by Cari Z
“Why?” It was dark—it had been dark when we arrived. I came over to stand beside him, and he flipped on the porchlight.
“Son of a—” The snow had somehow doubled from when we’d arrived, deep enough to risk getting buried up to my knees if I walked out there. “Wow. That was fast.”
“They did say it would get worse before it got better,” Dominic said then looked at me. “Do you want to spend the night? Just—just to sleep, I mean, we’ve been hauling crap around this house for the past two hours, and it’s dusty as hell, and—”
“That’s fine.” I didn’t need him to justify it to me. Actually, the thought of just sleeping next to him felt really…nice. “I’d love to stay.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Dominic paused then reached out and took my hand. It was slightly awkward with our bulky gloves on, but when he squeezed, I squeezed right back.
“Thanks.”
I didn’t quite know what he was thanking me for, but if it put that look on his face, I’d take it.
Chapter Six
Dominic
I woke up to the familiar whir of my space heater and the unfamiliar slow breathing of a person sleeping deeply next to me. With my heart ready to jump out of my chest, I spun around too fast and almost fell out of bed. It took a few seconds to understand who was in my bed and to remember why.
It was Max. Of course it was Max. And I was okay. He’d spent the night because of the snow. We’d gone to bed and laid awkwardly next to each other for a while, but later, a sleeping Max had slid over and pressed his back against my side. It had been like a teenage fantasy come true, except with no boners or action because we were so tired.
I held back a groan and glanced at the clock. Barely seven—no wonder Max was still asleep. He didn’t look like he got the chance to sleep in much with his job. Part of me wanted to stay and watch him for a few minutes, but a bigger part urged me not to be a creeper and to see what the snow was like outside.
I eased out of bed and grabbed my coat off the floor then let myself out into the hall. Shit, it was cold out here. Better than it could have been, but I seriously should have gotten the insulation all done first thing instead of dicking around with the floor. I shuffled to the front room and looked out the window, only to be met with a monochrome of white. It wasn’t falling much anymore, but what had already fallen was deep, almost up to the door of my Jeep.
I could shovel out and chain up, but until the streets were plowed, it was going to be rough going, even with four-wheel drive. We might be stuck here today. I wondered how Max would take it, if he would stress about work again. I was somewhere between excited and nervous myself, but I didn’t have a huge presentation to prepare for, either.
I shuffled back to the kitchen and made coffee then assessed breakfast options. Hmm…I had eggs, I had butter, I had bread for toast…we’d survive. I poured two mugs of coffee, made one of them up the way I’d seen Max take it yesterday morning and kept the other black for me, then headed for the bedroom.
Max was just waking up as I entered, and the smell of the coffee seemed to help get him the rest of the way there. “Mmmmm?”
I sat down beside him. “Yeah, brought some for you.” I handed him the mug and had the pleasure of watching his head tilt back a little as he took a long swallow.
“That’s good,” he said once his mouth was free.
“Hal has turned me into a coffee snob.”
“Sounds like him.” He tilted his head as he looked at me in my heavy coat, and I tried not to let on how cute that was. “So I guess there hasn’t been a miraculous heat wave since last night, then.”
I laughed. “Not even close.”
He pursed his lips. “Is it that bad?”
“About two and a half to three feet.” I shrugged. “It’ll be okay once the streets are plowed, but they do the main ones first, and there are only two plow operators for the whole town.”
“Oh.”
I felt a little bad about laughing now, seeing him so crestfallen. “I’ve got some snow shovels. We can dig the Jeep out and make a path to the main road if we need to.” It would suck, because I was at the far side of the cul de sac, but we could do it.
He took a deep breath and shook his head. “No, as long as it’s clear tomorrow, I should be okay. The highways will be even cleaner, so I’ll still be able to make it back to New York in time for my afternoon meeting. I need to spend a few hours on my presentation, though. I meant to work more yesterday, but time got away from me.” He sounded a little chagrined.
