She didn’t know if she could have it. If she could give it back.
She wanted to stay connected. To lose herself in the drum of his heart under her hand. To bask in the heat of his skin and the lingering taste of wine on his lips and tongue. To give in to the sense of security and safety that came from being in his arms.
She wanted to be his. Freely. Without reservation.
But could she?
“Wow,” she whispered when she gradually pulled back from the kiss.
He bent his forehead against hers, his breath coming rapidly against her cheek, his heart still galloping against her hand. “Is there anything you can’t do?”
“Pottery,” she blurted.
He laughed, then turned them back to the street. She’d forgotten there were people driving and walking by, that they were in front of a giant window looking into the last cheese shop. But he kept an arm firmly around her waist. “You like fondue?”
“I thought you didn’t do commitment,” she quipped.
“Didn’t realize fondue was a marriage proposal.”
“Are you kidding? Have we met?”
He laughed again. “You’re funny. I like you, Merry Silver.”
“And I like the way you talk cheese to me, Max Gregory.”
The kiss changed everything.
And yet, it changed very little.
Because while Max was still funny and charming and attentive, he still had his own life in Bliss. And Merry was still happy in her little neighborhood in suburban Chicago and perfectly fulfilled in the parts of her life that she didn’t let Max into.
She could do this.
She could have a boyfriend. She could figure out how normal people had relationships. Even slow relationships. With an emphasis on the friend part of boyfriend. And if she happened to think about Max every three seconds, that was fine.
Being liked by a guy like Max was new. Exciting. Of course she’d think about him a lot.
And if he turned out to be the one, her one, then she’d tell him about Amber Finch and the Daddy problem.
Eventually.
When the time was right.
But for now, she’d enjoy being the Merry he thought she was.
Chapter 10
“Are we friends or not, Phoebe Moon? Because friends help each other.”
“But Uncle Sandy is my problem, Zack Diggory. Not yours.”
—Phoebe Moon and the Missing Sunshine
* * *
Present Day…
Forty-five minutes, one shower, and one harrowing four-block walk with her eyes on the sky after Max had left her at the B&B, Merry banged on the door of a two-story brick colonial decorated with a multicolored line of Christmas lights along the roof in a modest older neighborhood.
A dog woofed inside, but no one answered.
Maybe he’d lied. Maybe he wasn’t home all night. Maybe he didn’t still live here. Maybe it was a trap.
She stood there, debating with herself.
She could walk away.
Or she could bang on the door again until someone answered. The lamps on either side of the door switched on, and Merry was staring at Max’s tall, dark, broad form backlit from the foyer light. Scout pranced behind him, but he blocked her with his legs.
“Were you going to marry me?” she blurted.
His grip visibly tightened on the edge of the door, making those corded muscles in his forearms bunch and squeeze, but he quickly blinked back the deer-in-the-headlights panic. “Did you think I was?”
“No. Maybe. I—girls with fathers like mine don’t get happy endings. But you—never mind.”
She turned around. She shouldn’t have come.
“Merry.”
Streetlamps chased away the darkness, chased away all the good places to hide.
“C’mon in,” Max said. “Don’t want you blaming me if the owl attacks again.”
She knew she shouldn’t be here, but she let herself complete a full circle, then refused to let herself think anymore when she stepped into his house.
Max shut the door. Scout leapt for Merry, tongue lolling, tail wagging, nose going straight to her crotch.
And for the second time in two hours, she had to choke back tears.
Someone loved her unconditionally. She went down to her knees. “Hey, sweet girl.”
Scout licked her cheek, then put her paws on Merry’s shoulders, rear end still wagging, tongue going wild against Merry’s ear.
“Scout, down.”
The dog ignored her owner, and Merry buried her face and fingers in Scout’s fur.
Forget men. Merry was getting a dog. As soon as the plane touched down in France, she was getting a dog. Dogs didn’t judge. Dogs didn’t steal. Dogs wouldn’t tell her secrets to the wrong people.
She squeezed her eyes shut, hugging and petting Scout while she willed the stinging to go away. She swallowed hard until the lump in her throat finally surrendered and she could take a deep breath without worrying that her exhale would come out on a sob.
Before Max, she hadn’t known she was lonely. Before Max, she hadn’t had dreams of a family of her own. Before Max, she’d never wished her parents were normal.
When she finally looked up, he was gone.
She discreetly sniffled and took a quick swipe at her eyes, then gently helped Scout off her. Muted rock music filtered out from somewhere near the kitchen. She stood, glancing around as she made her way toward the music.
She entered the dining room, where the same regal eight-person mahogany table sat centered and surrounded by matching carved chairs. The china was missing from the hutch.
She froze and stared at it.
The glass wasn’t broken or cracked, the hardware was intact, and the shelves weren’t splintered.
Of course it hadn’t been stolen. More likely Max had asked a female relative to take it. Fine china hardly fit in a bachelor pad, and she’d heard whispers that both his grandparents had passed away early this year.
