Extreme Bachelor (Thrillseekers Anonymous #2)
Julia London
Prologue
New York
ON the day of the last showing for the fabulously successful Broadway play, Marty’s Sister’s Lover, Leah Kleinschmidt, one of the leads, was bouncing off the walls in Michael Raney’s apartment, trying to contain her excitement. After a three-month run, everyone was talking about her hilarious portrayal of Marty’s sister, Christine. The critics loved her.
As a result, her agent had received several inquiries from Hollywood and was currently negotiating a development deal for her. After several long years of working her way up, Leah was finally getting what she’d always wanted—a shot at film.
“I mean, okay, a sitcom isn’t exactly film,” she’d said that morning, waving a toothbrush around. “But it’s one step closer, right?”
“Right,” Michael agreed. He was still in bed, watching her bounce around, talking and brushing her teeth all at once. He wanted to remember her like this always—vibrant and happy, her blue eyes shining as she padded around wearing nothing but one of his dress shirts and a pair of footie socks.
“Can you believe it?” she asked him for the thousandth time.
“Yeah,” he said, and leaned back, sprawled across the bed. “I can definitely believe it. You’re awesome.”
She laughed, tossed the toothbrush aside, and gleefully pounced on him. “See? This is why I love you, Mikey. I can forgive your sock problem because you’re so wonderful to me.”
“Hey,” he protested, looking at the ridiculous footie socks she was wearing. “I don’t have a sock problem— you do.”
“No, I have sock standards, which is totally different, and my standard is on your feet, in the laundry, or in a drawer,” she said, as she nuzzled his neck.
“But I don’t get even a fifteen-second grace period,” he complained. “Once they hit the floor, the Sock Nazi appears out of nowhere, demanding I put them in the hamper.”
“You’re lucky! I haven’t said anything about boxers yet,” she said, and bit him on the neck.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his hand automatically stroking her back, her bare leg.
“Leaving a mark so you’ll know how much I’ll miss you when you’re gone.”
The remark made him flinch inwardly. Leah was used to his absence for a week, two weeks tops, but she had no idea that forever was around the corner. That was because Leah really didn’t know much about him at all.
Her head popped up; blond hair whispered across his face, tickling him. “How long this time?” she asked.
He pushed her hair behind her ears, looked into her glittering blue eyes. “I don’t know, baby.” It was getting harder for him to work around the truth, because his frequent absences for work were becoming a source of contention between them. He didn’t like that, for a lot of reasons. He didn’t like that he felt guilty every time he left. He didn’t like that he had to leave. And he damn sure didn’t like having such strong feelings for Leah when he knew that he had to leave her for good.
“More than a week?”
“Definitely more than a week.”
She groaned, pressed her forehead to his. “Stupid Austrians! Why can’t they just hire someone there to look after their finances? Why does it have to be you?”
“I don’t know,” he said, stroking her back. “Maybe because I’m good at it? And I speak German and English fairly well?”
“I know, I know,” Leah sighed. “I just really miss you when you’re gone.”
“I miss you, too.” And he did, he truly missed her . . . but he’d always had a disquieting feeling that maybe he didn’t miss her as hard as she missed him, like deep in the gut. But he did miss her . . . only he’d get busy and forget the little things. Like how she talked with wildly expressive hands. Or how she would frown when she was trying to make the origami art she had been studying the past year. Or how she wiggled her fingers at him when she said good-bye every morning before disappearing into the bowels of the subway.
“And I miss the orchids,” she added as she suddenly sat up, straddling him.
He’d gotten in the habit of having fresh orchids delivered every week just to see her smile, because when she smiled, she lit up like a Christmas tree. She loved the orchids. Many nights, she’d sat at his dining room table, trying to replicate one of the delicate blooms with the expensive origami paper he had given her.
She was not as talented in the art of origami as she was at acting—in fact, she wasn’t very good at all. But Michael would never tell her that—he kept buying her paper and ignored her various attempts that now littered his apartment.