You couldn’t help who you were physically drawn to. That was a chemical reaction in the brain and libido that defied explanation. Sure there were biological studies about men wanting women who were fertile and women wanting men who were providers, but Amanda thought that was BS. People had evolved a lot since prehistoric times. Why should the assumption stand that they’d held on to their primitive reproductive/protector responses to the opposite sex when the protruding forehead and unibrow had disappeared?
As far as she was concerned, the world was full of all kinds of people to whom you responded—and who responded to you—differently. Some people evoked warm, fuzzy feelings inside. Some evoked instant animosity. Some evoked no feeling at all. Some took time to warm up to. Some you liked until you got to know them. With some, you were friends. With some, you were enemies. And with some, you were . . .
Well, what she and Max were. She just wished there was a convenient label to put on it. She wished even more that there was a good explanation for it.
Chemical reaction, she told herself again. Who knew why they’d gotten turned on the way they had when they had? Why did there even have to be a reason? They were on vacation. Living practically on top of each other. They’d responded to each other passionately for years—it had just been a different kind of passion. Or maybe it hadn’t.
Oh, why the hell does it matter?
she demanded of herself again.
Maybe, she immediately realized, it was because she was beginning to think that, on some level—for her, anyway—there was a lot more to it than chemistry. A lot more to it than physical response. A lot more to it than passion. Maybe, just maybe, she had . . . feelings . . . for Max. Maybe, just maybe, she’d had them for a long time. Maybe, just maybe, that was why he’d always made her feel so edgy and antagonistic and fierce. Because she hadn’t wanted to admit she could have . . . feelings . . . for a guy who didn’t feel the same way about her.
Maybe, just maybe, what had happened tonight hadn’t been the result of her physical response to him, but her emotional one. How could she know, though, if for him what had happened had been nothing
but
physical?
She scooted a little away from him and turned her head to look at him. His face was only half revealed in a slant of lamplight from the other room, his dark hair tumbling over his forehead, his thick lashes lying like silk against his cheek. The hair at his temple was damp with perspiration and, unable to help herself, Amanda pushed back a handful of dark tresses so she could see him better. She held her breath to see if the motion would wake him, but he didn’t budge. She smiled at that. She never would have thought she could outlast Max Callahan at the game of sex.
God, what was he going to say when he woke up and remembered what they’d done? How was he going to feel about her now? How would he treat her for the rest of the week? Or when they got back to Indianapolis? What if he didn’t want to see her again? What if he stopped attending parties he knew she would be attending too? What if he told Kate and Marshall to give him a heads-up whenever she was around, so he wouldn’t have to see her?
Or worse, what if he acted like nothing had happened? Like nothing had changed? There was no way she’d ever be able to treat him the same way after what had happened tonight. There was no way she would feel about him the way she had felt before. There was too much . . . Well, just too much, that was all. And it was utterly different from what she’d felt for him before.
Very, very carefully, Amanda disentangled her body from his and scooted the rest of the way across the bed. Then, very, very carefully, she got up and searched for her clothes. She found them near the doorway and tried not to think about how they’d gotten there as she shimmied back into them. But memories washed over her of how she’d dropped to her knees so shamelessly before him and so hungrily consumed him. She hadn’t felt any shame in what she had done, however. She didn’t feel any now. In fact, she wanted to do it again. And she wanted Max to do all the things he’d done to her again. And she wanted to do them for—
For a long time.
Don’t think about it, Amanda. Just don’t think about it
.
For some reason, she suddenly had a craving for one of those drinks Max had whipped up earlier. So after winding her hair atop her head and cinching it with a thick band, she made her way to the kitchen. All that was left, though, was a soupy, melted mixture in the blender and a sticky mess on the counter.
She tried not to view it as a metaphor for what her life was about to become.
Instead, she went to the wine rack and pulled out a lovely pinot noir she’d brought with her and opened it, then poured herself a generous glass and, with one more glance into the bedroom to make sure Max was still sleeping, crept to the sliding doors and—
whoosh, whoosh
—stepped out onto the deck.
Nighttime at the beach, she thought, was extraordinary. Almost surreal. Sounds seemed to carry down from the stars themselves, swirling around her ears, whispering the secrets of the universe just a little too softly to be understood. The wind whipped at her pajamas and hair, tugging loose dozens of strands to make them dance about her face and shoulders. She strode to the rail and rested her arms upon it, cradling the wineglass in both hands. Then she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with the pungent ocean air. She tasted salt on the breeze, felt the soft spike of sand on her cheeks, and far, far off in the distance, heard what sounded very much like the Sirens’ call.
A-man-da
, they sang,
come join us. Live as we live here in the sea. Sing the Sirens’ song. Dance the Sirens’ dance.
And then, after a moment—and a bit more incisively—they added,
Stop being such a workaholic, you moron. Your job sucks. Your employer is a pinhead. You have no life. You didn’t even know what Rickrolling was. Leave your sorry existence behind. Go out and live. Live.
Li-i-iv e.
And then, as if the point hadn’t already been hammered home by the harpies . . . uh, she meant Sirens—
whoosh, whoosh
—the door opened and closed behind her.
She turned to see Max standing there, of course, his feet and chest bare, his shorts hanging low on his hips, a glass of wine poured as generously as her own in one hand. She steeled herself for what he would say, how he would act now, how he would treat her.
And then he smiled. Not the smile he’d smiled whenever she’d seen him before. That one had always been wary and tight. As if he were bracing himself to talk to her. But then, she’d always had to brace herself to talk to him, too, she recalled. Tonight, however . . .
