Читать книгу Mad About Max - Penny McCusker - Страница 10

After the Chinese food and ice cream, they’d moved on to Jack Daniel’s, the only man, according to Janey, who really knew how to comfort a woman. Sara was usually a rum-and-Coke woman, heavy on the Coke, or maybe a Baileys Irish Cream if she was feeling especially adventurous, but she had to admit Janey was right this time. The first shot of whiskey burned her throat and turned her stomach. The second still had her gasping for air, but it hit her bloodstream like a warm massage. By the third she was singing “R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” and doing her tap routine from when she was eleven years old. It wasn’t the song she’d tap-danced to—the two didn’t even go together very well—and she had to imagine the tapping sounds because her loafers didn’t really do the job on Janey’s linoleum. But that song just demanded some life-affirming action and the one she’d chosen wasn’t going into effect until she saw Max.

Her pleasant buzz started to fade after that. By the time Janey, who’d appointed herself deignated driver and switched to coffee early on, pulled into Max’s driveway, Sara was already rethinking her get-it-over-with-now strategy.

“Shhh,” she said to Janey, putting her finger over her pursed lips when the tires crunched and popped on the gravel drive. It didn’t do anything to lessen the noise but it made her feel better.

“Having second thoughts?”

“Second? It’s more like…” She looked at her hands, fingers spread, then lifted her feet, one at a time. “I can’t count that high just now.”

Janey chuckled.

“I know that laugh,” Sara mumbled. “You don’t think I’ll do it, but I will. I’ll just do it tomorrow.”

“I don’t think you’ll remember any of this tomorrow.” Janey turned off the lights and eased past Max’s house.

She pulled up in front of the old bunkhouse Sara had converted into a little cottage, complete with a white picket fence and a generous garden, the frost-browned vines and bare trees decorated like a graveyard for Halloween. Every year when Sara put up the wooden gravestones with funny sayings, she’d secretly dedicated one to her perpetually broken heart. Well, that was going to change. “When New Year’s Day rolls around, I won’t need a resolution,” she said to Janey. “I’ll already be over Max.”

“From the look of things, you won’t have to wait till tomorrow to get started on that resolution.”

Sara twisted around in her seat, this way and that, groaning when she realized what Janey was talking about. Either Bigfoot was coming toward her car or Max was. She would’ve preferred Bigfoot. A three-hundred-pound ape-man with an unpredictable temperament would’ve been much easier to face.

Janey glanced over at Sara, muttering, “I’ll buy you a couple of minutes to get it together, then you’re on your own,” and she popped out of the car, crossing her arms on the top of the door.

Max pulled up short when he saw it was her rather than Sara. He turned toward the passenger side of the windshield, but the way Janey was staring at him was a challenge he couldn’t ignore. “Don’t you have someplace else to be?” he asked her.

“Jessie is spending the night at Mrs. Halliwell’s.”

Max frowned. “That doesn’t explain why you’re here.”

Janey lifted up a shoulder, and gave him a crooked smile. “Moral support,” she said. “And entertainment—at your expense, hopefully.”

Max just shook his head. They had a…unique relationship. No matter what he said or did, Janey would roll her eyes or huff out a breath, as if he had absolutely no clue about anything. Max wrote if off as a kind of younger sister/older brother thing that came from knowing each other their entire lives. If it had been anything else, Janey would’ve told him, he figured. She was nothing if not outspoken.

He went around to the other side of the car. At least with Sara, he knew where he stood. “I figured you were at Janey’s,” he said once she’d rolled the window down. “I wish you’d called, though.”

Sara tried to defend herself, but she had to put her head down first. Jack Daniel’s, loyal and thoughtful guy that he was, suddenly wanted to come to her rescue, and not in a good way. Then again, throwing up at Max’s feet would definitely send him running in the other direction. Or maybe not.

Considering the kind of man he was, Max would almost certainly see her tucked up safely in bed, maybe sit with her for a while to make sure she wasn’t going to get sick and choke on her own vomit. The picture that went along with that thought—minus the vomit—had her sitting up in her seat. Smiling. Max in her bedroom, inches away from her bed. Within easy touching distance. All she’d have to do was take his hand, invite him into her bed and indulge every fantasy she’d ever had. It might mean losing him forever—or it might mean that he’d finally acknowledge her real feelings and consider the possibility that he could grow to love her, too. It was a risk she’d never been willing to take before, but with Jack Daniel’s to help her…

Jack was supposed to help her do something else, Sara thought fuzzily, something entirely different. Wasn’t he? Her head spun like a roulette wheel, risk opposite caution, fear across from courage, all of them separated by big sections of necessity. By the time Max knocked on her window, necessity had shoved all those other pesky options out of the picture.

