by Sonya Weiss
Her eyes wouldn’t feel as if she’d rubbed them with sandpaper if she hadn’t tossed and turned all night. Threaded in with the thoughts of the upcoming wedding tasks were thoughts of Max. For a brief almost-lost-it moment, she’d thought about kissing him last night. And then she hadn’t been able to get him out of her mind. Not him exactly, she quickly corrected herself, but what he was supposed to be doing for her.
Max was supposed to set things up with Michael, the fourth man on her kiss list. Haley was feeling the pressure. Three men in and she hadn’t kissed a single one. As if the universe was conspiring against her.
“It’s freezing out here,” she muttered as she huddled in her car, waiting for the heater to blow warm air. She held her hands up in front of the vents, wishing she could have worn her mittens instead of her fingerless gloves. But she’d learned the hard way that trying to move heavy Christmas decorations while wearing mittens wasn’t a good idea.
On last night’s news forecast, the cheerful weatherman had warned that the town was in for several inches of snow beginning sometime this morning. She only hoped they finished loading the truck before it started.
The arts and crafts showcase was a big deal for the family business, not only in sales but also in helping spread the word about Bowman’s. When she was little, she hadn’t understood why tourists would come to Cherry Creek in the cold to buy the Christmas things her father made. Then her mother had explained that people loved coming to show their kids the old-fashioned designs. That it reminded them of Christmases past when the buyers had been children themselves.
Haley could imagine that someday (fingers crossed) she’d have children of her own to pass the love of the business down to. Her thoughts drifted to Max striving to become a partner in Bowman’s. If they had to split decisions and he was going to ride her case about everything she did, then that would be a problem. But a temporary one. Her father had mentioned his retirement again last night, which would then give her governing control of the business.
With a pointed stare and a hopeful expression, he’d said, “It could be a great business for a growing young family.”
That was a big could. If nothing happened with her list, the business would consist of herself. Until she was ready to retire. Gray, wrinkled, and still trading barbs with Max. The only plus to growing old with Max was that she could smack him with her cane when he got smart with her.
Haley sighed and drove along the main road toward Bowman’s. At the intersection of Cherry Main and Cherry Minor, she saw Celeste waiting outside the doughnut shop without even so much as a sweater. Everyone in town knew the older woman was getting a bit forgetful.
Pulling the car to the right, Haley parked and, leaving it running to keep the heater blasting, jumped out and hurried to the woman.
“Celeste, you left your coat at home again.” Haley stripped off her own coat and settled it around the other woman’s shoulders. She tugged it closed and threaded the oversize buttons through the holes. “You don’t want to catch a chill.”
Celeste smiled. “I didn’t forget my coat. I walked here in the cold because it helps remind me to be grateful for all I have. And because the new EMT is looking mighty fine.”
Haley laughed, then scolded, “Your house is too far away for you to walk in this weather.”
“At my age, honey, it’s the only thing that gets my blood pumping. Gotta keep life exciting,” Celeste said. “If you ask me, nothing’s more exciting than a relationship when it’s brand new and sparkly. How’s your future coming along? Found your man yet?”
Haley didn’t mind Celeste asking. She’d known the older woman for what felt like forever. “After I saw you at Suzie’s bachelorette party, I made a kiss list and—”
“And how’s that going?” Celeste asked.
Haley felt like squirming under her pointed stare. “Not as well as I’d hoped, even with Max helping me.”
“Hmm,” Celeste murmured. “Well, at least you do have Max helping you. His willingness has to be a gift of sorts, yes?”
“The kind of gift you tuck away in a dark closet and pretend to the weird relative that you liked.”
Celeste laughed.
“Max is helping only because he wants the partnership.”
“Hmm,” Celeste murmured again. Then she patted Haley’s hand. “I sure have missed you.”
A surge of nearly overwhelming gratitude for being back home struck Haley. “I’ve missed you too.”
“Don’t fret so about your man. I’m sure it’ll all work out the way it should.”
“I hope so.”
Another strange smile crossed Celeste’s face. “I’ll throw you a bachelorette party when it’s your turn to be the bride.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
Neil Miller, owner of the doughnut shop, opened the door and switched the sign from Closed to Open. Haley used to babysit his children when she was a teenager. He had the same shaved head and bushy beard he’d had back then, except now it was sprinkled with white hair.
Haley inhaled the warm aroma of baked sweets, and her mouth watered.
“Come on in. I’ll get your regular order ready for you,” Neil told Celeste. “You want anything?” He looked at Haley.
She debated. The coffee machine was broken at home, and she was ready to chew the paint off the walls to get a cup, but Neil was known for his chest-hair-inducingly strong brew. He could grow a Wookiee with a full pot.
“No, but I’ll wait so I can give Celeste a ride home,” Haley said.
Celeste was having none of that. “I’m not accepting your offer. There’s a reason I’m supposed to walk today. Someone needs my help.”
“Who?” Neil asked.
“I’ll know when I encounter them.” Celeste pointed to Haley, then the door. “You. Out.”
