Merried

by Jamie Farrell

  All this honesty was killer. But Max deserved to know as much as she could tell him.

  “I missed you,” he said quietly.

  Tension loosened in her neck, and a foreign warmth swelled in her chest. “I’m sorry.”

  His hand settled on her thigh again, warm and solid and real. He rubbed his thumb over her jeans. She put a shaky hand over his, soaked in the heat radiating from his skin, and gave in to the urge to scoot closer to him.

  “When I guessed why you were gone, I spent hours looking into your father. And then my grandparents passed, and—” He cut himself off with a long sigh. “I didn’t know how much I liked you until you were gone.”

  “I knew how much I liked you before I left.”

  “But you still left.”

  “You wouldn’t have asked me to stay.”

  “I—no, you’re right. I wouldn’t have.”

  She dropped her head to his shoulder and squeezed her eyes shut. She hadn’t expected him to deny it, but she’d still hoped he would. “We should go back. You have to work tomorrow, and Mom’s planning a tour of the winery, which means we’ll all be drunk before two.”

  But Max didn’t move.

  Not to put the car back in gear, anyway.

  Instead, he pressed his face into Merry’s hair. The roots of her hair tingled when he inhaled, then his fingers curled around her neck. “I’ve been thinking about you all fucking day.”

  More than just the roots of her hair tingled at the suggestions in his raspy voice. “That’s what you get for kissing me.”

  “I want to kiss you again.”

  Oh, yeah. Her core pulsed, and her nipples perked up. “Maybe your mother can watch this time.”

  “She’s out of town. Maybe next time.” His tongue flicked her earlobe.

  Her breath hitched, and her bra was suddenly painfully tight. “Who says there’ll be a next time?”

  “You smell amazing.” He nuzzled her neck, his scruff igniting her nerve endings everywhere. “Like if fried chicken and engine grease got together and had flowers.”

  She choked on another surprised laugh. “That’s disgusting.”

  “I missed your laugh, Merry.” He reached across her, his arm and chest brushing her breasts, and she whimpered.

  Then her seat went back, her seatbelt disappeared, and Max lifted a wolfish, tempting grin. “For old times’ sake?”

  “You just want to watch my ass when I climb back there.”

  He shifted his position, one hand sliding up her inner thigh, the other tangling in her hair. “Actually, I was wondering if you could use your ninja moves to throw me back there.”

  She laughed, but his teasing grin faded.

  “Merry—”

  “I’m leaving again.”

  “Not gone yet.”

  “Max—”

  “I haven’t wanted another woman since you left. Not like I want you.” He caught her lips in his again, aggressive, possessive, demanding, while his fingers brushed her sensitive places.

  Merry groaned into his mouth, grabbed him by the jacket, and yanked him against her. She leaned back in the seat, pulling him toward her with his lower lip caught between her teeth. He slid across the center console. Something banged against the door, then the car shook. He landed on her with a grunt.

  She giggled.

  She hadn’t giggled in over a year, but there it was—a girly, free-spirited giggle. “You’re still not very good at that.”

  He swore, then buried his head in her shoulder. His words were muffled, but they were perfect. “I missed you,” he said again.

  The idea that he’d say it until she believed it made her eyes sting again.

  He knew she had secrets, he knew who her father was, but he still wanted her. The her she wanted to be. She swallowed. “Okay. I guess I can let you see my ass.”

  “And touch it?”

  “And touch it.”

  “Watching your ass crawl into the backseat would’ve been easier before you used your ninja strength to pull me on top of you.”

  She tilted her hips up to his, and he sucked in a breath. “Am I not worth the trouble?” she whispered.

  “Merry.” He brushed his thumbs over her cheeks. “You’re not trouble.”

  “I am.”

  His lips followed his thumbs, hot kisses against her cool face. “You’re strong. You’re sexy. You’re smart. That’s not trouble.”

  He was so getting laid. “You’re a very dangerous man, Max Gregory.”

