by Linda Turner
“We’re going to the movies and Mr. Toad’s! Wanna come with us?”
“Please, Max! We’re going to have frog nuggets and ice cream and everything!”
Grinning, Max hesitated. “I dunno, guys. It sounds like you got a date with your mom. I don’t want to horn in on that.”
“Mom doesn’t care. Do you, Mom?”
Caught in the trap of three pairs of male eyes, Natalie had to laugh. Did she care? Of course not! She would love for him to go with them, more than she had any intention of admitting. Was that why he was here? To take up where they had left off when he’d asked her out before the test? Her heart skipped a beat at the thought.
“Of course I don’t mind if Max goes,” she told the boys, marveling at her easy tone. “But he might be busy, guys. We haven’t even asked him why he’s here.”
When she lifted an inquiring brow at Max, he grinned. “I thought you might like to know that you made a ninety-five on your test.”
“Are you serious? A ninety-five!”
He nodded. “I thought you and the boys might want to celebrate. A movie and Mr. Toad’s sounds good to me.”
“You might want to ask what the movie is,” she advised with twinkling eyes.
“I hope it’s the new Disney movie,” he replied with a straight face. “I saw the commercial on TV the other day—it looks great.”
“Yeah!”
“See, Mom, he wants to go!”
So excited they could hardly stand still, the boys ran to their room to change. Natalie never took her eyes from Max. “You’re good,” she said in admiration. “They believed you.”
“Why wouldn’t they?” he retorted, his blue eyes twinkling with mischief. “I wasn’t lying. I do like Disney movies. The Lion King’s my favorite. I bet you liked Beauty and the Beast. You seem the type who would love a good romance.”
Color stealing into her cheeks, she couldn’t deny it. “Like I said, you’re good.”
The boys returned then, wearing identical red and white shirts and jeans. They’d taken time to brush their hair and wash the dirt off their faces and they looked absolutely adorable. Her heart melting with love at the sight of them, Natalie grinned. “Well, if it isn’t the two best-looking men I know. Maybe I should go change. I feel downright scruffy next to you guys.”
“Wear your red dress, Mom,” Harry piped up. “Then we’ll match.”
“I’ll wear my red sweater instead,” she promised. “I’ll be right back.”
As she quickly changed, she told herself she was just getting into the spirit of the evening, but she knew it was more than that. She had a date with Max and her sons…sort of. Or did he have a date with her and the boys? Either way she looked at it, she and Max were going to dinner and a movie…and just thinking about it made her knees weak. Had she lost her mind? she wondered. She must have. How many times had she told herself since she met Max that she wasn’t looking for a man? And here she was, going out with him.
“It’s not a real date,” she told herself in the mirror as she quickly changed into black jeans and her favorite red sweater. “There’s nothing romantic about it. It’s just dinner and a Disney movie with a friend, for heaven’s sake. And the boys will be there.”
But when she returned to the living room after she’d brushed her hair and checked her makeup, it wasn’t friendship that she saw in Max’s eyes when his gaze met hers. It was heat…the kind that stole her breath and warmed her blood and set her heart tripping over itself. The boys were raring to go and bolted out the front door, but she couldn’t seem to move.
“Ready?” he asked huskily, and held out his hand.
She couldn’t remember the last time she wanted to hold a man’s hand so badly. But she was afraid, afraid to go there again, afraid to step off a cliff into something that seemed doomed to fail. She tried to remind herself it was just dinner and a movie, not a walk down the aisle, but her heart wasn’t listening. She wasn’t ready for this. “Max…”
“Nothing’s going to happen this evening that you need to worry about,” he told her quietly. “We’re just going to have some fun. Okay?”
She had no reason to trust a man—the only one she’d ever loved had stabbed her in the heart and walked away—but Max wasn’t Derek. He might be a flirt and a tease and seem to have no interest in settling down, but he’d never given her any reason to think that she couldn’t trust his word. “Okay.” She sighed, and stepped forward to place her hand in his.
