by Zoe Chant
For now, though, breakfast. Max had lost a lot of blood yesterday, and he must be starving. She was surprised he hadn’t said anything earlier.
Wait, never mind. She wasn’t surprised at all.
Rolling her eyes, Shoshanna searched in the fridge and came up with eggs, cheese, frozen spinach, and a few other things that had survived her week in Miami. Food. She could do food, and maybe when Max reappeared, they could figure out how to talk to each other without arguing.
Although she wasn’t holding her breath.
***
Max waited until Shoshanna had gone downstairs, and dialed his secretary’s number from memory.
“Hello, Ms. Delgado,” he said, without identifying himself. He didn’t want to chance Shoshanna’s shifter hearing catching his full name from below, and Ms. Delgado would recognize his voice.
“Mr. Rowland!” she said. “Where have you been? You said you’d be back yesterday evening. I tried your phone, I called your apartment, I even contacted Mr. Mayfield—”
Mr. Mayfield was RGS’s head of security. “I apologize, Ms. Delgado,” Max interrupted. “I was unexpectedly delayed. And I’m afraid I won’t be in today or tomorrow morning, either. I’ll need you to cancel everything up through tomorrow noon, at least.”
“Even—”
“Even the Secretary, yes. All of it.” That was going to cost him, but Shoshanna was more important.
And he was going to keep her safe and happy no matter what. Even if she fought him every step of the way.
“Should I give them any message, sir?” Ms. Delgado’s voice was back to being professionally calm.
“Just convey my apologies and reschedule for at least a week from now.” That should be enough time to definitively wrap all of this up.
“Will there be anything else, sir?” she asked.
“No, that will be all. Thank you, Ms. Delgado.”
“Of course, sir. Enjoy your time away.”
Max hung up with those words ringing in his ears. Enjoy your time away. As though he was on a weekend getaway with his mate. As though they were curled up together in her cozy home in the New England woods, wearing sweatpants, sleeping in, lying in bed until late morning and talking lazily.
It was strange how much this resembled something like that. And yet, that sort of weekend with Shoshanna was so thoroughly out of his reach. After he healed enough to receive her approval to leave, that would be all.
Maybe...maybe someday, he could come back.
Max never allowed himself this sort of weakness, fantasizing about some intangible future. Building castles in the air. But he was thinking of it now. Someday, when he’d rooted out the entirety of Hendricks’ corruption in RGS, when he was satisfied that he’d investigated every company showing signs of engaging in shifter-related research, maybe then it would be safe to come back here. Maybe then, his presence wouldn’t bring any more danger to Shoshanna’s door.
But there would always be corporate espionage, wouldn’t there? There would never truly be no danger.
And there was also the problem of the weekend off itself. Max had never, since his father died and he stepped into the position of CEO, gone an entire weekend without working at all. He didn’t go on weekend getaways; when he traveled, it was for work.
Somehow, he doubted Shoshanna would put up with a schedule like his from her mate.
That was all moot, though, because it was still too dangerous to even think about. This was why it was a bad idea to speculate wildly about long-term desires. Reality always got in the way.
Max stood up, pleased to see that he already felt less pain than he had half an hour ago when Shoshanna made him try to walk. He made his slow, careful way along the hallway and down the stairs.
When he was almost at the bottom, Shoshanna poked her head out of the kitchen. “Oh, for—” she said. “You should have asked me to come help you! Wait, never mind. I don’t know why I thought you’d do that. Come sit down, the eggs are almost ready.”
She withdrew into the kitchen again without giving him the chance to respond. Amused, Max continued his slow, semi-painful walk into the kitchen, which smelled delicious.
Shoshanna was standing over a pan, a look of fierce concentration on her face. She jerked her head over at a small table in the corner by the window, set with two places.
Max walked over to the table. By the time he sat down, he had to admit to himself that he was feeling shockingly tired, and his injuries were screaming with pain.
Only to himself, though.
It was only a few more seconds before Shoshanna appeared with the hot pan. She slid half of an omelet onto his plate and half onto hers, then disappeared, returning a minute later with coffee, and then finally with bowls of fruit yogurt.
“Spinach, cheddar, and bacon,” she said, nodding at the omelets. “I’m not a chef, so hold your criticisms.” She sat down across from him and took an enormous gulp of coffee.
Max tried the omelet. He felt his eyebrows go up. “No criticisms necessary,” he said honestly. “This is delicious.”
She was pleased, and trying to hide it. It was unfairly adorable. “I guess I’m getting good at omelets, then.” She took a bite of her own. “I’m nothing like a gourmet cook, but eggs are hard to really screw up. And pizza delivery way out here is an enormous pain, so I have to cook most nights anyway.”
“There’s no need to make excuses for why you’re skilled at something.” Max took another bite. “It’s not a failing, it’s an advantage.”
He’d learned from his father that self-deprecation was a dangerous habit. If you told yourself you weren’t good at something, you’d start to believe it. It was better by far to acknowledge your talents and use them to your advantage.
Shoshanna was quiet for a minute. “You’re right,” she said finally. “Thanks. Okay. I make a good omelet.”
