Daisy grunted. “I know plenty; none of it good.”
“You’d be miserable if you didn’t have men to complain about.”
“If that’s the case, then let me be miserable.”
Max rolled his head toward the kitchen. “Where’s Napoleon?”
Daisy looked around, realizing, as had Max, that the parrot hadn’t been heard from recently.
Max started to rise.
She pushed him back. “I’ll find him.” A few steps toward the kitchen and she smiled. Teal tail feathers jutted toward the ceiling; Napoleon was head deep in the cracker jar.
“Take these,” Daisy said, holding two codeine capsules and a glass of orange juice.
With a few groans, Max maneuvered himself to a sitting position against his headboard. Light from the bedside lamp caressed his bare chest. She had convinced Max to go to bed and to take pain-numbing drugs for his knee. Convinced him that a good night’s sleep would be the best thing for him. Convinced him after she’d put Napoleon to bed in his cage precisely as Max had dictated, draping a black sheet over the wire to quell his squawks.
“The last time you gave me drugs, you vanished.”
She put the glass in his right hand and the drugs in his left. “You won’t be so lucky this time.”
Max handed back the empty glass. “Bad luck, maybe.”
Daisy ignored what might’ve been a compliment. Max was not going to schmooze her, not after everything he’d put her through. “Do you want more ice for your knee?”
“I think it’s sufficiently glacier-ized.”
“Your eyes look better. How do they feel?”
“Not terrible.”
“Then go to sleep.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“Sleep on the sofa.”
“There’s plenty of room here.”
She flicked off the bedside lamp. “Good night, Max.”
“Right. You’ve got that sheet phobia thing.”
She headed for the door and the light beyond. “Holler if you need anything.”
“They were put on clean this morning.”
Daisy turned at the threshold. “Which gave you time for at least one blonde.”
“I thought you were on a ferry back to Seattle!”
“Which makes it all okay.” Daisy pulled the door to—“Sweet dreams, Max”—and latched it.
No longer kept at bay by interior lights, a cobalt glow swarmed the bedroom, entering through the undraped sliding deck doors
Max stretched under the sheets, trying to eke out a little comfort from a body that wasn’t cooperating. Years of hard work and hard play had taken their toll. Physically and mentally . . .
Daisy made it impossible for a guy to apologize. Not that he was apologizing for the blonde. Or anything else, for that matter. But if he was inclined . . . well, she made it impossible.
Frustrated—by just about everything, including his ambivalence about Daisy—Max threw off the sheet and slipped his legs over the side of the bed. He labored to stand, hitched up his boxers, then he hopped around the bed toward the glass doors.
Daisy frowned at the thumping coming from the bedroom. Max Kendall was worse than a six-year-old! Daisy marched to his room. She swung open the door, intending to lay down the law, when the empty bed stopped her. Then she caught sight of Max, sitting on his deck in the gleam of the night that wasn’t quite night, his gaze somewhere out beyond the shore.
Don’t go there, don’t go there, don’t go there, Daisy told herself as she headed there.
“You should be in bed.” She stood in the track of the open slider, not quite in, not quite out.
“Too much going on in my head.”
“You should use your crutches.”
“I should do a lot of things.”
“Like going back to bed.” Daisy pushed open the screen and the glass to its full width. “C’mon. I’ll help.”
“Do you ever watch the ocean, Daisy?”
Daisy paused against the jamb, crossed her arms, and listened to the surf. Across the bay, Homer twinkled. A beacon swept the twilight. A breeze brushed past her like a ghost, leaving goose bumps in its wake. Clouds with silver Mylar tops and ominous metal-gray bellies were moving in from the west.
That poor slice of moon doesn’t have a chance, Daisy thought of the sky’s lone defender.
“Daisy?”
“It’s going to rain,” she answered as her curls fluttered against her cheeks.
“I take that as a no.”
“I don’t have the time . . . or the view.”
Max gave her a quarter-turn look, but otherwise ignored what he heard as a complaint about her accommodations.
