by Sonya Weiss
“Sure thing.” Haley put the phone on speaker and answered without checking to see if it was his sister or not. “Max’s phone. Girlfriend number one speaking.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Gallagher,” Haley said, clearing her throat and darting a look at Max. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t worry about it, dear. Is Max busy?”
“I’m here. We’re at the gingerbread contest.” Max stooped to eye level with the walls of the creation. “Looks even,” he said. “What’s up, Mom?”
“Hugh is home now, and he’d like to see you.”
Max took the phone from Haley and turned off the speaker as he raised it to his ear. “Is that right? You can tell Hugh I’d like to unsee my brother with my then-girlfriend, but that’s not possible either. Coming home early and catching the two of them making out on my bed is something that’s burned into my brain. I have to go.” He disconnected and tossed the phone back onto the table as he let out a long sigh. “I need a break.”
Haley watched him walk outside and debated for a second. He probably wouldn’t like it if she followed and gave him her opinion. But he was upset, and enemy or not, she didn’t like to see someone hurting. With that thought in mind, she went after him.
…
The cold air sliced across Max as he walked around the parking lot, drawing in deep breaths. Every time his brother’s name came up, he felt like he’d been hit by a car. Now that his brother had showed up in town, that car became a bus. And according to his mom, Hugh wanted to make amends.
Forgive, forget, move on, his family urged, but how did a man do any of that when just breathing through the pain took everything he had?
He bowed his head.
“If you’re praying, it’s probably going to give God a heart attack.”
Max turned at the sound of Haley’s voice. “Is that your version of a pep talk?”
“No. I have better material than that.” Haley hopped up onto the tailgate of a truck and sat swinging her legs.
“Better than ‘forgive, forget, and move on’?” Shoving his hands into his pockets, Max remained where he was but watched her, trying to read her in the poor glow of the parking lot security light.
“Much better. Your brother screwed you over. Don’t forget. Sit up until the wee hours of the night plotting how you can get revenge to make him as miserable as he made you.”
Max walked over to the truck and climbed up beside her. “I know you’re not serious.”
“You’re right. I’m not, because no one can tell you what to do or how to feel unless they’ve been there, done that, you know? If someone wants advice on how to handle a viral breakup, then hey, I’m your woman to call.”
“The rift between my brother and me is hard on my family.” Max let out a sigh. “I caught them together. They’d both lied to me for months. Hugh and I went to games, took fishing trips, hung out, and the whole time he was…he was…”
“Acting like a rat, and Annalise was too,” Haley supplied.
Max swung his head to look at her, surprised at the ease he felt talking to her about something that cut him so deeply. “You never liked her.”
“In my ever-so-humble but shockingly accurate opinion, she was one tent away from being a full circus. All glitz and pomp. But when she wasn’t in the public eye, she was a mean person.”
“I guess. I don’t get it.” Until her betrayal, he hadn’t seen her that way. Afterward, Max had never been able to understand what made either of them act the way they had. “How do you lie to someone you profess to love and think it’s okay?”
“People justify lies in their mind when it’s something they want. Whether it’s right or wrong makes no difference.”
“I can’t imagine you treating someone that way.”
She sucked in an exaggerated breath. “Did you just pay me a compliment? Is the zombie apocalypse near?”
“Two things I can count on you for, Haley. To annoy me and to make me laugh.” The stone that had been lodged in his stomach shifted. Max felt lighter, less like he was stooped beneath the weight of family expectations.
“I know, right? I feel the same about you. We’re perfect as enemies.”
“I don’t know that I would call us enemies.” He shot her a look.
“What, then?”
“Beats me.” Max looked up at the night sky.
“Sorta friends,” she said.
“Yeah. Sorta friends.” He smiled at her, liking the sound of that, liking the sight of her. Too much. “I don’t know about you, but I’m about to freeze in place here.”
“I’m freezing faster than you. I don’t have as much plump on my rump.” She bumped her shoulder against his.
Max liked that too. “I do have plenty of plump. All of it good.” He got off the truck and wagged his hips back and forth. “You should see me wiggle it when I dance. I’ve got the moves.”
Haley snort-laughed and jumped down from the truck bed. “You dance like you’ve had an electric shock. I’ve seen you.”
“I’ve upped my game since then. You and me at Bowman’s Christmas party. We’ll see who’s best at bustin’ a move.”
“Oh, Max.” She patted his chest.
“What?” He followed her inside the community center. “I’ve got it going on, and you know it.” Back at their table, he picked up the icing bag. “Maybe you’ve secretly put my name on your list.”
The sparkle fled from her eyes, and her cheeks flushed. “Nope. The list ends with Scott.”
“Sort-of-weird Scott?”
“He’s not sort-of-weird Scott. That was Scott Brown. The ex is Scott Landon.”
“Oh, him.” Guy looked like a pretzel stick and had about as much depth to boot. The thought made Max relax. Haley wasn’t going to be interested in a guy who made counting sidewalk cracks look more exciting. Or would she go for a bland kind of man? The thought turned his stomach. Maybe he was sorta friends with Haley, and maybe he was…was…interested and he shouldn’t be. Should he? Would that be okay with her? Would she laugh if he told her what was running through his mind?