It was a mistake of course—she knew it the second his fingers closed around hers. Just that easily he made her feel as if she was no longer alone. And that was something she hadn’t felt for a very long time. It was intoxicating, seductive, wonderful. For no other reason than that, she should have pulled her hand free. Instead her fingers tightened ever so slightly around his. With a grin he pulled her out the door after the boys.
The boys were starving, so they went to dinner first, but Natalie barely tasted her food. She was in a daze and it was all Max’s fault. As the boys chatted happily, Max played footsie with her under the table. When she gave him a pointed look, he only winked at her and playfully flirted with her ankles. With heat spilling into her cheeks, she didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or throw something at him.
“Behave yourself,” she hissed as the waiter brought the bill.
She might as well have saved her breath. He snatched up the bill before she could, paid it on the way out, then laced his fingers with hers as the boys raced ahead to the car. “You should have let me pay,” she told him, fighting a smile as he swung their joined hands between them as if they were first-graders.
“We’re celebrating your test score,” he said simply. “My treat.”
She could have pointed out that she and the boys had planned to go out, anyway, but he was a charmingly stubborn man and he was obviously determined to have his way. Giving in, she smiled. “I can see I’m not going to win this one, so all I can say is thank you. The boys are so excited, I don’t know how they’re going to sit still for the movie.”
“Are you kidding? They talked about nothing else but the movie all during dinner. I was the same way when I was a kid and the first Star Wars movie came out. My dad took me to see it, and I didn’t move a muscle the entire movie. When it was over, we got back in line and watched it all over again. Trust me, the boys are going to be the same way. They won’t even know you and I are there when the lights go out.”
Not surprisingly, he was right about that. Seated side by side on Natalie’s right as the lights dimmed, they were riveted from the second the first promo flashed onto the screen. Grinning in the dark, she leaned toward Max, who sat next to her on the left. “Look at them,” she whispered. “I don’t think they’re even breathing.”
“I told you,” he said in her ear, and just that easily, he melted every muscle in her body by pressing a soft, lingering kiss to the side of her neck.
Caught off guard, she swallowed a moan. “Max!” That was all she could manage…just his name on a soft sigh that didn’t carry to anyone’s ears but his. “You’ve got to stop this.”
Smiling in the darkness, he backed off, but only to take her hand again. His fingers twined with hers, he ran his thumb over the back of her hand in slow circles, teasing her, making it impossible for her to concentrate on anything but his touch. Like the rest of the audience, her eyes were riveted on the screen, but from the first scene, she lost track of what the movie was about. And she couldn’t find the strength to care.
When the final credits rolled at the end, Max grinned wickedly. “How’d you like the movie?”
She gave him a baleful look. “What movie?”
He laughed and jumped up to pull her to her feet. “Hey, boys, what’d you think?”
“Let’s watch it again!” they said in unison.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Natalie chuckled. “It’s already way past your bedtime. It’s time to go home.”
They grumbled but went along peacefully eno
ugh, and long before they reached home, they fell asleep in the back seat. Pulling into her driveway, Natalie cut the engine and smiled ruefully at Max. “I knew this would happen. They always fall asleep in the car, and then get all grumpy when I have to wake them up.”
“So don’t wake them. I’ll get them. You get the door.”
She started to object—they were heavy little munchkins when they were deadweight—but he’d already climbed out of the car and was unbuckling Harry. Hurrying to the front door, she’d hardly pushed it open before he stepped through it, carrying Harry as tenderly as if he was his own son.
“I’ll be right back,” he growled, and headed down the hall to the boys’ bedroom. Minutes later, he was back for Tommy.
Natalie expected him to leave then, but he stayed to help her undress the boys and stuff them into their pajamas. “I can’t believe they didn’t wake up,” he told her as he followed her into the living room after she’d tucked both boys in and kissed them good-night. “World War III could have started in there and they wouldn’t have heard a thing.”