She did. And Max was starving, he realized suddenly. He’d been too preoccupied with the situation to realize how much his body needed food. It made sense; healing as fast as a shifter did took fuel.
Shoshanna eyed his fast-disappearing omelet. “Want another one?”
He didn’t want to make her jump up and cook for him. That seemed...backwards, somehow. “I’m all right.”
“Max...you are such a liar.” She got up and started cracking eggs into a bowl.
No one talked to him like this. His sister Alexandra probably came the closest, but she needled him in more oblique language, using professional contexts. And he was her boss and her older brother, so he could tell her to stop if he thought she was going too far.
But Shoshanna wasn’t his subordinate. If she thought he was a liar, or if she wanted to say he wasn’t smart enough to take the time to rest his injured body, he couldn’t stop her.
It was strangely...refreshing.
Still. “I don’t want you to wait on me.”
“I’m not waiting on you.” Shoshanna grated cheese. “I want more, too. I’m making it for both of us.”
“I can do some of the dishes.” Max pushed himself out of his chair.
Shoshanna stopped grating. “Sit down.”
He sat, astonished at his own obedience.
She went back to the cheese. “You can make me a gourmet meal and scrub my kitchen until it sparkles when you’re better, okay? For now, let me make you a stupid omelet.”
I’m not going to be here when I’m better.
Max swallowed the words down, but the guilt kept him in his chair. “All right.”
While Shoshanna cooked the second omelet, Max finished his yogurt. She came over to the table and gave him more yogurt without asking. Then she glared at him. “You need calories. Eat it.”
He should not be charmed by this irritable mothering. He should not.
But he was. He picked up his spoon, and covertly watched her at the stove. She was dressed casually, in jeans and a sweater. The outfit hugged her curves. He had a sudden vision of coming up behind her one morning while s
he was cooking like this, pressing himself against her, kissing her neck. Breathing her in.
He shook himself out of it. Max Rowland was not the sort of man who wanted to spend the morning in a quaint kitchen with his mate making eggs for the both of them. No, he wanted to get up before dawn and start the day with espresso and conference calls.
He’d never wanted a domestic life. He’d always wanted to step into his father’s shoes, make his father’s kingdom into an empire. And his father had certainly never sat around in the kitchen on a weekend morning eating eggs. Instead, he’d been at the office seven days a week.
For the first time in his life, Max wondered what his mother had thought about that.
She’d seemed like she was the perfect corporate wife, attending charity functions and appearing in the society pages alongside her husband. She’d encouraged Max to take after his father.
Had she been happy with her life? Max wasn’t sure he’d ever seen past her serene expression to know.
He’d learned his negotiation face from her. His father had been passionate, blustery, always charging forward. Max wasn’t like that. He was like his mother. He didn’t let anyone see what he really thought about anything.
Today, though, he’d been...more open than he was accustomed to being. He was letting things show, like surprise, annoyance, enjoyment. Normally, he kept his face the same smooth, cool mask his mother had worn, no matter what was happening.
But he didn’t want to do that with Shoshanna. He was already hiding so much from her. Keeping back his enjoyment of her cooking, his reactions to her comments about him...he simply didn’t want to.
And there was no reason to, was there? She wasn’t a rival business’ employee. She wouldn’t use what she knew about him to undermine his company.
She didn’t even know he had a company.
Much less that it was the company that had held her captive and done horrific things to her.
A hot pan appeared in front of him. Shoshanna gave him approximately 85% of the second omelet, and took the smaller piece for herself.
“That doesn’t seem even.”
“I don’t want that much.” She set the pan aside and sat down, picking up her fork. “Besides. That should be yours.” Her eyes seemed to twinkle with—he thought—uncharacteristic mischief.
“Why?” he asked cautiously.
“Because it’s the lion’s share.”
Max actually laughed, a quick involuntary chuckle, and found himself honestly a little scandalized. “That would have gotten you banned from the table at my house.”
Your heritage is not a joke. He could hear his mother’s voice now. Neither of his parents allowed casual or funny comments about their shifter nature from any of their children. Particularly after Seth reached his rebellious phase, and started getting into vicious arguments with their father about what it meant to be a lion.
“I’ve been corrupted,” Shoshanna said now. “Kevin can’t utter a serious sentence to save his life. That’s my—my partner,” she added, hesitating a little over the label. “We have a business together.”
Kevin Lane, Max knew, had been a prisoner alongside Shoshanna in the lab. He was also co-owner of their private investigator business. And Shoshanna’s close friend.
When the two of them had set up shop together, Max had wondered if they were seeing each other. The thought had filled him with furious jealousy. Before that moment, he hadn’t even known he could have such a strongly possessive reaction.
He’d forced himself to master it. Shoshanna needed to live her life, and if he wasn’t going to be in it, he couldn’t expect her to take into consideration a man she’d never even met.
And, as it turned out, their relationship wasn’t physical or romantic after all. They’d never shown any appearance of dating. And now Max had been in Shoshanna’s bed, and hadn’t scented any other male presence, Kevin’s or anyone else’s.
