Page 16

CHAPTER 16

I really did mean to feed Max lasagna, I even put the last pan in the oven to warm up once we’d made it to the kitchen, but then he boosted me up on the table, and kissed me again, moving between my legs, his hands under my apron, and I brushed my face against his beard, which was new and different and still Max, and wrapped my legs around him just to feel him hard against me, and ripped off my apron, and then started shucking his clothes off, too. There were a lot of them; evidently he was dressed for winter.

We were down to my dress (no underwear as usual) and Max’s pants when somebody knocked on the back door.

“I’m going to kill him,” Max said, and I went to see what Dmitri wanted now. Except it was Marley.

I opened the door and let him in, and he said, with his eyes closed, “It’s none of my business, but the curtains are open on the bay window and anybody out back can see in.”

“You can open your eyes,” I said, and he did cautiously. Two old people fooling around had evidently traumatized him. “Have you eaten? There’s lasagna in the oven.”

I heard Max growl behind me, but Marley said, “I’m good. I’ll just go back out?—”

“What do you mean, go out?” Max said, sounding surly. “Aren’t you upstairs in Oz’s apartment?”

I watched the wheels move behind Marley’s eyes, calculating whether this was a time for truth or self-preservation since he’d promised Max that he’d move into Oz’s apartment and look out for us. Then he nodded. “Yes, sir. Nice beard.”

Self-preservation. Smart boy.

“Then go up there,” Max said.

Marley looked from him to me and said, “Right,” and went out into the hallway.

I said, “We’ve got a good twenty minutes before the lasagna is done. What do you want to do?”

“The pantry,” he said and pulled me in there and closed the door and boosted me up on the counter there and after that, it was just us, losing the rest of our clothes, Max naked against me, so hot and strong, tasting like Max when I kissed him, sounding like Max when he laughed softly in my ear, feeling like Max when he touched me everywhere, and I touched him everywhere, too, ravenous for him. It wasn’t even about sex, although I wanted that badly, it was about having Max again, having him close, having him back , because he was there, everything was better, would be even better tomorrow. With Max back in my arms, I had a future again.

At least I hoped so. I didn’t think he’d leave me again, but he hadn’t said?—

“Hey,” he said softly, hot against me, and I paid attention again as he got serious.

Max serious about sex was a glorious thing.

* * *

When we were semi-dressed again—Max in his t-shirt and pants and me in my dress, sans apron—I took the lasagna out of the oven and then sat across from him and watched him eat. He was as ravenous with the pasta as he had been with the sex, and I smiled just thinking about it.

“What’s so funny?” he said, and I shook my head.

“I’m just glad you’re home.” I stopped, thinking that maybe the “home” bit was presumptuous, but he just said, “Me, too,” and kept eating.

So I told him everything: what had happened to Coral, telling him she was going to be fine, and then talking about the honey pot meeting, and how we couldn’t figure out what was going on. “Oh, and there was a snake in the oven.” He stopped eating, so I said, “It wasn’t in there with the lasagna, it was pre-lasagna, Maggs killed it for me, so now we’re all being careful. Well, except for Louise, who is evidently invulnerable, and Bea, who is too drunk to care, but the rest of the honey pots and I are checking in with each other. I mean, these are women it would be hard to kill anyway?—”

“Nobody’s hard to kill,” Max said. “You just have to pick your moment and move fast.”

“Oh.”

I must have looked startled because he said, “We’ll find out what’s going on and stop it.”

“That would be good.”

I was still kind of stunned by “nobody’s hard to kill,” so I asked about Dmitri, who’d been a pretty big surprise, for me, anyway. He filled me in while he was buttering garlic bread, and I was shaken again, realizing how close he’d come to being killed. “There’s no treasure here.”

Max nodded. “I know. But it looks like Oz found some pieces in the forest and gave them to Coral and Pike at the will.”

“I wondered about that,” I said. “Is Dmitri going to be a problem?”

“I don’t think so. By the way, he sent Betty her llama years ago.”

You know, every time I think Rocky Start can’t surprise me, something else comes up. “Betty and Dmitri? He sent her Fernanda ?”

He grinned at me, his mouth too full of bread to speak. Then he swallowed and said, “Yep. Don’t worry. I’ll deal with Dmitri.”

He sounded confident about that. Then he changed the subject. “How’s Poppy?”

“Not good,” I said. “She still can’t sleep very well.”

He nodded. “It takes a while to come back from the kind of stuff that happened to her. She’ll get there. How’s Marley working out living here? I thought he’d help. What was he doing out back?”

“He comes in most days to help her with the shop, but he hasn’t moved in yet.”

Max’s face darkened. “He said he’d watch out for you.”

“I think he is. Poppy said he slept in his truck out back last night, and he was out there again tonight. Poppy thinks he figures the Ferrells are watching State Street and he’s got the alley. Evidently with a view of us.”

“That’ll teach him not to follow orders,” Max said. “And he lied to me just now.”

“Self-preservation, and he’s in Ozzie’s apartment now.” I grinned at him. “I’m not sorry he got an eyeful. Embarrassed, but not sorry. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

Max grinned back at me. “Me, too. But first I need a shower, which I should not take alone.”

“Really?” My smile was practically to my ears by now. “And why is that?”

“I might drown,” he said, pretending to be serious now. “I have a history of near drowning, so it would be thoughtful of you to accompany me to keep me from?—”

“Going under?”

“No,” he said, looking actually serious now. “I went under the day I met you. No hope.”

I swallowed. “So how long before you go back on the Trail?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Spring maybe. But I’ll come home again. To you. Always to you, Rose.”

“Oh,” I said, trying not to cry with relief. “Oh, that’s good .”

He stood up and put his plate in the sink, and I put the rest of the lasagna in the fridge. Very homey.

Then he grinned at me. “So about that shower.”

I started for the door to lead him upstairs, but he caught me and kissed me again, and I put my head on his chest, just so damn grateful that I had him again.

And then we went upstairs, and he didn’t drown.

Look, I knew it wasn’t going to be that simple, nothing about Max was simple; we needed to have the Relationship Talk, figure out the future, and we had big problems to solve in town, there was danger ahead of us, people I loved were in trouble, but just for one night, I wanted to believe everything was going to be all right. For one night, I wanted it to be about us.

And it was.