Mad About Max

It didn’t bear thinking about. Much as she loved Janey and trusted her silence, Sara wouldn’t even tell her best friend that she’d accidentally superglued herself to Max. Of all the things she’d done, this was the most humiliating yet.

All she had to do, Sara told herself, was get through the rest of the evening with no one the wiser. It couldn’t be all that hard, and as the evening progressed, it seemed as if she might just pull it off. No one asked about her apron, and the scavenger hunt she and the children had set up was a big success, every parent ending up with a prize all the more precious for having been made by their own child’s hands. Sara stayed away from Max, which meant that she kept her composure.

And missed the moment when he let the cat out of the bag.

A school event was no different from any other social occasion in town. The women gathered in one corner to trade recipes and organize the next potluck. The men gathered in another to discuss the price of beef and swap fish stories. Aside from Joey, if there was anything in the world Max liked more than his ranch, it was fishing. And if there was one thing universal to great fishing stories, it was exaggeration.

Max apparently lifted his arms to lend credence to his latest one-that-got-away tale, and the red pleather-decorated button popped right out of the waistband of his pants.

It was the sudden hush from that corner of the room that first caught Sara’s attention. She glanced over in time to hear The Question.

“Hey, Max, what’s that on your button?”

Sara really didn’t blame Max. It was an accident, and if there was anything she understood it was accidents. Just like she understood when he fumbled for an answer, his gaze automatically shooting to her.

That stereotype about big, dumb cowboys was just that—a stereotype. As if it had been choreographed, the circle of men turned and looked at her, back at Max’s traitorous button, then back at her, this time their eyes dropping inevitably to her skirt—or what could be seen of it behind her apron. Her big, concealing apron.

The room erupted in shouts, questions about who had the winning square and laughter. Parents and students from the surrounding classes crowded in, attracted by the pandemonium, until the room was overflowing. Sara found herself at the front of the room, standing right beneath that troublesome banner as the whole embarrassing story came out.

After one glance at Max, his only assistance to shrug apologetically, Sara let everyone laugh and tease her good-naturedly, smiling and going along with the jokes. She caught sight of Jenny Hastings, her hair cropped boyishly short except for the tiniest fringe of barn-red. If Jenny could withstand the fallout of one of Sara’s episodes, Sara could surely take it—within reason.

She let the ribbing go on for a full fifteen minutes, then held up her hands, her sudden willingness to talk bringing an instant hush to the room. “All that matters is that we saved the banner,” she said, looking up at the item in question—just at the moment it decided to come loose.

The superglued center seam parted with a quiet whoosh, the two sides of the banner floating down right over her head. As if that wasn’t enough, the tacks she’d used to hold up the corners suddenly popped out, wreathing Sara in ten feet of white paper that smelled like crayon and felt like the weight of the world settling on her shoulders.

She slumped back against the blackboard, listening as everyone filed out of the room. Even when Max offered to help her, she sent him on his way. As accidents went, having a paper banner over her head wasn’t so bad. At least it hid her tears.

Chapter Two

“Hi, Dad!”

Max shouldered the fifty-pound sack of grain he’d been about to load into the back of his pickup and turned toward the entrance of the feed store to see Joey running in his direction. Sara stood in the open doorway, one hand on the jamb, the other lifted to shade her eyes from the bright sunshine so she could see into the dim interior.

Joey was halfway across the cavernous space when he veered off suddenly, like a heat-seeking missile. Only in Joey’s case, it was kittens that drew him, a whole carton of them with FREE written on the side in big, bold letters.

Just what he needed, Max thought as he bumped the sack up and off his shoulder, letting it fall onto the pile in the back of the pickup. Joey already had a hamster, three goldfish, a parakeet and two dogs, and those were the indoor pets. But even if he’d known about the kittens when he asked Sara to drop Joey off after school, Max still would’ve done it. It would be worth adding to the menagerie if he succeeded in dragging her out of her self-imposed isolation. And dragging, he figured, was exactly what it would take, considering that she was going to leave without even saying hello to him or goodbye to Joey.

“Sara, wait,” he called before she could do more than turn around.

