Book Boyfriends Cafe Summer Lovin' Anthology 2015

by Melinda Curtis

  Gentle but firm.

  Sue fluttered her eyelashes up at him. “Are you going to put me in handcuffs, officer?”

  A man snapping to attention that fast should have his own sound effects. In half a second, he’d let her go and retreated three steps to stand at parade rest, both hands clasped firmly behind his back.

  And that was really too bad.

  Having Max Holt’s hands on her, even if he wanted to lecture at the same time, would never be a hardship.

  The only thing protecting him from her patented seduction technique was her love for her job. Never getting honey where she made her money was one rule Sue had made and kept.

  “Don’t you have enough work to keep you busy?” Max snatched a folder off the counter. A white envelope fluttered to the floor. “Security reports. Paper clips instead of staples as you insist.” The folder sliced neatly through the air as Max thrust it her direction.

  Almost everything about him was hard edges. In Sue’s experience, lots of military and law enforcement types who returned to normal life kept the high-and-tight haircut and let everything else relax into civilian softness.

  Max’s soft salt-and-pepper curls were a nice contrast for the hard muscles.

  All of those muscles were tensed, ready for combat.

  With her.

  She made him nervous.

  That was fun.

  Sue made sure to keep one eye on Max’s face as she bent to pick up the envelope. Nothing in his posture changed, but his tension made it hard to catch her breath until she handed the envelope over.

  “I was about to tell Lindy that I need to leave early this afternoon.” She crossed her legs slowly. “Hot date tonight. With a fireman.” Lindy waited. “Get it? Hot? Fireman?”

  Max grunted.

  “I thought we were joking around. Peeping Sue? That indicates that our normal patterns of me trying to get you to lighten up and you grunting in response had turned a corner.” She covered her heart with one hand. “Oh, dear. Was I mistaken? Have you had your sense of humor permanently removed?”

  The thing about sparring with Max was that he could maintain an expressionless expression better than anyone she’d ever met.

  And her father was career army so that was saying something.

  The small twitch under the corner of his eye could have been irritation. Or amusement. Or a nervous tick. Hard to say.

  But it was some kind of reaction.

  “Two dates with the same guy?” Lindy asked from her spot at the counter. How had Sue missed her arrival?

  She was slipping. Her ability to track everything that was happening in her domain was a point of pride. No one came in or out without her knowledge. Max had distracted her.

  “Different fireman.” Sue wrinkled her nose at Lindy and ignored the twist of jealousy that reared up when handsome Ryan Myers draped a hand over Lindy’s shoulder. They’d had some missteps, but lately, everything between them was fairy-tale sweet.

  That was enough to make even the most supportive of coworkers queasy with envy.

  “Great dress. I wondered what the occasion was, since you usually do retro Fridays.” Lindy picked up the crisp folder of security reports and flipped through them before setting the folder back on Sue’s desk. Before Ryan, Lindy would have returned to her desk to commit the stats to memory. Now, she had better plans.

  “I’ve learned that beehives and cat-eye glasses can have a dampening effect on romance with certain types.” Sue liked to play around with clothes and hair. Her father’s strict insistence that she be neat and presentable at all times had created a fashion renegade.

  That was what she told herself. Really, she had a short attention span. Changing her hair was an easy way to add some fun to her life. So was dinner with a lot of different men.

  “So today I went for basic black. Firemen may lack imagination and fashion-forwardness, but they make up for that in other ways.” Sue ignored Lindy’s coughed laugh to watch Max closely for more delicious reaction. His lips tightened and she was pretty sure she knew how lottery winners felt.

  “What are you doing this weekend?” Lindy tapped the counter. “We could come over and help you unpack. Ryan can handle the heavy lifting.” Her lips twitched when Ryan Myers made struck a pose.

  Max had crossed his arms over his chest.

  No pose necessary. His biceps were bigger.

