Читать книгу Mad About Max - Penny McCusker - Страница 9

“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.

Sara straightened, managing a half smile. “Cold, slightly bruised Chinese food?”

Janey shrugged. “Nothing a microwave couldn’t fix. And it beats leftovers, which is what was on the menu since I was dining solo tonight.” Jessie, her nine-year-old daughter, was across the street having dinner with Mrs. Halliwell. Jessie didn’t have any grandparents, Mrs. Halliwell didn’t have any grandchildren, and it gave Janey a night off, so everybody got something out of the arrangement.

She pushed back from the table and went to the fridge, returning with a half gallon of ice cream and a bottle of chocolate syrup. “And since you brought the main course, the least I can do is supply dessert.”

Sara took a spoon and the chocolate syrup, scooting her chair closer to Janey’s so she could be in easier reach of the calorie comfort. “What would I do without you?”

“I don’t know.” Janey took a big spoonful of ice cream, closing her eyes and moaning in sheer delight. “I can tell you one thing, though. Without you I’d still be a size eight. I’ve eaten so much ice cream in commiseration that none of my pants fit anymore. But you, you rat, haven’t gained an ounce.”

“Embarrassment burns a lot of calories,” Sara said around a mouthful of ice cream. “I’m thinking of writing a diet book.”

“I don’t think it’ll catch on.”

“It’s not the most pleasant way to lose weight.”

Janey shook her head. “It’s just that most women can’t stick to a diet for six days. You’ve been embarrassing yourself over Max ever since you came to Erskine.”

“Six years.” Sara set her spoon in the carton and sat back in her chair. Hearing it like that made the egg roll and ice cream in her stomach simmer and stir unpleasantly. Not that it wasn’t the truth, but having the past half decade of her life boiled down to that one basic truth made her feel like throwing up.

She’d met Max Devlin when she was nineteen, a bright-eyed, eager sophomore at Boston College. Max had been a senior, there on a track scholarship, and her student advisor; he’d always known somehow when she needed a sympathetic ear or a comforting shoulder, and he’d never failed to provide it—for the short time he could.

Before midterms, Max received news that his grandfather had died suddenly. Sara had ached for him, but even if she could have found a way to help him through his grief, there’d been no opportunity. He’d lost his father to a riding accident before he’d graduated from high school, and his mother had remarried and moved to Europe. With his grandfather gone, there’d been no one to run the ranch, and Max had been faced with a choice—sell or stay home. He never came back to Boston.

Time passed, Max married, and Sara convinced herself that what she’d felt for him was nothing but gratitude for the kindness he’d shown a shy, sheltered young woman out on her own in the world. They’d kept in touch, but the frequency had dropped significantly; Max didn’t have a lot of free time on his hands.

Not that Sara did, either. After graduating from college with a degree in education, her father convinced her to take a job in his company, training men and women with master’s and doctorate degrees how to use software systems they fobbed off on their admins anyway.

When Max’s marriage ended, leaving him with a two-year-old to look after and a ranch to run, Sara hadn’t hesitated. She’d arrived in Montana, a city girl so far out of her element she’d wondered how the ranchers punched cows without hurting their hands. She’d only planned to stay long enough to help Max get things under control, but every time she mentioned leaving, he got such a look of abandonment on his face she hadn’t had the heart to go through with it. In the end, it was her heart that had kept her there.

Looking back now, she could barely remember the decisions she’d made in those first confusing weeks after she realized she was in love with Max. Not that she regretted taking a job teaching third grade; she’d always longed to teach children anyway. Her new job was so much more rewarding than what she’d been doing in Boston. And it had just made sense for her to move into the old, unused bunkhouse on Max’s ranch so she could be closer to Joey. And Max. Someday, she’d hoped, he would fall in love with her and make them a family.

But it seemed that Julia had taken something with her, after all, when she’d walked out of Max’s life. His heart.

“I’m sorry, Sara,” Janey said, “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

Sara dismissed that nonsense with a wave of her hand. “My feelings aren’t hurt, Janey. I’m just beginning to wonder what I’ve been doing here all these years.”

“Sounds like you’ve been talking to your mother again.”

Sara looked up, surprised. “I talk to my mother every week.”

“And she always campaigns for you to move back to Boston, so what’s different this time?”

“Maybe she’s right. Maybe Max won’t ever see me as more than a friend.”

Janey’s spoon clattered to the tabletop, her mouth and eyes going wide in overdone shock—which went ignored.

“Besides, Joey’s always been my excuse for staying, and he’s been self-sufficient for a while now,” Sara said, admitting it aloud for the first time, although she’d been thinking it more and more often. “Max really doesn’t need me around anymore, and my contract is up for renewal this year….”

