by Marie Force
Cynthie took a breath. Straightened her shoulders. “Mama, I need a favor.”
* * *
NOT okay. Max dropped his head in his hands with a groan. Not okay at all, no matter how reassuring Cynthie tried to sound. He was trying to prove to her that he wasn’t like all the other guys in her life, that she could trust him enough to take their relationship to the next level, and then he blew off dinner with her daughters.
At least he’d stopped heaving.
He pressed the heels of his palms to his eyeballs, as if he could push his brain back into his skull. He needed to think. To move. He could fix this. All he had to do was . . . All he had to do . . .
A shudder shook him. His muscles, already stiff from spending the night on the cold tile floor, seized.
Hot shower, he thought when the spasm had passed. He stank like a corpse dragged from a swamp.
The doorbell rang while he was getting dressed. He yanked his gray T-shirt over his head and padded barefoot to the door.
Cynthie.
His heart leaped.
He blinked, half-afraid she would vanish, a vision concocted of too little sleep and the lingering effects of the graduate student potluck dinner.
But, nope, she was still there, on his doorstep, carrying one of those reusable grocery bags.
“Hi.” She smiled and stepped over his threshold. “You should shut the door. It’s cold outside.”
He complied automatically. “What are you doing here?”
“Somebody has to take care of you.”
He couldn’t remember anybody saying that to him before. Julie? Never. Maybe his mother, years ago. “I’m fine.”
“Mm.” Her soft green eyes widened as she took him in, from his bare feet to his wet hair. “You look . . .”
He smiled wryly. “Like the walking dead?”
Her mouth quirked. “Like you just got out of the shower,” she said tactfully. “How are you feeling?”
“Better.”
Much better, now that she was here. He couldn’t believe she was here.
She stepped in close, smelling like cloves and Cynthie, and laid a quick, cool hand on his forehead before cupping his jaw. He turned his face into her hand, pressing his dry lips to her palm in gratitude.
Her cheeks were pink as she moved away. “No fever,” she announced. “Is your kitchen this way?”
“I’m not sick. It’s just food poisoning. I really am better now.”
She tipped her head. “When did you last eat?”
He winced.
She made another of those soft, judicious noises. “All right, what have you had to drink?”
“I can’t keep anything down.”
“Not even water?”
“I haven’t tried.” Not since the last disastrous attempt. “I brushed my teeth,” he added defensively.
“That’s not going to stop you from getting dehydrated.” She carried the grocery bag to the kitchen. “That’s okay. I brought you something.”
“I really don’t want anything.” Except for you to stay. To make her stay, he was even willing to force food on his protesting stomach.
She set the groceries on his immaculate granite counter. “Sit down before you fall down. I’m making you ramen. You don’t have to eat the noodles, but the broth will replace salt and fluids.”
It was a relief to fold himself into a chair. “Yes, ma’am.”
She looked around as she removed things from the bag—soup, ginger ale, crackers. “This is a nice big kitchen.”
“Um, thank you.”
He had considered the house a good investment when he bought it, new construction in a relatively featureless development, close enough to campus that he could bike to work. It was not a home like Cynthie’s trailer. But there was certainly more counter space.
Cynthie opened and closed cupboards. “You don’t have a lot to cook with.”
“Julie took most of it,” he said, and bit his tongue. Probably not the best time to bring up his former house partner. Was there a good time?
Cynthie poured ginger ale into a glass, no ice, and set it in front of him. “Julie?”
“My, ah, ex-girlfriend.”
Cynthie nodded. “How long?”
“Did we live together? About a year.”
“Since she left.”
“Oh.” He sipped the soda, grateful for something to do with his hands. “Six months.”
Cynthie raised her brows. “Plenty of time to buy a pot.”
“It’s easier to eat out.”
“Cheaper to eat in. Better for you, too.” She wrinkled her nose. “And now I sound like your mother.”
Not his mother. His mother’s favorite thing to make for dinner was reservations. “No, you’re right. I should pick up some pans and stuff.”
Cynthie set a pot of water on the stove. “Unless you’re hoping your ex is coming back with all your cookware.”
“God, no,” Max said without thinking and was relieved when she laughed.
She arranged three crackers on a plate and set them on the table. “Tylenol?”
“In the bathroom.”
Cynthie dimpled. “I meant, have you taken any?”
“Oh. No.”
She took a little white bottle from her bag and shook two tablets into her palm. “How’s your stomach feel?”
He thought. “Not bad,” he admitted.
“Good. Now that you’ve kept some soda down, these will help with your body aches.”
She poured his soup, refilled his soda, handed him a spoon and a napkin. “Eat slowly. Don’t push it.”
He had often admired Cynthie with her daughters, her easy caring, her casual hugs, the nurturing she exuded as readily as air. Her fussing over him was another kind of pleasure, a secret, half-shameful comfort to the child he’d once been.
“This is great,” he said as she sat down opposite him. “Thank you.”
Her eyes met his shyly, pleased, before she looked away. “Packaged soup and ginger ale. Yeah, I really knocked myself out.”
He didn’t have the words to tell her how much her kindness meant to him. “Aren’t you having anything?”