  Every spare hour Sue had for a month had involved unpacking or DIY. The small house she’d bought on the outskirts of Lincoln came with decades of wallpaper and enough space for kids to roam.

  Her personal vendetta against wallpaper had taken its toll, but at some point, sore muscles had disappeared. Home ownership might have benefits in addition to never having to memorize a new address.

  “Sure, but if you can’t make it,” Sue said as she waved a hand, “we’ll call it a party game. Everyone who unpacks a box at the end-of-the-school-year picnic gets a hot dog. Seems fair to me.”

  The insistence that they could have the party in her cramped backyard, like they had as long as Sue and Lindy had both been working at Lincoln, was on the tip of Lindy’s tongue.

  None of her co-workers liked change, but Lindy had done some changing since Ryan and Maddie Myers had taken her in. Dating with a teenager around would take flexibility and a healthy sense of humor. Sue had taken advantage of Lindy’s preoccupation to make the case for moving the cookout to her brand new, decades-old farmhouse.

  And crossed her fingers that Lindy didn’t take it back.

  Sue had dreamed of hosting parties like this for friends who never moved away for a good part of her life.

  “You handle the food, boss.” Learning to cook was next on Sue’s agenda of building the life she wanted, but finding and buying the house had been a major hurdle. Frozen dinners would do the job a bit longer.

  “You’re coming to the barbecue next weekend, right?” Lindy asked Max, putting him on the spot.

  Sue watched him squirm, a bug caught in magnified sunshine. Resistance was futile. Lindy Mason was a force that no one refused easily.

  “I’m pretty good at grilling.” Max rubbed his forehead. “Only if you’ll let me help.”

  Shocked at how easy it was to get him to go along, Sue quickly sent Lindy a pleading glance. Lindy never let anyone help. Ever. With anything.

  Why did it matter so much that Max attend the get-together for administration and faculty? At the Christmas party, he’d monitored festivities from the corner.

  Which made it impossible to spike the punch bowl.

  “Hey, man, she’s roped me in and you would not believe the horrors I can inflict with fire and raw steak.” When Lindy opened her mouth to argue, Ryan pressed a sweet kiss to her lips and the jealous monster rapped against the inside of Sue’s head again. “You’re hired.”

  “Neither of you have to cook. I can cook. Maddie’s a genius with dessert, so she’ll do that and I’ll take over the barbecue.” Lindy held up both hands. “It’s your party, Max. I just want you to come.”

  “The men have settled it, Lindy. Let it go. We’ll call you Sunday, Sue.” Ryan quickly shuffled Lindy out of the office.

  As soon as they stepped out in the hall, Lindy let Ryan know exactly what she thought of his attitude while he laughed. Then there was silence.

  Sue shot a look at Max to gauge her chances on sneaking up on them again. He shook his head once.

  They waited in silence until the faint bang of the exit door echoed down the empty hall.

  “If you’re ready to go, I’ll follow you. Lock up.” Max held his hand out, as if he was some court gentleman and she was a lady of delicate constitution.

  Old-fashioned manners. She’d forgotten how much she missed them.

  Sue stretched slowly and then stood. “Fine. I need get home so I can refresh my lipstick.” No, she really didn’t. Her favorite tube of Drop-dead Red never let her down.

  Max’s intense concentration on her lips froze her feet to the floor. Breathing w
as a challenge. All she wanted to do was lick her lips and wait for the fallout.

  Apparently, iron will came along with steely muscles because Max blinked twice and held out his hand again.

  The temptation to add some extra oomph to her walk was hard to fight.

  Through valiant effort, she conquered it, slung her giant fringed hobo bag circa 1972 over her shoulder, and kept her usual brisk pace through the office. As she went, she flicked off lights, pulled locked drawers as a double check, and dug through her purse to make sure she had her keys.

  Just as she did every day. This place was her domain. Max and his team kept the rest of the school safe.

  This office was hers.

