He liked the feel of her hand in his, soft yet strong. A perfect representation of the Angie he knew so well.
"Uh, Max? I think you’re done."
"Oh, oh, yeah." He released her hand, then got to his feet. "You got an ice pack?"
She shook her head. "I have peas."
It took him a second to make the connection, a second he blamed on the fact that half his brain was still picturing her naked, and now picturing those sweet pink nails wrapped around a very hard, not so delicate part of his anatomy. "Peas. Oh yeah, right." He turned away, grabbed them out of the freezer and pressed the bag into her hand.
She winced again then she sighed when the ice pack did its job. She looked around the kitchen and let out a small, sad sound. Tears brimmed in her eyes, and he wondered why she cared so much about a couple of steaks. "I’m sorry. I had such great plans."
"Angie, it’s okay. Not everyone can cook. That’s why God invented Chinese food." He got to his feet, then leaned over and pressed a kiss to her forehead. It was meant to be a friendly, comforting gesture, but when the delicate floral scent of her perfume met his senses, his brain went into hormonal overdrive again. For a second, he had the crazy thought of kissing her. Of taking her in his arms, and finding out of if she tasted as wonderful as she smelled. Of taking this attraction, which had always brimmed beneath the surface of their friendship, to the next level. Then he caught himself. This was Angie, his best friend. And he was a smart man, one who didn’t screw up the only thing going right in his life.
So he stepped away and picked up the phone, then started cleaning up the mess. By the time the kitchen was set to rights and they were eating Moo Shu Pork out of white cardboard containers, the urge to kiss Angie had passed.
Max told himself that was a good thing.
30 jalapenos, seeded and split lengthwise (use gloves!)
2 pounds ground sausage, cooked
2 8-ounce packages cream cheese, softened
¼ cup cheddar cheese, shredded
Okay, okay, so you can’t cook. At all. But maybe this recipe will show him you’re hot in the kitchen and a hot and spicy addition to his love life (maybe show a little leg while you’re at it, to show him you’re hot in a whole lot of ways).
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Mix sausage and cream cheese in a bowl, then stuff jalapeno halves with the mixture. Bake for 20 minutes, sprinkle cheddar cheese on top, then bake for another 3-5 minutes, or until cheese melts.
Serve with a really good beer and a sexy smile. Make him think twice about you—instead of thinking at all about Miss Wrong.
CHAPTER THREE
Whoever invented high heels had to have been insane. Angie wobbled across the parking lot, nearly empty at the end of the day on Monday, sure she was going to come crashing to the pavement at any second. She cursed the salesgirl who had talked her into the platform pumps. "Ooh, they make your legs look long and sexy," the salesgirl had said.
She should have added, as long as you stay upright.
The winter wind kicked up under Angie’s skirt, sending a chill into places that should never be chilly. Angie drew her coat closed, and wondered if it was too late to go back to the car and go home. Then she pictured Becky’s face when Max proposed to her in a week. That was enough to spur Angie forward.
Angie was tired of letting fear rule her life. She’d always thought she was the brave one, thinking her lack of commitment meant she wasn’t afraid to take a risk, to live on the edge. Deep down inside, she knew the truth.
She was afraid. Of a thousand things—rejection, abandonment, disappointment—pick your Dr. Phil buzz word and pin it on Angie like she was the analysis donkey at a birthday party. The only constant in her life had been Max. Angie’s flighty mother had flitted in and out of her life, leaving Angie with her father more often than not. Then her father died in high school, and Angie and her mother had moved six times in two years, so often that Angie stopped bothering to put their name on a mailbox because chances were she’d be gone before the tape could start to stick.
Max, though, had been as dependable as the sun. The one who convinced her to concentrate on school, on the things she could control. Together, they’d muddled their way through their teen years and college. He’d spent most weeknights at her house, avoiding his alcoholic father, making out his lists and notes, while she taught him the culinary fun that could be had with a can of Cheez-Wiz. Now she wanted more than that, more than their friendship, and the only way to get that was to keep putting one high-heeled foot in front of the other.
