“You’ve still got By-the-Wind.”
“For now.”
“Any chance he can make good on those threats?”
She sighed and pressed a hand to her stomach. Sexual harassment. How low could the man stoop?
“He can try, but there’s absolutely no evidence backing him up. I refused to even date him for months. I didn’t want any appearance of impropriety. The other employees can all confirm that. But he was so damn persistent and I was…flattered. That’s what it comes down to. I only dated him for a month, but I swear I never slept with him.”
Oh, why couldn’t she keep her mouth shut? Did she really need to share that particular detail with Max?
“Then don’t worry about it. I know his type. He’s all bluff and bluster up front but the minute you confront him, he runs away like the rat he is.”
“I’m just sorry you were tangled up in the middle.”
“Funny, I was just thinking how glad I am that I was here to back you up.”
She stared at him for a long moment, at the solid strength of his features, the integrity that seemed so much a part of him. The contrast between a sleazy, dishonest slimebag like Grayson Fletcher and this honorable soldier who had sacrificed so much for his country and still bore the scars for it was overwhelming.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
With a full heart, she leaned across the space between them to kiss him softly. Compared to their heat and passion of the night before, this was just a tiny kiss of gratitude, just a slight brush of her lips against his, but it rocked her clear to her toes.
She was crazy about this man. She was aware she had only known him a few days but she was in serious danger of falling head over heels.
She eased away from him, feeling shaky and off balance.
“You’re welcome,” he murmured, and she wondered if she imagined that raspy note in his voice.
“What did I miss?”
At the sound of her employee’s voice, Anna tried to collect her scattered wits. She took a deep breath and found Sue had come out of the stockroom carrying two of the colorful glass floats.
“Not much. He’s gone.”
“Good riddance. I don’t care what you say, I’m calling the cops the next time he has the nerve to come in here.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Anna said. “Did I answer what you needed to know on canceling an order?”
“Yes. And now you need to get out of here and enjoy the rest of your day off.” Sue had on that bossy mother-hen voice that Anna was helpless to fight. “Go have some fun. You deserve it.”
She rubbed her hands on her slacks and turned back to Max as a customer came up to Sue and asked her for help locating an item.
“You’re welcome to look around more if you’d like.”
“I think I’m done here,” he answered.
“Are you ready to go home, then?”
A strange light flickered in his eyes and she wondered at it, until she remembered his transitory life. The concept of home probably wasn’t one he was used to considering.
“Good idea,” he said after a moment, and his words were punctuated by Conan barking his approval.
Dusk was washing across the shore as they reached the outskirts of Cannon Beach and the setting sun cast long shadows across the road and saturated everything with color.
Brambleberry House on its hill looked graceful, welcoming, with its gables and gingerbread trim and the wide porch on all sides.
“I love coming home this time of day,” she said as she pulled into the driveway. “I know it’s silly but I always feel like the house has been waiting here all day just for me.”
“It’s not silly.”
“Abigail used to say a house only comes alive when it’s filled with people who love it.” She smiled, remembering. “She used to have this quote on the wall. ‘Every house where love abides and friendship is a guest, is surely home, and home, sweet home, for there the heart can rest.’”
He was quiet for a long time, gazing as she was at the house gleaming in the fading sunlight. “You do love it, don’t you?” he asked, finally breaking the silence.
“With my whole heart. Rusty pipes, loose shingles, flaking paint and all.”
“She knew what she was doing when she left it to you, didn’t she?”
It seemed an odd question but she nodded. “I hope so. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed with the endless responsibility of it, especially when the rest of my life seems so chaotic right now. I have no idea why she left things as she did and bequeathed Brambleberry House to Sage and to me out of the blue, but I love it here. I can’t imagine ever leaving.”
He let out a breath, his eyes looking suddenly serious in the twilight. “Anna—”
Whatever he intended to say was lost when Conan began barking urgently from the cargo area of the van, as if he had expended every last ounce of patience.
She laughed. “Sorry. That sounds dire. I’d better take him down the beach a little to work out the kinks from the car ride. You interested?”
She thought she saw frustration flicker across his features but it was quickly gone.
“Sure. I’ve got kinks of my own to work out.”
Conan leaped out of the van as soon as she hooked on his leash and practically dragged her behind him in his eagerness to mark every single clump of sea grass on the beach trail.
Just before they reached the wide stretch of beach, Max reached for her hand to help her around a rock and he didn’t let go. They walked hand in hand with Conan ahead of them and warmth fluttered through her despite the cool spring wind.
She didn’t want to the day to end. Even with the humiliation of the encounter with Gray Fletcher, it had been wonderful, the most enjoyable day she’d spent in longer than she could remember.
Conan obviously didn’t share her sentiments, however. The dog could usually run for miles along the beach at any time of the day or night. But though he had been so insistent earlier, as soon as he had taken care of his pressing need, now he didn’t seem nearly as enthusiastic to be walking. One moment he planted his haunches stubbornly in the sand, the next he tried to tug her back the direction they had come.