  “Are you still ticklish inside your elbow?” His fingers fiddled with the zipper on her coat.

  She thrust her hands through his hair. “Danger,” she said against his mouth.

  He chuckled. “I love danger.”

  She apparently did too.

  She made quick work of unzipping his coat, then thrust her fingers under his shirt while he treated her to a long, slow, everything kiss. His stomach was hot and rigid, the wiry hairs on his chest tickling her fingers, his nipples hard.

  She’d missed being wanted. Being appreciated. Being bold.

  But she’d also missed Max to the point that she physically hurt, and not just in her heart. She’d hurt in her legs when she’d had to walk away. She’d hurt in her fingers when she’d typed Zack Diggory’s scenes. She’d hurt in her memories.

  She’d probably hurt again.

  But this time, she was moving on to make a new life.

  This time, she’d get to say goodbye.

  She tweaked his nipples, smiling into his kiss at his surprised gasp. “C’mon, speedy.”

  “Speedy? You’re asking for it, you little minx.”

  “What? I was talking about your driving.” She scurried from beneath him and crawled into the backseat, taking her time in letting him have as good a view of her backside as the light would afford.

  The car rocked, and before she’d scooted across the backseat, Max was with her. He gripped her knees, then slid his hands up her thighs while his dark eyes telegraphed exactly what he wanted to do to her. His thumbs brushed the denim covering her center, and she had to bite down on her lip to keep from moaning.

  She yanked her jacket off and tossed it into the front seat. Her shirt was harder to get off—she banged her elbow against the window, and the air was cooler than she expected, but Max dipped his head and pressed a kiss to her collarbone, then made a path from her bra strap to the edge of one cup and across to the other while his fingers continued to flick at her center.

  “This isn’t real,” she whispered.

  “But it feels damn good,” he replied.

  It did.

  And so she shut her mind off, sealed up her heart, and let herself simply feel. Max’s thumbs on her nipples. The stiff leather bench seat beneath her. His tongue on the underside of her breasts. The slide of her pants when he stripped them off her. His sandpaper cheeks and chin on her inner thigh. His thick, remarkably soft hair between her fingers. The heady, salty taste of his skin on her tongue. The sound of his voice dancing through the air. The hard steel of the muscles in his arms and chest. The perfect fit of his erection inside her. The rocking of the car. The stars behind her eyes—and the sun and the moon and a few planets too—when Max hit that perfect spot inside her and sent her into oblivion.

  She fell apart, into a thousand shards of rainbow light, and floated through the winter night, wishing she never, ever had to come back down.

  His weight was solid and heavy, his head cradled between her breasts, his breath quick but steady. She squeezed her eyes shut, pretended moisture wasn’t leaking out the corners, and let her hand rest in his hair.

  “I missed you, Merry,” he whispered once more in the dark.

  “I’ll miss you too.”

  * * *

  It was well after midnight when Max dropped Merry at the B&B. He’d wanted to invite her home with him, but he knew where that would lead.

  Danger.

  To his brain, to his heart, possibly even to his family’s busin
ess.

  Had Merry meant to tell him her daddy liked to take things from people who hurt her? To warn him?

  Or had she simply been telling an old story about her father’s misguided intentions?

  Max should’ve told Dan about her. Probably needed to put in a call to Spencer McGraw’s people as well, just as a heads-up. See if McGraw wanted to put a temporary halt on displaying the diamond.

  He pulled into the driveway of his grandparents’ old house and hit the button on the garage.

  The lights came on as the door lifted. No owl sightings tonight. No angry fathers waiting for him inside.

  Just the old Dodge Charger and all of Max’s tools.

  What would your grandfather tell you to do?

  Max sat in Trixie, her engine chugging, and stared at the other old hunk of metal.

  Fixin’ cars is a working man’s job, Gramps had said when Max was nineteen. You got the privilege of brains and an education. Be a sin to waste it.

