by Jillian Hart
A knock rattled her window. She pulled out her keys, grabbed her purse and unlocked the door. Max towered over her, balancing the bags of food and the drink container and still managing to open her door. “How does it feel to have wheels again?”
“Too good to be true.”
“Believe it. It’s true. Paul’s a friend from church. His grandmother can’t drive anymore, and I know she took good care of it. You got a great deal.”
“Thanks to you, which is why dinner should be on me.”
“Not a chance, pretty lady.”
Her face heated. She was blushing again. He had that effect on her. He made her feel like a new-and-improved Brianna McKaslin. He made her forget everything she usually worried about. Suddenly she was walking at his side heading for the front door without remembering climbing out of the car or standing on her own two feet or even shutting the car door. Did she lock it? Who knew? That she had forgotten to double check was a sign. Max’s kiss had caused her to lose every shred of common sense.
She unlocked the front door and trailed inside, flipping on lights. “You have to remember we are on an extremely small decorating budget. And we’re not too tidy. We are when we aren’t in school. But when classes are in session, there’s not enough time for everything.”
“You don’t need to apologize.” He followed her into the entry hall and pushed the door shut with his elbow. “Typical student apartment, if you ask me.”
“Yes. You aren’t allowed in the kitchen, though. Brandi left the dishes all over the place. It was her turn to clean up last night. So why don’t we go straight to the living room?”
“Sure thing.”
She couldn’t get their kiss out of her mind. The side of her face tingled, sweetly with the memory. She had never known that a man as tough as Max could be so tender.
Now how was she going to keep counting up all the ways he wasn’t right for her? How was she going to stop from falling head over heels, one hundred percent in love with him?
“What’s it like having a twin?” He set the food bags and drinks on the scarred coffee table and moved a stack of books aside to make room for the drinks. He nodded toward the framed picture collage on the wall of her and Brandi together.
“I always have someone who understands me perfectly. She’s my best friend.” Bree settled onto the couch. As long as they spoke of simple things, she would be okay. “She’s my constant support. Our lives aren’t as similar as they used to be. I went into the elementary teaching program and she went into the secondary, so we don’t cross paths like we always used to.”
“You used to do everything together?”
“A habit from the crib. We were always together when we were little. We still like the same things, do the same things, watch the same TV shows. It’s second nature.”
“Must be nice to have someone so close.”
“I can’t complain.” Why was her pulse skipping beats? He moved to the couch and sat on the cushion beside her, his big presence dwarfing her. Her palms went damp. Her brain turned to mush. Little wishes fluttered within her, new and joyful. Wishes that had everything to do with the man at her side.
“I think this is yours.” He freed a cup and set it on the table in front of her. It sounded as if he meant something else entirely.
“Yes, it is.” She did, too. Afraid to say more and yet wanting more, she took the straw he offered her with whispered thanks.
“Let me say grace.” His hand found hers and held on tightly, his rough-warm fingers entwined with hers. It felt romantic sitting at his side, holding his hand and feeling the peace of prayer and the grace of the moment descend.
Show me the way, Father. She bowed her head, watching Max through her lashes as he did the same. Show me what I do not know.
A soft joyfulness came to her soul like the kindest song. Reassured, she closed her eyes and let her fears come down.
“Dear Lord…” He began the blessing. She liked the way reverence enriched his voice. He was a deeply faithful man. “Please bless this food and our fellowship. We’re asking for Your guidance in our lives and that You lead us to Your purpose, Lord, and strengthen us. Amen.”
“Amen.” Bree opened her eyes, and all she saw was Max. There was no easy humor to hide behind, no wry joke or distance of any kind. She saw him without shields. Just Max, steel and vulnerability.
“You have a trial coming up fairly soon.” He unrolled one of the bags and handed her a cheeseburger.
“In eight weeks. I’m trying not to think of it.”
“Are you getting more frequent nightmares?”
“I don’t want to say yes, but, well, yes.”
“You want to be stronger than that.”
He understood. She let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding, and a surprising amount of tension went with it. She took a fry from the tub he set out. “When you told me that you’d been shot, I should have realized. You went through post-traumatic stress, too.”
“Roger that. I still struggle with it from time to time.”
“And you feel that’s weakness.”
“It’s certainly not something I like.” He reached inside the last bag for his hamburger, paper crinkling, his stoic veneer falling away. “That time I told you about with Nancy’s boyfriend, it was the first time I was in real danger. No doubt about it, I thought I was going to die.”
“Sure, because you were shot.”
“True.” He unwrapped the burger, staring at the silver paper, lost in thought. “He wasn’t alone. He had two buddies with him. They waited until I was in my carport. With a cement wall on one side, the house on another, I was essentially trapped. I couldn’t get around the car, they were coming from behind me up the driveway. It was pitch-black out, rain falling like hail. That’s why I didn’t see ’em coming. They were waiting for me, no doubt about that. I remember hearing Manny calling out my name, and that’s all the time I had to react. I was hit before I could pull my service revolver. I fell. Never knew concrete could be so hard. Rain was falling sideways, pounding me and I saw the three of them strolling closer to finish the job.”