A real girlfriend would’ve been here for him. He’d loved them. Even though he’d been pragmatic about death, about how fortunate his grandparents had been to live good long lives and raise a wonderful family, he had to miss them. To grieve for them.
He strolled in the door from the kitchen, a plate of cheese in hand. She shifted her gaze to an early 1990s family portrait on another wall, but he’d seen what she was looking at.
He must’ve.
Question was, would he think she was simply being curious, or would he think she was casing his joint?
“Havarti?” He tilted the simple white Corelle plate to display mouthwatering temptation.
Her belly grumbled.
Max lifted the plate in the air, far out of her reach. “Gouda on there too. And this ridiculously delicious white cheddar a customer sent from Washington state. Cougar gold something.”
And to get any, she suspected she’d have to surrender a few secrets. “You are an evil man.”
He jerked his head back toward the kitchen. “All yours if you come out to the garage.”
Something else rumbled in her midsection, but this rumble was decidedly lower and not a hunger cheese could fix.
Evil wasn’t strong enough. Malicious? Malevolent? Sinful?
Most definitely sinful.
There was something about the sight of Max using tools on an old car that revved her engine as much as riding in Trixie had. And she needed to keep her engine out of it. Still, she trailed him to the garage, Scout on her heels. “I’m running away from home,” she said.
“Looking for better cheese?” He set the plate on a vintage kitchen cabinet just inside the garage, then crossed to a dusty powder-blue Dodge sitting next to Trixie.
She propped a hip on the edge of the cabinet and eyed the three cheeses. “Looking for a better life.” She took a nibble off a square of Havarti first, and a happy sigh flowed from the depths of her chest.
She wondered if it would’ve tasted better if she confided in him.
About the ring. About Amber Finch and Phoebe Moon. About—everything.
Max grabbed a wrench and a rag and bent over the Dodge’s engine. “Seemed like you had a good life.”
“Always does.” She had no idea what he was doing under that hood, but his arm muscles flexed again beneath his threadbare gray U of I T-shirt, and her angle gave her a fabulous view of the worn denim hugging his rear end. “You still planning to open a shop for these girls someday?”
He grunted, and the wrench moved. “Never let me forget I said that, will you?”
The way he’d talked about cars reminded her of the way she felt about writing. But either he had his guard up against her now, or he’d given up the idea of pursuing his dream. “Dreams are important,” she said.
He shifted a sapphire squint at her. “What’s your dream?”
Home. Family. Friends. Roots.
She didn’t even have to think about it. She knew. She knew, because he’d nearly given it all to her last year.
She looked away and picked blindly at the cheese plate.
Being here was a mistake. Because being here, eating cheese and watching Max do his manly, macho car thing was reminding her of living her own personal dream with him last year.
She’d thought a hunky, attractive, age-appropriate man being interested in her was the best part about dating Max. But it turned out, normal was the part she’d liked best.
He’d shown her normal last year. This kind of normal. The normal kind of normal, not the Daddy kind of normal.
After a few weeks of casually dating Max last year, of listening to him talk about his family and his hometown, she’d understood what roots were.
And she’d wanted them.
No, she’d craved roots. A home. A forever home, with forever friends.
She’d even indulged in fantasies of her own family.
Of telling Max things she couldn’t tell her parents. About how she’d kept imaginary friends well into high school to compensate for how often she’d moved as a child. About how she’d dream Daddy would come home one day and announce he’d been at medical school and was now a doctor instead of a thief. About Phoebe Moon and Amber Finch.
But normal-normal wasn’t meant to be for her.
No matter how much she still liked riding in his car or hanging out in his garage, watching him fiddle with a car engine while his dog lay at her feet, she couldn’t stay here.
She didn’t want to stay here. She wanted to go to France. To rent a house somewhere overlooking wine country, to dine on fresh Brie and baguettes and pastries, to write her Phoebe Moon novels in the superior French air.
To disappear somewhere that Daddy and his misguided intentions couldn’t take anything from her again. “I’m leaving the country,” she said quietly.
Max twisted around and stared at her.
“My mother doesn’t know. I don’t know how much contact she has with my father, and I don’t—I can’t—he used to do tea parties with me. He never forgets my birthday. He taught me how to read and how to throw a softball, and he let me have ice cream for dinner long after I’d gotten better when I had my tonsils out. I love my daddy, but he has a way of turning my life upside down, and I can’t live like that anymore. I have to go somewhere he can’t find me. I need a life of my own.”
Max straightened. “What did he do?”
Last year, Max meant. He didn’t have to specify.
And the simple truth was, Daddy had called.
That was all it ever took.
Not long after she’d left Max’s house after spending a lovely Tuesday night with him last year, Daddy had called. Hey, Merry-berry. Surprise! Just rolled into Chicago on the bus. Can you pick me up at the station? Got the address right here.
Except the address had been in a posh neighborhood, and he’d actually just rolled out of a house with Merry didn’t want to know how many thousands of dollars’ worth of stolen gems and jewels.
Now, baby girl, you don’t know what this man did to the people I’ve been working with, Daddy had said. Can you drive a little faster? Thought I might’ve been made back there.