  The same man had been beside Ma and Pops at every one of Max’s football games in high school. He’d taught Max how to spot a fake diamond and how to charm the ladies to make a sale. Max had used that charm for other advantages through his teen years and his twenties, which Gramps had most likely known. Whenever Max had swung by to see Gran for cookies after school, if Gramps was home, they’d sit and talk sports, the family business, grades, and how much money Gramps would’ve won if he’d been playing on Wheel of Fortune last night.

  The Wheel was sacred in the elderly Gregory household.

  When Max had moved in to help out after both Gran and Gramps started having mobility issues three years back, he’d gotten addicted to the damn show too.

  But Max’s obsession with cars was the one thing Gramps had never understood.

  Dan or Pops either.

  But Max had a solid job offer on fixing an old car now. He had all the parts. He knew who he’d call for a paint job. He could find a way to make the time.

  He didn’t want to believe Merry was right, that he was a chicken for not jumping at the chance, but was he?

  Was he holding back because he didn’t want to lose the love he’d barely begun to rediscover of working on old cars?

  Was he worried that he didn’t have a good enough business model, the right connections to form a client base, that he’d fail and have to go back to With This Ring with his tail tucked between his legs?

  Or had his dream simply died when Merry walked out of his life?

  He stroked a hand over Trixie’s wheel.

  No, his dream hadn’t died.

  But life had given him too many losses in the past year for him to want to face another one.

  Chapter 14

  Phoebe Moon felt the pressure behind her dainty nose, but no sneeze would come. Just like the grown-ups, she’d had her sneezer stolen from her. “That dastardly Uncle Sandy!” she cried.

  —Phoebe Moon and the Sneeze Snatcher

  * * *

  One year ago…

  On a late-October Saturday, one week after Max had had his mind—and possibly his heart—blown by Merry in Trixie’s backseat, he took her to a car show in Willow Glen. He hadn’t expected her to want to go, but he’d tossed out the offer so she wouldn’t think his only intention was having her come down to spend the night.

  Which was his real intention.

  He liked hanging out with Merry, sure, but Merry in bed?

  Yeah.

  He wanted more of that.

  And since the only place they’d had sex was in Trixie’s backseat, the car show turned out to be an exceptionally bad idea.

  Every backseat he saw made him picture Merry’s skin, her breasts, her legs, her head thrown back, her face in utter ecstasy. For the first time in his life, Max didn’t want to linger over muscle cars.

  He wanted to take a woman home.

  Now.

  But she was either oblivious, or she was enjoying torturing him. She was in jeans that showed off her amazing ass, a purple-gray vest over a white shirt, with a light scarf looped around her neck and her long dark hair loose so she kept having to tuck it behind her ears. They’d been at the show for an hour, and now she was eating a hot dog—yeah, watching her wrap her lips around that wasn’t a problem at all—and pointing to a black 1970 Charger with chrome rims and a bench seat up front that had Max Jr. getting ideas again.

  “I like this one, but I’d want it in blue,” she said. “Does it have all that power-torque V-whatever stuff too?”

  “Yes.”

  She tilted her head at him, took another bite of her hot dog, and waited.

  The last time Max had taken anyone with him to a car show, his companion had been yawning and obviously feigning interest within the first fifteen minutes. Merry, though, was bright-eyed, inquisitive, and, Max suspected, soaking in every word he said.

  As if she liked cars as much as he did.

  He pointed to the sign next to the Dodge. “This one’s a beast. Three-ninety horsepower with a V8. If I ever give Trixie a sister, it’ll be one like her.”

  “A nineteen-seventy model?”

  “Or a sixty-nine. Like the General Lee.”

  “Does it come in red too?”

  “Bright red.”

  “You know a lot about cars.”

  Unlike his family, she seemed impressed. “It’s a hobby.”

  “Trixie’s much prettier than that Mustang behind you.”

  And more powerful. Max had checked. “You have excellent taste.”