“That had to be terrifying.” She went pale, as if she were imagining the scene, or maybe remembering what it felt like to think she was facing the last minutes of her life.
He knew the cost of what violence did to people. He saw it all the time in his line of work. He’d experienced it personally more than once.
“I was fighting as hard as I could to stay focused. I couldn’t move. All I could think was that I had to get my gun, it was my only chance, but I blacked out. “Grim, he remembered the rain staining his face, the grit of the concrete against his cheek, the fiery pain and his heavy, unresponsive body.
“You were lying there unable to defend yourself.” Compassion had never looked more authentic. “What happened? They obviously weren’t able to—”
She couldn’t say the word, bless her.
“No,” he said gently. “They weren’t able to finish what they started. God must have been watching out for me because my neighbor came home, drove into the shared driveway and I’m told, because of the storm, hit one of the perps. Not bad, just enough to send him flying a few feet. He got up and ran off with the others, and Melvin, a World War II vet, managed to keep me alive until the paramedics showed up.”
“God bless Melvin.”
“Exactly. I adopted Mel after that. We spent a lot of time together, watching old war movies and playing chess and Scrabble. When he passed a few years later, it was like losing a grandfather.” Remembering Mel was an old wound, too, but at least he didn’t have to think about those moments lying helpless on the ground, unable to do more than blink and breathe. “It took me nearly a year until I was back to full speed.”
“You’re very good at that, you know.” She set her chin, as if she thought she had him all figured out.
“Good at what?” He took a bite so he wouldn’t have to say more.
“I don’t know if i
t’s avoidance or denial.” She shook her head, scattering tendrils of gold bangs, which fluttered softly against her face.
He resisted the urge to brush her hair from her eyes. Something down deep, call it instinct, wanted him to be nearer to her. To bridge the distance he kept between him and everyone. It would be easy right now to give in and accept her sympathy and her friendship. But he held in his emotions out of habit and the need for safety.
“Probably both,” he answered. “It was the first time I was in trouble. Not the last.”
“Let me guess. You avoid dealing with it or thinking about it. You put it on the back burner and do what has to be done in your life.”
“True. It’s working so far.”
“You must have nightmares, too.”
“It’s not so bad these days. I’m not a beat cop anymore. Detective work is harder in some ways. I see tragedy every day, but I’ve only been shot at once since I got promoted.”
“I see that wry grin. Just once doesn’t make it any easier.”
“What are you trying to get at, pretty lady?” The compliment made her blush.
“Only that it’s normal to cope with the trauma after the fact. When I was in the middle of that chaos with guns firing and those meth guys shouting crazy awful things, there was no time to put in perspective what was happening. I was in the moment, that was all, trapped like everyone else in the kitchen.” She bit her bottom lip, vulnerable but strong, too. “You’ve been there more than a few times.”
“Except I had training, experience, a revolver and back up. Never underestimate the importance of good buddies who come when you call.”
“You’re going to have to cope some time.”
“Who says I’m not coping? I see the world as it really is and people as they really are.” He’d never been more honest with anyone. The experiences had made him hard, tough as nails. He’d learned to be realistic, to accept the fact that there was dark and injustice in this world. It was how he fought against it, solving crimes, methodically piecing bits of information together. His world had become black and white and all the shades of gray in between.
“Max, all it took was one moment. It happened so fast. I nearly lost my life—everything—that night. I wanted to live so badly.”
“That’s why you fought hard to recover.” He knew what that was like, too.
“Yes, I fought as hard as I could. There were surgeries and rehabilitation.” She left so much unsaid, but her voice thinned, tremulous with remembering. The memories changed her, making her luminous and achingly real. “When I woke up in the hospital, I had never been so grateful for anything. I still am.”
Her words touched him, hooking deep. Sitting beside her in this room surrounded by frilly eyelet pillows and family pictures on the wall, with children’s books stuffed into the bookcase and lying out on the coffee table, it was a world apart. A tenacious innocence in spite of what had happened to her. He set down what was left of his burger, shifted on the couch and drank her in. She was like golden sunlight shining into his life, shades of color come to his heart. Everything his battered soul yearned for. Everything he was afraid to believe in.
“When I finally came home from the hospital, I was afraid to go outside.” She blushed a little, as if admitting that embarrassed her. “Anything could happen to derail my life and hurt me. Car accidents. Carjackers. A blood clot. Another robbery.”
“How did you deal with it?”
“I went out anyway. Because I realized that there is more good in this world—in people—than bad. That is something I will not stop believing.”
Respect crashed through him with tidal-wave force. She looked willowy and fragile and far too altruistic to have this happen to her. Worse, she had run straight into danger to resuscitate a shooting victim. Juanita Morales had still died, but he knew things the newspaper didn’t. That Brianna had not stopped giving life support until she had fainted from blood loss from her own bullet wound.
He braced hard against it, but emotion came anyway. A new wave of affection powerful enough to knock down his every resistance. The unbreachable walls that had always separated the real part of him from everyone else crumbled like clay. He fisted his hands. He was drowning in a kind of tenderness too enormous to name.