Sara took a deep breath and looked up at him. Her heart lurched like it always did, but only a little. It was too heavy to give a really good lurch.

He opened the door and offered to help her out. Sara ignored his hand. She waited until he dropped it and stepped back before she levered herself out of the car, awkwardly but on her own.

“You okay?” he asked, all concern, from the deep timbre of his voice to the slight frown between his eyes.

She nodded.

“I was getting worried, Sara. After this afternoon…” He reached for her again.

She held up both hands to ward him off, bending into the car to gather her purse and her courage. And then her balance. She had something to say to Max. It wasn’t going to be easy, but it had to be done or he’d never give her the space she needed to get over him. Just once, she told herself. If she did it right, she’d only have to do it once. She straightened slowly, grabbing on to the open door so she wouldn’t have to wait for her head to stop spinning. “Max—”

“Why don’t you come in the house? We’re eating popcorn and watching The Mummy for the umpteenth time.”

The Mummy was one of her favorite movies, but not for the action or the really amazing special effects, or even the bumbling hero and endangered heroine. She always found herself hoping those two dead Egyptians in love for thousands of years would find a way to be together.

“Come inside,” Max said softly, homing in on her indecision. “Joey is worried about you, too.”

Sara closed her eyes, stifling the intentionally rude thing she’d been about to say. She’d forgotten about Joey. Max would eventually understand why she’d had to stop being his friend until she could be only his friend. But she was going to have to be very careful about how she alienated the father if she was going to avoid hurting the son. She turned to face him, taking a step forward so he couldn’t possibly misunderstand her. “I don’t wanna watch a movie. I’m going t’bed.”

Max took a step back, waving a hand in front of his face. “Are you drunk?”

And she’d enunciated so carefully, too. “Maybe just a li’l.”

He glared over at Janey. “This is your idea of making her feel better?”

“Now I have somewhere else to be,” Janey said. She slid into the car and fired it up.

Max took Sara’s purse and slid his hand under her elbow, steering her out of the way as Janey peeled off in a small shower of gravel. “Leave it to Janey to get you drunk.”

Sara wrenched her arm out of his hand, then had to catch herself before she spun completely around. “It’s not Janey’s fault. I got myself drunk.”

“She should’ve called me. I’d have come to get you.” He tried to take her arm again.

Sara stepped back and, just for good measure, snatched her purse from his hand. It took her two tries, but it still felt good. “Janey’s not responsible for me, Max. Neither are you.”

He stopped in midstride. “I know that, Sara,” he said, his voice very deep and solemn. Hurt. “But I think of you as a—”

“Don’t say it!” She winced as her own screeching voice cut through her head like a railroad spike. Apparently she was getting started on the hangover already. Great. That meant she was sobering up. But drunk or sober or somewhere in between, she had to finish what she’d started before Jack deserted her entirely. “I’m not your sister, Max. I’m thirty, no twenty-nine, years old and more’n capa-capa—I’ve been making my own decisions and my own mistakes for a long time.

“Of course, noooobody forgets the mistakes, but why can’t you remember that at least eighty—seventy—” She stopped and thought really hard, but she seemed to be having an awful lot of trouble with numbers tonight. “Most of the time I manage to live my life without tripping over anything or gluing myself to anyone. But does anybody notice that? No, you all congregate at the Ersk Inn—and by the way that’s the stupidest name I’ve ever heard for anything—and you sit around and drink beer and talk about when Sara Lewis is going to damage the town again.”

Max rubbed at the spot on his chest where she’d been poking him to make her point, his handsome face creased in lines of confusion. “I’ve spent my share of time at the inn, Sara. You got the sitting around and drinking beer part right, but mostly we just watch whatever sporting event is on the big screen. Hardly anyone ever brings up your name, and I’ve never bought one of those squares.”

“No, but you always seem to be around when someone wins.”

“So it’s my fault?”

Sara sank her teeth into her bottom lip, realizing what she’d said. If Max figured out that he played some role in her clumsiness, he’d wonder why. It was a question she didn’t want him asking. Not now that she’d finally found the strength to let go of her dream instead of sitting around waiting for it to come true while life passed her by. The decision made her sick to her stomach, but empowerment was so liberating—it was as if she’d taken her first deep breath after a lifetime of struggling for oxygen. “No, Max, it’s not your fault. I just want it to stop. I can’t live like this anymore.”