“That’s fine. I’ve got plenty to do working on the house.”
“Oh, I’m still going to help you with things here today,” Max said with a grin, scooting a little closer to me. “We’ve got hours and hours to spend together. You know what we should start with?”
Was he saying what I thought he was saying? A few choice images had heat creeping up my collar—Max smiling that wicked grin as he stripped his shirt off, Max pulling me in for a kiss with one hand as the other one reached down for the button of my jeans. “Um…what?”
He leaned in and whispered in a sexy as hell voice, “Putting up insulation.”
“Oh my god.” If he didn’t have a hot mug of coffee in his hands, I would have hit him with a pillow. Or tackled him back into bed and see if he was up to reenacting the erotic reel my brain had been playing since last night.
“Because there’s no good reason for you to have to put up with a freezing cold house right now, especially when you’ve got me to help.” He took another sip of coffee. “Right?”
He had a good point. “Breakfast first, though.”
“Definitely breakfast first.”
I called Hal to let him know we were snowed in, to which he replied with enough innuendo to make me blush and make Max laugh at my reaction, then made a breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast. It was nice, sharing the space with someone else, especially now that I was over my early morning shock. I was glad Max hadn’t noticed it—explaining my issues with surprises to people was about my least favorite thing to do, especially to guys I was interested in.
And I was very interested in Max.
…
After food was demolished, we got to work hanging insulation against the bare walls in the front room. It wasn’t my neatest work ever, but after a few hours, it began to feel considerably warmer in my house. Max’s work, I couldn’t help but notice, was also quite a bit neater than mine, even though I’d been working on this house every day for the past month and a half. Was he just naturally amazing at things? “If you decide you get tired of the rat race in New York, you could probably make it as a construction worker.”
“I’ve always enjoyed the work,” Max said as he measured a stud bay. He grabbed one of my utility knives and began to cut the batt of insulation to fit. “Not enough to make it a career, but I spent a lot of time at work sites with my dad when I was a kid, and that helped me pick up the basics.” He smiled, faint but real. “It was fun. I enjoyed spending time with him back then.”
That must have been before Maxfield Senior ran for mayor. He’d sold his company after he got elected, if I remembered right. And just a few years later, everything went to shit.
Max’s smile was gone. He looked lost in an unhappy memory, his hands moving more slowly than before. I opened my mouth to say…something, anything to lighten the mood. Max got there first.
“You might consider getting a little professional help when you redo the floorboards, if you don’t want everything set at a diagonal.”
“What?” I glanced down, then up at the piece of insulation I was stapling on…at a forty-five-degree angle. “Oops.” That got Max to laugh, and it was the best sound I’d heard all morning.
Was I maybe a little in over my head? Ugh, yes. I hadn’t let any thought of romance enter my head in s
o long, and now I had a backlog of years all catching up to me. I couldn’t keep my eyes off him, construction errors and all. I couldn’t help it—he kept moving all the time, twiddling his fingers or tapping his toes even when he was sitting back and considering his next step. It was irresistible.
But Max was leaving tomorrow, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
Max looked over and saw me watching him—heat rushed up my neck and ears in an instant—but he didn’t seem to mind. He winked. “See something you like?”
“I think you know I do,” I replied.
“Yeah? Me, too.”
Oh damn, really? He must have read some of that in my expression, because he set the utility knife down and turned to face me. “Maybe we could take a break and—”
And then his phone began to ring.
“Shit.” Max pulled off his right glove and grabbed his phone out of his pocket. “Shit.” He answered the call. “Marcus, I was just about to—no, I saw that. Yeah. Yes. Yes, I know you feel strongly about those clauses, but any rearranging of section seven has to go through his lawyer first, and—no, she didn’t call me. Of course I would know. I’ve had my phone with me all morning.” Max pressed to his feet and began to pace around the room as he hashed out what sounded like more than a difference of opinion, but slightly less than an actual fight, with his boss. I did my best to focus on the wall in front of me and not eavesdrop, but it was hard to not only hear, but see the change that came over Max, from loose and playful to upright and rigid in a few minutes.