The third time he tried the trick, she gave a tug on the leash. “You don’t know what you want, do you?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
She looked over at Max and found him watching her in the fading sunlight, a glittery look in his hazel eyes that made her catch her breath.
“I was talking to Conan,” she murmured. “He’s being stubborn about the walk. I think he’s ready to go back.”
“Not yet,” Max said quietly.
Before she could ask him why not, he pulled her against him as the sun slid farther down the horizon.
All the heat and wonder they had shared the night before during the storm came rushing back like the tide and she couldn’t seem to get enough of him.
She tried to be careful of his sling and his arm but he lifted the sling out of the way so he could pull her against his chest.
He kissed her for long moments, until they were both breathing hard and the sun was only a pale rim on the horizon.
“If we keep this up, we’re going to be stuck down here in the dark and won’t be able to find our way back.”
“Conan will lead the way,” she murmured against his mouth. “He hasn’t had dinner yet.”
He laughed roughly and kissed her again. She wrapped her arms around his waist, a slow heat churning through her. She couldn’t seem to get close enough to him, to absorb his hard strength and the safe harbor she felt here.
She didn’t know how long they stood there accompanied by the murmur of the sea, a salty breeze eddying around them. She would have been quite content to stay all night if Conan hadn’t finally barked with thinly veiled impatience.
The moon had started to rise above the coastal range, a thin sliver of light, but all was dark and mysterious around them.
“I guess we should probably
head back.”
She couldn’t see his features but she was quite sure she sensed the same reluctance that was coursing through her.
Somehow she wasn’t surprised when he pulled a flashlight from his keychain in the pocket of his leather bomber. He was a soldier, no doubt prepared for anything.
“I don’t have night-vision goggles with me so this will have to do,” Max said. He reached for her hand and they walked back up the beach toward Brambleberry House, whose lights gleamed a welcome in the darkness.
Her insides jumped wildly with nerves and anticipation. She didn’t want this to end but how could she possibly scramble for the courage to tell him she wanted more?
They said little as they made their way back home. Even in his silence, though, she sensed he was withdrawing from her, trying to put distance between them again.
Her instinct was confirmed when they reached the house. She unlocked her apartment and opened the door for Conan to bound inside to find his food. She and Max stood in the foyer and she didn’t miss the tight set of his features.
Desperate to regain the fleeting closeness, she drew in a shaky breath and lifted her mouth to his again.
After a moment’s hesitation, he returned the kiss with an almost fierce hunger, until her thoughts whirled and her body strained against him.
After a long moment, he wrenched his mouth away. “Anna, I need to tell you something.”
Whatever it was, she didn’t want to hear it. Somehow she knew instinctively it was something she wouldn’t like and right now she couldn’t bear for anything to ruin the magic of this moment.
“Just kiss me, Max. Please.”
He groaned softly but after a moment’s hesitation he obliged, tangling his mouth with hers again and again until nothing else mattered but the two of them and the fragile emotions fluttering in her chest.
“I have been trying to figure out all day how to seduce you,” she admitted softly.
His laugh was rough and strummed down her nerve endings. “I think it’s safe to say you don’t have to do anything but exist. That’s more seduction than I can handle right now.”
She smiled with the heady joy rushing through her. He made her feel delicate and beautiful, powerful in a way she had never known before.
“Come inside,” she said, her voice soft.
He froze and she knew she didn’t mistake the indecision on his features. “Anna, are you sure?”
“Please,” she murmured.
With a ragged sigh, he yanked her against him and an exultant joy surged through her.
This was right. She was crazy about him, she thought. Head-over-heels crazy about this man.
She knew he wasn’t going to be here forever, that he wanted to return to active duty as soon as possible and she would be alone again.
But for now, this moment, he was hers and she wasn’t going to waste this precious chance fate had handed her.
A soft, silken spell wove around them as they kissed their way inside her bedroom.
The rest of her house was tasteful and subdued, all whites on wood tones. Her bedroom was different. It was soft and feminine, with lavenders and greens and yellows.
How was it possible that Max could seem so overwhelmingly masculine amid all the girly stuff, the flounces and frills? she wondered. He had never seemed so dangerously, enticingly male.
She led the way to her bed, with its filmy white hangings and mounds of pillows. Max looked at the bed for a moment then back at her and his expression was raw with desire.
“I should probably warn you I haven’t done this in a while. I’ve been redshirted for a while with my injury and before that I was in a country where there wasn’t a hell of a lot of opportunity for extracurricular activities.”
She couldn’t seem to think with these nerves skating through her. “Good to know. I haven’t, either. My engagement ended five years ago and I haven’t been with anyone else.”
His eyes darkened, until the pupils nearly obscured the green-gray of the irises.
“I don’t know if I can take things slowly. At least not the first time.”
She smiled. “Good.”
