by Tarr, Hope
He moved to the refrigerator and opened the double doors. “Speaking of breakfast, what would you like?”
Staring at his sexy profile, Becky could come up with a whole menu of things she’d like—all of them X-rated. “I don’t eat breakfast, but thanks. Coffee’s fine for me…and maybe some juice if you have it.”
Setting a carton of eggs and a stick of butter on the counter, he shook his head and clucked his tongue—the same tongue that had made her feel amazing things just forty-eight hours ago. “Haven’t you heard breakfast is the most important meal of the day?”
Needing to put some distance between them, she walked around to the other side of the counter. “It depends on whose day you mean. Mine seems to unfold just fine without it. Personally I think the whole breakfast-as-the-most-important-meal movement is hype put out by the dairy industry.”
He shook his head at her though she couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or just amused. “You’re full of theories, aren’t you? Sit—I’ll make the coffee. How do you take it?”
Elbows on the counter, she leaned in to watch him. Colleague or not, she found everything about him completely sexy, from the way he moved around in his kitchen, so confident and sure, to the way he gestured with his strong hands.
“Strong with plenty of cream, please, half-and-half, if you have it.”
He seemed surprised. “No sugar?”
Becky couldn’t resist. “I’m already sweet enough.”
Looking up from scooping coffee into the cone filter, it was Max’s turn to smile. “In that case, Miss Sweet Enough, take a load off. How do pancakes sound?”
She dragged out a stool and sat. “Like you’re on a mission to make me fat.”
Grinning, he turned away to the stove, sliced off a pat of butter from the stick and dropped it into the frying pan. Over the sizzle, he said, “I can’t imagine you ever being fat. What are you, a size two?”
Becky was a size two petite actually, but the golden retriever ambling into the room saved her from saying so. Being born Angelina tall and curvy hadn’t been in the cards—or genes—for her.
“Here, Scout.” Max stopped what he was doing to pour dried kibble in the dog’s bowl. “That’s a good boy.” Reaching down, he patted the animal’s side. Looking back at Becky, he said, “He used to run with me when he was younger, but he’s too old for that now. He has trouble with his hips.”
She’d guessed as much from the dog’s stiff movements and slow stride. “I’m sorry to hear that. Did you say you run?”
Straightening, he nodded and returned to making breakfast. “Yeah, only in the winter, that means the treadmill. I have a gym downstairs.” She’d wondered how he stayed in such great shape. “You’re welcome to use it while you’re here.”
“Thanks, maybe I will.” If he kept feeding her as he had the previous night and promised to this morning, she’d better hit the gym, otherwise she wouldn’t be a size two for much longer.
He poured coffee into two mugs, adding cream to hers. Watching him, she saw that he drank his black with a heaping spoonful of sugar. She’d licked and sucked and tasted nearly every part of him, but until now she’d had no idea how he took his coffee—how crazy was that?
Sipping her coffee, she offered, “I run, too.” Her apartment building backed up to Rock Creek Park. Running through the park and then cutting through the National Zoo was a major benefit of her northwest Washington location. “I’m pretty much good to go until December. Once the really cold weather hits, I hibernate in aerobics class until the spring thaw.”
Scout finished his food and headed for the family room, stopping by Becky for a petting. Watching her stroke Scout’s ears, Max couldn’t help remembering how good those soft, small hands had felt stroking his back and the rest of him. She had the gentlest touch of any woman he’d ever known. Thinking of the magic those tapered fingers and clean scrubbed nails had wrought, heat spread over his groin.
Whisking the lumps from the pancake batter, he cleared his throat. “It looks like you two have made up since last night.”
Looking up from the dog’s head in her lap, Becky nodded. “I’m a huge animal lover, in case you can’t tell. I have a cat, Daisy Bud. She’s a tiger-striped tabby. I found her as a kitten in the alley behind my apartment building, or she found me.”
