by Tarr, Hope
She folded her arms across her chest, alarmed by her heart’s sudden fluttering. He’d come up with a special name for her. Nobody ever had before unless you counted Becky, but she’d pretty much given that name to herself. Like many middle children, she’d grown up feeling lost in the pack.
Becky cleared her throat. “Getting back to Angelina, she’s tall. She could look you in the eye.”
He lifted his shoulders in a shrug, reminding her of how amazing it had felt to anchor her hands to that solid shelf of flesh and bone. “You’re plenty tall enough and besides, I didn’t mind bending.” He opened his mouth but stopped short of saying more. Suddenly he was all stiff-lipped New Englander and guarded gaze. “All I’m saying is don’t you sell yourself short. You’re beautiful and smart and talented.”
“You think I’m talented?” Coming from bestselling author Adam Maxwell that constituted high praise indeed.
He nodded. “You’re a damn good writer and you’d be a success in any genre you chose to write.”
This time the compliment touched her. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He took a sip of his coffee. Setting the mug back down, he said, “Now answer me this. If Angelina’s so great, then why doesn’t she have a significant other—until Drake, I mean?”
“That’s the beauty of her—she doesn’t need a man to validate her life. She comes and goes as she pleases, she answers to no one.”
Suddenly it occurred to Becky that not only didn’t Angelina have a steady boyfriend, the supersleuth didn’t have so much as a pet or a potted plant waiting for her at home, either. Scratch that—she didn’t have a home. Becky, on the other hand, had a lovely apartment, assuming she could still afford the rent, her precious Daisy Bud to greet her at the door every time she came back home, and people like Sharon and her family, all of whom loved and cared about her a lot. Angelina’s “life” might be packed with adventure but there was nothing substantive in it, nothing more. It was just possible Max might have a point.
And yet who was he to criticize her? It was childish of her, she was a grown-up author with a book to get out after all, and yet with the sexual tension between them spiking by the hour if not the minute, she badly wanted to wipe that smug smile from his face. If she couldn’t take him to bed, the very least she could do was take him down a peg—or two.
Taking a sip of her coffee, she asked, “What about our buff bounty hunter, Drake?”
Max supposed turnabout was fair play, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. “What about him?”
“He’s obviously you.”
After yesterday, she expected him to rocket up from his seat and announce he needed a walk. Instead, he didn’t seem fazed. “He’s a composite of people I’ve met over a decade of travel.”
It was her turn to express skepticism. “Oh, right. And I suppose it’s pure coincidence you both just happen to be six foot three, blond and, er…built. You both have traveled all over the world. Thirty countries, didn’t you say? You both have degrees in archeology.” You both lost your wife. “Except for his Australian accent, you might as well be twins.”
Max hesitated. Until now, he’d forgotten how much about himself he’d shared with her in New York. So much for anonymous sex; he’d apparently bored her with his life story straight out of the gate, right down to the deeply personal fact that until she’d come along he hadn’t had sex in almost two years. Looking back, it seemed crazy to reveal that much about yourself to a stranger, even a stranger you were planning on sleeping with, but Becky then had been so very easy to talk to. He wished they could get past the crazy chemistry, and whatever else had them at each other’s throats, and recapture some of that ease now.
Searching for a new subject, something unexpectedly nice struck him. “By the way, do you realize you just referred to Drake as our character?”
Becky hadn’t. “I did, didn’t I? Do you mind?”
He hesitated and she wondered if he might be mulling over intellectual property rights and potential future lawsuits. Instead he smiled. “No, I don’t mind. Actually it’s kind of nice.”
Yes, Becky silently agreed, it kind of was.
Chapter 10
Fingers slipping on the splintered wood, Angelina looked up the collapsed mine shaft into the sliver of sunlight. Mere minutes ago she’d stood on solid earth. One misstep onto Falco’s booby trap had sent her hurtling underground.
Drake’s face appeared in the pinpoint of light. “Hold on, Angie. I’m coming.”
