by Sonya Weiss
Haley bit her lip, and he could tell she was mulling over what he’d said.
The timer went off, and Max picked up a kitchen towel and used it to take the pan from the oven. “See? Golden-brown perfection.”
“Use the mitt,” Haley corrected. “You’ll burn a hole in my towel.” She took a saucer from a cabinet and slid one of the cookies onto it.
Max took one straight from the pan and juggled the hot treat from hand to hand in an attempt not to burn his fingers. When he thought it had cooled sufficiently, he popped half of it into his mouth. It tasted like he’d stuck his tongue in a bowl of salt. Turning, he leaned over the trash can and spit it out.
Haley took a bite of hers and her lips puckered. Then she laughed. “Golden brown but definitely missing the perfection.”
Max picked up the bowl with the remaining dough. “Great. Now this is wasted, and we have to start over. Are there enough ingredients?”
“I don’t know.” Haley dug two fingers into the bowl and took out some of the mixture. She wiped it across Max’s lips, then laughed and backed away. “There. Now that’s perfection.”
For a second, Max stood there, hands still clutching the bowl, not free to defend himself against the gargoyle. He licked his lips. The heavy taste of salt reached his taste buds. He calmly set the bowl down and scooped out dough.
“Don’t you dare.” Cheeks flushed, she shrieked with laughter as she darted around the table, dodging his reach. As she passed by the bowl, she grabbed a handful. “I’m warning you. I’m armed.”
He flung dough at her.
Haley ducked, and it splattered against the cabinet. She balled up the dough she had and threw it, catching him in the V of his shirt. The gooey mess stuck to his skin for a second, then slid beneath his shirt.
She smirked until he grabbed more dough and gave chase. Haley ran, wildly tossing pieces of dough over her shoulder.
Max lunged, closing in, and nearly had her until he slipped in something on the floor. He grabbed the back of a kitchen chair for balance. While he was standing there, righting himself, Haley—mean-hearted woman—made her move.
She grabbed two handfuls of the mixture and smooshed it into his hair, scrunching it through the strands for good measure. So evil.
He wasn’t about to let her get away with that.
Max grabbed her before she could escape. Locking his arms around her, he pulled her against him. “Gotcha!” he crowed. Only now that he had her…weird new sensations poured through him.
She locked her arms around him. “Gotcha back! You deserve it.” Haley’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “Because you, Max Gallagher, are the biggest pain in all of Cherry Creek.”
Her mouth curved sweetly into a smile. Her body was flush against his.
He had an enormous brain blip, shutting down his common sense and self-preservation. He lowered his head, hesitating, giving her time to push him away.
“Yes,” she whispered before he tasted her lips.
Without hesitation, Haley’s arms wound around his neck, her sticky fingers pressing in, holding him to her. She kissed him back like she’d never let go. When a million years later—but all too soon—he raised his head, she stared up at him.
Her smile was gone, replaced by wide-eyed wonder. “What…what did we just do?”
What? I don’t have a clue. I think I lost my mind. Panic set in. What would she say if she knew how fast his heart beat and how badly he’d wanted to kiss her? He had to give her something that wouldn’t risk him getting shot down. “I was there. You were there,” he said, trying to come up with an explanation that made sense.
Her eyes narrowed. “I was there?” she said flatly. Her lips pulled slightly into a thin line.
Uh-oh. “It wasn’t as if I planned to kiss you.” Max shook his shirt, trying to dislodge the cookie-dough bits. His thoughts raced.
“So what, then? You guesstimated it would be a good idea to kiss me and then say something totally unromantic?”
“Romantic? What does that have to do with anything?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Let’s just get back to familiar ground. I hate you. You hate me.”
Max wished that were true. He was mixed up. He was starting to worry that neither one of them truly despised the other, that they were instead caught in a battle of one-upmanship. A battle of the sexes that had nothing to do with despising each other—and that was bad news. At least to him.
He dumped the remains of the batch into the garbage can. He might as well say what he was wondering about. “Didn’t feel like you despised me when you kissed me back like you never wanted to let go.”
“Hmph. I was…I was…erm—”
Okay…so obviously she’s not into me. He sought familiar ground by joking, “Delighted. Overcome. Unable to believe your good luck?”
Haley rolled her eyes. “Option D: curious. That’s why I said yes. The devil not taken or something along those lines.”
“Isn’t that the road not taken?” Max asked.
“Not with you, it isn’t.” Haley brushed her hands together. “I’ll start another batch. And since my salt-adding skills are superior to yours, I’ll mix the ingredients. You’ve been demoted to pan loader.”
Max was content to brush aside any conversation concerning the kiss. It had left him feeling like he couldn’t think straight. “As long as we get this done for Wynne, I don’t care what I am.”
“How has she been since…everything?” Haley looked at him over her shoulder as she got out another bowl. “Has Drew made any effort to see her or Lonnie?”
“She’s dealing with it, and no, he hasn’t.” Max’s heart ached as he shared that. He’d been the one a sobbing Wynne had called at three o’clock in the morning. He’d rushed to her house, and she’d cried until her alarm rang the next morning. Then she’d dried her tears and pulled herself together for her daughter’s sake. The memory of that flooded Max, and he clenched his jaw. “I would never abandon my wife or child,” he said fiercely.