Wearing an oversized T-shirt, baggy sweatpants and with her pretty maple-colored curls tousled about her face, she looked soft and approachable, more like a teenager than a grown woman. Even with bed head and pillow face, she struck him as alluringly perfect and completely adorable. If there was a flaw, he’d so far failed to find it—and he was pretty sure he’d explored every square inch of her in New York. Picturing the tight, lithe and very womanly body lying beneath the shapeless clothes, he felt himself hardening.
It promised to be a long couple of months.
Once he’d gotten her settled in her room the night before, he’d known he wouldn’t be able to go to sleep right away, if at all. Instead he’d cleaned up the kitchen, made a fire and then settled in to read her book. By the end of the first chapter, he’d found himself really getting into the story. Although he still couldn’t say he was a romance fiction fan—make that mystery erotica, whatever the hell that was—he had to admit she was a damned good writer.
He’d cracked open the book expecting purple prose and cardboard characters. Instead, Becky’s writing was crisp and clean and stylish, her characters well-fleshed out even if he did find her protagonist, Angelina, less than sympathetic. Like him, she kept to a basic twenty-chapter structure, each chapter ending on a cliffhanger that propelled the plot forward. Who knew but this collaboration of theirs just might work out. Who could have predicted that his sexy one-night stand would be sitting in his kitchen in her stocking feet, about to eat pancakes and petting his dog? Real life really was stranger than fiction.
He carried the bowl of batter over to the stove and dropped large spoon-size globs onto the hot skillet. It had been a long time since he’d had someone other than his dog to talk to in the morning, let alone make breakfast for. He really should do a better job of keeping up the conversation.
Over the hiss of batter meeting scalding-hot butter, he called out, “I’ve had Scout since he was a puppy. We…I got him from a breed rescue group. Apparently his hind legs were too short and his eyes too wide-set to show him. He’s been a great companion, though. Now that he’s pushing eleven, the hip dysplasia is really starting to kick in. I’m not sure how much longer I can keep him going, but while he’s still feeling pretty good, I don’t mind making my vet a rich man.”
He and Elaina had gone to look at the dogs together. Like Becky’s cat, Scout had picked them, not the other way around. Max remembered watching the puppy trot up to Elaina without being called and settle onto her lap. It had been a happy day. Thinking of Scout’s gray-muzzled head resting in Becky’s lap a moment ago, Max felt a funny tightening in his throat.
The night before at dinner, he hadn’t been prepared for the gut-wrenching feeling her tears had stirred in him. There was no denying he had a soft spot for the woman. Once she’d admitted her book contract had fallen through, turning her away was no longer an option. What the hell, maybe Harry was right. Maybe Drake could use a little softening and a lot of sex—and maybe he wasn’t the only one.
Whoa, Max. She’s your writing buddy, not your fuck buddy. “I called my friend, Sharon, this morning to arrange cat care and she told me her dog just passed away. She’s pretty broken up about it.” Her big brown eyes were suspiciously bright.
“I’m sorry to hear that. I know from having Scout and other dogs before him that you get really attached.”
He glanced at Becky and it occurred to him he was the one in danger of getting attached. Assuming they could figure out a way to work together, she still wasn’t staying beyond the two months it took to finish the draft. If the collaboration was a bust, she’d be leaving in a week. And from everything she’d said since he’d met her, she wasn�
��t looking for a relationship. Even if she had been, it was never a good idea to mix professional and personal affairs. Someone always ended up getting hurt and in this case neither of them could afford to let the work suffer. The book had to come first and it had to be good. Better than good, it had to be a blockbuster for both their sakes. They couldn’t afford to walk around like hormone-blitzed teenagers.
“Max?” Becky’s voice called him back to the moment. Wrinkling her nose, she asked, “Is something maybe…burning?”
Max looked at the skillet and the blackened pancakes within. Damn, he’d zoned out and burned breakfast. That was a first—and a warning sign.
He carried the pan over to the trash can and upended it, the blackened circles sliding off his nonstick skillet. Other than feeling foolish, ruining breakfast was no big deal. He’d make another batch. There was plenty of batter.