She made it into the building and the elevator, trying to ignore her complaining feet. As the elevator rose, she shifted her weight from foot to foot, but it did little to alleviate the ache in her arches. The elevator doors slid open, and there was Max. His brows arched in surprise. "Angie? What are you doing here?"
Her heart did a little skip beat. Angie started forward, her gaze locked on Max’s blue eyes. "I’m—"
Then she was falling, her brain scrambling to process why one foot had moved forward, and the other hadn’t. Her hands pinwheeled at her sides, reaching for salvation, grabbing only air, and then, with an oomph, she landed, face first on the gray speckled carpet. Something hard and cold banged on either side of her right ankle.
"Angie? You okay?" Max’s voice, coming from somewhere six feet above her head.
"Yeah." Just completely humiliated. Angie almost wished she’d fallen down the elevator shaft instead. "What the heck happened?"
"You got your heel stuck in the crack of the elevator door." Max held up the offending platform. "First time on the new legs?"
"Ha, ha. Very funny."
Max chuckled. "I thought so, too. Come on, Crash, let me help you up." His hand went to her elbow, helping her into a sitting position. He reached down and tugged her right leg forward. Her skin sizzled when he touched the bare skin, and even in the humiliating position of being flat on the floor of his office, she wanted more, wanted him to slide on top of her and kiss her and—
He sat across from her. "Okay, spill. What's up?"
Thank God most of the people who worked for Max had already gone home, so her humiliation was relatively small. She shifted into a sitting position, then accepted Max’s hand as he hauled her to her feet again. She smoothed her skirt and tried to look cool. "What do you mean?"
"The manicure. The heels. The dress. The condoms in—" He cut off the sentence.
"How do you know I have condoms?"
His face reddened. "I, uh, I saw them when I got the bandages for your burn." He shifted his stance. "Can we not have this conversation?"
"You brought it up."
"It's just hard to imagine you having sex."
"Am I that asexual?"
"God, no. You're sexy as hell, Angie. With those legs and that way you smile when you—" He shook his head and cursed.
"When I what?"
If he told her, it would tell Angie he had noticed her as a woman. Which he had, a million times since they were in seventh grade and he'd seen the strap of her training bra peeking out from under her tank top. It was that moment when he'd realized that Angie Wilson wasn't just his friend; she was a girl, a living, breathing girl with all the right equipment.
He'd spent a solid month acting like a bumbling fool around her, a month that had ended with Max placing a sloppy kiss on her lips. His first kiss, and Angie’s too, a terrible fumbling attempt that was far from any Hollywood version. He saw the look of surprise and confusion on her face and made up some excuse about the kiss being a joke.
He’d forgotten that in high school when he’d asked her on a date, thinking maybe they were older, more mature, and they could go out. Instead, it had been that middle school kiss all over again, only ten times more awkward. He’d realized that if he kept seeing Angie as a girl, he'd stop seeing her as a friend. He'd had to choose, and in that moment and all the ones that followed, he'd chosen friendship. Angie meant more to him than some sexual urge and always wo
uld.
That didn’t mean he didn’t see her legs in that skirt and think about taking her to the nearest bedroom. It just meant he wouldn’t be dumb enough to act on those thoughts.
"Don’t you like my shoes?" she asked.
"A monk would like those shoes," he said. "You know you rock a skirt, Ang."
She smiled. "Glad you noticed."
Oh he’d noticed all right. And that was the whole problem. He wasn’t supposed to look at her that way. "Some guy is going to be lucky as all hell to have you."
She shook her head and let out a gust. "Will you quit saying that?"
"You gotta settle down and fall in love some day." Though the thought of it pained him.
She parked her fists on her hips, which emphasized her hourglass shape. He swallowed hard and told himself to stop seeing his best friend as a sex kitten. "How do you know I haven’t already fallen in love?"
He laughed. "You are the last holdout to single-ness," he said. "Listen, why don’t you let me fix you up? Introduce you to someone who will treat you right."
