Leave it to Max (Lori's Classic Love Stories Volume 1)

by Lori Handeland

  “No.” Max’s bottom lip jutted out in a belligerent pout that usually made Livy want to shriek. Now she just wanted to…shriek. “Mom lied.”

  “She did, and that was a mistake. But we all make them. Don’t you?”

  Max hung his head. “All the time.”

  “And your mom loves you always, right?”

  “Forever and ever, no matter what.”

  Livy smiled even though it hurt.

  “She did what she thought was best because she loved you so much. And though she lied, I’d cut her some slack if I were you, because she’s your mom.”

  Max peered at Garrett from between his bangs. “Do you cut your mom slack?”

  “My mom ran off and never came back for real.”

  Max considered, face bunched tight. “That would be a whole lot of slack. I didn’t think moms were allowed to run off.”

  “They aren’t, but some do it anyway.”

  “Do you hate her?”

  “I try not to hate. There’s too much of that going around.”

  “That’s too bad about your mom, ’cause I like grammas. Rosie’s the best, and I wouldn’t mind another. But you got a dad, right?”

  Garrett went stiff all over. “He’s not the grampa type.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He wasn’t the dad type.”

  “Well, neither were you until you got me. So maybe your dad will be the best grampa. If you cut him some slack.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  In Garrett’s eyes Livy saw the shadows that had been there when he was J.J. and remained even when he’d become Garrett—the shadows of insecurity that his father had put there long ago. She wanted to erase those shadows, though she wasn’t sure how, or even if she could. Perhaps that was a task for Max.

  “Mom? I’m sorry I said I hated you. That was mean.”

  “Right now, I hate me.”

  He smiled a little at that. “I was mad. I’m still mad, but I don’t hate you. Because even when you’re mad at me, when I’m the baddest I can be, you still love me, right?”

  Livy nodded. “That’s love.”

  Garrett gave her an unreadable glance.

  “You going to forgive me, Max?”

  “Maybe.” His shrug had the attitude of a born heartbreaker. “Tonight I wanna stay with Dad.”

  That hurt.

  “Sure. Fine.” Her voice, too loud and hearty, revealed it wasn’t fine at all.

  The two of them stood. Max took Garrett’s hand and tugged him toward the door. Garrett held back, his gaze on Livy’s face made her feel as if he could see everything that went on behind her eyes.

  “You okay?”

  “Sure,” she said again.

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “Really. Thanks for this.” She moved her hands helplessly. He’d done a wonderful job of calming their son while she’d been struck dumb by her own stupidity.

  “Thanks for Max.” He kissed her cheek. “Really.”

  Max pulled on his arm. “Come on, Dad.”

  Her son left her with a smile and no goodbye. Maybe he’d forgive her? As quickly as she’d forgiven her own father for dying? Or J J. for leaving?

  Livy collapsed into the chair Garrett had just vacated. Wouldn’t that be justice?

  What happened in childhood was so hard to outgrow. The things parents did, however well meaning or accidental, affected their children for years, sometimes for always.

  What would be Max’s cross to bear, courtesy of her? Lack of trust? Dislike of women? Compulsive dishonesty?

  She rubbed her forehead. Mother guilt forever. Put that on a T-shirt, she could sell a million.

  *

  Fifteen minutes later, Livy felt steady enough to leave the room. Unfortunately, what was waiting for her in the hall made her want to run right back inside and lock the door behind her.

  “Sugar, I don’t know why you felt the need to lie to me of all people.”

  “Or me.” Kim was not giggling now. “I thought we were best friends. I told you everything.”

  Which wasn’t exactly true. Kim refused to discuss how she’d ended up in Savannah, where she was from in the first place or why she insisted upon dating brainless bimbo boys.

  But this wasn’t about Kim.

  “I’m sorry.” Livy leaned against the wall for support, since her usual sources were mad at her. “He left; I panicked. Then the lie just grew. I never thought he’d come back. He wasn’t the type.”