  “All right. Everything looks good.” Sue paused in the hallway to watch Max close the door and check to make sure it locked. He moved to the next door, repeated the process, and waited for her to follow.

  “Are you limping?” Sue asked. She’d spent a lot of time studying Max Holt. Something in his gait was different.

  “No.” He walked down to the next door, opened it and stepped inside.

  She could call him a lost cause and escort herself out the door.

  Or she could wait.

  “You go ahead. Takes me a while to secure the hallway.” Max pulled the door shut, turned the knob, and moved on to the next one.

  “Oh, I’m in no hurry.”

  He didn’t sigh. Or curse. Or in any way betray impatience, but it charged the air between them anyway.

  “Fine. The leg’s bothering me today, but I’m not limping.”

  He opened the boys’ bathroom and stepped inside. Since nothing could compel her inside a high school boys’ bathroom, Sue walked slowly down the hall.

  “Why is it bothering you?” she asked as soon as he stepped back out.

  This time he did sigh.

  “Listen, if you weren’t such a closed book, I’d know more about you at the end of the school year than your name, Max Holt.” And his address and cell phone number. Those she’d committed to memory.

  To be used in emergency, of course.

  “I’ve been pushing my recovery.” He skipped the girls’ bathroom and the next classroom. Apparently, he’d realized he could do this more quickly and in silence if he got rid of her.

  Darn.

  “From?” She knew the answer. Gossip said he’d been wounded in a drug bust.

  She wanted to keep him talking. In the course of this long walk, they’d at least equaled their previous best record.

  “Gunshot wound. You know that.” He cut a glance at her out of the corner of his eye.

  She didn’t bother to confirm it. “Doesn’t slow you down much.”

  “Not any more, not unless I push it.” A flash of him running on a treadmill, shirtless for some reason, caused her to stumble, but she caught her balance before he had to pick her up out of the floor.

  If shirtless Max was half as nice as she’d imagined, he should be required to leave his shirt at home all the time.

  Well, not at school. There would be too much fan-girl screaming in the hallways.

  Amused at her own wit, Sue decided one more volley, just to please herself, was acceptable. “Big plans for the weekend?”

  Max grunted.

  “I’ll take that as a no.” The corners of her mouth twitched. The strong, silent type had never been her favorite. She preferred the life of the party, the charmer with a witty, sexy comeback for every clever conversation starter she issued.

  Something about Max’s silence convinced her to keep trying.

  The small puff of breath might have been a sigh, but she had to check Max’s face to be sure.

  Yep. Irritated.

  “No plans.”

  As a reward for the effort, Sue patted his bare forearm, and they both stumbled to a stop.

  Seriously, Sue? You touched his arm. Get it together.

  “Other than the house, big plans?” Max hit the metal bar on the door and held it open for her. The blast of heat ruffled the edge of her skirt.

  “Well, there’s the fireman. He should keep me busy enough for a weekend.”

  Sue stepped out into the blaze of late May in Texas, thinking she might have done better to go for ice cream, air conditioning, and reality television for dinner.

  Max squinted in the bright light. Then he met her gaze head-on. “That’s one lucky fireman.”

  Sue watched the corners of Max’s mouth turn up as the door shut with a bang.

  The metal handle was hot in her hand as she tried to yank the door back open. He couldn’t drop a nice bomb like that and expect her to sit on her response, could he? She had one. Or she’d come up with one.

  The door was locked. No amount of yanking on the handle changed that.

  Sue propped her hands on her hips and stared at the door in consternation.

  It was too hot to stand on the sidewalk staring at the door for long.

  Max Holt had turned the tables on her. If he’d ever seemed upset or interested at all in her light flirtation, she would have retreated to a safe distance, but he’d always been safe, stoic.

  Why did his small reversal make her twice as interested?

  Not that it mattered. No soldiers, no cops, no coworkers—the dating policy had been in effect since she learned what boys were made of.

  As she headed for the car, Sue was afraid the fireman wasn’t going to get her most sparkling conversation. Distraction could do that, even for a semi-professional first dater like herself.

