by Kate Meader
And boy, did I come up with some righteous ways to expend it.
No one could handle me. No one could stand to be around me. I would scream and curse and ensure I was unlovable because God help anyone who dared to think I might have a single redeeming quality. Everything sucked. Everyone could go fuck themselves. Through two group homes and three fostering situations, I made myself impenetrable. I was a Teflon-coated anger monster.
Tonight, that monster showed herself and tonight, I experienced something sudden and bewildering: a feeling of safety. Max Henderson stepped in to stop park security from laying a hand on me. Of all people, I would not have expected this man to come to my aid.
He doesn’t look too pleased about it, though.
In the small room where security has stowed us to either cool off or wait for the police, Max is pacing, his ridiculously handsome face crumpled in annoyance.
“Do you want to call someone?” I ask.
“Like who? A lawyer?”
Sarcasm noted.
“I’m sure they’ll let us go with a slap on the wrist. It’s really not a big deal.” Maybe he’s worried about his reputation as an enforcer of the law.
“What the hell were you thinking, Charlie?”
“I was thinking Muller is an idiot.” He was. He is. “The guy’s blind!”
“But he’s not deaf, is he? You can’t scream insults at game officials and not expect consequences.”
“So I should have just zipped my mouth and acted like the quiet little woman?”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make this about feminism or getting beaten down by the patriarchy. It’s about common sense and respect. Sure, Muller’s an idiot and your running commentary was highly entertaining—”
“You thought so?”
He smiles. I wish he hadn’t. I wish he’d keep that weapon to himself because it’s lethal.
“I thought so. I’m not sure I’d heard some of those terms before. Douchewaffle was my favorite.”
Now I’m smiling like a loon. “The truth had to be told, Max.”
“Sure, but you had your fun and then when the people who control who stays and who goes got involved, then it was time to dial it back, oh, five hundred percent.”
He’s right. I know this, but I hate it. I hate feeling like that angry girl again, even if the stakes are as low as screaming invective at a ballgame official. I’m never going to find a man if I can’t rein in that part of myself that’s unpalatable to the segment of the human race I need to impress.
One of them stands before me. Not that Max Henderson is on my radar as husband material, but he is a sought-after member of the male species. Smart, handsome, upwardly mobile, a Ken-doll model for the guy I’d like to meet.
And Ken’s looking at me now, his head tilted, his inquisitive blue eyes narrowing.
“What?” I ask, a little flustered at his scrutiny.
“Something happened just there.” He does a corkscrew gesture with his index finger. “You toggled some sort of switch.”
I swallow because that’s a pretty accurate description of what I just did.
“Sometimes I need to make a conscious effort not to murder the person nearest to me, especially when he’s a smug, supercilious, know-it-all douchewaffle.”
He laughs. I like his laugh. It tickles a spot in my stomach.
“I’m getting the douchewaffle treatment now? Lumped in with Muller?” He steps in closer. “You know, that security guy had it coming. I just didn’t want to see you manhandled.”
“Even if I deserved it for shooting my mouth off?”
The mention of my mouth seems to act like a lever for his gaze. It drops to the mouth in question, gives it an imaginary lick, and flashes with a flicker of appreciation.
“He had no right to touch you.”
The words are said with an intensity that shocks me because one, it’s ten minutes past the event, and two, this is Max Henderson, Mr. Smooth ’n’ Slick, who seems to operate at a keel so even I’m not quite sure he’s a hundred percent human. The only man in my life who’s ever made me feel this protected is the one who saved me all those years ago, who saw my potential. I’m not used to feeling it with the guys I date and certainly not with guys like Max Henderson who are chronically undateable.
“You shouldn’t have pushed him,” I say.
“Because it landed us in here?” He’s closer now, leaning over me like that moment when we met in the Gilt Bar.
“Because you could have gotten hurt.”
“Aw, you care, Charlie?”
Yes. But I don’t like the renewed smirk in his voice. Neither do I enjoy how his personality can shift so quickly between that drilling-my-soul intensity and the flirt he turns on for every woman.
“Because I’m sure you’d find a way to blame me,” I say with a check of my nails. “Maybe sue me for your pain and suffering.”
“Like I said, he shouldn’t have touched you.”
Which is when he touches me. Max rubs a thumb along my jaw, causing my entire body to ignite. My quickly drawn breath is necessary to keep me upright but it’s also a mistake because it provides oxygen to that spark inside me and fans the flames of desire to the point I’m in danger of burning up. If this is the effect of one simple touch, how would I survive more?
“He was just doing his job,” I murmur.
“And I was just doing mine.” That thumb now moves over my chin, trails down my throat, and hovers over the divot above my collarbone. As if he’s trying to cover as much ground as possible without involving all his digits. Or his hands. Or all two hundred pounds of rock-solid muscle that I’m now imagining cradled between my legs as he slides in, deep, true, and to the hilt.
“Your job?” My voice sounds annoyingly breathless. “What job?”