Finally, he ended the call with a sigh, and all that strange stiffness seemed to flow out of him until he was the man who’d been with me all morning, just a little more flustered. “I really need to start reviewing the contract changes for the meeting tomorrow,” he said then looked with disgust at the film of pink fluff that covered his clothes. “I also need to clean up.”
“Lucky for you, the shower works really well,” I assured him, “and I’ve got spare clothes you can use. I have a washer and dryer, too, so we can at least get your stuff clean by tomorrow morning.”
“Thanks.”
We headed back to my room together, and I got out a loose pair of sweats and a gray army hoodie and put them on the end of the bed. “You can just throw your dirty stuff out into the hall and I’ll get it in the washer.”
“So that’s a no on the strip tease, then.”
I knew my mouth had just dropped open like a cartoon character, but I couldn’t help it. Had a strip tease been on offer?
Max started chuckling. “No, I’m sorry, I’m kidding. I mean, I’d be willing if I wasn’t completely covered in fiberglass dust right now, but as it is…”
I wasn’t used to people I was attracted to being casually cute yet fully direct with their flirting game. Generally, my interactions with them hadn’t lasted long enough for them to joke with me, but for all that Max was clearly concerned about his meeting tomorrow, he still managed to rev me up and make me laugh at the same time. “Sound logic,” I said at last.
“I’m a practitioner of civil law. Deductive reasoning is my forte.” He winked and then shut the bathroom door.
I took a second just to breathe before heading back out front, alone.
Max would probably work on his presentation for hours, so once I got his clothes started in the washer, I buckled down on the insulation. I was going to get all of this up in my future living room today, and neither snow nor rain nor gorgeous high school crush distraction currently naked in my bathroom was going to stop me.
I worked steadily, resisting the urge to go back and check on Max, to ask if he was comfortable, if he needed anything. He was an adult. He’d let me know if he wasn’t.
I guessed he wouldn’t appreciate the interruption.
So I was surprised when Max was the first one to seek me out a few hours later. “Hey.”
I turned around to look at him, grimacing a little at the stiffness in my lower back. I was only in my mid-twenties. This was not okay.
He was standing at the edge of the room in my clothes, all a little too big on him, and holding a plate with a sandwich on it. “You ready to break for a late lunch? It’s not a snowman grilled cheese, but it’s edible.”
Max made me lunch? Without the girls being around? “Thanks,” I managed after a second. “That sounds great.”
“I made you a ham, mustard, and mayonnaise masterpiece, because that’s what I found in your fridge. And look!” He held the plate down a little lower, and I could see that while it wasn’t a snowman, it was a cutout of some kind with those pointy ears, maybe a cat or a—
“Is that a raccoon?”
“It’s commemorative!” Max glanced down at it. “What, too much? The extra pieces didn’t go to waste. I left them in the kitchen on the cutting board.”
Part of me wanted to laugh. Part of me wanted to get choked up, because nobody had ever gone to such weird, funny lengths for me before. Most of me just wanted to eat the sandwich, because now that I was aware it was mid-afternoon, my stomach also started rumbling at me. But I also wanted to wrap him up in my arms and kiss him senseless to satisfy another type of hunger.
My stomach growled loudly enough for Max to hear, if the sudden grin was anything to go by. I held out my hand. “It’s the most delicious raccoon I’ve ever seen. Gimme.”
…
Late lunch turned into an early dinner once it was clear that Max was done for now and didn’t mind something a little more elaborate—in this case, a second course of canned beef stew over egg noodles. Then it was my turn to shower, and I blessed my brand-new hot water heater the whole time. When I came out, Max was sitting against the headboard of my bed with his tablet in his hands but clearly not working on it.
“Hey…want to watch a movie?”