“Aw, Sara.”

She almost stepped into Max’s outstretched arms, one last brotherly hug that she could fantasize meant something else entirely. Instead she stepped around him and headed for her front door. “Just go away, Max.”

“But—”

“Please, just leave me alone.”

She slipped inside and closed the door behind her, then leaned back against it as tears started to stream down her face.

Jack Daniel’s was a whiz at courage, but he wasn’t very good at deadening the pain.

MAX SCOOPED UP one last bucket of grain and dumped it into the trough for the milk cows, then opened the fifty-gallon drum of cracked corn to fill the chickens’ feed pan. Joey usually did both chores, but he and Jason Hartfield had been trading off sleepovers just about every Saturday night, and this weekend was Joey’s turn to stay over there.

He missed Joey, but he knew his son would be back in the morning. Sara wouldn’t.

Oh, she was still living at the ranch, but she hadn’t said more than hello and goodbye since that last unfortunate incident Halloween week. It was almost Thanksgiving. Max was beginning to wonder who was going to cook the turkey. Okay, he allowed, that sounded a little self-serving, but that was what friends did, they took care of each other, compensated for one another’s shortcomings. Sara helped him muddle through the domestic side of life and he did stuff like shovel her walk in the winter, change the oil in her car, chop wood…

The sound of an ax thwacking home drifted to him, and Max realized it had been going on for some time while he’d been moping, a kind of somber background music for his self-pity. It puzzled him for a second. None of his neighbors lived close enough for it to be coming from another ranch, and while they all got along pretty well, none of them liked him enough to just drop by and chop a stack of wood—which meant it had to be Sara. She’d finally emerged from her house.

With an ax in her hand.

He dropped the pan of chicken feed. Cracked corn poured into his boots and scattered over the floor. Max ignored the mess and the discomfort, racing out of the barn and across the yard, plowing through knee-deep drifts of snow. He skidded around the corner of her cottage on one foot, arms flung out for balance, his mouth opened on a shout that would have worked a lot better if he’d had any breath left in his body.

He gulped in a huge, painfully cold lungful of air and yelled “Sara!” just as she lifted the ax.

With a shriek she froze on the upstroke and kept going, the heavy ax dragging her over to sprawl flat on her back. The powdery snow puffed up around her, then drifted back down like her own miniblizzard, dusting her in white, face and all. Max pinned his lips between his teeth and slogged over to help her to her feet.

Sara ignored his hand. Her cutting glare might even have made him feel a little bit chastened if she hadn’t spent the next couple of minutes floundering around in her puffy green coat like a turned-over turtle. She finally managed to roll onto her side, then crawl to her feet, leaving behind a snow angel that looked more like a Lizzie Borden silhouette, complete with murder weapon.

Max’s amusement completely evaporated when she bent, picked up the ax and tried to walk around him. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked, stepping between her and the woodpile.

“Chopping wood,” she said in her best third-grade teacher’s voice, reasonable and patient. “I use it to heat my house, remember?”

“How could I forget when I always chop it for you?”

“Well, now you won’t have to.” She lifted the ax and took a step forward.

He crossed his arms and held his ground. “You’re not chopping wood, Sara. That’s my job.”

“Not anymore.” But she dropped the ax head to rest on the ground. Safely. “Weren’t you listening three weeks ago?”

“Well, yeah, but…you were drunk.”

Sara’s breath puffed out in a cloud of white. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t know what I was saying. Or that I don’t remember what you said.”

“I really didn’t mean to imply you couldn’t take care of yourself, but…” You’re Sara, he finished to himself, Clumsy, artless, scattered-as-a-handful-of-packing-popcorn-in-a-windstorm Sara. His best friend in the whole world. “I’m sorry if I offended you.”

“You didn’t offend me, Max. I’m used to people thinking of me as hopeless. What bothers me more is that you didn’t really hear what I said.”

That was exactly what his ex-wife had always accused him of, but Max shook off the thought almost as soon as it reared its ugly head. Sara and Julia were nothing alike.

“Of course I remember what you said.” He shut one eye and tried to remember. “You said, ‘I can’t live like this anymore.’ But like I said, Sara, I thought you were—” He got a good look at her face and swallowed the word “drunk,” and, just to be safe, decided against mentioning her unfortunate tendency to leave chaos in her path every once in a while—which was the other reason he’d decided that statement had nothing to do with him. Now he had the sneaking suspicion she’d aimed that dart much closer to home—and he was wearing the bull’s-eye. “What did I do wrong?”