“I already ate.”
Right. The dinner he’d blown off. “This isn’t how I imagined your first visit to my place,” he admitted ruefully.
Cynthie smiled. “It’s fine,” she said.
Like she really meant it.
He dug into the broth, surprised by how good it suddenly tasted.
“So why did you and your ex break up?” Cynthie asked.
Max swallowed. “It wasn’t anything big or dramatic. No bad guys, just . . . She decided I wasn’t capable of giving her what she needed.”
She cocked her head. “Marriage?”
“Fun.”
“You stopped having sex?”
“Ah . . .” Toward the end, definitely. Because Julie had moved on to another relationship before she’d moved out of his house. “I don’t think sex was her definition of fun.”
Cynthie sent him a slow, sizzling smile. “Then she definitely wasn’t having sex with you.”
He inhaled sharply.
She shrugged. “Anyway, that was Doug’s excuse. He felt bad enough, what with losing his job and all. And I was worn out from work and trying to keep up the house and taking care of Maddie. I guess at the end of the day, I didn’t have much left over for him. Can’t blame him for going elsewhere to find it.”
Anger at her ex spilled through Max, corrosive as battery acid. “You mean, you supported him and he cheated on you.”
“I mean, we both got married too young, thinking things were going to be one way, and they turned out another. After Maddie came along, I wasn’t that wild girl he fell for in high school anymore.”
“You were never that girl,” Max said. “You were always more.”
* * *
THOSE clear gray eyes looked into hers.
Cynthie’s breath clogged. “More what?”
“Braver. Kinder. More intelligent,” he said simply. “More . . . you.”
A warm, liquid flush swept her face and flooded her chest. Hoo boy. It was quite possibly the nicest thing anybody had ever said to her in her life. Her eyes flooded, too.
Which was stupid. He was sick. He didn’t need her weeping all over him.
Though his color was better, she noted with a mom’s experienced eye, the death-warmed-over pallor replaced by actual skin tones. With his two-day scruff and damp-from-the-shower hair, he looked masculine, relaxed, and very, very sexy.
“Well.” She exhaled. “I should probably get going.”
He held still for a moment before he nodded. “Right. The girls.”
The girls were fine. Her mama was staying with the girls tonight.
But she didn’t tell Max that. She didn’t want him to feel he owed her anything in return for her visit. Like a bed. Or sex. Three weeks had passed since they’d made love in the backseat of his Volvo. Pleasure filling her, thick and hot, rushing along her veins . . .
The memory brought a surge of blood to her face and other places lower down. If she didn’t get out of here soon, she was going to melt into a formless puddle of lust on his kitchen floor.
“I need to get something first,” Max said. “Be right back.”
Well, okay, Cynthie thought, watching his retreating back down the hall. Clearly, he wasn’t thinking about sex. Because he’s getting over food poisoning, idiot.
And if he was fetching his wallet to pay for the groceries, she would just refuse, that’s all.
Whatever he was doing took a while. By the time she had loaded his few dishes into the state-of-the-art dishwasher, rinsed the pan and lined up the tummy-friendly foods on the counter where he could find them, Max still hadn’t returned.
She frowned, drying her hands on a paper towel. He needed dish towels. Maybe next time she came . . . If there was a next time.
Maybe his stomach wasn’t ready for noodles. Maybe he was throwing up again. Or curled in a ball on the bathroom floor.
“Max?”
No answer.
She tiptoed down the hall, feeling like an intruder. He had a nice house. Too much space for a guy living alone, but that was his problem. His decorating was as bland as the soup and crackers she’d served him for dinner. White walls, beige carpet, neutral wood. No evidence of that other woman who had lived here. Or maybe she had been bland, too. The thought was vaguely cheering.
There were bookshelves everywhere, their spines bright notes of color, and some black-and-white photographs in the hall that looked like they belonged in an upscale island art gallery.
The door at the end of the hall stood open. Max’s bedroom, more beige mixed with navy. A vivid seascape in oils hung opposite the bed, where he must see it when he woke every morning.
A big bed, with rumpled covers.
Maybe she should offer to tuck him in.
Max stood in front of an open closet, examining something in his hands. The soft gray knit of his T-shirt clung to his broad shoulders. His short, dark hair was adorably mussed. A rush of yearning tightened her chest and loosened her knees.
“Hey.”
“Hi.” He turned, his smile weakening her knees even further. “It took me a while to find this.”
She stood there, dry-mouthed with longing and lust, remembering the feel of him against her. Inside her. She wanted to slide her hands under his T-shirt, over the smooth muscles of his back, along the bony indents of his spine.
To distract herself, she looked at the object in his hands. A digital camera. “You want to take dirty pictures before I go?” she joked.
“Ha. Good one.” A gleam lit his eyes. “Although if you want to take off your clothes, I won’t stop you.”
Her heart hammered. Was he kidding?
“Here.” He held out the camera. “It’s an old one. For Madison.”
She stared at the slim silver camera as if it were a snake in the Garden of Eden. Her fingers itched to take it from him. She tucked them behind her back, away from this new temptation. She didn’t know how much a camera like that originally cost, but . . . “I can’t accept this.”