“Probably not,” she agreed, chuckling. “They’ve always been like that.”
“So how do you wake them up in the morning for school?”
“Bongo,” she retorted. “He jumps into their beds with them and licks them until they wake up giggling.”
“Aha. They’re going to have great memories when they grow up.”
“I hope so,” she said softly, wistfully. “It’s good memories that get you through the rough times in life.” Dragging her thoughts from flashbacks of her own childhood, she suddenly realized that the boys hadn’t thanked him for their night out. “The boys forgot to thank you. That’s my fault. I should have reminded them. I don’t know why I didn’t. I guess I was…”
When she hesitated, his blue eyes danced with mischief. “Is the word you’re looking for distracted?”
Heat spilled into her cheeks. “No!”
Grinning, he swore softly. “Damn. And I thought I was doing so well. I guess I’ll just have to try harder.”
And before she could guess his intentions, he reached for her.
Chapter 9
How long had it been since he’d kissed her? Max wondered as he lost himself in the intoxicating heat of her mouth. Days? Weeks? It seemed like an eternity. How could he have forgotten how right she felt in his arms…or how she tied him in knots when she pressed close and kissed him back with a hunger that matched his own? Sweet. Merciful heavens, she was sweet! And when she wrapped her arms around his neck and raised up on her tiptoes to take the kiss deeper, all he could think about was sweeping her up in his arms and carrying her to bed.
But the boys were just down the hall and he couldn’t take a chance that they would walk in on them.
Groaning at the thought, he knew he had to get out of there. And he would, he promised himself. Any minute now he was going to come to his senses and walk out the door. He just needed one more kiss for the road.
But one kiss led to another, then another, and the couch was only two steps away….
Suddenly realizing where his thoughts had wandered, he stiffened. Dammit, he couldn’t do this! Frustrated, he set her away, only to groan when she swayed back toward him. He’d never encountered this problem before and he didn’t have a clue what to do about it. How did people with children make love?
“I’ve got to go,” he rasped, giving in to the need to give her one last quick kiss. “I’ll see you Monday when you come in to work on the dig.”
Her blood roaring in her ears, her body aching, Natalie started to call him back as he walked out the door, but she came to her senses just in time. No, she told herself sternly. She had to get control of this…fascination…she had with the man. Okay, so they’d had a great time together tonight, and it was obvious the boys really liked him. And kids were great judges of character, she told herself. If Max was just pretending to like them, they would know. And so would she. Her mother’s radar was always right on the money when it came to someone taking advantage of her sons, and there hadn’t been so much as a bleep on the radar screen where Max was concerned.
Okay, so he was good with kids. That didn’t mean he wanted to take on the job of daddy for the next thirteen years or so. And she and the boys were a package deal. If he wasn’t interested in having an instant family, then he’d spent the last few minutes kissing the wrong woman. All she had to do was just remember that, and she’d be able to hang on to her heart. If she was lucky.
Clinging to that thought, she made her rounds through the house, just as she did every night, picking up toys and shoes and socks, then making sure windows and doors were securely locked before she made her way to bed. It had been a busy day and she was tired. She should have crashed the second her head hit the pillow. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to put Max out of her head as easily as she’d hoped. She dreamed of him all night long.
Across town Max wasn’t faring any better. After he woke up reaching for her for the fifth time, he swore, and reluctantly accepted the fact that he could forget about sleeping—it wasn’t going to happen. When had he given the woman permission to haunt not only his waking hours but his sleep, too? Irritated with himself, he rolled out of bed. Granted, he had no one to blame but himself—he never should have kissed her. But he was only human, dammit! And all she had to do was breathe to drive him crazy.
Booting up his computer, he decided that if he couldn’t sleep, he might as well work on his book. But as his fingers settled on the keyboard and he reread what he had last written, he found it almost impossible to concentrate. He kept remembering the kisses he and Natalie had shared, how right she’d felt in his arms, how much he wanted to make love to her.