Burned pancakes were no big deal. Getting burned by Becky, now that would be a real problem.
* * *
Becky might not cook, but she was a crackerjack dishwasher and she insisted on doing the cleaning up. After polishing off the pancakes—she had been hungrier than she’d realized—she hopped down from the stool and started washing dishes and wiping down counters. Stealing glances at Max sitting at the breakfast bar reading the paper, she was struck by how natural it felt to hang out with him in his kitchen. She and Elliot had never shared such a cozy morning. He hadn’t been a breakfast person, either and they’d eaten their other meals out. Looking back, his visits had been so brief and last-minute that they’d never really spent much time just hanging out. She and Max had done more talking in the past forty-eight hours than she and Elliot had in their entire six months of seeing each other. That was certainly a depressing statement.
They parted ways to shower and dress. Thirty minutes later, they met up in Max’s office, one of the rooms at the back of the house. Stepping inside, Becky was struck by how quiet it was. Her northwest D.C. apartment looked out onto Connecticut Avenue, a busy thoroughfare. Writing without the backdrop of car alarms, ambulance sirens and honking horns was going to take some getting used to.
Max was already at his computer when she entered. Looking over his shoulder, he said, “I’m e-mailing Pat the details of our deal so she can put together the joint contract.”
Becky nodded. “I’d like to look it over before you send it.”
“Of course.” He turned back to the monitor.
She hoped she hadn’t offended him. She didn’t think she had. He’d been in the business longer than she. Publishing contracts were legally binding documents, just like signing on the dotted line to purchase a car or a house, and she wanted to make sure he hadn’t missed any of the points they’d discussed over breakfast. The provision that either party could break the contract and walk away at any time without being sued was key.
Until he finished, though, there was nothing for her to do. Restless, she roamed the room, focusing on getting her bearings—the location of office supplies, the flatbed scanner, the fax. Compared to the bare-bones setup she had at home—a laptop and flat-screen monitor—Max’s office seemed opulent and a little daunting, if kind of dark.
She rounded his desk and pushed aside the curtains to let in the light—and caught her breath. The French doors opened out onto a panorama of snow-covered mountains and clear sky. A pond, obviously frozen, lay about a quarter mile from the house. Other than a gazebo and an ironwork bench, there were no structures, no houses and certainly no skyscrapers in sight.
Sensing eyes on her back, she turned around to find Max standing by the desk, an unreadable expression on his face. “What do you think?” He’d put on a soft blue pullover and stone-washed jeans. The sweater brought out the vibrant blue of his eyes, making them seem bluer still.
Becky felt as though she was on the brink of drowning yet again. To get her bearings, she turned away to look outside. “It’s beautiful. I can see why you love it here. The view must be even more amazing come spring.”
He joined her at the window, his hip accidentally brushing against hers—at least she assumed it was by accident. “Every season has its unique beauty, but autumn is the best. The mountains are an incredible panoply of color. I could show you photographs I’ve taken though no camera lens can quite capture what we see with the naked eye.”
The innocent reference to naked had her thoughts swirling back to their time together in New York. She caught herself holding her breath and wondered why she was still so skittish around him—and so incredibly turned-on. The stranger sex mojo should be wearing off by now if not burned out altogether. Instead, the attraction felt stronger and hotter than ever.
“I’d love to see them sometime.” Uncomfortable with him standing so close, she dropped the curtains and stepped away. She had started over to the computer to read over the e-mail when she spotted the leather-framed photograph on his desk.
Becky stopped in her tracks. A man didn’t keep a woman’s picture lying out in plain view on his desk unless he had strong feelings for her. She was sure Elliot hadn’t bothered to set out even a snapshot of her.
Her and Max’s amazing night was less than forty-eight hours old, the memory still fresh and achingly tender. She knew she should move on, but she couldn’t resist picking up the picture for a closer look. “Your girlfriend’s very striking. She reminds me of my heroine, Angelina.”