For a minute it seemed she was going to pretend she hadn’t heard him. Then she turned back, stepped through the doorway and stood there, seeming about as relaxed as a sinner at the Pearly Gates.

Max supposed he should feel sorry for her, but he wasn’t really in a sympathetic mood. Impatient was more like it, with enough confusion thrown in to remind him that Sara was a woman and when a woman was involved in any sort of relationship, a man never completely understood what was going on. He knew Sara well enough to have a pretty good idea, though.

After one of her accidents, she usually kept a low profile, staying away from the more public places and the more vocal residents of Erskine. That had never included him before, but then, neither had one of her accidents.

She must still be embarrassed by what had happened two weeks ago, and no wonder. It couldn’t have been pleasant for Sara to have her hips pressed to his—to find herself stuck to a man she considered a brother. And being a woman, she just naturally couldn’t let it go and forget it like he could. At least not until they got the awkward first meeting over with.

“I’ve barely seen you in two weeks,” Max called out. “Come over and talk to me while I finish loading up.”

But instead of reaching for the next sack, he leaned against the side of his pickup, hooked his thumbs in his front pockets and watched Sara walk across the feed store. He couldn’t resist. Even with her normally bubbly personality weighted down by embarrassment, she exuded so much energy that a person’s eyes were naturally drawn to her.

Copper-colored curls bounced around her shoulders with every step. Her dark, lively eyes sparkled, and the corners of her mouth were lifted in the slight smile that rarely left her face. She wasn’t beautiful by the standards set for magazines or movie screens, but she had more charm and personality than any actress or model. And she was a lot more entertaining. Just watching her was a spectator sport, even on a day where the most interesting thing she did was choose what to wear.

Today it was a flame-bright orange sweater, black tights dotted with jack-o’-lanterns—in honor of the big day coming at the end of the week—and a black skirt that flared and floated around her slender thighs and hips with every jaunty step.

Max got a sudden, strong flash of the way those hips had felt between his palms two weeks ago, the resilient feel of her flesh where his fingers had gripped her, the warmth of all that tight, fake red leather. And then there’d been that hole she’d snipped in her skirt. He could have sworn he saw black lace through that hole.

He dropped that memory like a mental hot potato. Thinking about Sara and black lace at the same time was just wrong.

She belonged to the white-cotton set, that asexual group of females in every man’s life who baked cookies, stepped in to baby-sit at a moment’s notice and knew how to heal any injury with a Band-Aid and a kiss. Aside from Joey, Sara was the closest thing to a family Max had, and if there’d been a time, once, when he might have seen her in a different light, a more romantic light, he’d deep-sixed the thought before it could even begin to take hold.

He had a dismal record when it came to love and marriage—all the men in his family did. His grandmother had died young, leaving his grandfather alone to raise a young son and run a ranch. His father and mother had called it quits before they’d been married ten years, and his own marriage had lasted substantially less time. Instead of heeding the lessons he’d learned by example, Max had been young and foolish enough to try the “love conquers all” route. The only thing love conquered, he’d learned, was any man by the name of Devlin.

At least, Joey didn’t have to be shuttled from household to household, like he’d been. Julia, his ex-wife, hadn’t asked for anything from their marriage but her freedom. She’d wanted Hollywood, she had the looks for it, and Lord knows she’d done a damned good job acting like a wife and mother during their few years together.

No, that wasn’t entirely fair. They’d wanted different things, he and Julia, and she’d loved him once, enough to give him a son. For that alone he would never regret his marriage. And regardless of the terms of their divorce, she did her best by Joey, visiting when she could, occasionally calling him on the phone and having him out to stay with her in the summer, no matter what she had to do to swing it. Usually, though, it was just father and son. The same as it had always been in his family.

A man with that kind of sorry history had no right getting involved with any woman, let alone the settling kind like Sara. She deserved someone who could come to her fresh and loving, and give her the home and family she deserved.

It was just a matter of time before some lucky guy whisked her off to the altar and out of his life. When that day came, Max would be the first to congratulate her and wish her well. When that day came…

Frowning, he tore his eyes off her and bent to lift another sack of grain. But he knew when she stopped behind him, even before he caught a faint whiff of her perfume. “Where are you off to—” he paused to launch the sack off his shoulder and into the truck “—in such a hurry that you can’t even say hi to a friend?”