A moment later, a thick climber’s rope dropped down the hole, the tail swinging just above her. She grabbed hold, releasing her grip on the collapsing wall just as the last of the rotted boards and crumbled earth gave way. Gripping the hemp, she braced her feet on the tunnel wall and climbed as Drake pulled her to the top. As soon as she was within reach, he shoved a large hand through the hole and wrapped his strong fingers about her wrist.
Angelina had never been so happy to be captured in all her life. Feet once more on solid ground, she let go of the rope and wrapped her arms around Drake’s muscle-corded neck, burying her face in the salty hollow of his broad shoulder. “Easy, love,” he said, stroking the tangles from her damp face. “I’ve got you safe now.” He swiped the smudge of dirt from her cheek with his callused thumb.
Embarrassed by her moment of weakness, she stepped back from his embrace. Brushing dirt from her legs she looked up and said, “Thank you, I think.”
Blue eyes, meltingly tender, smiled down into hers. “You’re welcome, I think.”
* * *
Becky wouldn’t have believed it those first rocky few days, but by the second week, she and Max had settled into a schedule, a complicated set of compromises that got easier as the days passed. Bit by bit and day by day the written pages were piling up.
Now that they’d started getting into a groove, she found she was enjoying having another writer to bounce ideas off. She was also just plain enjoying spending time with Max. Not Max her nameless midtown Prince Charming, or her sexy one-night stand or even the bestselling author, but rather Max the man who liked dogs and cooking and long walks in the snow.
She couldn’t imagine anyone who less fit the stereotype of a spoiled star author. He obviously had money, and yet he was the most down-to-earth man she’d ever met. Other than the sixtysomething housekeeper who came in once a week to change the bed linens and vacuum and dust, he didn’t have servants. He didn’t even have a secretary. He chopped his own wood and cooked their meals and drove into town to buy plumbing supplies from the hardware store to fix the leaking faucet in her guest bathroom. Becky couldn’t help admiring his hands-on approach to living. Drake’s Code wasn’t a set of stupid macho rules he’d made up for his fictional character but a set of ethics Max lived by.
Except for the sexual tension that never seemed to go away between them, their arrangement was working out even better than Becky had supposed. Other than missing her cat and her friends, especially Sharon, she didn’t feel all that homesick. D.C. had never really felt like home to her, and she had no desire to move back to Maryland where her parents and siblings still lived. Visiting her big, boisterous family always left her feeling like a fish out of water, whereas with Max she not only felt at home but comfortable in her own skin.
That afternoon they sat side by side at the computer, Becky manning the keyboard. The chapter they were working on was a love scene written from Angelina’s viewpoint. Though Becky had written steamy scenes aplenty in the past, she’d never done so with a writing partner. That her collaborator happened to be a man she’d recently slept with, a man to whom she was still madly attracted, made the whole scenario that much more awkward. With the tension between her and Max mounting by the moment, no wonder the words on paper weren’t working.
She drummed her nails atop the keyboard caddy, wishing there was some chocolate nearby. “Drake lifting Angelina’s hair away from her neck and running his mouth alongside of her neck just doesn’t work for me.”
“Why not?” Max asked. He sounded grouchy but then again they had been working crazy hours. “It’s an erogenous zone for most women, isn’t it?”
Becky trained her gaze on the computer screen, hoping her warm face didn’t translate into a vividly visible blush. Her own neck was a particularly sensitive area as Max well knew. Back in New York, he’d kissed and licked and nibbled her throat to their mutual hearts’ content. At times such as this, she had to force herself to remember it was Angelina and Drake they were discussing.
“Well, er…I’m not saying it doesn’t feel good to her. Of course it feels good—better than good. My point is it’s not in her character to stand there passively while he puts the moves on her. She’s more proactive than that.”
“Okay, I’m wide open here. Let’s walk through it step-by-step the way we did the action scenes.”
