Thankfully, that jerked Amanda’s attention back to the matter at hand. Although maybe
hand
wasn’t the best word to use under the circumstances. Or
jerk
, for that matter. Not considering where her gaze had fallen and how much she had been admiring the way his towel so beautifully framed his . . . ah . . .
Where was she?
Oh, yeah. Max had been laughing at her. Not that that was anything new.
“Oh, man, if you could see the look on your face,” he added, punctuating the statement with a smug grin. “Relax, Amanda. I’m no more interested in wrestling
or
sharing the bed—or the bedroom, for that matter—with you than you are.”
Somehow, his reassurance did little to reassure her. Maybe because, suddenly, the thought of sharing the bedroom—or the bed, for that matter—or even wrestling with him didn’t bother her quite as much as it would have a few weeks ago. Or a few minutes ago. Or even a few seconds ago. Funny how a precariously placed towel could completely change the tone of a conversation.
Um, where was she?
Oh, yeah. Not getting along with Max. Not that that was anything new.
“How about we draw straws for it?” he asked. “The couch out here unfolds into a bed, and whoever draws the short straw takes the living room. How about that? That’s fair, right?”
She wanted to say something about how a gentleman would automatically offer to take the sofa and let the lady take the bedroom, but she knew it would be pointless. For one thing, it wasn’t unusual for her and Max to argue about women’s rights on those occasions when they were forced to talk to each other, and about how he had no respect for women
or
their rights and how everything between men and women should be equal. So it would look pretty lame if Amanda talked the talk but couldn’t walk the walk. For another thing, Max was no gentleman. So she only nodded her agreement. It did seem like the best way to resolve the problem.
He started to head for the kitchen to look for a couple of straws, but Amanda stopped him with a carefully worded “Don’t you want to, um . . . I mean, ah . . . Before we do that, wouldn’t you rather . . .”
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t carefully worded. Max didn’t seem to think so, either, because when he turned around to look at her, his expression was puzzled. Instead of finishing what she had been trying to say—since that would be even more difficult to do looking at his front side than it had been looking at his backside—she just turned her gaze away and waved a hand airily at the towel wrapped around his hips.
“Oh, that,” he said without concern.
Oh, that
, she repeated to herself. With lots of concern. Then again, he
would
be unconcerned about it. He saw himself half naked and dripping wet and rippling with muscle and mouthwatering . . . ah . . . She meant he saw himself like this all the time. For Amanda, however, this was a first. Not her first half-naked man, of course. Or even dripping-wet man. Well, not quite the first, anyway. She had, after all, you know . . . Lots of times, in fact. Well, okay, not lots. But there had been more than one guy in her life. And one of them had even showered at her place. The rippling muscle, though, was definitely a first, since the guys she dated were more fluff than buff. More rut than cut. More dip than rip.
But they all had
great
personalities. And that was what was most important.
“Seriously, wouldn’t you be more comfortable if you were dressed?” she asked. Though, truth be told, it wasn’t Max’s comfort she was thinking about just then.
Really
funny how the placement of a towel could change the tone of . . . oh, everything.
“This’ll just take a second,” he said with even less concern than before, continuing on his way.
She watched as he ducked behind the breakfast bar and started opening cabinets . . . then made herself look away again because she just couldn’t tear her gaze from the way the muscles in his bare back bunched and relaxed and bunched again with every move he made. She didn’t know why she was surprised that Max looked this good under his clothes. Of course a man as shallow and self-absorbed as he was would spend time at the gym. All he cared about was the physical. With himself and the women he dated.
Amanda pushed the thought away and took in the rest of her surroundings. Kate and Marshall had furnished the condo beautifully. Between the kitchen and the bathroom was a set of French doors that led out to a small balcony, and beyond that, nothing but sparkling white beach, glittering blue ocean, and luminous pink sunset. It was the perfect complement to the Caribbean theme of the decor. The walls were painted a brighter yellow than the exterior, and the furniture was whitewashed rattan. The accent pieces were plentiful, all splashes of dazzling color, from the charmingly primitive paintings of island houses and marketplaces to the irregularly shaped throw pillows to the thickly woven carpets scattered about the tile floor. Directly opposite the kitchen was a door that led to what must be the bedroom, and . . .