He gave a rough laugh and kissed her again, then lowered her to the bed. “As much as I want nothing more than to take hours undressing you and exploring every inch of that glorious skin, I’m a little clumsy with buttons right now. With this damn cast, I can barely work my own.”
“I’ve got two hands,” she answered. Her fingers trembled a little as she slowly worked the buttons of her shirt and pulled her arms free. At least she had worn one of her favorite bra-and-panty sets, a lacy creation in the palest peach.
He swallowed hard. “I definitely don’t think I can take things slowly.”
He pressed his mouth to her bared shoulder, then trailed kisses along the skin just above the scalloped edge of her bra. She shivered, arching against him as he slid a hand along the bared skin at her waist then up until he touched her intimately through the lace.
She wanted more. She wanted to feel his skin on hers. He must have shared her hunger because he pulled the sling off, revealing the cast underneath that ran from his wrist to just above his elbow and began working the buttons of his shirt.
“Let me help,” she said.
He leaned back to give her more access and she helped him out of his shirt and then went to work on the snaps on his Levi’s.
“I can take it from here,” he told her.
In moments, they were both naked and he was everything she might have dreamed, all hard muscles and lean strength.
Then she caught her first view of the full extent of his injuries and her heart turned over in her chest.
For some reason, she had thought the damage was contained to his arm and shoulder. But rough, red-looking burns spread out from his collarbone to his pectoral muscles on the right side, crisscrossed by scars that were still blinding white against his skin.
“Oh, Max,” she breathed.
Regret slid across his features. “I should have kept my shirt on. I’m so used to it by now I forget how ugly it is.”
“No. No, you shouldn’t have. I am so sorry you had to go through that.”
She pressed her mouth just above the raw-looking skin at the spot where his shoulder met his neck, then again in the hollow above his collarbone.
“Does it hurt?”
He looked as if he wanted to deny it but he finally shrugged. “Sometimes. Right now, no. Right now, all I can think about is the incredibly sexy woman in my arms. Come up here and kiss me.”
“Absolutely, Lieutenant,” she said with a smile and settled in his arms.
They kissed and touched for a long time, exploring all the planes and hollows and secret places while those tensile emotions twisted through her, wrapping her closer to him.
He said he couldn’t take things slowly but it seemed to her their teasing and touching lasted for hours. At last, when she wasn’t sure she could endure another moment, he braced above her on his left forearm and he entered her.
She gasped his name and tightened her arms around him, hunger soaring inside her like bright, colorful kites on the wild air currents of the beach.
Had she ever known this sense of wonder, the feeling of completion, that scattered pieces of herself had only right this moment fallen into place?
She was floating higher and higher, her heart as light as air as he moved inside her, slowly at first and then faster, his mouth hard and urgent on hers with a possessive stamp that thrilled her to the core.
She held tight to him, her body rising to meet his, and then he pushed slightly harder and she gasped suddenly as she broke free of gravity and went soaring into the air.
He groaned her name, then with one last powerful surge he joined her.
Oh, heaven. This was heaven. She held him tightly as a delicious lassitude slid over her.
Chapter Thirteen
Abigail would have approved.
Anna lay next to Max, her arm across him,
feeling his chest rise and fall with each slow, steady breath as he slept. Pale moonlight filtered in through her open window and played across his features, and she thought how vulnerable he looked in sleep, years younger than the hard-eyed soldier he appeared at times.
Abigail would have loved him. She didn’t quite know why she was so certain but somehow she knew her friend would have been quick to include him in the loose circle of friends that Sage had called her lost sheep—people who were lonely or tired or grieving or who just needed to know someone else believed in them.
Max would have been drawn into that circle, whether he wanted it or not. Abigail would have taken him in, would have filled him with good food to ease all the hollows from those months in the hospital. If he ended up leaving the army, Abigail would have been right there helping him figure out his place in the world.
He made a soft sound in his sleep and her arm tightened around him. She rested her cheek against his smooth, hard chest, astonished at the sense of peace she found here in his arms, the tenderness that seemed to wind through her with silken ties.
She was in love with him.
The truth shimmered through her, bright and stunning, and she drew in a sharp breath, astonished and suddenly terrified.
Love. That wasn’t in the plan. She was supposed to be having a casual fling, nothing more. The man had made no secret of his plans to leave as soon as he could. This whole situation seemed destined for disaster.
He wasn’t the stick-around type. He couldn’t have made that more plain. He had told her himself that he considered his base in Iraq more of a home than anywhere else he had lived. She remembered how sad that had seemed when he told her. It was even more tragic now that she had come to know him better, since she had seen a certain yearning in his eyes when he looked at Brambleberry House.
He needs a home. A place to belong. That’s what he’s always needed.
The words whispered into her mind and she frowned. Why on earth would such a thought even enter her mind, let alone with such firm assurance? It made absolutely no sense, but she couldn’t shake the unswerving conviction that Harry Maxwell needed Brambleberry House, maybe more even than she did.
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