“Groceries,” she said. “It was either the diner or the market, and at least at the market I can stock up so I won’t have to eat out. Or shop again for a while.”

Anything to stay out of town until the hubbub blew over, Max interpreted, and had to hide his grin before he turned to face her. It was good to hear her sounding like her old self again. “You could always go out on the range and catch yourself a steer.”

She shook her head, the corners of her mouth curving up into a reluctant grin. “As long as they stay out of town, they’re safe from me.”

“Now that’s not strictly true, Sara. Remember the time old man Winston’s cows got out and wandered into the road? It’s a good thing I was fixing his fence when you happened by. If you hadn’t seen me waving my red flag of a shirt and shouting like a lunatic, you would’ve driven head-on into the middle of them.”

“Lucky for me you were there, Max, and that you happened to have your shirt off at the time so you could use it to catch my attention.”

“It was lucky, all right. You didn’t get hurt, and the cows started giving milk again after about a week or so.”

“If you’re trying to cheer me up, you can stop now.”

Max laughed, finally understanding her sarcasm. “I’m almost done here,” he said. “If you wait a few minutes, the human stomach and I will go to the market with you. We must be out of something the way Joey eats.”

Sara’s smile dimmed. “Thanks, Max, but I think…it might be better if I go alone. I mean, after the glue and all, you know…” She looked at the floor, her even white teeth worrying at her bottom lip before she met his eyes again. “I wouldn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea. About you and me.”

“I think we can risk being seen together in public without anyone getting the wrong idea.”

“Yeah,” Sara said on a heavy sigh, the thought of braving the teasing of her friends and neighbors obviously pulling her mood down again.

Max could have kicked himself for bringing it up after he’d worked so hard to make her smile, but he didn’t have to rack his brain for a way to cheer her up again. Joey did it for him. He ran up just then, two mixed-breed kittens clinging precariously to his jacket by their needle-sharp claws and mewing pitifully. “Mr. Landry says I can have them both.”

As grateful as he was for the return of Sara’s company, Max wasn’t about to reward his son with a pair of kittens. “They’re not even weaned yet, Joey.”

“They must be, Dad. The mom cat is gone and there’s a dog in there with them.”

“I know. Mr. Landry told me…I’m afraid the kittens’ mother died, son. It just so happened that Mr. Landry’s dog had weaned a litter of pups not long before, so he brought her in to see if she’d adopt the kittens and she did. It happens sometimes.”

Joey thought for a second, then shrugged as if it were an everyday occurrence for a dog to adopt a bunch of newborn kittens. Of course in his world, Max reflected sadly, mothers went away and life carried on.

“Can I have them when they’re weaned?” Joey asked, his one-track mind barely making a detour.

“Who’s going to take care of them all day while you’re at school?”

“Sara will let me bring them to school, won’t you, Sara? They can be…” Joey’s face scrunched up, but in the end he puffed out his breath in defeat. “What’s it called when they belong to the whole class?”

“Mascots?” Sara supplied.

“That’s it! They can be mascots to the third grade. We can all take turns bringing them home on the weekends.”

“I doubt Mrs. Erskine-Lippert will agree to that,” Sara said.

Joey snorted. “Ooh, the principal. I heard Mr. Jamison, the sixth-grade teacher, call her Mrs. Irksome. I was gonna look it up in the dictionary, but I figured it meant, you know, trouble. And I couldn’t spell it,” he added as an afterthought.

“You shouldn’t repeat things like that,” Max admonished. He managed to hide his smile, but his eyes, when he lifted them to meet Sara’s, were shining with amusement.

She couldn’t help smiling back, her sadness lifting as she watched father and son bicker good-naturedly over the kittens. She might not have Max’s love, let alone his ring on her finger, and she might not have a paper labeling her Joey’s mother, but she still got moments like this, precious pearls strung between the humdrum, lonely hours that made up the greater part of her life. And who, she asked herself, could ask for more than that?

“I’ll make you a deal,” Max said to his son, resorting to bribery when reason didn’t work. “If you leave the kittens here, I’ll take you to the diner and you can have anything you want.”