“Well,” Shoshanna was continuing, “he’s more like my brother.” She smiled fondly. “My extremely bratty little brother. He loves puns, even though they’re completely obnoxious, and now they keep occurring to me. Even when I wish they wouldn’t.”
“I understand entirely,” Max heard himself saying, without any input whatsoever from his brain. “I have a couple of those.”
What was he doing?
But Shoshanna’s eyes lit with interest at the revelation. “Really? Actual brothers, or weird pseudo-adopted ones like me?”
“Actual brothers,” Max admitted. Now that he’d gone this far, he couldn’t just refuse to say anything else, could he? “I’m the oldest of four.”
Now Shoshanna looked...wistful. “Wow. I don’t have any blood siblings. That’s a lot of family.”
“Well,” said Max. He didn’t want to misrepresent his situation to her, especially since it seemed like she wished she could have as much family as he did. “We don’t—I don’t talk to my brothers that much. I work with my sister.” Stop talking! Too much! But he didn’t want to stop talking; he wanted Shoshanna to know. “But we don’t spend time with each other outside the office, generally.”
Shoshanna was looking at him with a penetrating gaze. “Do you wish you saw them all more?” she asked bluntly.
Max had set himself up for this question, he knew it. Lying would be pointless. “Yes.”
Shoshanna nodded, and turned her attention to her small slice of omelet. Max focused on eating as well, relaxing slowly as the questioning seemed to be over. After a minute, she asked him, “How are you feeling?”
“Better,” he said, a little surprised.
Shoshanna looked up at him. “That sounded like the truth.”
It was the truth. Eating a hearty meal had replenished his energy more than he’d expected. He could almost feel his skin knitting, his bones strengthening. “Of course it’s the truth.”
Shoshanna snorted. “Don’t start with me, Mr. Falling On His Face While Insisting He’s Fine. Do you want any more?”
“No, thank you.” He was pleasantly full. “And I believe I can do the dishes without falling on my face too badly.”
Shoshanna frowned at him. “You can dry them,” she decided.
So Max found himself sitting on a barstool by Shoshanna’s side as she washed the dishes, holding a drying cloth and carefully stacking plates on the countertop as he finished with them.
It was unexpectedly pleasant. He never would’ve imagined that something as mundane as doing the dishes could be pleasant.
***
Shoshanna couldn’t name the feeling she was having.
It wasn’t passion. Because nobody was passionate about doing the dishes with somebody. It wasn’t tenderness, either, because there was too much going on below the belt for that. It was too strong for affection, too complex for attraction.
There was just something about watching Max with the kitchen towel she’d given him, taking a coffee mug from her dripping hands with careful deliberation, drying it completely, inspecting it to make sure no part of it was still wet, and then setting it precisely on the countertop next to the rest of the dishes.
It was stupid. They were doing dishes.
But. The way he stayed aware of her movements, reaching out just as she finished washing something. The way his hands moved, graceful and thorough.
The fact that she was sure, she was absolutely sure that this man did not do dishes very often. She was willing to bet that he either paid someone to do his dishes for him, or subsisted entirely on restaurants and delivery.
High-end delivery, she thought, watching him surreptitiously. No Domino’s for Max. Sushi, probably. He didn’t sit in aging rural homes, in kitchens with peeling linoleum and old appliances, and dry dishes with a towel that had sparrows embroidered on it. He ordered sushi and ate it while staying late in some fancy office. She knew it, as surely as she knew he was a blond, noble, stubborn lion.
He’d said he worked with his sister. What did they do? A family business of some kind? It
had to be a pretty successful family business, to buy suits like the one he’d been wearing when she found him.
But Shoshanna was caring less and less about the secrets Max was keeping from her. Because watching him here in her kitchen, steam from the sink rising around them both, sunlight coming in the window to glint off his hair...
It didn’t matter where he’d come from, where he worked and what his family was like. Shoshanna was looking at this man, present next to her in her kitchen, reaching out to take a cluster of forks and spoons from her damp hand, and realizing that she wanted him to stay.
She wanted this. She wanted to wash dishes like this every day, with Max being too careful with the drying towel and watching her too intently to see when she was ready to hand him something else.
That look was giving her the shivers.
Finally, every dish was washed, dried, and put away. Shoshanna hesitated after drying her hands, not sure what to do next.
Max was wiping down the table. As he leaned over it, she could see his shoulders straining the sweatshirt, the long line of his back leading down to the curve of his—
“Done.” He stood up straight again, and came over to hand her the sponge. She automatically watched his gait as he walked, and was surprised at how smooth it was.
“How are you feeling now?” she asked.
“Much, much better.” He quirked a smile at her. She liked his little half-smile; it was like a full-on expression would be giving too much away to the world, but he wanted to share at least a little of it with her.
“Okay,” she said steadily. “How about we go upstairs and check you over, then? See how your injuries are doing.”
His eyes locked with hers. He knew what she really meant, she could tell.
But she was being honest. Because as much as she wanted to get him into her bed, stripped naked, and have her way with him, she wasn’t doing anything that might hurt him more. She just wasn’t.
“All right,” was all he said. He led the way upstairs, which put his ass right at her eye level. She tried not to stare. She didn’t succeed.