  “Livy, I’m just so angry right now I think I’d better leave.” Kim clipped off toward the exit.

  “Will you be in on Monday?”

  “I’ll let you know.” Kim didn’t even turn around.

  Livy winced. “Ouch.”

  “If she’s any kind of friend, she’ll get over it.”

  “I lied to her for years. What kind of friend does that make me?”

  “A frightened one. But you had to have known I’d understand. That I’d never judge you.”

  “A lie seemed the easiest way to make the questions go away. Then the lie had been around so long, it was the truth—or near enough.”

  “Well, I can’t say as I agree with what you did, but it’s done now. The question is, how are you going to clean up this mess?”

  “I have no idea,” Livy answered.

  *

  Garrett had wanted Max to know the truth, but he hadn’t wanted him to find out the way he had. However the shock didn’t seem to be having any lasting effects on the boy. He appeared completely normal as he skipped up Garrett’s walk, tripped on the stairs and sprawled across the porch.

  Garret began to hurry forward to pick him up. Then he remembered how embarrassed he’d always been if anyone fussed after he fell. So he hovered on the walk, held his breath until Max’s head went up, revealing no signs of major injury and allowing Garrett to breathe freely again.

  “Hey, Dad?” The boy had taken to calling him dad with the greatest of ease. “There’s a package for you. From…A. Lawton, New York City.”

  Andrew had resorted to Federal Express. Must be serious. Of course, Garrett knew things had been serious for quite a while now. Andrew hadn’t.

  Max handed Garrett the envelope. “What is it?”

  “Trouble.”

  “You know that just from the package?”

  “I know that from who sent the package. You remember the coffin in the dining room?”

  Max nodded.

  “That came from A. Lawton, too.”

  Max shrugged, unconcerned with trouble that didn’t include him for a change.

  As Garrett let them into the house and turned on the lights, he considered what might be in the envelope. It was Garrett’s turn to send a practical joke to his agent. By their unstated rules neither could send a joke unless it was his turn. Otherwise things might get out of hand.

  The fact that Garrett had not answered the delivery of the coffin with something hilarious only proved how dead his Muse was. In the past, he wouldn’t have rested until he’d come up with the perfect reprisal.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” Max asked.

  Funny how jokes, reprisals, contracts and careers meant little in the face of Max’s smile.

  “Nope.” He tossed the package on the table. “Let’s have some fun.”

  An hour later, Garrett carried his sleeping son upstairs. Despite Max’s chatter about all they were going to do together on their sleepover, he’d been snoring halfway through the first scary movie, the bowl of popcorn in his lap tilted in the opposite direction from his head.

  When Garrett laid him on the pull out couch in one of the bedrooms, then took off his socks and his jeans, Max mumbled, “Mom,” and tugged the pillow over his head.

  Tired himself, Garrett nevertheless watched Max sleep awhile. How could he have created something so perfect?

  A sound downstairs drew Garrett into the hall. Was that a knock? After glancing at a motionless Max, he went to find out.


  From the table in the hall, Andrew’s package beckoned. Garrett stuck out his tongue at it and moved closer to the front door.

  Light and dark danced on the porch. The weak thud sounded again. Who could be here at this time of night? Garrett opened the door to Livy.

  They stared at each other. Garrett wasn’t sure what to say. Why was she here?

  “Is Max…?”

  “Sleeping,” he answered.

  She stepped inside, closed the door, then leaned against it as if afraid to be near him. Had she come to end what was between them? Garrett had never been sure exactly what it was, but since there was something, he hadn’t pressed to put words to it. Livy could easily have cut him out of her life and out of Max’s.

  But as the weeks had gone on and she’d let him stay, let him get closer and closer to their son and to her, Garrett had begun to hope they might forge a family. Still, she’d never mentioned love, not this time, and he wasn’t sure if he should, if he could, or even how.

