“That Damon Matthews,” Linda spat. “You know, take one letter out of his name and it spells ‘damn’ as in ‘damn, that kid’s a worthless sonovabitch’.”
“Nina! Max! Hey!” I heard and looked to the right to see Becca approaching. Then she caught sight of me and skidded to a halt two feet from Niles. “Whoa! What happened to your face?”
“Fuck me,” Max muttered.
“Damon,” I told her, talking over Max cursing.
“That dick!” Becca screeched.
“Nina! For God’s sake!” Niles bellowed and I looked at him.
“Niles! Go! Away!” I shouted at him.
Becca’s torso reared back, her eyes got wide and they were on Niles.
“Dude,” she said low, “you’re Niles?”
Niles just scowled at her so she looked at me.
“Seriously, Neens, Max is way better,” Becca informed me. “Not only is he hotter, he’s taller, has great hair, that awesome rough voice and he dresses nearly as hot as he just plain is.”
Becca was not wrong about that. Any of it. Therefore I had no response.
“Who’s Niles?” Linda asked Becca, finally examining Niles.
“I’m Nina’s fiancé,” Niles answered Linda, now scowling more irately at Becca.
“Ex!” I shouted.
“Jesus, enough!” Max cut in on a sharp, impatient bark and looked at Niles. “Man, it’s over. Deal with it but deal with it somewhere else.” He looked at his mother. “Mom, we gotta go in so Nina can swear out a statement. I’ll call you later.” He looked at Becca. “Babe, Nina’ll call you, yeah?”
“Cool,” Becca said on a grin.
“Is it pasta bake tonight?” Linda asked.
“No,” Max answered instantly.
“When am I gonna get pasta bake?” Linda pushed.
“I don’t know, Mom,” Max replied and I could tell he was losing it.
“Saturday,” I told her quickly. “That’s my parent’s last day here. We’ll have a little party.”
“Duchess,” Max said to me, sounding exasperated, “when I’m in England, we gotta get your shit sorted so you can move here and people’ll get used to having you around so maybe they’ll back the f**k off so I can spend some f**kin’ time with you.”
“You’re moving here?” Niles asked on a loud, horrified whisper.
“Yes, Niles,” I answered him.
“But you said you’d never leave Charlie’s house.”
Now he was hearing what I said a million times over the last year.
“I’m not leaving Charlie’s house, Max and I are going to…” I stopped speaking as it hit me, I looked at Max and whispered, “We can’t do that anymore, can we?”
Max’s arm at my shoulders gave me a squeeze. “We’ll talk about it later.”
I ignored him, remembering what he’d told me the morning before about taking the job in town and how wonderful it was that he’d make that sacrifice for me, taking over Curt’s business, but how he couldn’t do it, seeing as it was Curt’s business and Curt was a jerk, so I announced, “And you can’t take that job.”
“Babe, we’ll talk about it later.”
“What job?” Linda asked.
“Fuck,” Max clipped.
“Nothing, nothing,” I said quickly to Linda. “We need to go in.”
“What job?” Linda repeated.
“Mom, later,” Max bit out.
Linda’s hands came up. “All right, all right. Yeesh. Later.” Then she looked around Niles to Becca and asked, “Do you wanna get a coffee? I’m meeting Barb and Mindy at the café.”
“Awesome,” Becca answered.
“Mindy?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Linda said to me then invited, “You guys finish, you can join us.”
I smiled at her and said, “That would be lovely.”
“Someone kill me,” Max muttered, I looked up at him to see he was looking up at the blue, cloudless sky.
“Darling,” I called, putting my free hand to his stomach, “we need to go into the Station and get this done so I can see Mins and get a coffee.”
Max’s head tilted down and his frustrated gray eyes locked on mine. “Babe, just gonna say, you’re lucky you’re so damned cute.”
That was when I curled my body into his, got up on my toes, pressed close and smiled at him before I said softly, “I know.”
And I did know. At that moment with Max looking irritated but still amazingly handsome and I was tucked firm in the curve of his arm, I knew.
I knew I was possibly the luckiest woman in the world.
And Max proved me correct when his eyes moved over my face, his expression cleared, his face warmed and his mouth came down on mine.
* * * * *
We were sitting in the little room that Mick questioned Kami in, Max at my side, his chair pushed slightly back but close to mine, his arm draped around the back of my chair, his legs stretched out in front of him, feet crossed at the ankles.
This seemed like a pose of masculine relaxation but it wasn’t.
I knew this when he clipped, “What’s takin’ so f**kin’ long?”
I looked up from returning the texts my friends had been sending.
Before texting I’d found that yesterday Niles had called four times, Mom three and I had five calls from three numbers I didn’t know. After interrogating Max I found that one call was from his home phone (so I programmed it in), three from his mobile (so I programmed that in too) and the last one was from Arlene (which I also programmed in). Mom had given Max my number, Max had given it to Arlene and her message was mostly about how next time we were at The Dog I couldn’t leave without saying good-bye and partly about her asking when I was making another fish casserole without any mention at all about my heartbroken getaway which, I suspected, she knew would be foiled.
“They are investigating a murder, darling,” I attempted to soothe the wakening beast.
His irritated eyes sliced from their impatient examination of the door to me and I decided just to let the beast wake and take my chances.
Thankfully at that point the door opened and Jeff walked in carrying papers and a pen.
“Fuck, sorry, I mean, um…” he looked at me and repeated, “sorry.”
“Max curses all the time, Jeff, you don’t have to apologize for saying the f-word,” I assured, smiling at him, he smiled back, headed to the chair opposite us, dumped his papers and sat down.