“I never use it. And she would.”
“I didn’t even know she was interested in photography.”
“We talked about it. It could be a passing thing. At her age, kids should be experimenting, exploring different interests. But if she keeps it up, she could do a photography elective in high school.”
“That’s three years away.”
Max shrugged. “Something to think about anyway.”
Right. She’d simply add it to the list of, oh, five hundred other things she had to think about. “I’m not used to thinking long term. It’s all I can do to make it from Saturday night to Saturday night or paycheck to paycheck.”
“That’s not how I see it. You’re very focused on making a life for yourself and your kids. Look at the way you’ve gone back to school. You took on a second job so you could get some dental experience.”
“And look how well that’s working out,” she muttered.
His dark brows twitched together. “What?”
“Nothing.” Nothing important. But the memory of this afternoon, the image of her boss’s hand on her breast, intruded on the quiet room, the intimacy wrapping them like silk.
She hadn’t stopped him. Her failure dug at her. She’d sat there like a dummy and let that bastard get away with putting his hands on her because he could. The specter of her helplessness rose like a ghost to taunt her.
“I wish I’d known, that’s all,” she said. “I should have seen. I would have done something.”
“Cynthie,” Max said with controlled patience. “It’s a camera.”
“It’s not just the camera.” A sense of her own inadequacy sharpened her voice. “It’s paying attention to who Maddie is, to what she wants. I feel like I’m letting her down.”
“Bullshit.”
She blinked, shaken from her sulks. Professor Maxwell Lewis, swearing. Imagine that.
“I’m not a parent,” he said. “I don’t pretend to share the kind of bond, the kind of insights, you have with your daughters. But I do know that loving somebody doesn’t mean that you automatically understand everything that’s going on in their lives. Or that you can fix all their problems.”
“It ought to. I’m her mother.”
Max smiled. “You’re a great mother. She’s a lucky kid. But you’re also your own person, with your own dreams, your own abilities.” He pulled her close against his warm, hard body. “Your mother had to learn that with you. And you have to accept that with your girls. You can’t live their lives for them. Or through them. All you can do is love them and hope that gives them the confidence to follow their dreams to the best of their abilities.”
She dropped her forehead against his chest. “That makes me sound so selfish.”
“You’re the least selfish person I’ve ever met.”
She shook her head.
“It’s the truth.” He cupped her face, tilting it up to meet his gaze. His eyes were the color of the sea on a cloudy day, deep gray and shining. “You never complain. You never give up. You’re not afraid to put yourself out there. You have the biggest, softest heart of anyone I know.”
She wriggled her shoulders, uncomfortable with compliments. “The softest head, maybe,” she joked.
“Stop it,” he ordered quietly. “How can you see the best in everybody else and not see yourself that way? The way I see you. You are amazing.” His lips, slightly dry and oh-so-tender, brushed hers. “Kind.” He kissed her again. “Strong.” Another kiss, like punctuation. “Smart.”
She searched his gaze, her heart trembling on the brink of possibilities. Was that really what he saw when he looked at her?
He was so close, she could see herself in his eyes, two tiny reflections gazing up at him with love and longing. He kissed her again, longer, deeper, shutting her eyes, drawing out the sweetness
until her whole body shimmered. She touched his jaw, rough with stubble. She wanted to touch him all over, to feel his roughness against her smoothness, his hardness against her softness. Wanted him, his mouth, his hands, all of him on all of her.
“How long do we have?” he murmured minutes later.
Forever.
She drew back, breathless. “I . . . Are you sure? You’re still sick.”
“Food poisoning isn’t contagious.”
“Yes, but . . . Are you up for this?”
He brought her closer so that she could feel him, taut and aroused against her. “What do you think?”
Her breathing hitched. Her hips arched, seeking the pressure of his. She was tired of thinking, about the future, about her job, even about her girls. She wanted to be the woman he described, loving and giving and fearless.
“I think we’ve got all night,” she whispered. “I asked Mama to stay with the kids.”
His smile broke like sunrise over his lean face. “Then let’s make the most of it.”
She watched, transfixed, as he reached behind his head and grabbed his collar, dragging his T-shirt over his head the way men do. But when she reached for the hem of her own shirt, his hands stopped her.
“Let me.” His fingers trapped hers just above her belt. Their eyes locked. “You take care of everybody else. Let me take care of you for a change.”
* * *
“WHEN I was fifteen, I used to imagine you in my bed,” Max said much later. They lay as close as spoons, her smooth bare legs entwined with his, her hair across his pillow, his hand resting possessively on her hip. The sweet, heavy curve of her ass nestled warm against him.
Her head moved against his arm. He thought she was smiling. “Only when you were fifteen?”
He grinned. “Recently, too.”
“And what did we do? In your imagination.” Her warm, teasing tone set fire to his brain.
“Everything,” he admitted. “Every raw, dirty, secret fantasy I could think of.”
“Sounds good to me,” she said. Definitely smiling. He could hear it in her voice.
Happiness pooled inside him. “The reality is better.” He kissed the top of her head. “Thanks for coming over.”
She snuggled deeper into his heat. “What are friends for?”