“There’s something sad about the waves,” she finally said.
“Sad?”
“Never mind.”
“Oh, c’mon. Finish.”
“It’s just . . . well . . . Jason and I used to vacation in Kona. And we always had a room with an ocean view. I would sit on the balcony when the sun was just coming up, sipping my vanilla latte, and I’d watch the waves crash on the shore, over and over, like they were trying to escape, but the ocean just dragged them back in . . .”
“Trying to escape?” He looked across his left shoulder at her. “From what? The ocean?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“The waves are the ocean. That’s like my hand trying to escape my arm.”
“No, it’s not,” Daisy said. “The ocean isn’t one entity. It’s made up of billions of little entities. And some of those entities want to see what life is like on land.”
Max frowned. “The waves are not trying to escape; they’re reaching.”
“Reaching?”
“Reaching, exploring, checking things out. Seeing what they can find on the beach to claim as their own.”
“Your waves might be reaching. Mine are trying to escape.”
Like two interpretations of a Rorschach, Max thought. “Maybe it was you who wanted to escape. From Jason.”
Refusing to go there, Daisy turned the tables. “Who’s Molly-Anne?”
“How do you know about Molly-Anne?”
“Your boat told me.”
He chuckled.
“Men don’t name their boats after just anybody. Who is she?”
“The love of my life.”
Her thoughts screeched to a halt. At his admission? At the idea that Max Kendall could love? Or at the unexpected inkling of jealousy she felt? But Max Kendall suddenly seemed, well, less Max Kendall.
“So what happened?”
“She died.”
“Died?” It was so unexpected . . . soooo unexpected, Daisy hadn’t the wherewithal to come up with a sympathetic response. Or even an unsympathetic response. But it explained a lot, she thought, feeling uncharacteristically ambivalent about further prying. However tough it was to compete with the living—Tina, for example—it was impossible to compete with the dead. Not that she was trying to compete for Max. No way, no sir, no how!
Max obviously didn’t talk about Molly-Anne—had never told Rita about her—but here he sat, confiding his sorrow to Daisy. Was this the same man who, only a week before, hadn’t wanted Daisy to know how many suits he had? But here he was, trusting her with one of the most painful moments of his life. How could she not feel—
“It was a long time ago,” Max added.
Maybe Charity was right. Maybe the blonde was a misunderstanding. Maybe Max was just a puppy trying to find his way. Maybe Max Kendall deserved a second chance. Maybe Max Kendall . . .
“I’m sorry, Max.”
“Yeah, what can y’ do?”
Daisy tried to brighten the moment. “Move to Alaska?”
“It’s not called the Great Escape for nothing.” One heartbeat. “Right?”
He looked into her, at least that’s what it felt like to Daisy. “It’s cold out here,” she said, rubbing her goose bumps and ignoring his insight. “Aren’t you cold?”
“If you thi
nk this is cold, you’re going to love winter.”
Rain hit her cheek. “It’s raining.”
Turning from Daisy, Max lifted his face to the tumbling clouds as if inviting the assault.
“You’re going to catch cold.”
“I’m fine.”
“Please, Max, come inside.”
“In a minute.”
“I’m going back inside. You’re on your own.”
“Naturally.”
“What?” Daisy asked.
Max side-glanced her. “I said . . . thanks.”
Caught off guard by yet another unexpected response, Daisy brushed it off. “I don’t know what for. You’re impossible to take care of.” But she quickly retreated into the house. Stopping at the bedroom door, she glanced back at Max, sitting alone on his deck in the gloom of the impending storm, his gaze returned to the ocean vastness . . . and shook off the impulse to—
She shivered and wrapped herself in her arms, wishing she’d made Fitz stay.
Max never claimed to be the brightest bulb in the box, but he knew enough to come in out of the rain. Once the drops assembled into an army, Max pushed himself from his comfortable deck chair and hopped for cover inside. Closing the glass door, he left a few inches for the indoors and out to mingle. He lingered, watching and listening as the rain hit, realizing as he stood there that his knee wasn’t throbbing. He finger-raked the rain from his hair and remembered his doctor’s warning.