Joey stopped in midobjection. “Anything I want?”

“Yep, and we’ll take Sara with us and feed her some pie—just as soon as I’m finished.” He had to yell the last part because Joey was already running across the feed store to return the kittens to their cardboard home. “And then we’ll take you to the market afterward,” Max said to Sara.

“It’s nice of you to invite me, but—”

“No buts. It’s been two weeks since…you know,” he finished, bending to heft another sack and muscle it into the truck bed. “You can’t hide away forever.”

No, she couldn’t hide away forever, and even if she could, Sara thought, the people of Erskine would still be waiting to rub her nose in what had happened at the Open House. It wasn’t just that, however; she didn’t think she could bear to spend the next few hours with Max. For two weeks she’d been trying to forget those few seconds she’d spent plastered against him. Her memory was just too darned vivid; all she had to do was close her eyes and she was back there again, fighting a real battle with spontaneous combustion.

Watching him work only fanned the flames. He bent, lifted, twisted and dropped each sack, the slide and bunch of muscle beneath worn denim and plaid making her heart pound and her breath shorten until her head began to spin. She couldn’t have taken a steady step if her life depended on it; going to the diner with him would be sheer foolishness. Worse than tempting fate, she would be daring fate to make a fool of her again.

“Really, Max, I’d rather just go home and open a can of soup,” she said, her voice growing stronger when she pulled her gaze off his backside. “I have a lot of papers to grade tonight, anyway.”

“What papers?” Joey asked as he rejoined them. “You let us grade each other’s papers today.”

“And I still have to check them over,” she said to Joey, tweaking the hair that was growing past his collar. “Maybe your dad should take you to get a haircut, instead, and I’ll bake you a whole pie of your own this weekend. Cherry.”

Cherry pie was one of the basic food groups to Joey, but he didn’t even waver. “Nope. Dad promised me the diner and he never goes back on a promise.”

“Well, then, you guys have a good time, and maybe I’ll see you later at the ranch.”

“Nope, Sara, I promised you the diner and I never go back on a promise.” Max bent to lift the last sack of feed and heave it into the truck.

The combination of all those muscles flexing and the sexy little grunt he uttered completely stalled Sara’s thought processes. If Jack the Ripper had popped in and asked her to take a walk, she’d have wandered into the closest alley with him, no questions asked, so it was no wonder she said okay to Max.

She watched, dazed, as he pulled an old, faded bandanna from his back pocket and wiped his face, but it wasn’t until he yelled out to Mrs. Landry that he was leaving his truck in the feed store for a while that she snapped out of her haze and realized what she’d done.

Max gestured for her to precede him, and Sara had no choice. He figured he was helping her get over her latest humiliation, and she didn’t have the courage to tell him otherwise. Maybe if she didn’t look at him she’d be okay.

The street side of the feed store was a huge door that rolled aside to let vehicles in to be loaded. In the middle of the large door was a smaller pedestrian door. Max opened it, warning Sara to step over the lip at the bottom. And just to make sure she didn’t trip, he cupped her left elbow.

She tripped.

How could she stay upright with his fingers wrapped around her arm, shooting heat and need into her bloodstream in such a quick and overwhelming burst that she forgot she even had feet, let alone what she was supposed to do with them?

Max’s fingers tightened around her arm, hard enough to bruise, but Sara stumbled forward anyway, right into the flow of pedestrian traffic on the crowded sidewalk of the town’s main street. Her right arm shot out for balance, knocking a bag of groceries from old Mrs. Barnett’s arms. The sack hit the sidewalk, but Sara barely noticed the brown paper bottom burst open, disgorging an assortment of cans and boxes, along with a spreading puddle of white.

Max and Joey stooped to help the elderly woman salvage what she could of her groceries. Sara went after the half-dozen oranges that had tumbled out of the bag and headed for freedom, oblivious to the potential for disaster. She managed to scoop up five of them and place them in the shallow pocket formed when she lifted the hem of her sweater. The sixth orange insisted on giving her trouble, rolling and bumping down the sidewalk between the feet of unsuspecting pedestrians as though it had a will of its own and no concept of the laws of physics.

