“Have you ever seen a psychiatrist?” He laughed. “No, I’m afraid of what he’d find.”
“Like maybe you’re as crazy as a bullbat?”
“Definitely.” He slid his hands down her arms to her elbows, and again she had to fight the urge to lean into him. “Have you been eating?”
She’d been having a bit of trouble with that. She’d been having to remind herself to eat, but she’d been there before and knew the routine. It was nothing she couldn’t handle. Nothing she couldn’t conquer, and nothing she wanted to talk about. “Why all the questions?”
“I need to know you’re okay.” He dropped his hands to his sides, taking the warmth of his touch with him. “In my life, I’ve done some things I’m not especially proud of, but I’ve never screwed up the life of an innocent woman. I did that with you, and I’m sorry.” He looked into her eyes as if he could read her mind. “I want to make sure you’re going to be all right, and I want to help you get those photographs off the Internet. I owe you that much.”
He made it sound as if the only reason he’d come was because he felt responsible for her. As if he were here because he felt he owed some unpaid debt. As if she were just another job he needed to finish before he checked her off his list and eased his conscience. “You don’t owe me anything. I can hire someone to help me with Sam. And you didn’t have to drive all the way down here from Alexandria just to make sure I’m okay. You could have called to do that.”
“I’m on my way to Charlotte.”
“Oh.” She’d been a stop on his way to somewhere else, and she was embarrassed at how horribly that hurt.
“I would have come anyway.”
“Why?”
“You and I have been… a… we…” He struggled for the right words, just as he had the afternoon on the Dora Mae when he’d tried to clean up his language for her. “1 thought we were getting along better. More friendly, anyway.”
Yes, she’d say making love was more friendly. She wondered what he was really getting at. If he was getting at anything at all. With Max, it was hard to tell. “Are you trying to say you want to be friends?”
He folded his arms across his chest and rested his weight on one foot. “Friends is good,” he said, although he didn’t look particularly happy about the prospect. “We can do that.”
The man who’d stood on her welcome mat, looking at her as if he were sizing her up for his next meal, had not come for friendship. But the man in front of her now reminded her of the Max who’d told her she could walk around naked and he wouldn’t feel a thing. “Have you ever had a woman friend?”
“No.”
“Are you sure you can handle just being friends with me?”
“Sure.”
She stuck a tulip into the vase and looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Because I remember several times when you kissed me and, before I knew it, your sneaky hands had unbuttoned my clothes.”
“I can keep my hands to myself,” he assured her. “Can you?”
“Not a problem.”
He tilted his head to one side and studied her beneath lowered brows. “You sure about that?”
“Positive.”
“ ‘Cause I remember you sticking your hand down my pants and grabbing my balls.”
Lola’s mouth fell open and Max smiled. She’d forgotten he could be so rude. “Well, that’s only because I thought I was going to die. Since I don’t plan to ever be in that situation again, your… your… body is safe.” She tilted her chin up. “Yes, I think we can be just friends,” she finished. But could they? How did she really feel about Max? Confused, mostly. And how did he feel about her? She didn’t have a clue.
“I’ve never had a man friend before. Well, not a friend who wasn’t gay anyway, so this could be interesting.” She put the rest of the flowers in the vase and wondered if she and Max could be friends after everything they’d been through. Just friends? Perhaps, but she had her doubts. She didn’t know if she could really be friends with a man who had sexually knocked her socks off.
“Okay,” she said, “why don’t you put the chicken on the barbeque in the backyard, and I’ll go change?” She moved past him but stopped in the doorway. “Do we call each other buddy now?”
“No, you call me Max, and I’ll call you Lola.”
Smoke bellowed from the electric grill as Max lifted the lid and flipped the chicken. He brushed barbeque sauce on the breasts and thighs and eyed Baby’s doghouse, or rather his dog castle. It sat in a covered part of the garden, surrounded by pink and purple plants heavy with blooming flowers, and looked like something fairies would live in. It was light blue and lavender and had little flags on the corner towers. It was about three-by-four feet and had a drawbridge for a door. Next to the inside of the condo, it was about the sissiest thing he’d ever seen.
On the drive south, Max had wondered what Lola’s home would look like, and he hadn’t been far off. Fluffy pastels the color of cotton candy, doily-covered pillows on the dark purple leather sofa, and lace curtains. White carpeting and flowers on the wallpaper. It was the kind of stuff that could suck out testosterone and shrink a guy’s nuts if he wasn’t careful.
Max looked down at the dog by his feet and pointed to the castle with a pair of tongs. “Doesn’t that make you feel like a little fairy?”
Baby barked and his eyebrow twitched.
“If you’re not careful, you’ll be wearing pink toenail polish and little pink bows on your ears.”
“Baby is secure in his masculinity,” Lola said as she walked through the French doors and out onto the brick patio.
Max shook his head and flipped a chicken leg. “Sugar, your dog has had all of his juice sucked out of him. Probably the reason he has such a big chip on his shoulder.” He glanced over at Lola, but further comment died on his tongue. She moved toward him with a glass of wine in one hand, a bottle of Samuel Adams in the other. She wore a pair of lose-fitting jeans shorts that hung low on her hips, and a white T-shirt. But not just any T-shirt. It was so tight it fit her like shrink-wrap, and across her big breasts, in neon green, were the words eat me in St. Louis.
“Nice shirt.”
She looked down at herself and smiled. “A friend of mine opened a restaurant in St. Louis a few years ago, and this is what he named it,” she said, and handed Max the beer. “Charming, isn’t it?”
“A boyfriend?”
“No, Chuck is gay. I did a little free advertising for him at the time, and he catered a party for me. The restaurant went out of business, but I still have my eat me shirt. It’s one of my favorites, but of course, I don’t dare wear it anywhere.”
Of course not. Just in front of him. Just to make his eyes ache and his brain seize. Just to make him wonder what she’d do if he tossed her on the ground and took her up on the invitation.
“How’s the chicken?” she asked.
Max tore his gaze from her shirt and looked at the grill. This friends thing was not going to work out. He took a big swig of beer before he answered. “About ten minutes more.”
“I’m almost done with the salad. Do you want to eat inside or out here?”
His grip tightened around the bottle and he wondered if she was torturing him on purpose. “Outside.”
She smiled up at him, all innocent, as if she didn’t know the chaos she created just by breathing. “I’ll set the table out here, then.”
Max watched her walk into the condo, his gaze moving down her back, over her butt, and down her long legs. Coming here was a mistake. He’d known it even as he’d loaded his Jeep that afternoon.
Turning his attention back to the grill, he flipped a thigh. He’d used the trip to Charlotte as an excuse to see her, plain and simple. He didn’t have to be anywhere until Monday morning, and in fact, he had a round-trip airlines ticket stuck in his suitcase. He’d booked the flight several weeks ago in anticipation of his business in Charlotte. There had been no need for him to make the long drive-except to see Lola. He’d had to see for himself that she was all right. Not knowing had been driving him crazy and keeping him up at night.