LITMIR.BIZ

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      She sounded like a moron but hoped he wouldn’t notice. Or that he would be noble and just let her off the hook.

      “What’s your rush? It’s Sunday. Even a workaholic like you is off today. If nothing else, city hall has the good sense to close the courts on the weekend.”

      Apparently, he wasn’t feeling especially noble this morning. “True. But most of a lawyer’s work is done before setting foot in the courtroom. Besides I have groceries to buy, and—”

      “Hold it, Maddie.”

      Maddie. He was the only one who ever called her that. It had been her undoing last night. She’d always been Madison. Her mother had insisted on it. She’d picked up the habit of correcting anyone who tried to shorten her name. Why had she never admonished Luke?

      “What?” she asked.

      “Ever since Nick, you vowed never to get involved with another Marchetti man. I know for a fact that you’ve never been with another man. I have to know—why me?”

      He was right about her vow. She’d made it just over a year ago, after her relationship with his brother Nick hadn’t worked out. His heart belonged to another woman. That didn’t come as a big surprise. She wasn’t the sort of woman men fell for. Growing up the way she had tended to do that to a girl. The split with his brother had been amicable, and Luke had offered her a shoulder to lean on. Which she had refused. Even though his shoulder was just one of many parts to admire in such a fine specimen of a man.

      Her career had to be her focus. She didn’t want an intimate relationship. Although it would be a humdinger of a challenge to have a relationship less intimate than she had shared with Luke last night. So what in God’s name had possessed her to sleep with him? Because he swept her away? He had, but it was so not like her to lose control.

      She just didn’t have any answers. “Objection. The question is irrelevant.”

      “It’s relevant to me.” He sighed heavily. “You’re twenty-five. You’re a beautiful, green-eyed redhead.”

      “You should get your eyes checked.” She pointed to her nose. “These freckles are hateful little suckers and pretty unattractive.”

      “I like them. I imagine a lot of guys like them. In fact, I bet guys hit on you all the time. So why now and why me?”

      “I wish I knew.”

      If only she could chalk up her weakness and temporary suspension of brain function to too much liquor at his brother’s wedding the night before. But she’d only had the one glass of champagne Luke had fetched for her to toast Alex and Frannie, and she hadn’t finished that. Luke had been attentive from the moment she’d arrived at the elder Marchetti’s home without a date for the wedding. Her law firm represented the legal interests of Marchetti’s Incorporated. Since she’d become a friend of the family, she was the representative chosen to attend. Alone. Luke had been alone, too, which she didn’t understand since he was a babe magnet.

      He’d just said guys must hit on her all the time, and she could say, “Right back at you.” A man who looked like him had to give the general female population whiplash when he walked into a room. Yet in all the time she’d known him, he’d never settled on one woman. Why in the world would she be foolish enough to believe she could be the one?

      But she’d been grateful for his presence beside her at the fairy-tale June wedding. For some reason, as the festivities had wound down, she’d been oddly reluctant to return to her lonely town house. He’d taken her for a drive. When it came out in conversation that he’d never seen her place, she’d invited him over. One thing had led to another. But he deserved a more articulate answer to his question about why him.

      “I’m not sure why, Luke,” she started. “Motive and opportunity.”

      He flashed a grin and treated her to the world-class dimples that made her knees weak. “Spoken like an up and coming attorney.”

      Cursing the fact that she hadn’t made a quicker exit, she met his intense, blue-eyed gaze. “That’s right. I’m a lawyer on the fast track. I was handpicked by Jim Mallery to take over his clients when he retired. Virgin, high-powered attorney is an oxymoron. Sort of.” She shrugged.

      “That doesn’t answer my question. Why me?”

      “That’s the opportunity part.”

      His lips thinned for a split second. “I was hoping for something less premeditated. Something more along the lines of that you lost your head and couldn’t help yourself.”

      She hoped he would never know that he’d just hit the nail on the head. But losing her head was a half step from taking a blowtorch to her heart. Burned once she was naive; burned again she was just stupid. Nick fell for someone else because he realized she, Madison, wasn’t love material. She wouldn’t make the mistake of letting herself be vulnerable again.

      “I would have appreciated advance warning that it was your first time,” he said.

      “Why? What difference would it have made for you to know that I’m a vir—” Heat started in her neck and radiated upward into her cheeks. “I mean that I was a virgin.”

      He pushed away from the bedpost and walked toward her. He stopped at a point where another of his long strides would put him a whisper away from her. A delicious fluttering started in her abdomen.

      “It makes a big difference,” he said, an angry edge to his voice. “Number one, I might have backed off. Number two, it’s a big responsibility.”

      “Why?”

      The word popped out of her mouth before she could stop it. Followed quickly by mortification. Curiosity had put her in the top 3 percent of her law school class. Now she just felt socially backward and pretty much humiliated.

      “A woman’s first time has an impact on every subsequent encounter. There are things a guy can do to make it easier—to make it good.”

      “It was good,” she blurted out.

      The slow half smile that turned up the corners of his mouth excited her at the same time it made her nervous. Had she just given him some sort of secret to use against her?

      “I’m glad,” he said. Then he frowned. “I don’t buy the opportunity part of your explanation. This is me,” he said, tapping the chest she’d so recently admired. “I know guys must come on to you all the time. You still haven’t explained why me.”

      She sighed. “I’ll answer that as best I can, Luke, but I’m not sure I know myself. I was caught up in the magic of the wedding.” She smiled, and couldn’t help that it was sad around the edges. “It was wonderful to be a part of a big happy family again.”

      “You’re still hung up on Nick?” His voice was just this side of a growl. “Did it bother you hearing their announcement about Abby’s pregnancy?”

      “I was never hung up on Nick.” There was no point in elaborating. He didn’t need to know that guys figured out fast that she wasn’t lovable. “I realized that it wasn’t him as much as your family I missed. I never had that, a large, loving family,” she said wistfully.

      Or one that loved her at all.

      “I thought you had a brother.”

      “I do. Older. But we’re not close. Not with my parents, either.”

      “So you were raised by wolves?”

      She laughed. “Just the thought would give my mother the vapors. No. Boarding schools, accelerated classes, a law degree. Oh, my,” she said, struggling for humor as a defense against the assault of lonely, painful childhood memories.

      “I think there’s more to it than that.”

      Uh-oh. This was exactly what she’d been trying to avoid. “Don’t, Luke.”

      “Don’t

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