friend and I don’t want your fuck up ruining what is already going to be a horrible night for me.” With that cryptic comment, he rises out of the chair and puts his hand on my shoulder. “Your fighting girl is out there somewhere.”

  I let him leave and enjoy his night as my mind stays in flux. Like usual, I disagree with my brother. Madison Kelly might just be my fighting girl.

  Chapter Seven

  Madison

  The anxiety of coming home early after my date crashed and burned like an Indy 500 car that hit the wall straight-on sets in when the dark windows of my place greet me. Vanessa must be at her mystery job and Lauren is either on a date herself or just out. Of course, I wouldn’t put it past her to be doing PI work on Vanessa. She’s way too worked up about Vanessa’s comings and goings.

  After I’ve driven up the alleyway and parked in the garage, I make my way through the backyard toward the house. The back door opens before I reach it and Lauren softly closes it shut behind her.

  “Lauren,” I say in a calm voice.

  Her hand covers my mouth, and my back ends up hitting the banister of our porch. That’s going to leave a bruise. Sometimes her quick reflexes make me think she was an assassin in her prior life.

  Without any explanation, and with her hand still covering my mouth, she turns me around and pushes me forward to lead me to where I just came from—our detached garage.

  She doesn’t remove her hand from my mouth until she callously shoves me into the backseat of her yellow Fiat which is parked in the garage.

  “What the hell?”

  She ignores me, throwing a blanket over us so we’re concealed while peering out the back window.

  We watch as Vanessa steps through the outside entrance of the garage, her heels clicking on the new cement I poured a month ago in preparation of selling this property. She doesn’t give a glance to the Fiat when she presses the garage button and the large door rises.

  A black town car waits idle for her in front of us and she presses the code on our keypad, making the garage door lower, leaving us with a view of her climbing into the backseat, unable to tell if there’s anyone already in there.

  Lauren, the little acrobat, jumps into the front seat and thrusts the keys into the ignition and hits the button on the remote for the garage door opener. The tires squeal and she peels out of the garage.

  “Hello! What the hell are we doing?” I climb awkwardly into the front seat, the seatbelt my first priority.

  “We’re going to follow her.” Her small foot presses on the gas pedal and we round the corner of the alley into the street.

  “I’d like to not die tonight.” I grasp for the door handle, anything to hold on to.

  “Please. I know Chicago roads like a cardiologist knows the heart.”

  I don’t even try to argue with the deranged line of thinking. Instead, I close my eyes. After a minute, I peek out of one eye because it’s good to test your heart under stressful situations, right?

  “Tell me about your date.” Lauren tries to spur a conversation as she speeds past a biker on the right.

  “Later.”

  “What?” She brakes hard, almost rear-ending the car between us and the town car. Her eyes stay focused on me as the red light illuminates her face through the windshield. “Maddie?”

  “Nothing. We’ll talk about it after this little PI move you’ve kidnapped me for.”

  She doesn’t press the gas and I notice she’s still in her scrubs from the physical therapist’s office. “Did he treat you bad? Because I’ll find him and nut check him.” The pissed off expression on her face says she’s serious.

  “No. I mean…well…I took him to Dice and Spins.”

  A green light replaces the red one streaming into the car and I slam into the back of the seat when she guns it.

  “Why would you take him there?” she asks.

  “Because I thought it would be fun.”

  The town car stops at a light to turn left forcing Lauren to piss off the person beside us as she presses on the gas, squeezes in and slams on her brakes. Horns honk and I sink down in the seat.

  “Seriously, you’d never be able to be a real PI person. The driver is probably on to you.”

  “Don’t change the conversation. How did Mauro enjoy playing Life?” Her condescending tone confirms what I figured out mid-date—that it was the worst date idea ever.

  “He didn’t seem to care until I…lost.”

  “You didn’t?”

  The town car is moving and Lauren follows the car toward the lakefront.

  “What? Women do it all the time,” I insist, but even I can hear the lack of confidence in my voice.

  “Not you, Maddie.” She shakes her head. “I have to say though, I’m surprised he noticed. He always seemed so self-centered.”

  I stare ahead as the car slows down due to the traffic around Lakeview and the masses of young people heading out for the night.

  I’m not sure I want to stick up for Mauro, but if we hadn’t had that small fight at the end, I never would have realized that he noticed everything about me. In truth, that might be what scared me the most. Like he could see inside me…how messed up I was from high school…how my beliefs about myself didn’t catch up with my outward appearance. Lauren may believe that Mauro is all about himself, but he nailed me in one night. I can be a people pleaser and whether that had anything to do with having a mom who fell to pieces when my dad divorced her or a dad who moved miles away after the divorce so that I only saw him for a few days in the summer and maybe on holidays, I don’t know. Or maybe it came from trying to make up for my lack of beauty at a time in my life when everyone is judged on how attractive they are. Regardless, his words sunk into me like tattoo ink on bare skin.