Putting a hand to her stomach, Haley said, “That’s a sickening thought.”
“Abandonment?”
“You reproducing.” She laughed and snapped a towel at him.
Max caught it midsnap, their gazes tangling. “Same to you, my little gargoyle.”
“I don’t know what to think about the kiss. How I feel, I mean,” she said.
“Me either.”
She bumped her hip against him, and he bumped her back.
He couldn’t look away. The kiss had jerked him out of the belief he’d always relied on. The one that made sense. He and Haley were opposites. The fire between them was the spark of dislike.
Only…the kiss shook him. Made him wonder if that spark was something else entirely.
Chapter Ten
Haley beat Max to Bowman’s. Getting up an hour before her alarm hadn’t been intentional. If she’d remembered to silence her cell phone, she’d still be asleep. An auto dialer had called wanting to sell her a vacation cruise for the third time this month. She made a mental note to get her cell number changed from the California area code she was still using.
When she’d fled there to come home to North Carolina, she guessed it had been at the back of her mind to maybe return west when the pot stopped boiling over in her life. Now that she was here, though, back with her father and all that was familiar, she knew she wasn’t going to leave again.
There was a lot of good about her hometown that she’d longed for while she’d been gone. Family. Friends. Even Max.
The kiss between them had haunted her last night as she tried to sleep. She’d easily recalled the sense of expectant breathlessness, and it had shaken her. Max was admittedly desirable, and she’d done plenty of desiring. The sweetness of the kiss, the rightness made her wonder if maybe…perhaps…Max could possibly, even though he wasn’t
an ex…somehow belong on the list…
Scre-e-e-e-ch! Haley put the brakes on that thought. Where on earth did that come from? Max? She’d longed for… No…he doesn’t belong on the list. Not him. She’d missed having someone who challenged her, which he did in spades. That was all.
Longed for Max? She snorted to herself as she arrived at Bowman’s. She went into the main office and set her purse down in her dad’s chair, then went to see if she could locate him. She walked by rows of wooden Christmas designs waiting to be put together.
Her father leaned over one of the workstations, brow furrowed in concentration.
“Hey. Whatcha working on?” she asked.
“A dollhouse for the town’s Christmas party.”
Her parents had begun the tradition when Haley was six. She could remember them staying up into the wee hours the week before Christmas, putting together toys for boys and girls who might not otherwise get anything. They’d let her help wrap gifts—no doubt going behind her and rewrapping her messy attempts.
As soon as Haley was old enough to be around the saw, she’d begged to learn how to make the toys, and then she’d joined her parents in handing out the gifts at the town’s party.
Tears pricked her eyes. She’d missed this the last two Christmases, stuck in California because bad weather had closed the airport back east.
“You’re here before me. It is a season of miracles.”
Haley turned to give Max a withering look.
“The cookies were a hit,” he said, picking up one wall of the dollhouse and running his hand along it. “Need me to sand?” he asked her father.
Craig shook his head. “That’s okay; I can do it.” He nodded toward the docks. “I had some of the holiday hires load the truck. That’ll save you time getting to the showcase. You two can stop and grab breakfast on the way there, if you like.”
Haley didn’t like the calculating gleam in her father’s eye. She nudged Max to get him to leave. “I’ll meet you in the truck.”
Max shrugged and strode away.
“Dad. I know that look.”
He was the picture of innocence. “What look?”
“The I-wonder-if-anything-is-going-on-between-Max-and-Haley look.”
Her dad laughed. “You’re way off base. I was standing here pondering whether or not there was time for the two of you to pick up a to-go meal for me and bring it back.”
“Oh.” Haley winced inwardly.
“But if you want to talk about you and Max, I’m all ears.”
“Forget it. And I’ll make time to bring you something to eat. You could have had oatmeal. It’s healthy for you.”
“Tastes like cardboard,” he said with a grunt.
“You’ll live longer,” she insisted.
“Yeah. Miserably.”
“You have to eat better. Fruits and vegetables are good for you.”
Her father smoothed his fingers across the roof of the dollhouse. “You sound like your mother,” he said quietly.
A pang twisted Haley’s heart. By running from her own pain, she’d probably added to her father’s heartache. “I’m sorry I left.”
He looked up. “You were hurting. Getting away for a while was what you needed for healing. What kind of father would I have been if I’d asked you to stay, angel?”
The familiar pain poked at her heart. She hurt over the memories of the loss as well as for her father’s understanding that she’d needed to run. But she hadn’t been able to run far enough or fast enough to outrun the pain. A tear rolled down Haley’s face, and she wiped it away. “You haven’t called me that since I was a little girl.”
“What are you talking about?” He wrapped an arm around her in a tight hug. “You’ve never stopped being my little girl.”
Haley stood there for a second, enveloped in the familiar scents of the shop and her dad’s embrace. “I thought I had to leave here to find healing, but I was wrong. The hurt followed, and it’s taken coming home for me to see that.”