  “I can’t think straight, Garrett. I can’t sleep too well, either. You’re both the boy who left me and the man who made my son smile through his tears. When you laugh, I hear him. When he smiles, I see you.”

  What was she trying to tell him?

  “Every time I kiss you I feel new things, then I remember old times. It used to be that whenever I smelled a summer rain, I’d have to fight not to cry, because in the space of an instant I’d see your face and then it would be gone.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like you were. Every single time, I hurt so bad. I thought the memory would fade, but it didn’t. Because when I see Max, I see you.”

  He had to touch her. He couldn’t stay away. Garrett took one step, and she met him halfway. He held her gently, uncertain what she wanted but needing to give her whatever it was because she’d given him everything.

  “You touch me and I forget it all. Touch me now. Make me remember only you.”

  Then she was kissing him, not a kiss that said thank-you, or hello, and certainly not goodbye, but a true kiss, full of such passion that his mind went fuzzy with desire and crazy with need.

  He should tell her right now that he loved her, always had, always would. But what was between them consumed, as physical as it was intangible, and as she touched his skin, murmured his name, drew him into her spell as completely as she always had, he could think of nothing but showing her with his body all he felt within his heart.

  As he’d imagined countless times before, he ran his hand along her panty hose, up beneath her skirt. The satin of her skin beneath the silk of the stockings enticed him. He had to put his mouth to her neck, surround himself with the scent of her hair.

  He tugged loose the rubber band and buried his face in the strands, walked his lips to the first button of her jacket, then followed his fingers down. Above the camisole beneath the suit, her breasts appeared even fuller than before, nearly spilling out of the scooped neck. Her nipple peeked just below the lilac lace.

  “I want to see you in only this—” He looped his finger in the neckline. “These—” His palm stroked the stockings. “Maybe the heels, too.”

  Her eyes heated, and the smile she gave him was pure seduction, very little like Livy at all. “I can do that.”

  Even her voice was different, hoarse, as if she’d been moaning his name all night long. Garrett lifted her into his arms and headed for the steps.

  She struggled. “You’ll hurt yourself and be no good to me at all. Have you got a Rhett Butler complex?”

  “Doesn’t every man?”

  “Every Yankee, anyway. I can walk.”

  “I’ll only put you down if you run.”

  The smile appeared again. “I can do that.”

  And she did.

  By the time he’d locked the door behind them, she’d shrugged off her suit jacket. The skirt slid to the floor, and she stepped out of it to stand in front of him in lilac lace and nude panty hose. But it was the sensible black pumps that drove him wild.

  Crossing the floor, he unbuttoned his shirt. She shoved the material aside, pressed an open mouth to his skin. There would be no leisurely lovemaking tonight, because he wasn’t going to last much longer.

  He tipped her onto the bed, shucked his pants in a hurry and followed her down. With muted thuds her shoes hit the floor, then she rubbed his calf with her silk-stockinged toe.

  When had that become arousing? The instant Livy did it.

  He got rid of her stockings, left the camisole on, loving how it felt against his hand, his chest, his mouth.

  “Garrett.”

  She’d never used his new name in bed. He was overjoyed that she’d used it now. If they were to have a future, they had to let go of the past. Both of them.

  But when she pushed against him in an erotic bump and shift, she could have called him Napoleon for all he cared. He sucked in air between his teeth. He was far too close to the edge for that sort of thing.

  “Shh,” he murmured against her brow, her chin, the underside of her satin-shrouded breast. He ran his tongue along the slope, blew upon the wetness until she shivered, then discovered the satin tasted as good as it felt when he drew Livy and the material into his mouth and suckled.

  She cried out, and he stopped, lifted his head. “Did I hurt you?”

  “No.” Her cheeks were flushed; her breath came as fast as his. “I’m all right. I just need you. Now.”

  Since he needed her, too, always, he covered her hip with his hand and entered her with a single stroke. Her eyes fluttered shut, and he kissed her closed lids. “Look at me, Livy. Let me see all of you.”