“You’re giving me your Max-in-thought look. What’s that about?”
Will or Scott. A fifty-fifty chance Haley will like one of them. They’d start dating. Maybe marry someday. Which was…which was… Max swallowed hard. Not nearly as okay as it should have been.
“It’s about nothing.” Max concentrated on building the gingerbread house, wanting her to get the hint and stop the questions he wasn’t willing to answer. The ones chewing up his emotions.
Haley reached over his hand and repositioned a wall. “It was leaning.” She turned ice cream cone papers upside down and began to make trees with green-tinted icing. “What are you doing with the night-light bulbs?”
“I’m going to put them inside the building before we put the roof on so that it looks like the place is lit from within. It was Lonnie’s idea.” He nodded toward a table where his sister and niece were hard at work on their house.
“Ah. So that’s why it’s a brilliant idea.” Haley leaned closer, putting her head near his. “And we can place the Christmas tree in front of that window.” She pointed, turning to face him at the same time that he faced her.
They were whisper close. Max’s gut tightened as whiffs of her soap or shampoo or whatever it was scented the scant space between their mouths. He wanted to kiss her. Again. His brain and his body were all systems go, but he didn’t belong on her list, no matter how much he joked about that. She wanted a man to build a relationship with. Have a family with. After the fallout from the breakup with Annalise, he hadn’t given future relationships any thought. Shying away from getting involved was easier than risking that kind of hurt.
Except here with Haley, something he thought long gone stirred, unwilling to be qu
iet. An awakening of sorts that rooted him to the spot, making him see how much he enjoyed spending time with her. Making him wonder if he was ready to try again.
“Perfect spot for the tree.” Max shook himself out of his thoughts and took a step to the side. He needed to put some space between them, and the kiss list was the perfect excuse. “Hey, I think I’ll call Will and have him meet me for a beer after the contest. I can sing your praises and set up a date between the two of you.” He shouldn’t, but he let his gaze linger on her face. Tell me you’re no longer interested in the men on the list. Say you think about me the way I’m now thinking about you.
“Um…yeah. That’s a good idea.”
Does she look disappointed?
“I’m not working at Bowman’s until the afternoon for a few hours so, um…that’s good. Set up anything before or after that.”
Max shook some of the candies out to begin lining the gingerbread roof. “You still think your soul mate is on your list?”
Her brows raised. “I do.”
Max didn’t want to admit to himself that her emphatic answer left him feeling like a little bit of light had gone out of the evening. If he did, then he’d have to admit the full truth to himself—and that was going to sting.
Chapter Twelve
Haley hung the miniature icing lights on the Christmas trees she’d set around the finished Bowman’s building. “It’s the best display here. I love it.” She beamed up at Max, who was smiling down at her. He had traces of chocolate at one corner of his mouth.
“I knew you were eating the goodies. You have…” She started to touch his lips to wipe away the smudge but thought better of it. For some crazy reason, the idea of touching Max made her feel weird. Like she couldn’t breathe right and all her thoughts were running together.
“What?” Max touched his fingers to the wrong side of his mouth.
Haley took a napkin and handed it to him. “Other side.”
She wanted to press a kiss where he put the napkin. Great. The lying-to-herself gig was up, and she’d been doing just that for weeks now. She was, without a doubt, definitely attracted to Max. This is not good.
Whirling around, she bumped the end of the table in her hurry not to say or do something she’d regret. The gingerbread house wobbled.
“Careful.” Max surged forward to put a steadying hand on it.
Haley was relieved when Wynne and Lonnie approached. She needed a buffer between her thoughts and Max. Having others around would distract her.
“My favorite little girl.” Max went to pick Lonnie up. She laughed with delight and sank against him, the love for her uncle clear to see. “Want to see the house?”
She nodded.
He knelt in front of the table, and as he pointed to the pieces he’d added, he explained to his niece how Bowman’s operated. He showed Lonnie the miniature saw and hand tools he’d carved from a block of chocolate and the marshmallow snowman by the door.
Lonnie asked question after question, and Max patiently answered.
“He would be an amazing father,” Haley said as she watched them interact.
Wynne gave her a strange look. “He would.”
Embarrassed that she’d spoken her thought aloud, Haley quickly offered to buy his sister a hot chocolate to change the subject.
“One second. Do you have her?” Wynne put a hand on Max’s shoulder.
“Always,” Max said as Lonnie let loose a flurry of giggles.
“Can I bring you something to drink?” Haley looked down at Max, then up as he slowly stood.
“Anything other than one of your potions.” He winked. Same old barb.
Except she blushed and couldn’t meet his eyes. Pressing a hand to her cheeks in case he noticed them turning pink, Haley said, “Whew. It’s warm in here. I’ll bring you a hot chocolate.”
“Don’t forget the marshmallows,” he called after her as she and Wynne walked to the refreshment booth.
“Is Max going to spend Thanksgiving dinner with your family?” Wynne asked quietly while they waited for their drinks.