  First-date conversation was fun, but it could definitely be work. For twenty-two years of her life, dinners had been filled with proper discussion and exquisite table manners. Here in Lincoln, if the meal wasn’t fun, she didn’t stay. Fun that lasted a full weekend? Almost rare enough to say it didn’t exist.

  Still, she hadn’t given up hope. If she wanted her picture-perfect house and satisfying job to come complete with stable, happy family, she had to believe eventually she’d find a guy worth risking a second date on.

  The fireman would talk. She would listen.

  But Max and his parting words would need some careful study.

  Chapter 2

  Max was glad no one was around to see his idiotic grin. She’d been chasing him, from a safe distance, for so long that it was fun to turn around and catch her off guard. Sue Walker knew her worth, but she had entirely too much fun teasing him.

  He enjoyed it, too. Otherwise, he would have put a stop to it.

  Somehow.

  She didn’t strike him as the easy-to-discourage type.

  He stared hard at the door when he heard the rattle. Letting Sue back in would mean more conversation.

  He was not up for more conversation.

  Especially with the most tempting high school office administrator to walk the face of the earth and the woman he’d spent entirely too much time considering ever since he’d taken this job at Lincoln High.

  Time to cool off.

  That’s all he needed. By Monday, he’d have it all under control again.

  And maybe he’d know why he’d agreed to attend the faculty barbecue.

  He liked Principal Lindy Mason, but this insistence she had on “good morale” and a “positive work environment” pleased him as much as a nasty summer cold.

  He came to do the job. Keep the school safe.

  Making friends had never been at the top of his to-do list. The guys he’d been through the academy with and served alongside were better than friends. They were brothers. He’d be rejoining them soon.

  Since he’d been half a second from handing Lindy his resignation letter when he’d caught Sue loitering outside the door, he had no incentive to bond with his co-workers.

  Unfortunately, that weakened his resistance to Sue at the same time.

  Protocol demanded that he stop at every room to check each window to make sure it was closed and locked, verify that the room had been cleared of all students, conscientious and otherwise, and then to lock the door.
r />   As he had every single day since he’d started at Lincoln, he reminded himself that even if the job lacked the adrenaline and satisfaction of kicking in doors and late-night raids, at least he made his own rules.

  Property theft and the occasional drug bust had been the biggest challenges at Lincoln, but the world was a crazy place. Preparation could make the difference between success and tragedy.

  That was as true here as it had been on the streets of Dallas.

  And no matter what his father, older brothers, or obnoxious friends on the force might say, working in the school was better than desk duty. Listening to their bullshit every day would have made him miserable, never mind the unending phone calls and forms.

  He was going back and when he did, he’d be sharper, harder than before. No one would doubt he could answer the call.

  Not even Max himself.

  When he was back at the security office, a small room with cinderblock walls, a cluttered desk, his gun safe, and the school’s small safe, he quickly stripped his utility belt, checked the 9mm pistol, magazine, and mace. He’d do the same thing before he put it on in the morning, but the end-of-day check made it easier to sleep at night. Once everything was locked in the gun safe, he pulled out his cell phone.

  “Are we on?” Coach Jackson Ford didn’t waste time with pleasantries like “hello.”

  That was why they got along so well.

  “Yeah. Track or off-road?” Max asked the same question every day.

  And every day, Jack’s answer was “Track.”

  Since he’d hate every single minute no matter where they ran, Max said, “Be there in ten.”

  Max stripped out of his security uniform and glared hard at the scar on his thigh. For a year, the damn thing had made life a misery. After long days, he limped.

  That never stopped him from running. If he wanted to make it back to the task force or even regular active duty, the leg had to work. Dependably. Every single day. He’d gotten lucky to escape a bad bust with a gunshot wound to the thigh. Strength and stamina had saved his life then.

  Slowed reactions might mean death, not a sabbatical to small town Texas.