  I might be a confident woman in my job, but when it comes to social situations, I am and probably always will be a people pleaser at heart.

  “Duck!” Lauren says as the car comes to an abrupt stop.

  She sinks down low in the car and I
mimic her incognito behavior.

  “I think this is a little extreme. Vanessa will tell us when she’s ready,” I say.

  Lauren pays no attention to me, her eyes trained on the town car pulling around the front entrance to a condo building none of us would be able to afford a simple studio apartment in.

  The town car driver exits the car, rounding the front until he opens up the back passenger one. A doorman heads out at the same time, holding the front door open of the condo building.

  Vanessa steps out first, a raincoat I never knew she owned cinched tight around her waist, leaving only fishnet stockings and stiletto heels visible.

  “It’s so cliché I’m nauseous,” Lauren says.

  I jab her in the shoulder. “This proves nothing.”

  I’m fully in defense mode until a man emerges out of the town car. No suit, no tie, no clean-cut hairstyle that would suggest that he’s a successful businessman. Instead, he’s sporting a scruffy unkept beard and shaggy haircut with a plaid shirt untucked over a pair of jeans.

  “It’s so much worse than I thought,” Lauren says.

  “We don’t know anything for sure.”

  Lauren’s judgmental gaze flickers to mine. She’s cast her verdict already.

  I’m not so sure. Maybe it was my night with Mauro, that he wasn’t who I pegged him for, but I’m not convinced that Vanessa is an escort.

  The doorman tips his head toward Vanessa in a familiar way to suggest that this isn’t her first time here. They disappear through the doors a second later, leaving the silence in the car thick like the fog on an early spring morning.

  “It’s worse than I thought. She’s not even like Julia Roberts. There’s no Edward…what was his last name?” She doesn’t wait for me to answer. “I mean did you see that guy? She’s going to sleep with him for money? Why wouldn’t she just come to us? God knows I don’t have a ton of extra cash because of my student loans, but I’d give her every extra penny I could.”

  Lauren’s hand goes to the door handle.

  “No!” I yell, reaching forward to stop her.

  “We have to save her. If we catch her red-handed, she’ll confess. The three us can figure this out. Surely you’ll give her a pass on rent.”

  I love Lauren, but she’s wrong. “If we go in there guns blazing, Vanessa will flee. She’ll move out of the house. She’ll refuse to have anything to do with us.”

  “No, she’d never.”

  “Vanessa is hard-headed and after having a father who dictated her every move her entire life, she’s not about to swap him out for two best friends who are going to treat her the same way. She has to come to us for help.”

  I don’t inform Lauren that I’ve already told Vanessa not to pay me, but on the first of every month, there’s always an envelope under my pillow stacked with small bills. It pains me each time, but Vanessa would never let either one of us flip a bill for her. She’s too proud, a trait she inherited from her father, although she’d deny the accusation.

  “She can’t sell her body.” Her tone has turned defeated.

  “We don’t know for sure that she is.”

  Lauren’s fingers weave around the steering wheel, her fingernails digging into the indentations. “She’s in a town car with fishnets and heels.”

  “Maybe it’s her date. He’s older. She could be embarrassed to tell us.”

  I’m not sure I believe the words coming out of my mouth. Vanessa has a type and the man that followed her into that condo building isn’t him. She might have daddy issues, but she’s not looking for another one.

  “Come on. I’ll buy you ice cream.” My hand lands on Lauren’s arm. “She’s a smart girl. If she was into something bad, she’d tell us.”

  Lauren glances at the building again, the town car now gone, the doors closed.

  “Okay,” she agrees reluctantly.

  Ten minutes later Lauren has processed my words about Vanessa and although she’ll never tell me I’m right, we both know that I probably am.

  “If you’re buying, we’re going to George’s.”

  “Then you better hit the gas if you want to make it before they close,” I say.

  Lauren listens to me and although she’s back to her sane self, no longer weaving in and out of traffic and almost hitting parked cars, there were a few close calls with pedestrians. Lauren’s justifies her near misses with the theory that it’s Friday night and people shouldn’t come down to the city if they don’t know how to follow the traffic signals.