Despite his matter-of-fact tone, Becky hesitated. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
He shrugged but his gaze was anything but casual. “I’m game if you are. What would Angelina do if a man, Drake, was kissing her neck like…like this?” He angled his head and found the ultrasensitive spot just under Becky’s ear with his mouth.
Gooseflesh broke out all over her. She sucked in her breath. “She’d uh…” Damn, but it was just about impossible to think rationally, to think at all, with Max doing…well, that. “She’d touch him back, definitely.”
He slid his lips down the side of her throat, pressing openmouthed kisses along the way. “Now we’re getting somewhere. How would she touch him…or should I say where?”
He lifted his head, dark blue gaze holding hers, daring her to look away, his fingers toying with the sensitive area of her clavicle exposed by her sweater, raising a thrumming ache inside her pressed-together thighs.
Becky swallowed hard. Though she’d been sipping from a bottle of water throughout the day, she suddenly felt as though cobwebs had sprouted inside her mouth and throat. “Angelina is very straightforward about what she wants, and in this case, she wants Drake. Even though she knows she shouldn’t, that it’s not in the best interest of the mission to continue sleeping with her partner, she can’t seem to stop thinking about him.”
Max’s hand slid to her shoulder. “That’s her motivation but what would she do?” He leaned closer, drawing her toward him, his warm breath striking the side of her face. “Where would she touch him? How would she touch him? She must know he’s waiting for her to give him some sign, any sign, that it’s okay to break their no-lovers rule.”
Rules of any sort suddenly seemed very far away to Becky. Pounding heat pooled inside her panties, her breasts felt heavy and hypersensitive, and her racing heart felt as though it might break through the wall of her chest at any time. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flicker of motion from outside the window. Turning to look, she saw it was snowing.
She swung her head back to Max and like an idiot announced, “It’s snowing.”
Scowling, he dropped his hand and drew back. “It’s New Hampshire. That happens a lot here.”
“But this looks like a really good snow, a Christmas snow. Let’s take a walk.”
One dark blond eyebrow edged upward. “I thought you hated cold weather?”
“Just a short walk. The fresh air will do us both good.”
Becky couldn’t speak for Max but for herself, her next activity was going to be either a cold walk or a cold shower. Either way, she needed to get her temperature back down and her perspective back in line before she did something really stupid, like begging him to go to bed with her.
“Okay. But just remember that tonight when we have to stay up finishing this scene, that this time you were the one who called break, not me.”
He pushed back his chair and stood. The position put her on eye-level with his waist and for a fleeting few seconds she imagined herself reaching out to cup him, slowly rolling down his pants fly, and then drawing him into her mouth. Remembering how amazing he’d tasted, how she hadn’t been able to get enough, she felt her face flush even hotter—and the pulse between her legs strike even deeper—more evidence of just how much she needed that walk.
“Let’s go then.” He reached down a hand to help her up.
Reminded of their meeting in New York when he’d picked her up off the sidewalk—and peeked at her underwear—Becky let him lift her up, glad he couldn’t possibly guess how wet the crotch of her panties must be by now.
He ran his gaze over her, his blue eyes looking as hot as she felt. “We need to bundle you up. That low-necked sweater needs a scarf at least.” He glanced down to her feet. “And those fancy boots of yours aren’t going to cut it, either.”
She followed his gaze down to her high heeled Manolos. “They’re the only ones I have.”
He hesitated, a funny look rolling over his face, and she wondered if he might be considering bagging the walk and getting back to work after all. The thought brought about a bizarre sense of letdown. “I might have something that’ll work.” He turned and started out into the hallway.
Becky hesitated and then followed him out. As much as she needed to escape the close confines of the house, no way could she wear Max’s boots. His feet were huge compared to hers. If she tried, she’d only end up falling, something she’d done way too much since meeting him.
She found him buried head and shoulders inside the coat closet. He backed out and turned to her, holding out a dusty pair of knee-high black snow boots. “These might work.”
Becky glanced down at the shoes. Clunky and without a gram of style, they were too small to be his. Reaching out to take them, she almost said so when it hit her. Shit, they must have belonged to his wife.