And, oh, who cares how Kate and Marshall furnished the place?
Amanda thought as she turned to look at Max’s back . . . ah, she meant at Max, of course . . . again. By now he was facing her, doing something on the kitchen counter that didn’t seem to involve straws at all, but did rely heavily on a bottle of tequila.
“I couldn’t find any straws,” he said when he glanced up to find her looking at him. “So we’ll have to go with swizzle sticks. And it goes without saying that there’s no point in breaking out the swizzle sticks if you don’t have something to swizzle them with.”
“Is that a fact?” she asked dryly.
“Of course it’s a fact,” he assured her, continuing his task without looking up at her. “A fact you would have realized by now if you ever did anything besides work work work.”
She gaped at that. “I do more than work work work,” she denied hotly. “A lot more.”
“Oh?” he asked dubiously. This time he did look up, but it was only to toss a lime into the air with one hand and catch it deftly with the other. “Like what?”
She started to enumerate the many and myriad activities of her daily life, but all she could come up with at the moment were things that involved Mr. Hoberman. Things like picking up his half-caf skinny latte, light on the cinnamon, on her way to work, and spending her lunch hour picking out a gift for his wife’s birthday/son’s wedding/daughter’s promotion/mistress’s college graduation/whatever, and stopping on her way home to meet for drinks with a client he wasn’t able to meet himself because he had to meet with a more important client, which actually meant he was meeting his mistress. Or maybe his wife. Though Amanda doubted it.
But Max was standing there waiting for an answer, so she fudged. “I go out for coffee. And I go shopping. And I go for drinks with . . . people.” She couldn’t really say
friends
, because that would venture beyond the realm of fudging and into lying, since she never liked any of the clients Mr. Hoberman had her meet, and she always told the truth. Always. Except for when she fudged a little.
Max started putting things into a blender and grinned that smug grin again. “And what makes me think that all this coffee, shopping, and drinking relates directly to your job?”
She started to reply with something flip and cavalier—and hopefully honest—but he spared her having to do so by punching a button on the blender and creating a cacophony of crushing ice, lime, and tequila, thereby drowning out whatever she might say. So Amanda only mouthed a vehement, if silent, denial—It wasn’t lying if you didn’t say it out loud, right?—stopping the moment she saw his finger lifting from the blender button.
“So there,” she concluded haughtily. Let him make what he would of that.
What he made, it quickly became clear, was margaritas. Because after filling two glasses with his creation, he came out from behind the kitchen counter with two servings of something frosty and cold, each sporting a plastic swizzle stick that ended in the shape of a cactus. But he had arranged the sticks in such a way that both were protruding from the glasses at equal angles and equal lengths.
“Being a gentleman,” he said, “I’ll let you pick first. Short swizzle stick gets the couch.”
Amanda eyed each of the drinks carefully, but the concoction was too opaque for her to tell which glass might hold the shorter stick. She started to reach slowly for one glass, thinking maybe Max would offer some subtle body language as to whether that one held the shorter stick. But he only stood there unflinching—in his towel, damn him—holding the two drinks equidistant between himself and Amanda.
Without giving it too much thought, she reached for the glass she hadn’t initially aimed for and immediately pulled the cactus out. It was full length, as evidenced by the fact that it ended in the shape of a little plastic pot and hadn’t been broken at all.
“Hah,” she said, holding it up triumphantly. “I get the bedroom.”
Max shrugged. “Ah, well. At least I get a margarita out of it.” He held his glass up. “Cheers, Amanda.”
Wow. He was being a good sport. That seemed so unlike him. She touched the lip of her glass to his. “Back atcha.”