Her dad tightened his hold, and it was several minutes before Haley pulled away. “I’m going, and I’ll return with breakfast for you.” She headed the way Max had gone.
“Don’t you bring back any oatmeal,” he called after her.
Haley waved, not promising. Walking out the side door by the docks, she found the truck. Max sat in the passenger side, listening to the radio. He pointed up the hill after she climbed in.
“That tree is leaning too far. We need to check it and make sure it hasn’t been damaged.”
“I’ll put it on my to-do list.” She yawned.
“Lose sleep staying awake thinking about me?” he asked.
Haley wasn’t about to tell him she’d dissected every second of the kiss, wringing out of it everything it could possibly have meant by her reaction. And she had reacted. Kissing him back with all the wiggling, tongue-lolling enthusiasm her childhood yellow Lab had shown when asked if he wanted to go for a ride.
She swallowed, schooling her expression. “I barely remember the kiss.”
Too late, she realized what she’d done.
“I didn’t mention the kiss,” Max said.
True to form, he sat there in all his smug glory. She sighed. “I don’t want to talk about any of that right before I eat. It’ll make my stomach turn.”
“Fine with me. I reached out to James last night,” Max said.
“And?”
“Surprisingly enough, he was pretty happy at the thought of meeting you for lunch.”
“Funny.” Haley parked the truck across the road from the Sunrise Grill since there wasn’t room for it in the parking lot. “James and I dated for months.”
Max shook his head. “He escaped and now wants back into the snare. Guess he didn’t learn anything the first time around.”
Haley reached across the seat between them and patted the side of Max’s cheek. “Jealously is an ugly emotion, sweetheart.”
A motion-sickness expression spread across Max’s face. He climbed out of the truck and looked slightly better.
“Are you okay?” Haley asked.
“I’m good. Perfect. Hey, isn’t that your friend Piper?” Max asked.
“It is,” Haley said as they crossed the street.
Max paused with his hand on the grill’s door. “I’ll get the food. Three regulars, right?”
“Yes, but get a side of oatmeal for Dad.”
She knocked on the door of Piper’s car, and her friend jumped and put a hand over her heart.
“You’re up and out early. Going over client wedding plans?” Haley asked when Piper lowered the window.
“No, I’m taking breakfast to my boss. She said she was feeling worse, so I’m going to handle the office for a few more days while she rests.”
“If you need any help, let me know,” Haley volunteered.
“Thanks. Celeste offered to help as well.” Piper grinned. “Can you just see me letting the town’s fortune-teller around engaged couples?”
Haley laughed. “I’d pay to see that show.”
Piper glanced toward the grill. “Nice to see you and Max looking so chummy.”
“We’re on a breakfast run, same as you.” Haley bit her lip, then confessed. “But he did kiss me when we were making cookies last night.”
Piper’s eyebrows disappeared into her bangs. “Is that so?”
“Not like he was attracted to me or anything. I was there, that’s all.”
Piper frowned. “You were there.”
“That’s what he said. I think with the holidays coming, he’s lonely, and that made him do something un-Max-like.”
“Huh. Maybe, but then again, it could be that the kiss was a prelude to the two of you falling in love. You could always have a double wedding with Suzie,” Piper teased.
Hale
y feigned delight. “In the feather wedding dress. Don’t be jelly.”
Piper laughed. “Jealous of you? Never. The dress? Hmm…maybe.”
Haley laughed and then spied Max exiting the diner. “I have to go. We’re taking food back, and then we have to get to the showcase. I’ll call you tonight.”
Prelude to falling in love with Max. It sounded like a long stretch. But then she thought about Max and…her heart rate sped up. Quickly pushing that aside, she headed for the truck and settled in the passenger side before searching the bag. “You didn’t get the oatmeal.”
“A man never knowingly gives another man oatmeal. Your dad texted me that he’d throw it away.” Max started the truck and drove them back toward Bowman’s.
Haley opened another container. “Blueberry pancakes.”
“Still your favorite, right? Or has that changed too?”
Blueberry pancakes had been her go-to breakfast food when she and Max were unwilling coworkers at Bowman’s a teenage summer ago. He must have paid closer attention to her than she’d thought. “Yes, they’re still what I like best.” She quickly closed the Styrofoam lid and focused her attention out the window.
“What’s my favorite?” he asked in the heavy quietness.
“Scrambled eggs that you scoop up with peanut butter toast, and afterward you always, always eat a banana.” She looked at him. “We know these things about each other because we have good observation skills.”
“That’s my thinking too,” he said quickly.
“Not because, in some weird way, we care. Or have ever cared.”
Max nodded. “Right. Best day of my life was when you left town.”
“Same. Watching you grow smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror kept me going for days after I moved away.”
He parked in front of Bowman’s and engaged the emergency brake. “You want to run this in, or should I?”
“I will.” Haley grabbed the bag for her father and hopped out, shutting the door behind her, shutting out Max. Not liking that she hadn’t been able to shut him completely out of her thoughts since returning home. And really not liking that those kissing-Max thoughts kept multiplying.