Avoiding her eyes, he picked up the second boot and dusted it off. “Your feet are a lot smaller than hers were—you’re a lot smaller period—but I figure you can stuff some cotton or tissues in the toes if you need to. It’s a walk, not a run. I’ll hold your hand if you want. I promise I won’t let you fall.” He lifted his face and looked up at her, and the raw vulnerability in his blue eyes had her forgetting all about how much she hated the cold.
“These are good. I can work with these.” She took the boots from him, hugging them against her chest. “Give me a couple minutes to pile on those layers, and I’ll meet you back down here, okay?”
“Okay.”
She started toward the stairs. At the bottom, she turned back. “Max.”
He lifted his bowed head to look at her. “Yeah?”
“I won’t let you fall, either.”
* * *
They walked side-by-side, theirs the first footprints in the otherwise pristine snow. Scout pranced ahead, more puppy than old dog. The fast-falling flakes were so big and soft-looking Becky could almost imagine the white sky above was one big exploded feather pillow. What had started as a quick way to bring about a short-term sexual cool-down had turned into more, much more. Looking ahead to snow-covered mountains and sparkling ice-crystal-covered trees, Becky felt as if she and Max were the only two people in a magical winter world.
She turned to Max. Reaching out, she squeezed his gloved hand. “Thank you.”
He tucked her arm in his and looked over at her, his eyes intensely blue amidst all the winter white. “For what?”
“For—I don’t know, taking a walk with me. This is really nice. It’s beautiful out here.”
He fixed solemn eyes on her face. “There really aren’t words to do justice to a New England snow, not even for a writer. You have to see for yourself. And I can tell you really get it. Not everyone does, but you do.”
More than the perfect snow or the dramatic mountain backdrop, it was sharing this with Max, the feel of his big hand holding hers, the echo of his boots crunching a twin trail next to hers that made the moment so very special. Even if she was walking in another woman’s shoes—literally—she knew in her heart this walk counted among the most special of her life, one of those precious picture-perfect moments when
the magic washes over you, and you feel connected to something greater and grander than yourself.
She smiled, her face frozen but the rest of her body toasty warm beneath the layers. “I may rethink always sending Angelina to tropical climates.”
Fireside evenings, steaming mugs of hot chocolate or warm apple cider, even walks in the snow—certain lifestyle aspects of the New England climate were not without their charm. Or maybe it was just that she liked sharing those things with Max. It was a startling and disconcerting discovery and one she set aside to consider later—much later.
Their walk, and Becky’s reprieve, ended far too soon. Even though her toes felt frozen solid inside the too-big boots, she was sorry to see the house come back into view. Thinking of the still-to-be written love scene and the very real, very unresolved sexual tension mounting between her and her sexy writing partner, she hated to think about going back in.
They trudged up the gravel drive to the front porch. Protected by the hipped roof, they stood at the door shaking off snow. Standing on tiptoe, Becky finished dusting the flakes from Max’s broad shoulders.
He glanced back at her. “Am I done?”
“Yes.” Settling back on her soles, Becky felt as though she was the one who was done—done for.
For two weeks now, she’d fought her desire for Max as they’d shared intimate dinners and cozy fireside chats and one-on-one work sessions that lasted late into the night. Ironically it had taken a bracing winter walk to push her over the brink, to make her see that whatever there was between them, it wasn’t going to burn out or fade away on its own. Much like Drake and Angelina, the outcome was predetermined, even scripted. She wanted Max even more than she had in New York. Fighting her feelings in the name of professionalism wasn’t getting her anywhere. If anything, self-denial was wreaking havoc with her concentration, blocking her creativity and generally muddling her mind.
Max turned around. His gaze dropped to hers. This time she didn’t look away as she had earlier in his office. Instead, she reached for her Angelina-like bravery and met his eyes steadily. Remembering his mention of Drake needing some sign, she stood on her toes and rested her hands on his shoulders and brushed her mouth over his, a silent offering.
