by Abby Brooks
I nod. “Sounds like good reasons.”
“I guess so. A lot of people seem to think I did it for the publicity. Which couldn’t be farther from the truth. I’m not the kind of person who likes the spotlight.”
“I get that.”
I nod, just kind of bounce my head and lift my eyebrows. She doesn’t respond and the silence starts feeling awkward. I did just ask her out and she did just turn me. So now what? Do I shake her hand, hop of the table, and bid her goodbye? That sure sounds like the safe thing to do. But since when do I ever do the safe thing?
When it comes to women. That’s when. When it comes to things like ‘relationships’ and ‘family’ and anything that could end up with things like ‘attachments’.
Or dead eyes staring at you while you hide under the table. Too young to understand why the blood won’t stop.
And there you go. All the reason in the world why I won’t be pushing Chelsea London to go out to dinner with me. With that bit of history hanging out in my genes, I just can’t risk it. I can’t risk love and all the things that come with it.
Disappointment swirls in my stomach and resentment for a man who died decades ago seethes in my chest. “Well,” I say as I hop off the massage table, trying desperately to keep my face light despite the darkness gathering in my heart. “You’re a miracle worker, you know? Never felt this good.” I look down at my knee because it’s easier than looking at her. And that’s that. I turn my back and head towards the locker room.
“Hey,” Chelsea calls after me. “I didn’t peg you for a quitter.”
I turn, the rage-burned memories almost too thick to see through. “You’re right about that. I’m not a quitter.”
“You gave up awfully easy just now.” Her face is pursed in confusion. Her voice shakes.
“Saw the writing on the wall.” I shrug. Even though I know I should turn and go and put Chelsea London out of my mind, I don’t. I stand there, waiting.
“You always this sure you’re right, even when you’re wrong?”
I glare at her; I can’t help it. I know what she’s about to say and as much as I want her to say it, I feel like I should turn and walk away before she does. Chelsea London is about to accept my invitation to dinner and I’m pretty damn sure I should just go ahead and rescind the offer.
“You saying I’m wrong?” I ask.
She steps towards me and nods, her blue eyes wide and locked on mine. “Very.”
Walk away, asshole, I tell myself.
But, probably because I’m an asshole, I don’t. “Will you go to dinner with me on Friday?”
And damn it, as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I smile like an idiot.
Chapter Twelve
So here’s the thing. I have never in all my life been more excited about a date than I am about this one with Max. And that’s confusing as all hell because for one thing, the last time I went out with a man I met at work, well, it didn’t turn out very well, now did it? But the other thing? I swear, after he asked me out, he regretted it.
But in very typical Chelsea fashion, I wasn’t in the mood to be ‘not wanted.’ And I had already made up my mind to say yes because there’s something between us. Something good. He’s nothing like the kind of guy I thought I wanted, and that scares me a little. It really does. Especially with those dark moods that come over him. The ones that have his jaw pulsing and his nostrils flaring. What goes on in his head that gets him so worked up?
And should I be afraid of him because of it?
My intellect says yes and my instinct says no and somewhere in between my heart is beating in its silly little excited way. I never listen to my instinct. I always override my heart with my head, so the fact that I’m going out with Max has me a little off-kilter. I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately. But I do know this. If I stop thinking and start feeling, I’m really, really, really looking forward to tonight. Max is picking me up at six and he told me to wear a dress. Actually, his exact words were:
Something sophisticated. With heels.
Well, let me tell you what. If it’s sophisticated he wants, then he has found the right woman because I know how to pull off sophisticated. I put on a little black dress that hugs my body and highlights my shoulders and neckline. Put on a pair of killer heels. And I mean killer with a capital K. Max is tall enough that I don’t have to worry about how tall they make me, so the sky’s the limit, baby! I curl my hair, skipping the volume I went for at Aura with Hudson and go straight for something soft and feminine. As far as makeup goes, I apply black liquid eyeliner and a bright red lip and I’m not going to lie, I feel pretty damn beautiful.
And then immediately wonder if I went overboard.
I mean, Max is a cop. And I’ve never seen him in anything other than the workout pants and a t-shirt he wears to physical therapy, and the uniform he wore the morning he pulled me over. What if his idea of sophisticated and my idea of sophisticated are two entirely different things? And in that moment of absolute horror, my doorbell rings. I check the time on my phone.
He’s early.
Of course he’s early.
One more panicked look in the mirror and I race downstairs and fling open the door without even taking a moment to slow down and take a breath. Which is probably fine because what I find standing on my doorstep takes my breath away completely. Any breath I had taken would have been completely pointless. Max stands there, his broad shoulders filling the space, his blue eyes glittering in the setting sun. He wears a suit like he was made for it. Or rather, it looks like it was made for him.
“Hi,” I finally manage. “Wow. Look at you.”
“Can’t,” he says with a wry twist of his lips. His perfectly full and totally kissable lips. “I’m too busy looking at you.”
I giggle. An honest to goodness giggle. “You look very nice.”
“That’s it? I put all this effort into cleaning up for you and all you have for me is very nice?”