“Pain is not necessarily a bad thing,” she had told Max. “It’s your body telling you to take it easy. It keeps you from repeating your mistakes. Pay attention to your pain.”
When it came to pain, Max was a wuss. He didn’t like it, didn’t need it, didn’t want it. So why the hell was he reaching for that which would only cause more hurt? He was smarter than this; a long time ago smarter. And yet, here he was, being stupid. If only there was a pill he could pop to numb his feelings for Daisy.
He’d work on that tomorrow, when his mind was less jumbled and she was out of his reach. Right now, he needed a hot shower to ward off this midnight chill.
He turned from the glass and headed to his bathroom, slowing when the scene registered. Light peeked from under his unlatched bathroom door and leaked around the edges. Was that the shower he heard?
Cautiously he approached the door as a cat might approach an unsuspecting mouse. Inching the door open, he was met by a warm mist that felt good against his chilled skin. If he was smart, he’d leave his curiosity at that. But Max Kendall, admittedly, wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box.
She felt his presence long before she felt his eyes.
“It took you long enough,” Daisy said, standing beneath the hot spray of the dual shower heads, her back to Max, her racing heart quivering her breast. She glanced at him over her naked shoulder, trying to be coy and worldly, as if seducing a man was something she did every day. Trying to be unaffected by the magnificence of him, scars and all, standing in the V of the open shower door, looking confused, uncertain, but nonetheless melt-in-her-mouth hunky, his eyes questioning her presence in his territory, suspicious of a rebuff or ambush or worse . . .
Not that she blamed him.
“Are you in or out?” she asked, trying to keep the inexperience from her voice.
After a moment of visible indecision, Max slipped off his boxers and joined Daisy beneath the sprays, turning her to face him and pulling her close.
Close enough to feel his expectations.
She saw the question in his face. “It’s complicated.”
“Fair enough,” he said in not much more than a whisper. He met her lips halfway as his hands, silky like the water, cascaded down her back, along the curve of her spine, and the swell of her hip. Her heart surged and her breath stopped when his hand gripped her thigh and lifted.
Daisy clung to his shoulders as their kiss turned feverish, her hands grasping his knotted muscles, his slick flesh. Her fingers plowed his hair as he tasted her skin, sucking the water from her neck, her throat purring vulnerability and acquiescence. She gasped at the cold tile pressing her back as Max drove into her and then everything jumbled together into a whirlpool of soft, hard, cold, hot, give, take, and, and, and—
Yes, yes, yes, yes . . .
—Damn the torpedoes, crazy-for-you, no turning back, now you’ve done it . . .
“Ohhhh, Max!”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Daisy . . . I have to tell you . . .” Max sighed, fighting to keep his eyelids from closing.
“You sure these sheets are clean?” Daisy asked, hoping to avoid the inevitable caveats men used to warn women about getting too serious.
Spent and sated, they lay in murky twilight, beneath the covers in his bed, Daisy in the comfortable crook of Max’s arm, her cheek against his chest, her fingers meandering through the soft whorls, listening to the rain gently pelt the glass in a rhythmic lullaby.
She could fall asleep if only he’d let her; if only he’d shut up and not say something that would make her regret the second chance she’d given him—
—to lie, cheat, break her heart.
She tried to push the doubts from her mind, doubts that only a short while ago had swirled down the drain.
“Daisy,” Max began again, in a sleepy whisper, “I . . . shouldn’t have scared you tonight . . . in the woods. I was just . . . you’ve been so . . . bitchy—”
“You had the start of a really great apology going.”
“Sometimes . . . pride takes over. I just wanted to get even. But I shouldn’t have done that,” he finished with effort; from the drugs pulling him into a sleep or his own male ego, it was hard to tell which. “It was terrible what I did. You seem to bring out the worst in me . . .”