It was true. The tall Mediterranean-looking woman in the picture would have made a good stand-in for Becky’s British-born but half-Italian heroine. The biggest difference was that her waist-length black hair looked wavy instead of straight.
Max came up behind her, and Becky felt the heat of him penetrating all the way through her clothes. “Elaina was Greek-American. And she wasn’t my girlfriend, she was my wife.”
“Was?”
He hesitated and then nodded. “She died last year on New Year’s Day.” He reached around to take the picture from her.
So that explained his claim of having gone almost two years without sex. It also shed light on why he’d killed off Drake’s wife, Isabel, in a previous book. The one she’d read had described her as a tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed cryptologist who’d died helping her bounty-hunting husband on a mission. Isabel must have been based on Elaina.
Surrendering the photo, Becky lifted her gaze to his face. “I’m so sorry.”
Setting the frame down, he avoided her eyes. “She was sick for a long time—cancer. Toward the end, the pain got pretty bad.”
“Is that why you checked out of the publishing scene and went underground, to take care of her?”
She’d meant it as a compliment, but Max didn’t seem to be taking it so. His sexy mouth flat-lined and the light left his eyes, leaving them as vacant-looking as the windows of an emptied-out house on moving day. “I didn’t go underground as that damned reporter insisted on writing. I didn’t go anywhere at all. I stayed right here in this house, the house we built together, and Elaina and I did our thing. It wasn’t like I’m some saint or martyr. I did exactly what I’d wanted to do since the day I met her, and that was to be with her. Her being sick just meant we had to figure out a new way to do that and still be us.”
Becky looked at him, emotion thickening her throat. Adam Maxwell wasn’t just sexy and charming and talented and successful. He was all of those things in abundance, but, even more, he was loyal and decent, trustworthy and true, a one-in-a-million good guy, the kind her friend, Sharon, would call a “keeper.”
“Watching someone you love that much die must be so hard. I can’t imagine how hard that must be.”
“It was hard. It is hard. That year was the hardest one of my life, but it was also one of our best. We did a lot of crying but we did a lot of laughing, too—and remembering all the good times we were lucky enough to have shared. We spent just about every waking moment together and nothing got in the way of that, absolutely nothing, not even the book I was working on. I set my laptop up in our bedroom, and I wrote when I could
and when it finally got too hard, when she needed me too much, I shut the damn thing down and forgot about it for months.”
He’d sacrificed his career and put his life on hold for his wife and the best part was he hadn’t done it grudgingly but gladly. To be loved like that, to be wanted like that—Becky couldn’t even imagine it. It was horrible to admit, but she was almost envious of a dead woman.
Elliot had the hots for her in the beginning, but whatever he’d felt for her obviously hadn’t run very deep. Love and passion, was it really possible to have both with one person outside the pages of a romance novel?
“I’m sorry,” she said again and left it at that because really, what more was there to say?
She thought back to the interview he’d given the New Yorker. The issue would have come out around the time Max lost his wife or shortly afterward. He must have been raw with grief, devastated, perhaps even angry with the world. By the time she’d come to the housewife-porn quote, Becky had been too pissed off to read the rest. Until now, it had never occurred to her to give him the benefit of the doubt. She suspected there was a lesson in that.
He gestured to the computer. “Have a look at that e-mail I drafted. If it seems okay to you, then go ahead and hit Send. If not, we can talk about any changes you want when I get back.” He turned and started toward the door.
Thinking of the beautiful, barren landscape at her back, Becky wondered where he meant to go. There must not be another house for miles.
She followed him to the door. “If you want some company or—”
His adamant headshake cut her off. “I’m going into town for supplies. I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”
He was obviously upset, and it was all her fault. If only she’d tamped down her writer’s curiosity and let the picture pass without comment. Mentally kicking herself, she said, “Max, I’m so—”
He turned and left the room before she could get the word sorry out.