“He’d be devastated if you went away.”

“Would he?”

“You’re a huge part of his life, Sara. He loves you.”

“As a friend.” Sara threw herself out of her chair, pacing the generous confines of the kitchen. “I want more, Janey. I want it all. What if he never wants the same from me?”

“Maybe he won’t, but you’ll never know unless you push him to make a choice.”

Sara snorted softly. “You know Max. If I force him to choose, I’ll lose his friendship.”

“Or gain his love. Look, Sara, in some ways your mom is right. You’ve spent six years—”

“‘Wasted’ is how Mom put it. I’ve wasted six years.”

“So it’s time to take the bull by the horns and tell Max how you feel.”

“Like you’re doing with Jessie’s father?”

“That’s different.” Janey slumped in her chair, scooping up a huge, half-melted glob of ice cream and letting it drip back into the carton. “I called him when I found out I was pregnant. He never called me back.”

“He should still know he has a daughter.”

“We’re talking about you.”

“Not anymore,” Sara said, then gave a little bittersweet laugh. “We’re quite a pair, Janey. Two young, attractive women with nothing to do but sit around and feel sorry for ourselves. There has to be a bright side to this.”

“There is—for Ben & Jerry’s.”

“Seriously, Janey. It’s time we stopped moping around and did something about what’s wrong with our lives. There have to be a couple of men out there who want a home and family—”

“Whoa!” Janey held her hands up, palms out. “I have a home, and Jessie is the only family I need. Despite my recent tendency to wallow, I see no reason to shackle myself to some burping, farting, dirty-laundry machine.”

Sara dropped back into her chair, tracing the pattern on the antique lace tablecloth with one fingernail. “Aren’t you ever lonely?”

“Sure, but that’s no excuse to get married. It’s a known fact that ninety-nine percent of men completely stop talking within five days of their own wedding anyway.”

“I’m not buying it.” Sara had learned early on that Janey’s tough exterior was only a defense mechanism to protect her soft heart. “You want to meet someone and get married as much as any woman. You just aren’t ready to admit it yet.”

“If I ever do, slap me.”

Janey put on a belligerent face, but the look in her eyes nearly brought Sara to tears.

“But, hey,” Janey continued, sitting up suddenly. “You definitely need to change a few things. It’s only a matter of time before someone’s seriously injured or you’re completely bankrupt or both.”

“Yeah, a short time,” Sara agreed. “I almost wish…” She let the thought hang, then shook her head.

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“Uh-uh,” Janey said. “I just ingested a couple thousand calories for you. Spit it out.”

“Well…there was this moment when I was superglued to Max—Stop smirking, Janey.”

“You have to admit it’s funny.”

Sara couldn’t help grinning a little. “Okay, so it was funny. After. But there was this moment where I almost wished I could—” She swallowed, then said the rest on a rush. “I almost wished I could stop loving Max.”

Janey burst out laughing, holding her stomach and sliding down in her chair.

Sara crossed her arms and glared until her best friend got herself under control. “It sounds stupid, but the way I feel about Max is the root of all my problems. If I could stop loving him so desperately and just accept that he’ll only ever be my friend, I could still be a part of Joey’s life, but I could be happy, too. The only problem is, how do I do it?”

Janey put her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. “Considering my ex-boyfriends, falling out of love was never a problem for me. But Max is such a great guy. And he is drop-dead gorgeous. Just seeing him is enough to make any woman fall in love.” She shot Sara a teasing look out of the corner of her eye. “I’d be tempted to go after him myself, but thankfully I don’t see him all that often.”

Sara leaped out of her chair. “That’s it!”

“What?”

“It just might work.” She began to pace, gnawing on a thumbnail.

“What?”

“All my accidents happen when Max is around, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, if I stop seeing him, I won’t have any more accidents.”

“And how does that make you fall out of love with him?”

“I don’t know,” Sara said, her elation dimming a bit at the thought of how empty her life was going to be when Max didn’t fill it anymore. “I only know that seeing him all the time keeps me hoping. Maybe if he’s out of my life physically, my heart will forget about him.” It didn’t make any sense, even to her own ears, but she was desperate.

“That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.” Janey got up and hugged her hard, then handed her a tissue.

“So how are you going to stop seeing him when you live about five feet from his back door? And when the man relies on you for everything but sex, and you’d be giving him that, too, if he’d ever asked.”

“Jeez, Janey, just say what you think.”

“You don’t want to know what I really think. And you haven’t answered my question.”

“I guess I’ll just have to avoid him,” Sara said with a shrug. “And when he asks for something, I’ll just say no.”

“Would you like me to write it on the back of your hand so you don’t forget how to spell it?”

“I think I can manage,” Sara said. “I have to.”