“Protecting what’s—” I think he rasps out the word “mine” as his mouth descends, stamping a claim over lips that are all too eager to part and let him in. I shouldn’t allow this. I shouldn’t cling to his hell-those-are-broad shoulders. I shouldn’t be moaning my encouragement or reaching up to tunnel greedy fingers through his hair. I shouldn’t be making an ass grab to pull him flush because I need that cock I’ve been dreaming about to notch between my legs and rub there, yes, there.
I’ve kissed my fair share of frogs, a few earls, even a prince or two. I guess that’s all been practice as I worked my way up to the royal court of Max. This guy is King of the Kiss. It shouldn’t surprise me that he does it well, just as it shouldn’t surprise me that my body is reacting like it’s a drought-riven land newly doused in water. Like Max is the answer to a lifelong thirst.
He’s wedged his body between my legs, one very clever hand cupping my ass, the other holding my face at an angle that works for him. That theory I had before about him attempting to cover as much ground as possible with a single, teasing finger is now being put to the test. Max’s body envelops mine in an all-consuming, cell-invasive manner. It should be terrifying, but it’s not.
He’s an amazing kisser. Not wet or sloppy, not pushy or aggressive. Max kisses me like this is important to him. To us.
“Charlie.”
Max’s kiss continues to drug me even while awareness of the world around us attempts to break through. Someone is saying my name. Not Max, who is definitely not talking, thank God, but someone familiar…
“Charlie!”
Our mouths separate like those of teenagers caught in a parked car. Oh, God. This can’t be happening.
“Hey, Sully,” I manage. The lips might no longer be in flagrante but the hands…oh, dear, I’m still enjoying a big, meaty handful of Max’s most excellent ass. I let go and step out from behind him to greet the new arrival.
That guy I me
ntioned earlier, the one who saved me? Meet Frank Ignatius Sullivan.
Until Frank and Donna Sullivan came into my life, I was miserable on my rage-fueled island of one. Here were these two do-gooders pulling ashore with a raft and asking me to climb aboard. I stuck a pin in that raft. But they duct-taped over the hole and pumped the air back in and started over the next day. And the next. Wore me down.
I’d never felt more safe than when Frank took me in his arms and told me I could be a bitch for a while but eventually my real personality would want in on the action. The bitch took a hiatus, then a vacation, then a near-permanent leave. But she still comes back every now and then—this girl can gussy herself up with designer dresses and heels bought at consignment stores, she can turn herself into an in-demand wedding planner who deals with richer-than-Beyoncé clients, she can smile and simper at the sex-in-six-thousand-dollar suits she occasionally dates, but it doesn’t take much to unleash her temper-induced potty mouth.
Frank raises one white bushy eyebrow to the ceiling at me, then abandons his disapproval to get a better look at Max. You think my bullshit detector is finely calibrated? Frank taught me everything I know.
I’ll give it to Max. He doesn’t wither under Sully’s stare, and before anyone gets into anything, I make the introductions, more so my foster dad won’t think I’m snogging a complete stranger.
“Sully, this is Max Henderson. Max, Sully.”
“Carter said you were making trouble,” Sully says, referring to the head of security at Wrigley. He takes a long look at Max, source of the trouble. He’s not wrong.
“I had a few choice words for Muller,” I start in my defense.
“That asshole. I saw the calls on TV. Meanwhile, I’m up seventy-five bucks in a game, a queen short of a full house, when I get a call telling me my daughter has been arrested.”
“Not arrested. Just detained. The security guy looked new, and he started to get a little physical at which point Max stepped in. I had it handled…”
Frank’s no longer listening, his gaze having pivoted back to Max. “You were protecting my daughter?”
“Trying to. The calls were terrible, but Charlie crossed a line when she refused to back down.”
“Hey, wait a second,” I say, but Frank is already stepping in to shake Max’s hand.
“She’s got a temper on her, Max, but she usually knows better than to let it fly in my house.”
Max is sizing up Sully. “Frank Sullivan. I know you. You used to run the Wrigley scoreboard up until…a year ago?”
“Yep, had to retire. Now I sit around, smoke cigars when my wife’s not looking, and play poker. You a poker man, Max?”
I don’t hear Max’s answer because my brain is currently filled with a rushing sound I know all too well. The signal that I’m about to go she-hulk on these two idiots who are chatting as if I’m no longer here. The anger is a living thing inside me and then suddenly whoosh! it’s receding like the tide.
Max’s hand is rubbing slow, soothing circles on my back. It’s as though he recognized I’m upset, even while engrossed in—still engrossed in—a conversation with Sully about how the scoreboard works. Of course he’s a multitasker.
After a minute or so of me losing my mind in a new way, Frank steps in and cups my face.
“I talked to Carter, and no one’s going to make any more of this.” He kisses me on the forehead. “I won’t tell Donna, either.”
I sniff the air. “In exchange for keeping your cigar-smoking a secret? You know what the doc said.”
Frank splits a grin between me and Max, then his eyes wander to where Max’s hand is obviously still at my back. No longer circling, just in a holding pattern that feels much nicer than I care to admit.
“We’ve all got our secrets, Charlie.”