He hesitated just a fraction of a second before adding, “To a relaxing week at the beach.”
She hesitated, too, a bit longer than he had. “And just how are we supposed to manage that? Two people who do not get along—”
“To put it mildly.”
She ignored the interjection. It wasn’t like she disagreed with it. “—sharing such a tiny condo?” she finished.
He shrugged again. “We’ll figure it out. Who spends any time inside when they’re on vacation, anyway? I figure we’ll both be out on the beach most of the time. You head south, I’ll head north, and we’ll probably hardly ever see each other.”
Sounded like a reasonable enough plan to her. Still . . .
“Plus,” he added, “I bet you’re an early-to-bed-early-to-rise type, aren’t you?”
“Of course,” she replied automatically.
He grinned that smug grin again and repeated, “Of course.” Somehow, though, when he said it, it didn’t make her sound like the responsible, conscientious person it had when she said it. “I’m rarely up before noon myself,” he told her. “And never in bed before midnight. So we’ll probably hardly ever see each other here in the condo either.”
That, too, sounded reasonable, Amanda thought. So why did she suddenly feel kind of . . . disappointed? Oh, surely not. No way would she be disappointed to avoid Max Callahan. It just went to show what a rotten day she was having.
So, “To a relaxing week at the beach,” she echoed, clinking her glass softly against his.
And she ignored the little wiggle of apprehension that went up her spine as she completed the action.
It was only later, after she and Max had spent the rest of the evening avoiding each other and settling in, that Amanda saw he had, of course, left the dirty margarita glasses sitting in the sink. And when she went to rinse them out, she realized he hadn’t shortened the swizzle stick in either of them. Both plastic cacti ended in a little plastic pot. No matter which one she had chosen, she would have won the bedroom.
Max had been a gentleman, after all.
Four
The second day of Max’s vacation dawned with infinitely more promise than the first, and not just because he didn’t have to get up in what might as well have been the middle of the night so he could make the fourteen-hour—at least the way
he
drove—trip from Indianapolis to Captiva. No, it was because he awoke to the aroma of freshly brewed coffee instead of the reek of the Dumpster below his bedroom window, to the warmth of a slant of sunlight on his bare back instead of winter’s chill unabated by his busted radiator, and to the sound of the ocean beyond the window instead of his upstairs neighbors arguing about whatever was their conflict du jour.
And when he opened his eyes, he discovered yet another way this morning was different from any other in recent memory. Because what to his wondering eyes should appear but the sight of a gorgeous redhead in a satin kimono instead of some unremem bered woman he’d picked up the night before and he hoped would be gone by now.
Not quite able to believe his good fortune, he closed his eyes tight, then opened them again. Hold the phone. That was no gorgeous redhead. That was Amanda Bingham. So much for good fortune.
It all came rushing back to him then. The way Marshall and Kate had set the two of them up for the week by deliberately double booking them in an island condo at the height of the tourist season. The way Amanda had come tumbling so unexpectedly through the door just as he was coming out of the shower. The way she’d been looking at him in a way she’d never looked at him before, as if she weren’t A, repulsed by him; B, annoyed at him; C, disgusted with him; or D, all of the above.
Well, the joke was on Marshall and Kate. No way would Max and Amanda ever hook up. Not figuratively. Not literally. Not in any
-ly
way at all.
Then she turned, and he caught her in profile. She was talking to someone on the phone, and although her face was a study in contrition, the rest of her was flat-out . . . Well, he hesitated to use the word
gorgeous
again, now that he knew it was Amanda. But the morning sunlight spilled over her body in a way that was almost sacred, lighting tiny fires in the russet curls she’d piled loosely atop her head, infusing her ivory skin with an amber glow, turning her filmy robe almost translucent. And although he could tell by the silhouette beneath the fabric that she wasn’t naked beneath the garment, she might as well have been, because Max was just that good when it came to mentally undressing women.