She’d kicked him out of her car.
A cop had rolled past her, slowly, attentively, at a stoplight two blocks later.
And because it hadn’t been her first experience with being a getaway car, she’d known the drill.
Ditch the cell phone. Disconnect the computer. Leave the apartment. Call Mom for help in getting rid of her car.
And start over.
Leaving everything behind.
Including Max.
Especially Max.
She’d given a fleeting thought to turning her father in, but he was her daddy.
She couldn’t. He wasn’t evil. He didn’t hurt people, couldn’t use weapons, wouldn’t even fire a gun. He just…liked to take things that didn’t belong to him, from people who didn’t need them, so he could give to people who did.
Prison wouldn’t fix what was wrong with him, but being in prison would break him.
“Merry?” Max prompted.
She shook her head.
“Fresh honey goat cheese from a local farm inside,” he said.
She shook her head again.
Max grabbed his rag and wiped his hands, his lips set in a grim line. “If he hurt you—”
“Daddy’s not dangerous.”
“A man doesn’t have to use weapons to be dangerous.”
“He would never hurt me. He’s not that kind of criminal.”
“So you learned to be a ninja for the fun of it?”
“Yes.” And because it was as healthy an outlet as Mom could find for her preteen and teenage anger over being taken away from her daddy. At least, it had been initially. As Merry had gotten older, she’d begun to process that if her daddy could be a thief, then anyone could.
And then she’d learned firsthand that theft wasn’t truly a harmless crime.
Now, she didn’t keep all her valuables in a single place. She did her best to ensure her valuables were only of value to her. She practiced self-defense regularly, she had her money split among five different banks, and she kept a constant vigilance about her surroundings.
“Not all wounds are physical,” Max said.
Too close to the truth. Merry stared him down while she chewed on a slice of Gouda.
“You ever help him steal anything?”
“Not wittingly.”
“Your mother know?”
“Probably.”
“You really do that medical billing stuff?”
“I make an honest living.”
“Why’d you come here tonight?”
Because she was lonely.
Because she wanted to pretend to be a normal girl for a few minutes.
Because she needed to believe she could find this, and keep it, when she moved to Europe. “Why do you still like me?”
“Who says I do?”
She looked pointedly at his groin, then toasted it with her Gouda.
A slow, sure, suggestive grin grew on Max’s lips. “So you’re here for a booty call.”
“That’s all we ever were, wasn’t it?”
Thunderclouds overtook the innuendoes in his expression. “Was it?” He tossed his rag aside and took two menacing steps toward her. “You’re not like your father at all, are you? You’re more like your mother.”
“She’ll be flattered.”
“Tell me one thing, Merry.” Two more steps, twenty billion times more dark and dangerous. “Honestly. Tell me you didn’t like me last year. Tell me, and mean it.”
“Why?”
“So I can justify not kissing you.”
Merry sidestepped and stumbled over Scout. “See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You don’t even know me, but you still want to kiss me. What’s wrong with you?”
“Must be the curse.”
“You don’t believe in curses.”
He turned and trapped her against the cabinet. “
You use your family as an excuse to run away.”
“Look at that. A normal dysfunction. Hallelujah.”
He was two breaths from getting the kiss he wanted, and she knew what Max’s kisses were like. He was the kind of kisser the nuns at that orphanage had warned Phoebe Moon about.
Merry needed to go.
“You ever been the one left behind, Merry? You know what that’s like?”
Run, her sense of self-preservation yelled. “Yes,” she whispered. Every time Daddy had had to disappear after a botched job, she hadn’t known if she’d see him again. She’d catch Mom picking up the phone, then putting it back down. They’d both jump every time someone knocked on the door. Mom had even picked out a burial plot one time.
“Then why,” Max said, “did you do it to my dog?”
“I didn’t—to your dog?” Instinct, injury, and training took over. She snatched his hand and twisted until she had him bent over, elbow in the air like a chicken wing. “I wanted to meet your family. I wanted to come to your stupid Snow Bride Festival. I was going to bid on you in your stupid bachelor auction.”
“Easy to say—ow!”
“If it was illegal to design jewelry, but your grandfather did it anyway, would you have loved him any less? Would you have told him to take care of his own damn self when he got sick? Would you have just walked away, without a friend, without any more family, and still been able to live with yourself?”
Scout growled low in her throat.
“Down, Scout,” Max said.
Merry shoved him away. Her face was hot, and it felt like someone was trying to suck her heart out of her chest with a Hoover. Phoebe Moon and the Kink Gone Wrong: Author Amber Finch Arrested For Getting Too Frisky With Former Lover.
She fumbled toward the door. “You’re an idiot.”
“You don’t have to be alone, Merry.”
She stalked through his house without looking back.
Not because he was wrong.
But because she was terrified he was right.
Chapter 11
“Do you ever wish you could live in the dark forever?” Phoebe Moon whispered to Zack Diggory.
“Never, Phoebe Moon. And you shouldn’t either. We should all live in the light.”
Merried Page 9