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.
Baby dropped a squeaky toy at Max’s foot, and he picked it up and tossed it for the dog. It landed in some phlox, and Baby dove into the bushes and disappeared. He glanced about the backyard, at the ivy growing up the high fences and the profusion of roses. At the little bench seat beneath a magnolia, and he asked himself what he was doing here.
She’d been right. He could have called and determined that she was all right. Just as he could have called one of a dozen guys he knew who could take care of her problem with her ex-fiance. He did not have to involve himself. This was her life, her home, her world, and he did not fit. He would never fit. He was Max Zamora. Black operative, existing within a world he understood. Living the only life he knew. The only life he’d ever wanted.
But even if he had ever wanted more from life, he knew it was not in the cards for him. Lola was not for him. She was a fantasy, and how long would the fantasy last? Until his beeper went off and he’d have to leave in the middle of the night? Would she be satisfied with a kiss good-bye and no explanation?
No. She wouldn’t. No woman would. And how could he begin to imagine a life with her, when the chances were extremely good he would make her a widow before she turned forty? Max was not a fool; he’d been lucky, but in his profession a man’s days were numbered. He was not afraid of dying, but he was of leaving someone behind. How could he expect any woman to settle for that kind of life? Especially a woman like Lola who could do so much better.
Lola moved through the French doors and set a white platter next to the grill. “Max, there’s something I’ve wanted to talk to you about since the night we fled the island,” she said as she moved to the table sitting in the corner of the patio. “But so much was going on, I didn’t get the chance.”
“What’s that?” He took a drink of his beer and watched her shorts slide up the backs of her legs as she spread a red-checked tablecloth.
“Did you blow up the
“Yep.”
“How?” She moved to the other side of the table and looked up at him. “It was dark and I know you had some sort of rifle. Did you shoot the fuel tanks?”
“No. I’d loaded some dynamite with blasting caps and shoved them inside one of those condoms aboard the yacht, then I taped it in the O of
She smiled and tiny creases appeared in the corners of her eyes. “My hands were shaking so badly, I could hardly hold on to the steering wheel. And it was so dark, how did you manage something like that?”
“Practice,” he said. “Years of practice.”
She shook her head and threaded matching cloth napkins through little rings that looked like watermelons. “Well, you are one coolheaded guy. When those engines wouldn’t start and those bullets started hitting the water, the blood drained from my head and I about passed out.”
“You looked like you were going to pass out.” He put the chicken on the platter and closed the lid to the barbeque. “You did great, though.”
“No.” She shook her head and set flatware beside two red plates. “I was so scared I was numb, but you… you weren’t scared at all.”
She was wrong. He’d been afraid. He’d been more afraid than he’d ever been in his life. Not for himself, but for her. He moved to the table and set the platter in the center beside two lit candles that looked just like pears. “I’ve learned how to deal with fear,” he told her. “I don’t let it interfere with want I need to do.”
“Well, I don’t ever want to learn how to deal with fear, because I don’t ever want to be shipwrecked and shot at ever again.” Lola walked into the house and returned in less than a minute with salad and a basket of sliced French bread. “Once we got to the base that night, where did you go?”
Max held out her chair for her as she sat. “The naval station right next door to the Coast Guard base. Within an