“I don’t know.”
“But you do know Hugh is in town.”
Haley hesitated, then nodded.
“I’m caught between two brothers,” Wynne said abruptly. “I love them both. And of course I’m angry with Hugh for what he did. Angry at my parents for constantly telling Max to be the bigger man. They don’t get it.” Wynne accepted the cup of hot chocolate handed to her. “It’s not that easy to pick up the pieces when someone breaks your heart.”
“I’m so sorry,” Haley said, wishing there was something she could do or say to fix things. But if she had that kind of power, she’d fix her own life.
Wynne glanced toward Lonnie. “Thank you for that, but I’m fine. I’m a grown-up, and I’ll move on. My fear is that my little girl will grow up thinking she’s not enough because of how her father behaved.”
“Oh, your brother will make sure she knows she’s enough.”
“You think so?”
“I do.” Haley took the rest of the drinks, carefully balancing them in the cardboard cupholder.
As she and Wynne passed by the three judges in conversation, Haley overheard one of them say the winning entries were down to two choices: the one she and Max had made or the town’s businesses along Cherry Major that Wynne and Lonnie had created.
“We’ll take another look at both,” one of them said, and the trio headed toward Wynne and Lonnie’s table.
Haley quick-stepped back to Max and passed him the hot chocolate. Then she pried one of the walls off their creation, letting it fall flat onto the table.
“Watch out!” Max said, reaching to fix it.
“Wait.” She took his hand, intertwining her fingers with his to stop him.
The judges approached and saw the downed wall, which Haley fake-gasped at when one of them pointed it out.
“Why’d you do that?” Max grumbled after the judges walked off. He set the wall back up and fixed it with icing.
“It was a tie,” Haley whispered.
The judges announced Wynne and Lonnie as the winners, and the little girl squealed with delight. “I win. I win,” she said, raising her fists in triumph.
Max’s eyes searched Haley’s, an expression on his face she had never seen before. “You deliberately sabotaged…” He swallowed hard. “For Lonnie.”
Haley wasn’t comfortable with Max the Grateful. She was used to Max the Disapproving. Or Max the Sarcastic. Those were the sides of Max she expected to see. “I don’t have anything against your sister or niece. I save all my hexes for you.” She began to gather up the leftover items and put them in a bag.
Max picked it up when she was finished. “I’ll walk you to your car.”
Haley put her coat on and headed outside into the biting night air. “I love this time of year. I can smell the scent of wood burning in a fireplace somewhere.”
“My grandparents used to cook on an old wood stove. Now every time I catch that same scent, it takes me back there.”
“I know the feeling,” Haley said, blowing on her fingers before she inserted the key into the door and unlocked her car. “When I was in California, I’d smell freshly mowed grass, and it always made me think of home. The summers here were incredible.”
“They still are.” Max swung the door open, holding it as Haley leaned in to put the bag on the passenger seat. Once she sat, he said, “I’ll call you tonight and let you know how it goes with Will.”
“Hopefully he’ll want to go out or at least meet with me.”
“If he’s smart, he will. Drive safe.” Max closed the car door without giving Haley a chance to respond to his compliment. He walked off, hands in the pockets of his jeans, shoulders hunched against the cold.
Leaving Haley watching and wondering what was happening
between Max and her. She shivered as she waited for the car to heat up, but it wasn’t from a lack of warmth. It was because she’d realized she no longer found it a chore to be in his company. Instead, she wanted to be around him. Looked forward to it, in fact, and that bit of excitement, of anticipation, left her more than a little worried.
Her brain and heart were beginning to agree that Max just might not be the annoying man she’d always thought he was. He might be one of the good guys. A man to be counted on. One whose word was good.
Max the…Desirable. “Oh, this is bad. Very bad,” Haley muttered as she carefully navigated the roads home. She went through the rest of her evening on autopilot, still trying to come to terms with this new way of thinking about Max.
Right after she got off the phone with Suzie and started getting ready for bed, Max called.
“It’s on with Will tomorrow. Lunch is set at the pizza parlor on Cherry Minor, since they have the taco pizza you like.”
Haley took a fleece snowman-pajama set from her dresser and put it on the bed. “I don’t think Will ever knew I liked that place.”
“He didn’t. I heard you talking about it with your mom once.”
“You remembered?” The thought caught her off guard, and she forgot what she was doing.
“I was a teenage boy who loved pizza. I paid attention whenever the word was mentioned. Especially after Ripley and I went camping in Rock Hill and he dared me to eat a Carolina Reaper pepper after having pizza.”
“Is it worse than a ghost pepper?”
“Oh yeah. The Carolina Reaper is the hottest pepper in the world. It’ll make you want to curl up and cry. I thought my ticket had been punched. Eating that was probably the dumbest thing I ever did.”
Backing up, Haley sat on her bed and covered herself with a patchwork quilt her great-grandmother had made. “You were always up for a dare. I remember when your friends dared you to pop wheelies with them on the steep hill behind Cherry Minor right before school photos were taken.”
Max chuckled. “I won that race. That busted lip and cut on my forehead were badges of honor.”