“Fine. I’ll go, but you’re keeping my coat.” Haley refused to take it when Celeste tried to give it back. “I’ll find something else to keep me warm.”
Like Max?The thought popped into her mind.
She remembered last night when she’d taken him home. She’d looked at his mouth and imagined his lips soft yet firm, and she’d—Haley cringed at the memory—tingled all over from the rush of want. So strong, so insistent that it had made her breathe faster before she’d collected herself and booted him from the car. She’d come close to kissing him. Why can’t I stop thinking about him?
She blinked and swallowed hard. Max. Kissing me. Me kissing him… How…how… She gulped, her heart tripping over her silent protest. “I’d better scoot,” she said abruptly, giving Celeste a quick hug before she hurried back to the car.
The rest of the drive, she forced herself to think about the grocery shopping she needed to do, the dust bunnies she needed to conquer at the house, and the arts and crafts showcase. Anything but Max lighting her fire.
The object of her disaffection stood outside the building under the main-entrance awning. He had his hands in the pockets of well-worn jeans he’d topped with a black turtleneck. He was watching down the road as if searching for her.
Haley zipped the car into one of the handful of parking spaces in front and got out, intent on getting to the employee break room and making herself a cup of coffee.
“You’re late,” Max said. “Took longer than you expected to practice the hex you want to put on me?”
“I needed to make sure it was potent,” Haley said, coming up beside him, reaching around for the door handle. “I’ll get my gloves, and we’ll get the truck loaded.”
“It’s been loaded for an hour. I took care of it.”
“Brownie points for you, overachiever.”
Max turned to catch the door she swung open. “I see grumpy girl hasn’t had her vat of coffee this morning.”
“Unlike some people, I don’t have to have coffee first thing.” She kept her expression s
incere even though she was dying for a cup.
“Your dad told me the coffeemaker at his house zonked out last night. How badly would you want to kill me if I said I took the last pod from the carousel for myself when I got here?”
Haley stopped and spun around. “No one would ever find your body.”
He grinned.
Max…that smile…his eyes…
Lightning flashed. The earth screeched to a stop. His wind-tousled hair, the edge of his lips slightly turned up made Max look…look…enticing…sexy. Her brain leaped onto a bucking bull, and her thoughts were tossed every which way as they tried to scramble for safe, familiar ground. Remember the almost kiss? Remember the wanting? “Oh no,” she whispered.
His grin disappeared. “I was joking, caffeine junkie. Your dad put a new box in there yesterday.”
Haley exhaled, stepping back. “Good. I need…coffee.” She’d almost said, you, my fiendish enemy. “As soon as I get it, I’ll meet you outside.”
“I’ll get your gloves for you.” Max walked off.
She sucked in a deep breath and made tracks to the break room. Raising her hand to plug up the Keurig, she wasn’t surprised to see she was shaking. Sexy Max? Ugh. No more trying to function without coffee. Obviously the lack of it had disrupted an important neuron and it had misfired, causing her to think of Max that way. She’d viewed him, for one shocking moment, sans horns, and that was something that should never have happened.
Because, just like a leopard couldn’t change its spots, Max could never change. Haley finished preparing her coffee and poured it into a to-go cup, thanking her father repeatedly in her head. She took a sip and, sanity restored, went to find Max.
He’d always be the man who plagued her. Made her jaw ache from clenching her teeth. The last man in the entire universe she’d ever let herself kiss.
…
Max picked up the clipboard holding the sheets that detailed which products they were taking with them. His plan for today hadn’t included being sequestered in the high school gym along with forty or so other vendors. But he could roll with that.
What he didn’t like adjusting to was setting everything up with Haley. He’d wanted to kiss her after the visit with Dean, and he was still trying to sort that in his brain.
She materialized beside him. “Let me double-check to make sure everything is accounted for.” Setting her mug of coffee on one of the sawdust-covered worktables, she took the clipboard and read over the items. “Something’s missing.”
He snapped his fingers as if remembering. “Your broomstick. I saved a spot for it.”
She handed him back the clipboard. “I see my spell to turn you into a toad worked brilliantly.”
Max laughed and tucked the clipboard under his arm. He reached for his coat. “Did you leave your coat in the car?”
She shook her head. “I ran into Celeste in town. She walked in from her house and didn’t have hers.”
“Yeah, she’s been doing that for years now. I think she has three of my coats by now.” He settled his around Haley’s shoulders.
Quick as a wink, she whipped it off, dangling it at the end of her finger. Back straight. Braced against his offer. Chin tipped. Stubborn woman. “I’m fine.”
“Take it,” he insisted.
“Ulterior motive?” she questioned. “It’s you, so I know there’s one.”
“I don’t like the idea of you being cold.”
She softened slightly. “Max—”
“If you get hypothermia, I might end up having to perform CPR. You’d be so enthralled that you’d cling to me, and I’d have to brush you off. It could get embarrassing for you.” He walked to the door, waiting for her to put the coat on and pick up her coffee.
“It’d be the only time your lips would touch mine, and the only way I’d cling to you is if I was holding your head under water,” she said, breezing past him outside.