Sara ducked and weaved like a quarterback dodging line-men, cradling her sweaterload of oranges more carefully than any football, her goal an even half-dozen rather than seven points. But every time she reached down to grab that last orange, the obnoxious little fruit managed to skip away at the last instant.

Frustrated, she elbowed her way in front of Mr. Fellowes, the undertaker, and planted her foot sideways in front of the orange. It rolled to a nice, obedient stop less than a finger’s width from her arch, as if it were planning to stop there anyway. Sara bent to pick it up, and Mr. Fellowes ran smack dab into her backside.

They both went sprawling, the oranges flew out of Sara’s sweater, bounding off the boardwalk and down the curb. Right into the path of the delivery boy from Yee’s combination Chinese Laundry and Restaurant. He hit the brakes, too late to prevent the front tire of his bicycle from squishing a navel orange into aromatic, slippery pulp. The bike skidded, the delivery boy jumping off just before it slammed into the curb and lurched sideways.

The sack of Chinese food made a graceful arc as it flew out of the bicycle’s basket, the plastic bag flapping cheerfully before it plopped down on the sidewalk, right at Sara’s feet. The bundle of laundry in the rear basket slipped its paper and string constrictions, pelting her with some unfortunate man’s clothing.

And to top it all off, she’d drawn a crowd.

But then how could she not? she asked herself, as she pulled a pair of white boxers from her shoulder and dropped them at her feet. She stood in the midst of chaos, a bag of Chinese food, an undertaker, a delivery boy and his bicycle at her feet. A circle of white shirts and underwear surrounded her, with oranges supplying just the right splash of color here and there. All that was missing was a tent and a couple more rings.

The stunned silence was broken, finally, by Mr. Fellowes’s groan. Max eased his way through the circle of onlookers and helped the old man to his feet.

“I am so sorry, Mr. Fellowes,” Sara said, rushing to take his other arm and hold on to him until he recovered his balance. She didn’t look at Max. She couldn’t.

“Don’t give it another thought, my dear,” the undertaker said. “It was more my fault than yours. After all, I collided with you.”

Because she’d stopped dead in front of him. But Sara kept that to herself. Why give her friends and neighbors yet another reason to ridicule her?

Mr. Fellowes patted her hand, absently peering around him.

“Is something wrong? Aside from the obvious,” Sara added, sending the snickering crowd her best glare, the one that always silenced her third-grade class. It didn’t surprise her that it worked on the people of Erskine.

“I’m fine,” Mr. Fellowes said. “Only…you haven’t seen my eyeglasses, have you? I’m afraid I lost them when I bumped into you.”

“I’m sure they’re around here somewhere.” Sara took a step back and heard a sickening crunch. “Um…I think I found them.”

On the bright side, it was deathly quiet again. Except for the person at the back of the growing crowd who yelled, “I won!”

All Sara could think was that she’d lost. Again.

“SO WHAT DID YOU DO THEN?” Janey Walters asked, picking at the sweet-and-sour pork and cashew chicken still left on her plate.

“I did what I always do,” Sara said glumly. She’d assured Mr. Fellowes and Mrs. Barnett that she’d make reparation, and given Yee’s delivery boy all the cash she had on her. He’d insisted she take the sack of Chinese food, the little white containers mostly intact despite their foray into the world of flight. In the interests of escape, she’d accepted it without argument and hightailed it to Janey’s big Victorian house on the edge of town. “Max tried to talk me into going to the diner with him and Joey, but…” She raised one shoulder and let it fall again, her eyes on her plate of untouched Chinese food.

“The teasing didn’t use to bother you so much,” Janey observed.

“It’s not really the teasing, it’s just…” Sara sighed. “I don’t really know what it is, Janey. I couldn’t face the town, and I definitely couldn’t face Max.”

“Why not? Isn’t this partly his fault?”

“He can’t help how he feels.”

“Yes, he can. If he could see past the end of his nose—”

Sara shoved her plate away and bent forward, banging her head lightly on the tabletop.

Janey bit back the rest of what she’d been about to say. She felt as if she were swallowing a pincushion, but what kind of friend would she be if she vented her own anger and frustration when Sara was in no condition to hear it? “At least we got dinner out of it,” she said, instead.