  Twenty minutes later, the glass doors of George’s are shut and locked behind us. I have my typical cookie dough ice cream bowl in hand, while Lauren opted for cookies ‘n cream. Instead of hopping back in the car, we walk down the street. We pass a few couples strolling along after dinner and I’d be lying if I didn’t yearn for what they have.

  “Tell me what happened on your date,” Lauren says, finding a park bench and sitting down.

  “I made a fool of myself, but what’s new about that?” I take a seat beside her.

  Her shoulder knocks mine and I sway before righting myself. “I’m sure you didn’t.”

  “I thought I was over the high school crush, you know. That I could go in there and be all ‘look at me now.’ But the minute he was inches away, my voice locked up and I was that girl again. The one who thought he’d never go for a girl like me.”

  “Is that what you were looking for? For him to want to date you?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. I at least wanted to be asked.” I bury my head in my ice cream. “I know it’s stupid.”

  “Why is that stupid? He’s the one for you. Why do you think I bid on him?”

  I glare at her from the corner of my eye. “Thanks for that by the way.”

  She giggles, spooning a big heap of the cookie into her mouth. “So you let him win and then what happened?” she mumbles over the giant cookie lodged in her mouth.

  “He was angry. Called me out. Said I was a people pleaser.”

  “You’re nice,” she counters, sounding as affronted as I was at the time.

  “See!” I point my spoon at her. “That’s what I said, but he said I was confusing the two.”

  “You’re not a people pleaser when it comes to me. If that was the case, Vanessa would be sitting on this bench with us.”

  Point proven.

  “But when it comes to people you don’t know, you do tend to give in too easily.” Her eyes cast down and I think she’s afraid of how I’ll take her criticism.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “You are,” she insists.

  “Sometimes I really just don’t care when presented with two options.” I shove a spoonful of ice cream into my mouth.

  “I get that, Maddie. I probably care too much about getting my way which is why we’ve been best friends forever. I can take advantage of you by always getting my way.”

  “Hey.”

  She leans into me, placing her head on my shoulder. “I’m kidding. I throw you a bone every now and then.” Her eyes flutter in a ‘forgive me I’m beautiful’ motion.

  “We were only together for like two hours. I can’t be that transparent to a guy who didn’t even remember I existed until his brothers told him we went to high school together.”

  The ache from that jab returns like scar tissue under the surface of my skin.

  “Maybe Mauro has changed.”

  “Well, I’ll never find out because I told him to—”

  A smirk crosses Lauren’s face. “Told him to what?”

  “I told him to have a nice life.” Mimicking the conviction in my tone I had with Mauro hours earlier.

  “Oh Mad, you are too nice. I’m not exactly shaking in my boots over here.” She laughs and I join her.

  “What should I have said?”

  “You should have said even if I see you in my next life it’s too soon.”

  “That’s mean.” I toss my empty cup of ice cream in the trashcan beside the bench then stand
up.

  “Yes, Maddie. Mean is the exact opposite of nice,” she says with a smile on her face. “See where we’re going here?” She throws away her cup and swings her arm around my shoulders. “I’ll have an effect on you yet.” Her hip hits mine. “It’s okay to be nice, I wouldn’t want you any other way. Hopefully Mauro will be in your rearview mirror now.”

  “Not when you marry his brother.” I don’t even bother to look at her because she’s probably planning my death based on the glare I feel on the side of my face.

  “Never.”

  “Stranger things have happened.” I steal a glance and her eyes are narrowed to slits.

  “Pigs would be flying, a snowball would not melt in hell, you’d be holding your breath and the Cubs would win the World Series and still I would never walk down the aisle with Luca Bianco.”

  “I hate to remind you, but the Cubs did win the World Series.”

  “Again!” she yells. “They’d have to win it again. Damn it.”

  We’re laughing as we climb back into her yellow Fiat to go home and I realize this was just what I needed after my disastrous date. But one day we won’t live together anymore and no one will be around to help pick up the pieces. An ache starts up in my chest. I’m not in any rush for that day to come.

  Chapter Eight

  Madison

  The room in the courthouse is pretty packed when I arrive, which never ends up in my favor. I’m definitely not the only one bidding on Property 1731. I go over the figures in my head again while more people file in, mentally calculating how high I can bid for my old house. I rationalize the lower than normal return I’m willing to take, telling myself that the emotional aspect of this project outweighs the profit.

  To know that a family lives there whose love will saturate into the grain of the wood support beams will give me immeasurable pleasure. Yes, I know. Cheesy as hell, but my family crumbled under that roof and I’m determined to smack a new roof on that baby to bring a shelter of happiness to a new family.