And maybe once she was in a committed relationship, his brain would stop thinking of her legs and her lips and her breasts. He was supposed to be getting engaged himself, and he was still fantasizing about Angie. What was wrong with him?
She bit her lip and shook her head again. "You don’t get it, Max. You just don’t. I’m not interested in you fixing me up. I want…"
"What?" he prompted when she didn’t finish.
"Never mind." She spun away and pushed the down button. The elevator doors dinged open, as if they’d been waiting to help her make her escape. "Just never mind."
Then she was gone, and Max was left feeling like he had missed something important and fundamental.
2 pound pork tenderloin
Salt and pepper
¼ cup orange juice
1 tablespoon grated orange rind
¼ cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
¼ cup brown sugar
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Sprinkle tenderloin with salt and pepper. Easy, right? Well, as you know, cooking isn’t exactly my forte, but I keep on working at it, sort of like with a certain sexy man who has yet to get a clue.
Mix the juice, rind, soy sauce, hoisin sauce and brown sugar in a small bowl. Add a little more brown sugar if it’s not as sweet as you want it—remember you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Baste the pork with the sauce, then cook another 10 minutes until it does something fancy—caramelizes.
Take the roast out of the oven (use oven mitts; no need to repeat that steak disaster). Let it rest for five minutes before slicing. That should be enough time to give him the message that you’re not giving up easily. Even if the odds are stacked against your happy ending.
CHAPTER FOUR
"Are you sure you want to be here?" Max had to shout to be heard above the roaring crowd. Beside him, a couple of drunks arm-wrestled over the last bit of popcorn in the paper bucket, while on the other side, two guys took turns calling wolf-whistles at the women walking the inside perimeter of the ring.
"Sure. I love wrestling."
He chuckled. "Honey, this isn’t wrestling, it’s all out fighting. Like to the death."
Angie just grinned, and settled back in her seat with her nachos, as if she came to UFC fights every night of the week. He’d been surprised when she had texted him that day, saying she’d scored two tickets to the fight and did he want to go. He’d looked at the pile of work on his desk, looked at Angie’s text again, and decided in a heartbeat that spending time with Angie beat out anything else in the world. Plus, he was still curious about the changes in her and the way she’d run—well, hobbled—out of his office yesterday. Something was up with Angie, but what it was, Max couldn’t figure out. Which was weird, because he had always been able to read Angie’s thoughts before. For a man used to looking at the facts and arriving at a logical conclusion, the whole thing felt…weird. Like he was standing on an unbalanced seesaw.
"Two muscular sweaty guys battling it out?" Angie said. "Of course I want to be here. It doesn’t get much better than that."
"If you say so," he said, settling in beside her. "I know Becky would never come with me to something like this."
Angie just smiled and propped her feet up on the back of the chair in front of her. This time she was wearing jeans and practical, low-heeled boots with a V-necked sweater that kept drawing his attention, especially when she slumped down a little in her seat like she was right now and he caught a peek of her cleavage. Hot, that was the best word to describe Angie. Hot and sexy.
She’d scored second row seats for him, which was about as close to the action as one could get without actually climbing in the ring. The two fighters—a couple of scrappy kids from Roxbury and Somerville—snarled and snapped at each other like two dogs facing off. They circled right, left, throwing out test jabs, while the crowd roared and demanded action.
Of the eight hundred or so people filling the arena, only about five were women, but if that fact bothered Angie, she didn’t show it. She’d always been game for anything, as long as Max had known her. If she hadn’t been his best friend, he’d have thought she was the perfect woman—beautiful, adventurous, sassy. One of these days some guy was going to capture her heart.
And that wasn’t a day that Max was looking forward to seeing.
Insane. He was getting married himself. Of course he wanted Angie to be happy, too. Heck, he’d tried fixing her up yesterday. Except a part of him didn’t want her to meet someone else. A part of him wanted her to always be there for him, to be his rock, his UFC buddy, his everything. A very, very selfish part, clearly.
