Page 17 of Bad Reputation

It was a little terrifying ... and something else. Something equally visceral, equally raw, that he didn’t want to name.

“Hmm.” They’d gone another half block before Cole worked up the courage to keep telling her the unvarnished truth. “I made up rules, like a code, for the person I wanted to be. The person I thought I ... was. And I follow them. If I can be that man every day, then eventually they have to realize that’s who I am, right?”

“Right.” She said it as if she understood completely.

His words started coming faster then. “When I laid it out for myself like that, it helped me know what was true. I think I lost reality there for a while, because I kept hearing all these stories about who I was. And maybe I even believed them for a bit. But I won’t let myself get confused again.”

Even if that meant denying himself. This goal, he had to feed it everything. Ambition was a hungry mofo.

They came to a corner. Across from them, a busker was playing “Some Enchanted Evening” on the trumpet. Cole would normally find all of this sappy, but tonight, it fit. It did feel like an enchanted evening.

“Hey, he’s pretty good.” Cole patted his pocket and pulled out a couple of bills. He loped across the street to drop them in the guy’s case.

When he returned to Maggie, the expression in her eyes—he didn’t have the words for it. It was heat and longing, all the things he’d spent the better part of twenty years not letting himself have. Not trusting himself to have. Not feeling worthy ofhaving.

“Shall we dance?” Cole had meant it as a joke about the way he was feeling. The spell that this night had cast on him. But his words came out stilted and formal—and needy, so stupidly needy—and it turned into a real question.

He wanted to dance with her.

Heat swept down his body, from his hairline to his toes. Brisk spring night? Nah, Cole might as well have been hiking the Grand Canyon in August.

For a second, he thought Maggie was going to play along. That she wanted to play along. She took a step toward him, and his palm was itching to touch her.

Then she shook her head, and when she looked at him again, he knew she was being reasonable. Her eyes were cool, her expression no longer dazed. “That’s a different song. Both are by Rodgers and Hammerstein, though.” She was saving them both by pretending to misunderstand him.

Smart. Maggie was really smart.

“Oh, oh—right.”

Maggie started walking faster. “I’ve directed most of their musicals at one point or another. Occupational hazard!” Her voice was high and cheerful and kind. So kind.

But it didn’t matter. Cole was going to relive this humiliation for the rest of his life. For one minute, he’d let himself want something—want someone.

This was embarrassing. Like naked-in-front-of-the-class-nightmare level of embarrassing.

At least the sting of the cold night air on his cheeks was sobering. Harsh, but sobering.

“I understand what you were saying about wanting to stay ... focused.” Maggie was clearly trying to get them back to a more professional footing. “To live your values.”

“I can’t imagine you getting confused.” Obviously she was more grounded than he was. Much wiser.

“You don’t know me very well.”

“I’d like to.”

Oops.

It wastrue, but it wasn’t helpful. In fact, it was the exact opposite of what he needed to be doing here. He should fill the hole in, not dig it deeper. “As friends, I mean,” he added clumsily. “For us to work together, we’ll have to become closer.” God, how was he making this worse? It was already so bad.

“I knew what you meant.” But Maggie’s tone was too brittle to be convincing. She was probably regretting every second of this night, and he couldn’t blame her. He was out of practice being around normal people.

Thankfully, they rounded a corner, and the hotel, with its stone carvings and cupola, popped into view. “Here we are, no thanks to Tasha.” Cole offered Maggie an apologetic smile, trying to decide how to best fix everything he’d just awkwardly broken.

But Maggie was there, better and smoother than he was. “Thanks for dinner. It was out of this world.” She gave him a small wave. “I’m going to take the stairs.”

Because she couldn’t wait to get away from him. Awesome. Reasonable.

It was going to be alongfour months if Cole kept shoving his foot in his mouth around Maggie.

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