  “So what’s keeping you from giving Trixie a sister?” She shoved her last bite of hot dog in her mouth and lifted her brows at him.

  She was always doing that—changing the subject back to him. Different from what he was used to with women.

  Also uncomfortable right now.

  “Haven’t had the time to take on a second car,” he said.

  She was still chewing, still staring at him.

  “My grandparents needed more help than we realized when I moved in with them. I got home from work one night, and Gran was sitting on the floor in the kitchen, having a dizzy spell, trying to tell Gramps where to step to avoid broken glass. He could navigate the house pretty well, but Gran would put cans behind glass jars in the cabinets, so when she asked him to get out a can of soup, he’d dropped a full jar of spaghetti sauce on the floor.” And that had been one of the easier situations.

  With Gramps’s eyesight going, he’d known he’d never see Dan’s newest pieces or his own favorites again. He’d quit going to the shop, quit talking about it unless someone else brought it up. Another time, Gran had had a dizzy spell while baking cookies and burned her arm on the open oven door. Gramps had wanted to go to the emergency room with her, but wasn’t confident in letting anyone help him navigate the hospital, nor would he consider using a wheelchair.

  The emotional wounds, watching his grandparents cope with knowing they would never get better, had been more than Max had been prepared to deal with when he moved in.

  “Your family must’ve been grateful you could be there for them.”

  “My parents did a lot too. Getting them to doctor appointments, hiring house cleaners, visiting. My sister-in-law was always dropping off meals and audiobooks. I just mowed the grass and made sure they were safe overnight.”

  And worried he’d sleep through one of them needing something, had the occasional fling with the wrong women, and wondered how he’d handle himself when his time was just as imminent as Gramps’s and Gran’s was.

  “Do you miss seeing them every day?”

  “I still see them almost every day.”

  She smiled a faraway kind of smile, and before he could ask if she ever saw her own grandparents—or her parents, come to think of it—she went up on tiptoe, slung her arm behind his neck, and brushed her lips over his.

  He hooked his thumbs through her belt loops, and she sucked his lower lip into her mouth.

  When she’d kissed him in Trixie’s backseat last weekend, pr
imal lust had taken over.

  Today, he wanted her in his bed again, but he wanted her to stay.

  To talk. To listen. To simply be.

  Someone jostled them, and Merry pulled back with a grin. “You should be ashamed of yourself for being so irresistible in public. Look what you made me do.”

  “My apologies, your highness.”

  She laughed and took his hand. They turned to the next car, a sixty-seven Camaro. “Trixie could run this one over with both hands tied behind her back,” Max told her.

  “You really love this, don’t you?”

  More than he’d ever admit to his family. “I’m a guy. Motor oil is in my blood.”

  “You like your day job as much as you like cars?”

  “Old cars don’t put food on the table and a roof over my dog’s head the way With This Ring does.”

  She froze, then tilted an odd look at him. “With This Ring?” she said in a voice he’d never heard before.

  “My family’s shop.”

  She didn’t say anything else, but just stood there watching him as if he’d sprouted a third leg and a second set of elbows.

  “My parents are retiring, so I’m taking over as manager,” Max said into the vacant space of the conversation. “Dan, my brother—he’s the creative genius. Took over from Gramps. Even helped Gramps design the Mrs. Claus diamond ring, and—”

  Merry squeaked, then seemed to choke on air.

  “Ah. Right.” Max tossed her a grin he didn’t feel. He liked her. They had a good thing. She wasn’t going to get weird about his family working in the jewelry business now, was she? “Forgot to mention that’s why Gramps sent me to the signing, didn’t I?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Would it have made a difference?”

  “Obviously.”

  He laughed, relief seeping into his bones. That was Merry—funny and sarcastic. “You seem surprised.”

  Her complexion was too pale. She shrugged, then gestured to the cars around them. “Between this and Trixie, I guessed you were into custom bridal getaway cars or something. But it’s not like our day jobs define who we are.”