Then the cynical part of him won out. He blinked, trying to bring his thoughts back into focus, back to black and white. She had to be too good to be true. After all she’d been through, where was the anger? The disillusionment any crime victim had the right to? And what about her car? Wasn’t she upset some joker had stolen from her? What about outrage and the need for justice? “When I look at you and what you’ve been through, I can’t help noticing. You’re not angry. You’re not bitter.”
“Sure. I’m furious that someone decided three restaurant workers’ lives were more important than the few thousand of dollars they hoped to get from the safe. I’m angry about the loss of life and destruction two men caused. I lost months of my life.” Her chin went up, but there were no tears, just strength. Indomitable steel. “I’m angry that I feel wobbly, that I’m afraid of the dark and that I have to relive it all over again for the trial. But it’s not always going to be this way. Those gunmen don’t have to change how I see the world or how I see myself. That’s what I’m fighting for.”
Tears glistened in her eyes but did not fall, the only sign of what this conversation cost her. That beneath the layers of her smiles, her gentleness and her steel remained a pain that may never fully leave.
“I see how hard you are fighting.” Captivated, that’s what he was. Amazed. Enthralled. In love. He cupped her face in his hands, ready to wipe away those tears should they fall. Wanting to take away her every pain, comfort her and make sure she would never hurt like that again. Commitment to her pounded through him with immeasurable power.
“I won’t let them win, not in the end.” She leaned her cheek against his hand. “I’m going on with my life. No matter how hard it is, I won’t let what happened stop me.”
He loved her. There was no fighting it. No altering it. She was hope on a dark night, spring after a bitter winter. Brimming with love for her, both made weak with it and strong by it, he pressed closer, needing to comfort her. Leaving the barriers protecting his heart down, he said the first thing that came to mind. “So, what did you think of my kiss?”
“Your kiss?” Pink crept across her face. A little embarrassed, maybe, but he didn’t miss the way she brightened, the same way he did. With hope. “I didn’t mind it too terribly much.”
“And if I were to kiss you again?”
“I suppose I wouldn’t mind that too terribly, either.”
“Neither would I.” He chuckled once, humor crinkling the corners of his eyes and stealing her heart. As if he heard what she was too shy to say. He leaned closer, still softly cupping her face.
His kiss came gently. A faintest whisper of his lips to hers. Sweetly, she let her eyes drift shut, savoring her first real kiss. She felt the faintest tremble in his hands cradling her jaw, the slight roughness of his whiskers to her skin and a velvet caress as he kissed her again.
Absolute perfection.
After their amazing first kiss, Bree and Max finished their dinner, turned on the television to a classic TV station and watched reruns of a popular fifties’ set sitcom. She couldn’t remember a more perfect evening—there was that word again—as she laughed out loud with Max’s arm around her shoulder.
The front door opened around eight o’clock. Bree exchanged looks with Max as the sounds of keys dropping on the floor, an exasperated “oops” and a thud of a backpack hitting the linoleum rose above the canned laughter from the screen.
“Brandi,” she told him unnecessarily, interested to see if he was going to move away from her on the couch.
He didn’t.
“Bree?” came Brandi’s voice from the other side of the wall. “What a night. Be glad you were off. The Young Life group dropped by, along with about three birthday parti
es. Total catastrophe.” Brandi skidded around the corner, she took in the man sitting on the couch and her jaw dropped in momentary shock. “Oh, I didn’t know you had company. Hi, Max. Sorry to interrupt. Just color me embarrassed and I’ll tiptoe back the same way I came—”
“Not necessary.” He moved away, leaving her side.
It felt lonely without him so near.
“I should get going. It’s getting late, and I’m picking Marcus up in the morning and taking him to the early-risers service.” He rose to his six-foot-plus height, hovering over her. There was a silent message etched on his handsome face, one she understood. He didn’t want the evening to end.
Neither did she. She would be happy to freeze time and spend eternity snuggled at his side, laughing along with Max at the show’s story line.
“No, don’t go. I spoiled it for you two.” Brandi looked tortured. “Pretend I’m not here. I’m going straight to my room. Don’t mind me.”
Bree watched her twin disappear in a blink. The departing pad of sneakers through the kitchen was so fast, it was too late to call her back.
“I take it your sister isn’t used to coming home and finding men in the living room?”
“You know she isn’t.” Why was she blushing? Did he think she had kissed any other guy in this living room? “All those blind date setups, remember? Isn’t that a clue?”
He chuckled, as if he thought that was funny. He held out his hand. “Come walk me to the door.”
“Did I thank you for dinner?”
“You did.”
“Did I thank you for helping me find a reliable car?” She placed her hand in his, palm to palm, locking her fingers with his. A perfect fit. It felt right as they each went separate ways around the little coffee table and met again in the middle of the living room, hands still together.
“I’m sure you could have done a fine job on your own, but I wanted to help.” His tone deepened, dropping low and intimate, as if there was more he couldn’t say.
There was more she couldn’t say, too. Like how much it meant that he had been there for her. That he had checked under the car’s hood himself, helped to negotiate the price, and most important of all, she felt one hundred percent safe with him.