Another giggle and a heavy blush and, damn it, I don’t have anything witty to say in response. Max offers me his elbow—which just about does me in, I do love a gentleman—and leads me to his car after I lock up the house.
“You have a nice place,” he says as he holds open the passenger door for me. “Very you.” He closes the door and crosses in front of the car to the driver’s side, leaving me to wonder what about my house he finds so much like me. I’m busy with work, which doesn’t leave me a lot of time for landscaping. So, while my flower beds are neat, they’re sparse. Just a few perennials that I can set and forget. The house itself is small, but I’ve done my best to keep it welcoming by keeping the porch swept and the windows clean.
Max laughs as he fastens his seatbelt and brings the engine to life. “What’s got you thinking so hard?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re staring at your house like you think you might find the secret to life etched in that pretty white trim.”
“That’s not far from the truth, actually.” I shrug and glance at him and almost forget to breathe again. He’s such a stunning man in that suit. How did he know that I had such a thing for men in suits? “I was trying to figure out just what exactly about my house is very me.”
Max grins at me and puts the car in reverse. The engine sounds throaty and aggressive when he hits the gas and I realize that I was so flabbergasted as he led me out of the house that I have no idea what kind of car I got into. It does have leather seats and too many bells and whistles to be practical on a cop’s salary. Oh no… Please don’t tell me he’s irresponsible with his money.
Or, let’s try this again.
Since this is only our first date, maybe I should stop worrying about whether or not he’s good with his money. That is absolutely none of my business and a little crazy to worry about the implications on our financial future when I don’t even know what kind of kisser he is.
“So tell me,” he says as he flicks on the turn signal. “What does the beautifu
l Chelsea London like to do for fun?”
“For fun?” I pause and frown. “Well, work keeps me pretty busy. I don’t know that I do a lot of anything just because it’s fun.”
Max looks surprised. “Surely you can’t be that busy.”
“You’d be surprised. I put a lot of extra time into learning about the specific injuries of each patient. I typically get home from work, cook some dinner, do some research into the latest and greatest in the physical therapy world and then head to bed. Rinse and repeat until the weekend.”
“What about the weekend?”
I think hard, looking really seriously into my life, trying to find the bits and pieces of me that are interesting. “I clean up the house. Work in the flower beds…” I scrunch up my nose, looking for something, anything that sounded remotely like fun. “Last weekend I painted the trim.”
Wow. I sound like an absolute loser. What happened to the me that used to do things? When did I become such a homebody?
“What about you?” I ask, eager to get the conversation pointed away from me. “What do you do for fun?”
Max smiles. “I’m not a complicated man. I live a pretty simple life. I like to take my dog out to the park and throw the ball for her. Listen to some music in the evenings. Work out. But the real high point of my week is hanging out with Charlie.”
I wrack my brain, trying to figure out if he ever mentioned a Charlie before. Oh no. Please don’t tell me Charlie is short for Charlotte. Please don’t let me be one of many women. Please let this be a serious date and not fling.
I inwardly roll my eyes. There I go again, worrying about future-stuff and the serious factor of this evening and we haven’t even gotten out of my neighborhood yet. What in the world is that all about?
“Charlie?” I ask, hoping I sound at least hallway nonchalant.
This look of absolute adoration flickers across Max’s face, erasing the deep crevice he normally holds between his eyebrows “Yeah.” He glances at me and some of the stress comes peeking back into his eyes. “You know the Big Brother Big Sister program?”
I nod, dumbfounded. “Are you a Big Brother?” He doesn’t seem like the type to have the patience for kids.
“Sure am. Charlie’s my Little. Absolutely adorable.”
“How old is he?”
“Ten. All knees and elbows. A passion for sports that I’m not sure he’s going to be able to back up.” There’s that look again. I absolutely love it.
“Oh yeah?” I ask, crinkling my brow. “Why not? Not built for it?”
Max laughs and shakes his head. “If he grows into that body, he’ll be a force to be reckoned with, but as of right now, he’s a little lacking in the muscle department.”
Max goes on to talk about Charlie and I just love how much enthusiasm he has for the kid. “For a guy who made it pretty clear a couple weeks ago that he didn’t do the family thing, you seem incredibly attached to this little boy.”
“I am. Attached. And I don’t.” Max waves his hands and glances at me. “The family thing.”
And that, my friends, is that. If there was ever a clearer sign that a topic was officially not up for discussion, then I don’t know what it would be.
“You have a dog?” I ask, attempting a conversational hard right turn into safer territory.
“Yep. Reagan. Got her from the pound the day before she was scheduled to be euthanized. Pretty much the only reason I got her. She was a disaster, all fearful and mistrusting. It’s been a lot of work to get her to where she is, but she’s a good girl now. Enough that I’ve trusted her in the park with Charlie while I wasn’t allowed the use of my knee.”
“You were allowed the use of your knee.” I stare at him while he laughs at me.
“Oh, no. You made it very clear who held all the power in that relationship. What was it that happened during our very first appointment? You threatened to call my boss and tell him I wasn’t cooperating?”