The way she nibbled on her lower lip and looked away confirmed it.

“Just tell me and I’ll take it back or apologize for it or fix it or…” He spread his hands. “I’ll do whatever I can to get things back to normal, Sara. I miss you.” More than he’d ever believed possible, enough to drag that confession from him, which was really saying something for a man who considered “hi” an emotional outburst.

Baring his heart, however, only seemed to have saddened her more. “It’s not you, Max.”

“Then it’s the accidents?”

Sara lifted her shoulders and let them droop in a dejected shrug. “I’m not too pleased with making a fool of myself every few weeks, but the accidents are just the symptom of a bigger problem.”

“So what’s the bigger problem?”

“It’s me.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Don’t yell at me.”

“Don’t—” Max shoved his cold-reddened hands back through his hair, pacing away then back. “You want me to listen to you, but you’re not saying anything. You’ve been sulking for weeks and when I ask you why—”

“I haven’t been sulking!”

“Really? I used to talk to you every day, but I’ve barely seen you since Halloween. You’re hardly ever home before dark, and even when you are here you only come out of your house to get in your car and leave again. If that’s not sulking, then what is it?”

“I’ve been busy,” she muttered.

“Everyone’s busy. If I did something to make you angry, that’s fine, but at least tell me why I’m being punished.”

“I’m not punishing you.”

But she couldn’t look at him, either, Max noticed. “It feels like it.”

“I’m sorry for that, but you just have to understand that I can’t—I don’t—I’m unhappy.”

“You’re unhappy?” She seemed relieved to have that off her chest, but all that revelation did was heat his temper up a few more degrees. Julia had said that a lot. And then she’d left. He paced away, hands in pockets, kicking at the drifts of snow. “If you expect me to say anything remotely helpful, you’re going to have to give me more to work with.” He thought he’d said that in an incredibly even tone of voice, but when he turned back, Sara didn’t seem all that impressed. She appeared…irritated. She sounded it, too.

“I made the decision to come here six years ago, Max. It was my choice and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

“And we’re grateful, Sara. More than grateful. I don’t know what I’d have done without you. If I haven’t said that enough—”

“It’s not that,” she said, shoving his gratitude aside with a wave of her mittened hands. “Much as I lo—” Her eyes lifted to his, then skipped away before he got any clue as to what was going on inside her. “Much as I’d love to spend the rest of my life taking care of you and Joey,” she said so fast the words tumbled over one another, “I want a home and family of my own.”

“Damn it,” Max said on an outrush of breath that emptied his lungs and left him gasping. And damn her for catching him off guard with something he hadn’t thought about in years—six to be exact. A home and family were what he’d wanted when he married Julia, and he’d gotten them—not the way he’d hoped, and he wouldn’t trade Joey for anything in the world—but damn Sara for reminding him that Joey would be an only child. “Nobody’s preventing you from having those things, Sara.”

She looked up at him, her eyes narrowing in a very un-Sara-like way. “So it’s okay if I just move out, get on with my life? You should’ve told me a long time ago that you didn’t care if I was around or not.”

“Who said that?”

“You did.”

“No, I didn’t.”

She snorted. “You’re hardly broken up at the prospect of me leaving, Max. How am I supposed to take that?”

“I was trying to be supportive.”

“You mean you were humoring me.”

“No, I wasn’t….” He rubbed at his temples. It felt as if his head was going to explode. “You’ve been so confused lately. I just…didn’t think you were serious.” He dug at a half-buried log with the toe of his boot and jammed his hands in his coat pockets, looking up at her without lifting his head. “Are you?”

“Would you be upset if I left?”

“Joey—”

“I’m not talking about Joey.” Sara closed the distance between them, waiting until he met her eyes. “How would you feel, Max?”

Max found himself standing behind the woodpile without knowing how he’d gotten there, except that panic had something to do with it. One minute everything was fine, then suddenly Sara was unhappy. Talking about leaving. The next thing he knew, she’d be out the door, exactly like Julia. Except in Sara’s case she’d go back to her family in Boston, probably marry some junior VP handpicked by her father. And when she left, he’d have to pick up the pieces as he’d done before. Unless he made sure he wasn’t breakable this time. “What do my feelings have to do with it?” he demanded.

“They just do, Max.”

“It doesn’t sound to me like you even know how you feel about it.”

She tried to answer, but he walked away while he still could.

“Let me know if you ever figure it out,” he said over his shoulder.