He glanced at her, at her dark red lips and her deep green eyes. His gaze traveled down, over the enticing cleavage beneath her sweater, past the flat expanse of her belly, to the taut thighs outlined by her jeans. He cleared his throat and reminded himself that he was supposed to be in love with Becky. He refocused his attention on the fight, instead of Angie.
The Roxbury kid was built, with dark hair and shadowy stubble already showing on his clean-shaven chin. He kept his head down, his chin tucked in, and his fists up. The kid from Somerville was so white he might have been a ghost, with red hair and a scrawny chest that looked like it had never seen a bench press. But he was tough, and he dodged Roxbury’s punches with deft movements. Then Roxbury surprised him, slipping Somerville an uppercut, and driving him back into the ropes, so close to Max and Angie, they could see the sweat dripping down the kid’s temples.
"Hit him, for Chrissake!" screamed one of the drunk guys on their left. "Hit him!"
"Come on, McNeil, you look like a goddamned slug! Fight! Fight!" said the other drunk, roaring to his feet for the words, then dropping back into his chair with a thud. "This is wicked boring. We might as well be watching the wife’s bullshit soaps."
McNeil, aka Somerville, must have heard, because he surged forward, swinging with his right, hard, fast, connecting with Roxbury’s cheek and sending him flying. A tooth popped out of Roxbury’s mouth, spiraling up in a high arc, coming down at the same time the fighter did. The force of Roxbury’s landing popped him out of the ring, across the first aisle—
And into Angie’s lap.
The crowd roared, the drunks cheered and poured beer on him, while the ref declared Somerville the winner. Angie shoved the sweaty man off her lap and onto the floor, letting out a little oof as she did. "Okay, that might be a little closer to the action than I wanted to be."
Max chuckled. "You’re so tough, Ang, you could give either one of those guys a run for their money."
"Me? Tough? I’m as soft as a kitten."
"Right." He laughed. "You punched me so hard in third grade, my mother thought I’d fallen down the stairs."
"You tried to steal my dessert at lunch. You know how I feel about brownies."
He rubbed his arm, as if the spot was still sore. "Oh, I know. Too well."
She
gave him a light jab. "Now you’re just milking it."
"Maybe." He grinned. "But seriously, you are one of the toughest women I know. Heck, I’ve only seen you cry twice in twenty years. You’re practically one of the guys."
Any other time he’d said that to her, Angie had laughed, or teased him about challenging Max to an arm-wrestling competition. But this time, something that looked a lot like hurt flickered on her face.
Then she worked up a smile, and got to her feet, gathering her coat and purse. "And that, Max, is part of the problem."
Before he could ask what she meant by that, Roxbury had gotten to his feet, grabbed Max’s shoulder for stability, then collapsed again, leaving Max with a beaten fighter in his arms and a lot of questions about the one person he once thought he knew better than he knew himself.
Tortilla Chips
Shredded cheese
Salsa
Diced jalapenos
Diced onions
Sour cream
Any other fixings you want
Okay, so this isn’t really a recipe, but for Pete’s sake, your brain is fried. You can’t stop thinking about her, can’t focus on anything but the questions she’s raised in your mind. The high heels, the cleavage…oh wow.
Preheat the broiler. Line a cookie sheet with foil, layer the nachos, cheese, salsa, vegetables. Broil until the cheese is melted, then top with sour cream. Eat as many servings as it takes to forget the questions that seeing her as a woman, not just a friend, has been raising in your mind lately. Focus, man, focus.
CHAPTER FIVE
So far, her grand plan to win Max’s heart had scored a huge goose egg. Angie sat in the diner where she and Max had been on Saturday, picking at a platter of fries, wondering if maybe the whole thing was a lost cause. Maybe Max would never see her as anything other than a friend. Maybe she’d misread the attraction between them. The man had offered to fix her up, after all. If anything spelled not interested, that was it.
The Millionaire Tempted Fate (A Novella) (Sweet and Savory Romances) Page 3