He could have asked me to watch the snow melt and I’d have said yes. “Sure, that sounds great.” I wasn’t a movie buff or anything, but I enjoyed superhero movies as much as everybody else did.
“Great, do you like classics? I’ll cue up Casablanca.”
Casablanca? Wasn’t that a really old movie? What was I getting myself into? “Okay.”
The set-up was pretty nice, at least. Max set his tablet up at the end of the bed, and we settled in beside each other to watch. He smelled like my bodywash, and he was so warm—I didn’t know how he kept so warm when my own fingers felt like ice. The movie started, and it was interesting enough to hold my attention, at least for a while.
I woke up slowly to the feeling of a warm hand rubbing circles against my shoulder. It felt so nice I almost didn’t want to wake up, until I remembered who it had to be. “Mmm, Max?”
“Hey.” His voice was quiet. “The movie’s over.”
“Oh.” Oh damn, that meant I had slept right through most of it. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
“That’s okay. You worked hard today. You clearly needed the nap.”
Maybe I had, but I was getting more awake by the second now. His hand slid down my arm as he leaned in. The heat from earlier sparked to life again in his gaze. I wanted to both pull him down to me and lunge up toward him all at once.
“Hey, Max? Do you maybe want to—”
Suddenly, it was my phone going off. Max and I groaned. How many times was life going to cock block us?
“Shit, where is it?” he asked.
“I’ve got it,” I muttered, rolling over from where I’d propped my head against Max’s hip—which was familiar of me, jeez—and over to my discarded jeans, where I’d left my phone. “Hello?”
“Hey, Dom!” I heard the familiar, cheerful voice of my psychologist from the VA. “I was just calling to let you know that we’re going to have to reschedule the appointment we had set for tomorrow, unless you want to meet up on Zoom. This storm is setting everything back a few days, I’m afraid.”
“Ah.” Wow, I’d completely forgotten that. “Rescheduling the appointment is fine. Can we make it the week after next, actually?” I wanted to be around to help Hal with the girls as much as possible in the lead-up to Christmas.
“That would be fine.” We got something new set up, then I said good-bye and ended the call.
Max was looking at me curiously. “That was my counselor,” I said, trying not to feel too awkward about it. “I see her once a month, for help with my PTSD. Maybe not this month, though.” I gestured in a “hey, what can you do” kind of way.
Max fingered the edge of the blanket. “Is that delay going to be okay for you?”
It kept catching me off guard every time he cared or showed concern for me. “It’ll be fine. I’m a lot better, honestly,” I said. “Although sometimes it still pops up out of nowhere to give me trouble. Like this morning.” Shit, I hadn’t meant to mention that.
“What happened this morning?”
I reluctantly recounted how disoriented I’d been on finding him in bed with me at first, and how nervous, until I realized who he was. “But it’s not usually a problem, I promise,” I said. “It’s just been a really long time since I’ve been so close to someone who isn’t Hal or the girls.”
Max nodded. “I get that. I’m surrounded by people all the time in New York, but it’s not like I invite any of those people into my home. I’d freak out a little too if I couldn’t remember the other person in my bed.” He smirked a little. “Be honest, did you think I was a raccoon at first? I mean, I’d understand, given how hospitable you are toward them.”
This time I did whack him with a pillow. While he was chuckling, I asked, “Do you have much time to go out with any of those people, even if it’s not an invitation to your place?” Because from the sound of things, he was so busy with his job he barely even had time to sleep.
Max just shrugged. “I’m so focused on my career right now I don’t even think about things like meeting people who aren’t coworkers or clients.” His lips twisted in a not entirely happy sort of smile. “This phase won’t last forever, though. Soon life will slow down a little, and then…who knows? Maybe I’ll have time for something more.” He sounded more hopeful than certain of that, but it wasn’t my place to point that out. “What about you?” he asked, and now it was my turn to be on the spot. I shifted nervously. “I know Edgewood isn’t a queer metropolis or anything, but you’re a catch. Why aren’t you dating anyone?”