Do You Take This Maverick?

“The hell I am,” she declared out loud with enthusiasm.

So resolved, she took her baby daughter into her arms, rested Bekka on her hip and walked out of her room and into the rest of her life, or so she wanted to believe.

Unfortunately, as she all but marched into the hallway, she also walked straight into the person she was trying most to avoid.

She walked straight into Levi.

Chapter Three (#ulink_866453ae-80b1-5ad3-8213-da72102ccd88)

Caught completely off guard, Claire shrieked.

Her breath caught in her throat as she felt her heart—an organ she had become painfully aware of in the past month—slam against her rib cage.

Stunned, she blinked, fully expecting Levi to fade away, a mere wistful product of her overactive imagination.

He didn’t fade away. Levi remained exactly where he was, standing in front of her, holding on to her shoulders to keep her from falling.

He’d been hoping to run into her, but not quite like this and definitely not so literally.

Reacting automatically, Levi had grabbed his wife by the shoulders to steady her. That turned out to be a good thing, seeing how if he hadn’t, Claire would have probably stumbled backward and fallen while still holding Bekka tightly against her.

Holding on to Claire like this did more than just prevent a very unfortunate accident from happening. The exceedingly brief contact once again brought home the fact that he’d missed her. Missed his wife acutely. Missed the sight of her, the feel of her. The very first time he’d laid eyes on her, he’d known. Known that Claire Strickland was the one for him. Known that there was something very special going on between them.

The chemistry that all but sizzled whenever they were close to one another was just too hard to miss and too intense to ignore. At that moment he’d realized that he would have rather waited forever for Claire than settled for anyone else, no matter how willing she might have been to be in a relationship with him.

Claire was completely shaken. It took everything she had not to visibly tremble. Ever since she had thrown her husband out of her life, her nights had been filled with Levi.

Filled with dreams of him, with memories of him.

Filled with overwhelming longing for him.

In the privacy of the room she and Bekka were living in, she’d allowed herself to cry over a precious relationship that she believed in her heart had died—and it was her fault.

Bumping into Levi like this, in the last place in the world she’d thought that she would see him, her first reaction was a surge of sheer joy, not to mention that every fiber of her being had instantly—physically—responded to the very sight of him. At that moment she would have thrown her arms around Levi’s neck if her arms had been free.

The next moment her sanity, as she chose to view it, returned.

Luckily for her, she realized, her arms were filled with baby, so she couldn’t go with her first impulse. That allowed her second impulse to take root and swiftly take over. Her second impulse belonged to the young woman who had felt hurt and abandoned that fateful night a month ago. It belonged to the young woman whose husband was absent a good deal of the time—not to mention that the one time he wasn’t absent, he’d turned his back on her, choosing a stupid poker game over her company. That made the whole thing even worse because he’d abandoned her without so much as a second thought, as if she were some inconsequential afterthought in his life.

As that realization had taken root, Claire felt that she had to be worthless and unattractive in his eyes. This despite the fact that she had always made sure that she was her most attractive before he laid eyes on her in the morning. Even before she’d said “I do” she was determined not to turn into one of those wives who allowed herself to let her appearance go after the wedding.

To that end, Claire made sure that she was always up before Levi so that she could put on her makeup and be flawlessly beautiful when her husband looked at her first thing in the morning.

It wasn’t always easy, but she’d managed. Her makeup was flawless. The same went for her hair. Not a single strand was out of place, despite the demands of motherhood, made that much more acute by a colicky baby.

Claire’s first priority was to make sure that she was just as attractive to her husband on an everyday basis as she had been the first time he’d seen her.

And where had that gotten her? Abandoned for the first night they’d had baby-free in eight months, that’s where, she thought angrily.

The honeymoon, Claire thought not for the first time, was definitely over and so was, by default, their marriage.

Claire pressed her lips together, suppressing a sob. She just wished she didn’t still want Levi so damn much. Levi was a fantastic, thoughtful lover. She had no need to go through a litany of others to know just how very special he was. Her heart—and her body—told her so.

But even so, she refused to allow herself to be a needy woman in that respect.

Refused to allow Levi to see the advantage he had over her.

Finally finding her voice, she demanded, “What are you doing here?” as she shrugged out of his grasp.

The second he was sure that Claire was steady on her feet, he dropped his hands from her shoulders. Making eye contact with his daughter, he winked at her.

Placing her hand so that she blocked the baby’s line of vision, Claire turned so that Bekka was against her and not between them.

Levi squelched the protest that rose to his lips. The only way he was going to get Claire back was not to antagonize her any further. That entailed walking on eggshells, but, seeing what was at stake, he was up to it. He had to be.

“I’m staying here for a while,” he told her.

Claire’s eyes widened in disbelief. Levi had never lied to her before—but he had to be lying now. There was no other explanation for what he had just said.

“No, you’re not,” she cried. Why was he messing with her mind like this? Wasn’t it enough that he had ripped her heart right out of her chest?

“Yes, I am,” he contradicted. “I convinced your grandfather to rent a room to me.”

Claire felt as if someone had just literally yanked a rug out from under her feet and sent her crashing down to the floor.

Her grandfather wouldn’t do that to her—would he? As early as this morning, she would have confidently maintained that her grandfather wouldn’t rent Levi a room because he knew how much it would upset her—not to mention that allowing Levi to stay at the boarding house would effectively negate the very reason she was staying here instead of in the two-bedroom apartment that she had shared with Levi.

But now, looking at the confident expression on her estranged husband’s face, she no longer knew if what he was telling her was a pack of lies—or actually the truth.

The look in her eyes dared him to continue with what she viewed as his fabrication. “Why would my grandfather do that?” she demanded.

It took everything Levi had in him not to just sweep her into his arms and kiss her, baby and all. But he knew he couldn’t force this. For now he had to be satisfied with giving her his most sincere look as he pleaded his case, laying it at her feet. “Maybe your grandfather sees how much you mean to me.”

Was he still doing this? Still perpetuating the lie he had tried to sell her in the wee hours of the morning when he had come stumbling in after the wedding reception had long been over? She was no more inclined to believe him now than she had been then.

Less, in fact.

There was no way she was going to let Levi think that she bought his story.

“Ha! If I meant anything to you, you’d be around more often, not working at all hours, going out of town for so-called meetings at the drop of a hat and going off to play poker when we were supposed to be spending time together on our first free night in months.”

“We were spending time together,” Levi insisted. “We went to the wedding together.”

How gullible did he think she was? “I was in a room with a crying baby while you were at a poker table surrounded by your friends and playing cards until dawn. Just how is that being together?” Claire demanded hotly. Bekka began to fuss, and Claire automatically started to rock the baby to try and soothe her.

“Okay,” Levi conceded. “But up to that point, we were together,” he reminded her.

Stressed out, Claire began to pat the baby’s bottom, trying desperately to calm her down.