“Well, you weren’t! What was I supposed to do?” I’m somewhere between shocked and flabbergasted.
He laughs at me. “I was being kind of a jerk, wasn’t I.”
“From the moment you pulled me over.”
“Well you have to realize how it looked to me. Another pretty girl, trying to smile her way out of a ticket she knew she deserved.”
“I just didn’t want to be late to work. I had a busy day, new patient and all that.”
“I get that now. But then?” He lifts his eyebrows and laughs. “Not so much.”
I hate the way my mind is reeling from the compliment. Pretty girl. Hate the way I need to hear it again, the way I’m clinging to those words like they are an anchor. “You thought I was pretty?”
“From the moment I saw you. Prettiest damn woman I’ve ever seen.”
I look down at my hands, the look in his eyes too intense to manage. “Now you’re just flattering me. No one likes to be flattered.”
“What about honesty? I think most people can appreciate honesty.” Max flicks on the turn signal and turns into a parking lot I don’t recognize. “You’re absolutely stunning, Chelsea.”
As much as I’d like to think I can handle myself gracefully, there’s nothing graceful about the tongue-tied woman staring at her hands in the passenger seat of a parked car, too frozen to even undo her seatbelt, let alone come up with something appropriate to say.
Max pivots in his seat, puts his finger under my chin and lifts my face until I’m losing myself in his eyes. “Something tells me you haven’t heard that enough,” he says.
I blink furiously. Pull it together, London! And yet I continue to be speechless. Way to take awkward to a new level.
“We’re going to have to work on that, then.” Max brushes a stray hair from my face, that crease between his eyebrows deepening. There’s more tenderness in that one movement than I’ve ever experienced in all my life and for some reason, tears sting my eyes. When Max looks down to undo his seatbelt, I immediately fumble with my own, glad for the distraction. What the hell is up with me? Tears? For real?
We climb out of his car and Max offers me his elbow again. “Where are we?” I don’t know what I expected, but this isn’t it. The building in front of us is simple and unassuming, yet somehow—maybe it’s the man at the ornate front door in the tux—I get the feeling that there is so much more here than meets the eye.
“This, my lovely lady, is Han’ei, the best place to get sushi in at least three states. It’s not just about the food, it’s the entire experience.” He leans down to whisper in my ear. “And don’t worry, if you don’t like sushi, there are plenty of delicious items on the menu.”
I barely hear what he’s saying because all I can think about is how close he is to me and how it does funny things to my heart rate. His proximity is tangling with my confusion over all the ways this evening is turning out to be exactly not what I expected. Max Santoro, the hard-nosed police officer driving the leather-interiored, bells-and-whistled car that has to be way above his paygrade. The guy who doesn’t do family but whose greatest joy is the time he spends with an under-privileged kid and the dog he rescued from the pound and rebuilt from the ground up. The guy who was so condescending as he asked for my license and registration the first day we met calling me beautiful, touching me tenderly as he tells me he doesn’t think I’ve heard that enough. And now, the guy who professes to be a simple man but takes me out for sushi in some swanky club on our first date. Him in a suit and me in a dress and my arm in his like this is just the most natural thing in all the world.
What’s funny, is that it actually feels that way. Natural. Even as my head is spinning with all the different angles this man is throwing my way. As uncomfortable as I think I should be, I’m not at all.
All I know is that I don’t know enough about the enigmatic Max Santoro and what I’ve learned in one short car ride is enough to sell me on learning the rest.
Chapter Thirteen
Max is right. Han’ei is all about the experienc
e. The décor is understated yet decadent. The music is soothing yet invigorating. The atmosphere is one of posh civility and is very private and almost introspective. I’m trying not to stare wide-eyed and open-mouthed at everything, but I very much feel out of my league.
“Do you like sushi?” Max asks as he pulls out my chair for me at a table nestled into a private little corner. Our hostess nods politely and disappears, promising us our waitresses prompt arrival.
“Will you think less of me if I admit I’ve never tried it?”
Max shakes his head. “Not even a little bit.”
“I’ve never tried it.”
A look of disgust curls his lip down in a decidedly condescending frown. “I thought you were better than that,” he says with a curt shake of his head. He crosses his arms across his chest and looks away, refusing to make eye contact.
“Hey.” I lean forward, elbows on the table. “That’s not funny.”
“I thought it was.” He gives me an adorable little quirk of his lips. “And judging by the smile on your face, you did too.” There’s this moment of silence where he just stares into my eyes. I wish we had wine or something to distract me because I feel naked under his gaze and I’d love something to do with my hands. “I like seeing you smile,” he says finally.
“Well that’s funny, because I like seeing you smile, too.”
Oh my God. Kill me now. I am the most awkward person of all time. Ever.
“Are you adventurous? I could order for you if you’d like to give sushi a try. If not…” He gestures to the menu. “There are plenty of delicious choices here.”
Let’s see. Am I adventurous? Up until now, the qualities listed highest on my Ideal Man list included a steady job and a growing 401k. When asked what I do for fun, I talk about work and painting the trim on my house. And I say things like I never speed and I’m never late for work.