Tonight, there was no wariness in his smile. There was no tightness. Tonight, Max’s face was full of easiness, warmth, and affection. He was smiling at her the way she wanted to smile at him. The way she did smile at him. The way she felt inside. Easy. Warm. Affectionate.
“Hey,” he said softly.
“Hey,” she replied, just as quietly.
He took a few steps forward, then hesitated, as if he still wasn’t quite sure where he stood with her. “I woke up, and you were gone,” he said. “For a minute, I was afraid—” He halted abruptly, and she feared he might not finish whatever he’d intended to say. But he finished, even more softly, “I was afraid you’d gone.”
The knot that had been coiled tight in her belly since seeing him eased at his words, allowing the rest of her to relax too. “You say that as if you don’t want me to leave.”
“I don’t,” he said quickly. His dark brows arrowed downward under his windswept hair. “Are you planning to leave?”
“No.” She was surprised at how quickly the word left her mouth. At how quickly the decision was made. At how right it felt to make it. “Why would I leave?” she added with a grin. “I’m on vacation.”
Evidently, they were the very words he wanted to hear, because the crease in his brow disappeared, and he covered what little distance was left between them in three quick strides. Instead of pulling her into his arms and treating her to a long, languid kiss, however, he simply leaned forward and brushed his lips lightly over hers. Then he mirrored her earlier posture, leaning on the rail, fingers woven together beneath the bowl of the glass.
“I love it out here at night,” he said. “There’s just something about the ocean after dark, you know? Like it’s . . .”
“What?”
He turned to look at her. “You’ll laugh.”
Her? she thought. The woman who had just heard the Sirens call her a moron? “No, I won’t,” she assured him.
He expelled a soft sigh and looked back toward the whispering surf. “I don’t know. Like it’s . . . magic or something.”
When she didn’t say anything in response to that, he turned to look at her again, his expression sheepish. “You think I’m nuts, don’t you?”
She shook her head. “No, actually, I don’t. Just before you came out here, I thought the ocean and the stars were speaking to me.”
Now he grinned again. “Were they, now?”
This time she nodded. “Yup.”
“And what did the ocean and stars say to you?”
Now Amanda was the one to gaze out at the sea. She shrugged and sipped her wine, mostly because she wasn’t sure what to say, but also because she wanted to hold the moment suspended in time for as long as she could. Because she knew that, someday, she would look back on this moment as the one where everything changed. Where her old life alone fell away, and her new life with someone else—with Max—began.
“Mostly,” she began, “they told me I work too much.”
She heard Max chuckle at that. “And this is news to you? I’ve been telling you that for years.”
“Yeah, you have.”
“So now that it’s a consensus, are you going to listen?”
Was that a hopeful quality she heard in his voice? she wondered. How convenient if it was. Because she was feeling kind of hopeful too.
Without even realizing she meant to say it, she heard herself ask him, “Do you want to know why I was so focused on my grades and getting into a good college when I was in high school?”
When he didn’t answer right away, she turned to look at him and saw that he was looking at her now. “Why?” he asked, his voice softer than before. Though whether that was a result of the mellow evening or the mellow wine, Amanda couldn’t have said. Probably the former, since they hadn’t even finished their first glasses of the latter. Still, there was something in his voice that hadn’t been there before.
“It was because of my father,” she said simply.
“Ah,” he said. “You have one of those fathers who instills a healthy work ethic from an early age.”
“Had,” she corrected. “My father died the summer before I started at Notre Dame.”
There was a moment of hesitation on Max’s part, then an even softer, “I’m sorry, Amanda. I didn’t know.”
“I know,” she said. “Few people do. It’s not something I really talk about.” Then she hurried on—hurried because she knew she wouldn’t be able to say it otherwise, not that she knew why she was saying it at all. “But it was just the opposite, actually. My father never worked an honest day in his life.”
There was another one of those brief pauses, then Max said, “Uh . . . what?”
Amanda sighed heavily. “He was a lot like you, Max.”
Max nodded, but his expression fell a little. “So that’s why I never made your A-list. Because I’m like your loser dad.”
She shook her head. “No, he wasn’t a loser. He was a lot of fun. Happy-go-lucky. Not a care in the world. Always smiling. Always laughing. Never met a stranger.” She smiled as she remembered. “He could always make me laugh. I’d come home from school feeling horrible because I got a B on a test, and he’d always say something like, ‘Mandy, it’s not the end of the world. There’s more to life than grades.’ Then he’d tell me to blow off my homework and go to a friend’s house.”
Max smiled too. “And would you?”
She shook her head again. “No. I didn’t have any friends close enough for me to invite myself over.”
Max sobered at that. For a moment. Then he smiled again. “You coulda come to my house.”
Something in her stomach kindled at his words, sputtering to life at the matter-of-factness with which he’d spoken them. Instead of replying—because she knew he was only teasing—she said, “Anyway, as nice a guy as my dad was, he couldn’t hold down a job. It was always a struggle for us. There were nights when my mom had to serve peanut butter sandwiches for dinner. Sometimes all I had for breakfast was a piece of dry toast.”
“Aman da—”
But she held up a hand to cut him off. “I’m not telling you this because I want you to feel sorry for me. I’m telling you because I need you to know why I am the way I am. It sucked living like that as a kid. I didn’t want to live that way as an adult. I wanted to be more responsible than my dad. It was more important to me to know I could take care of myself than to . . . than to . . .”
“Than to what?”
“Than to be liked by other people,” she finished lamely.
He said nothing for a moment, then asked, “Why do you need me to know all that?”