“Hey!” Daisy lifted her head and poked him in the ribs.
He flinched, and with a brief awakening, popped his eyes at her indignation. “I mean that in a good way.”
“Yeah, it sounds like it.” And then, “People should bring out the best in each other, not the worst.”
“From now on we’ll bring out the best in each other.”
“From now on?”
“From this day forward . . . ,” he added, nestling Daisy back against his chest.
“From this day forward . . . ?” she squeaked.
“You’ve been quite the surprise, Daisy Moon,” Max said in a fading voice. “I never . . . expected . . .”
“Never expected . . . what?” But no answer followed. “Max?” Only the steady rise and fall of his chest. “Max?”
Max Kendall had left the building.
Trying not to read too much into his disjointed choice of words, Daisy settled against him, but her mind was anything but settled. Unexpected scenarios swirled in her head.
It hadn’t dawned on her that Max might actually take their relationship seriously. But isn’t that what Daisy wanted? To be taken seriously?
As opposed to just being taken?
Wasn’t that what her rage over the blonde had been about? That Max hadn’t taken them seriously? That he had defiled their union by bringing another woman into her bed?
Daisy groaned at her dramatics. Bringing another woman into her bed had been tacky, but had the stink she made given Max the wrong idea about her feelings? Had it made Max think she seriously cared about him?
Of course, it might help the discussion if Daisy knew exactly what her feelings for him were. Her thoughts traveled along the rocky road of their relationship, from the first moment her eyes lit on the stubbled, rumpled hunk to now, lying beside him after the best shower sex she ever had. Hell, forget the shower—
But . . . sex wasn’t love. Attraction wasn’t love. And, although on some inexplicable, crazy level, she liked the challenge of him, that wasn’t love either. True, he had experienced her at some of her worst and lowest moments—not to mention her most embarrassing—and he hadn’t fled the scene . . .
Y’ gotta love the guy for that!
But gratitude wa
sn’t that kind of love. And, yes, snuggled next to Max, she did feel a warm glow of serenity, but that wasn’t love either. . . was it? Even if she added all her feelings together, did they add up to love? Vow-making, to have and to hold, from this day forward kind of love? If you loved someone, wouldn’t you know it? Wouldn’t it scream at you? Or would it whisper, like the ripple of a new tide?
It didn’t matter what her feelings were. Loving Max was not in her plan and she simply would not entertain the possibility. Somewhere in Seattle, there was a restaurant with her name on it and a career waiting to be resurrected. She couldn’t waste her talents in Otter Bite. There were no gold spoons at the Wild Man Lodge! Not a silver one; not even copper. The best she could hope for was a Teflon spatula.
Daisy calmed her thoughts with a deep, slow breath. She was overreacting to a few words of indecipherable meaning from a man too groggy to know what he was saying. Max wasn’t the kind of guy who took a relationship seriously. It was as obvious as the hairs on his fabulous chest that she now burrowed her fingers into. Every now and again, she and he would end up in bed. A little way down the road, the two of them would part. She’d go back to her life; he’d stay in his. No harm, no foul.
Yep, Daisy insisted, snuggling closer to Max. There was no other way for this to play out. In the cold light of morning, when she demanded monogamy and commitment, Max would make his dishonorable intentions known. And she would . . . what? Throw things? Storm from his house? Or maybe she should just quiver her lip and walk out. That, of course, would make Max feel guilty—surprisingly, an emotion Max was capable of after all. Then Daisy would have him right where she wanted.
Hello, cinnamon coffee—so long, campfire sludge!
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Daisy woke, gasping for breath.
Invited in by the glass doors, the pale, misty morning made itself at home in the comfortable bedroom. Max was gone, the space where he’d been now cold. She lay in bed and wondered what had caused such an abrupt awakening.
She had been dreaming. Of the ocean. Of spoons. Of swimming in spoons. Of drowning in spoons. Bright, shiny, gold spoons. Daisy shuddered. Be careful what you wish for, she heard her mother say.
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