Suddenly realizing he’d been staring into space for at least ten minutes, he sat up straighter and forced himself to focus on his writing. He hadn’t been able to write much since the tour group had notified him that they were declaring bankruptcy, so whatever time he could spend working on his book was too precious to waste. He needed to finish chapter four by the end of the weekend, and he was barely on page three. Focus! he told himself fiercely. All he had to do was focus.
He might as well have told himself to levitate. His thoughts were still scattered, and it took him over an hour to write a single paragraph. He tried to find some satisfaction in the fact that he was at least making progress, regardless of how limited it was, but then he read over what he’d written. A first-grader could have done better. Disgusted, he deleted the paragraph and tried again. Then again. And again.
It was nearly three in the morning when he finally accepted the fact that he was just spinning his wheels. Shutting down shop, he gave up and went to bed, and this time he slept.
He was back at his computer by seven and getting nowhere fast. Still, he forced himself to sit there for another two hours. His patience short, he finally gave up. Sometime in the not too distant future, he was going to have to call Katherine and let her know that he was still struggling with writer’s block. She was a great editor and would, no doubt, sympathize with his plight, but she couldn’t wait forever for his manuscript. If he didn’t get it to her soon, she would have no choice but to change his publication date, and that was something neither of them wanted.
Sitting at his computer, staring at the screen for hours on end, however, was not the way to solve his block. In fact, trying to force creativity only made things worse. The only way to really deal with it was to get completely away from his writing for a while. Assuring himself that he wouldn’t be gone long, he strapped a cooler and his rod and reel on the back of his bike and went for a ride.
At the most he planned to be gone for only a couple of hours, but the open road called to him and he headed up into the mountains. He didn’t have a particular destination in mind, and he crossed any number of streams where he could have stopped to fish, but conditions weren’t quite right. Either there were people already there or there was no access to the water or something about t
he location just didn’t appeal to him. He headed farther north, turning onto smaller and smaller roads, not even sure what he was looking for.
Then, suddenly, there it was, a small stream that was deep and slow moving and nestled under large pines that looked as if they’d stood there for centuries. A small pull-off on the far side of the bridge spanning the creek gave access but was almost completely hidden from view until Max was past it. Braking, he circled back and pulled in among the trees. The place was deserted, which wasn’t surprising. He hadn’t seen another soul since he’d turned onto the narrow road that didn’t seem to go anywhere except deeper into the mountains.
Pleased, he cut the engine to his motorcycle and pulled off his helmet. Silence engulfed him and was broken only by the whisper of the wind through the upper branches of the towering pines. This was what he’d been looking for, he thought as he drew in a deep breath and released it slowly…the quiet solitude of his own existence. Grabbing his fishing rod and the cooler from the back of his motorcycle, he made his way through the trees to the stream. Seconds later the only sound was the plop of his lure hitting the water.
The sun was already lost behind the mountains when he headed for home hours later. More relaxed than he’d been in a long time, he toyed with the idea of getting a room for the night somewhere nearby, but he’d already taken off more time than he should have. The dig began in five days, and even though Natalie had taken care of most of the camping equipment they would need, there was still a lot to do. Thanks to his unscheduled fishing trip, he’d be working right up until they left, packing equipment and supplies, making sure nothing was left behind. He still, however, didn’t regret playing hooky for the day. For a while, at least, he would manage to put everything out of his head except fishing.
That ended when he stopped for dinner at a small café fifty miles from home. The place was little more than a hole in the wall, but the parking lot was full, so he figured the food had to be good. There was only one available table, and that was crowded into a small space next to the swinging door that led to the kitchen, but he was starving and the smells coming from there were fantastic. Pulling out a chair, he reached for the menu that was wedged between the napkin holder and salt and pepper shakers.