  Once, she’d held his gaze whenever they came together. The sharing of their souls had been as intimate as the sharing of their bodies. Now that they shared a son, he wanted that intimacy back. He needed it as badly as he needed her.

  He held his breath, afraid she’d refuse him the emotional bond. But as he joined them together, again and again, she opened her eyes. When she gasped and trembled beneath him, clutched him and made him tremble, too, he cradled her face between his palms, and he kissed her reverently. Then he said those words that had always been beyond him, until today.

  “I love you.”

  Her eyes fluttered closed again, and she continued to tremble beneath him. At first he felt cold and alone, but the pull of her body, the warmth of her, drew him in, and for a while he thought only of this act of love and not the lack of words.

  When the last tremors faded, she sought his hand, kissed the center of his palm, just like the old days, and he hoped she might tell him again, as she had once before, that she loved him. Instead, she smiled curled herself along his body, keeping his hand in hers. Her breath brushed his chest as she fell asleep.

  At peace, Garrett followed her with dreams of the past and the present merging into one future.

  He awoke all tangled up in her. In the depths of the night she’d turned to him again. Silent and sure they’d shared their bodies, shared love without a single word.

  He lay with her warm at his side as dawn grayed the windows. This was the first time they’d ever slept the night through together, and the beauty of it, the perfect rightness in such a small thing, humbled him.

  She’d lost her camisole. Actually, he’d lost it for her, and she lay nestled against him, skin to skin. Her breasts appeared heavier, the veins blue against the pale satin smoothness. He longed to love her in the light, to run his tongue along those veins, over the auburn peaks and down into the alabaster valleys.

  With words like those someone might mistake him for a writer.

  He missed it all of a sudden—picking one word over another, putting this sentence before that, the characters who became so real he heard them talking sometimes, their lives not a fable but his mission, and most strangely, but wonderfully, the way everything sucked until, miraculously, it didn’t.

  That was writing. What was he going to do without it?

  Livy and Max just might make up for the loss of all he’d held d
ear, because now he couldn’t think of anything more dear than his son and the woman who had given birth to him.

  Garrett inched away. If he continued to touch Livy and think pretty thoughts, he’d want her again, and she looked so tired. She’d had a rough day yesterday.

  After throwing on shorts, a shirt and some shoes, Garrett trotted down the hall to check on his son. The boy snored on fast asleep.

  Garrett went downstairs to start the coffee. As he passed the table in the hall, the package from Andrew shouted his name. He hesitated, tempted to throw the thing away, but curiosity won out and he yanked open the envelope.

  A letter and a legal document spilled out. Maybe Andrew was suing him.

  Dear Garrett,

  Since you’ve decided to turn off your phone so I won’t bother you, I’ve had to resort to courier.

  Garrett hadn’t turned off the phone; he just hadn’t charged the battery in weeks. Oops.

  I’ve been waiting patiently for your next gag gift, but it hasn’t come. I’m beginning to think the joke is on me. No book. Ha-ha. Is that the joke, Garrett? If so I’m not laughing.

  I know you. If you had something, I’d have it by now. So I’ve included a contract for a new house. Get there, get the book done, or you’re done. You signed a contract. We gave our word. Whatever’s gotten into you, get it out. This is your big chance. Do not blow it.

  Andrew.

  The contract was for a house in Alaska. Talk about getting away. He stuffed the letter into his pocket, then tossed the envelope and contract back on the table before he wandered onto the porch.

  Andrew was right. He had agreed to write a book, and if he reneged now he’d better be dead for real because he would be dead in publishing.

  The inertia that had plagued him since he’d discovered Max was fast dissolving and the familiar panic was taking its place. He might want to write the book, but the book did not want to be written, at least not by him.

  He had a son now. If he played things right, he might have a family. Did he dare reach for the magic when his own magic was gone? What else did he know but writing?

  Not one damn thing. Without it he was just J.J. again, the wandering loser Livy would rather say was dead than claim as the father of her son.