I make a noise of discontent. Frank had a heart attack a year back that prompted his early retirement. Cigars are definitely not part of the recovery plan.
“All right, see you outside,” he says. “Good to meet you, Max.”
“Sully, you don’t have to—” But he’s already left. I turn to Max, who’s got the megawatt grin on full force. “I don’t know why he left first.”
“Probably thinks we have unfinished business.” His fingers dig into my hip. “You don’t have the same name as your dad?”
“My foster dad. Since I was fourteen.”
He betrays no surprise at the F-word. “So, you know your way around the park.”
“Wrigley’s my second home.” I move myself two feet closer to the door, ignoring the quick cool down of that hip indent where his fingers had fit a little too well. “And there’s nothing unfinished about our business. What was happening when he walked in was not supposed to happen. You just caught me by surprise, that’s all.”
“Which is why you threw yourself into it like a nerd in a comic book store the day Stan Lee makes a visit.”
“Don’t make more of this than it deserves, Max. It was just a kiss. Pretty average, really.”
He walks toward me, all that Max-imum intensity on display, looking like he’s about to call my bluff and prove that kiss was anything but average.
I back up.
He reaches behind me with his hand and…
…opens the door.
“Don’t worry, Charles, your lips are safe for now. But let’s not pretend it wasn’t amazing. I might prevaricate for a living, but I don’t lie about the important stuff. Sweet dreams.”
And then he’s off, leaving me a little weak-kneed, to be honest. I don’t lie about the important stuff, he said, and for some strange reason, I believe him.
Chapter 10
“Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years.”
—Simone Signoret
Max
“So, did you meet Maddon?”
Grant squints at me from the other side of the booth in the Legal Eagle, a bar we frequent near the law courts. I’ve just shared my Cubs jail story. It takes a lot to impress the boys, and my visit to the inner sanctum, albeit under less than ideal circumstances, has given me more street cred than I bargained for.
“Nope. But I met Frank Sullivan.”
“Who?” Lucas asks much to Grant’s and my disgust. Sometimes his Britishness really pisses us off.
“You need to assimilate to our ways, Wright,” Grant says. “How the hell can you appreciate Henderson’s tale if you’re not even aware of who Frank Sullivan is?”
Lucas rolls his eyes so far into the back of his head all we can see is horror-story white. “So, he’s a player?”
“He’s the former manual scorekeeper,” I say impatiently. “Of one of the last remaining manual scoreboards at one of the last remaining neighborhood baseball parks in the country. The guy’s part of history.” I clear my throat. “And he’s the wedding planner’s dad.”
This makes Lucas smile, because “women” is a subject in which he considers himself an expert. Let me tell you more about our friend from across the pond. A boy genius, he graduated high school at sixteen with a full ride to Oxford. Can crush all comers in pub quiz trivia. Wears ridiculously jaunty hats and manages to pull it off. Has a Doctor Who fetish (For Classic Who, prefers the third over the fourth. For New Who, he’ll take Capaldi over Tennant. I know, weird.). I have no idea what he’s doing slumming with us. He’s been a fixture in my life for years, yet I can’t help feeling I’ve barely scratched the surface.
“So, you’re defending this woman’s honor,” Lucas says, “then you get hauled off to Cubs jail, and you meet her father.”
“Foster father, actually, but they’re close. Very close. He walked in on me making out with her. I felt like I was sixteen all over again.”
“Bone
rs in the presence of father figures.” Lucas shudders. “I’m getting a de-rection just thinking about it.”
“Thought this woman annoyed you,” Grant says, massaging us back on topic. “Like really annoyed you.”
“She does. She really does. But there’s something there.”
Grant opens his mouth but Lucas holds up a hand. “Please. Let me.” He turns to me. “Uh, what, mate?”
“She annoys me, and she interests me. The two are not mutually exclusive, Wright.”
“No, they’re not. But when you put ’em together, you’ve got the makings of a bit more than a bang-and-bolt situation.” Elbow on the table, he holds his chin thoughtfully like a psychotherapist. Or maybe just a psycho. “Tell me more about the ‘something.’ Are we talking connection?”
“She’s under my skin, that’s all. You know what that’s like.”
Passing over Lucas, who probably doesn’t know what that’s like, I turn to Grant, who does. He watches me carefully, but elects to keep any comment to himself. My heart checks for him, knowing his pain is still a soul-crushing thing.
And then because it’s not enough for the guy to be thinking about it, the embodiment of that pain appears before us.
“Gentlemen,” a cool, moneyed voice says.
Aubrey Gates stands outside the booth, all sleek, dark hair, her lovely gray eyes assessing us. She’s one of my closest friends—or at least she was until she and Grant officially divorced just over a year ago, though they’d separated a year before that. As a couple, they shouldn’t have worked: Grant, the quiet, gentle giant from Georgia, and Aubrey, the Boston society princess who can enthrall a room with her laugh and biting wit. We met at Northwestern Law and became inseparable, like Harry, Ron, and Hermione.
And yes, I was Harry in this scenario—without the scar, the glasses, or the wizarding abilities.