The rush of cold air hit Max, and he shuddered, hurrying around to the driver’s side the same time Haley did. They both reached for the door handle.
“Loader drives. You know the rules.”
“I forgot.” Haley backed up a step.
“There’s a lot you’ve forgotten since you’ve been gone.” Max climbed into the truck and started the engine.
“Like?” she asked as she pulled her seat belt around herself.
“Like how beautiful it is here. How peaceful. Or how neighbors are always looking out for each other.” Max eased the truck down the hill and swung it onto the main road. He winced as the rays from the newly awoken sun slanted across the windshield. Fumbling with the visor, he dropped a pair of heart-shaped pink sunglasses with unicorns at the temples.
He slid them on. “What?”
“Rocking those little unicorns. So adorable.”
“Lonnie liked my sunglasses better and wanted to trade. I haven’t had time to get a new pair.” When it came to his niece, whatever she wanted, he would give her. He loved her fiercely.
“Is your sister going to be there today?”
“Yep. She and Lonnie.” He glanced at Haley. “She’s still talking about those cupcakes. That was nice of you to do that.”
“I like Lonnie. She’s sweet.”
“Takes after her kind and devastatingly handsome uncle Max.”
Haley rolled her eyes. “I’ll bet all her uncles spoil her.”
Except Hugh. A quick phone call to their parents on holidays had been the extent of his brother’s involvement with the family in several months, until he’d dropped his coming-home announcement, not caring how it affected everyone else.
“You want to know how I’ve driven this route without you for years?” He turned into the high school lot. “Peacefully.” To his chagrin, he drove the truck over a speed bump faster than he meant to, and it jarred both of them.
“I don’t care how you drive as long as you do your work on the list.”
When he parked near the gym, Haley unbuckled her seat belt. “Any progress with Michael? He’s next.”
“Right. On the spinster list.”
“Max,” she said through clenched teeth.
None of them were worthy of Haley. And it bothered him to think like that. It also bothered him that his sparring with her was now more to keep his feelings for her from changing, from becoming something that would allow him to get hurt. He was supposed to help her with the list guys and that was all. A weird tightness stretched across his heart at the thought.
“He said he’d wait for you at Bowman’s after the showcase. He works at the lumber mill a few blocks from there and said it’d be easier for him.”
Haley bit her lip. “Did he sound excited?”
“Like game-time excited?”
She sighed.
“He sounded fine.”
Haley got out and slammed the door.
Max joined her at the rear of the truck.
“The more intel I have, the better prepared I am.” She jerked the handle and let the door slowly rise to the top of the truck. “Which in turn means the easier it’ll be for me to connect with whoever my soul mate is. It’s awkward talking to someone you haven’t seen in a while and haven’t kept in touch with. For future setups, remember I could use something to break the ice.”
“Fine. I’ll probe the next guy’s head.” Reluctantly. These guys, they’d miss the way her eyes lit up when she was delighted, the way her mouth turned down slightly when she was disappointed. None of them would see past her toughness to know there was a vulnerability underneath.
“Are you even taking our agreement seriously?” Haley climbed on board the truck and lowered a dolly to him. Then she bent over to push boxes within his reach.
Max began to load the dolly. “I am. I want that partnership.”
Putting her hands on her hips, she blew a puff of b
reath to move her hair away from her face. “Then what?”
“What do you mean?” Max wrapped a safety strap around the boxes.
“After the partnership. You don’t want anything more?”
“Nope.”
“Let me rephrase that: don’t you want someone in your life?”
Max shrugged, keeping his expression straight. “I’ve been working on my kiss list, but you know. So far, no luck.”
She took off one of her gloves and threw it at him.
He picked it up and threw it back, then pushed the dolly toward the gym doors. In what seemed like forever ago, he’d wanted someone in his life. He’d thought he and Annalise would get married. Settle down and raise a family. In his mind, he’d already carved out images of his own son one day playing in Little League, the same as he had. He’d imagined taking his family to the town’s annual parade, his little girl sitting on his shoulders, waving a flag and smiling. He’d imagined…happiness. Love.
Haley cut in front of him and opened the door, bowing with a flourish. When she straightened, she looked at the sky and gasped. “It’s snowing!”
From what he remembered about her, Haley loved the snow. “Guess you didn’t see much, if any, of that in California.” Max steered the dolly by her and stomped his boots outside before setting a foot onto the gym’s gleaming floor. Two years ago, the town had held all kinds of events in order to raise the money to renovate the gym after a summer storm sent a tree crashing through the roof. Max and all his brothers had worked alongside dozens of volunteers to get it ready before school started that year.
It was the last time he and Hugh had been a family before he’d discovered his brother’s deception. Before he’d caught him and Annalise. Max clenched his teeth and put the memory out of his mind. Striding forward, he headed for the corner booth assigned to Bowman’s.
“Think the snow will keep the tourists away?” Haley asked.
“Never has before.” He turned to go back to the truck but stopped when she handed him a reindeer hat she’d dug out from one of the boxes. “What’s this for?”