Mail-Order Millionaire (23 page)

“He said it was just what I needed, some male bonding.” He raked his hand through his hair. “Don’t worry. I’ll leave right away.”

She leaned forward in the big chair. “You can’t just drive right back. Have you had dinner?”

“No, but...”

“We have lots of spaghetti and meatballs left over.” The color was coming back to her cheeks and he thought she’d never looked so beautiful, but, then, he thought that every time he saw her.

“Sounds good.” He gave her a slow smile and she smiled back, tentatively at first, then she couldn’t help herself, a small hysterical giggle escaped her lips. She held out her arms, her palms up. “What am I going to do with her?” she asked. “I explained the situation to her when I got back from the weather station last week. I told her that you and I had agreed it was all over.”

He nodded, but he really wanted to shake his head. Why had they agreed? Why couldn’t they see each other? He’d forgotten, forgotten everything but the desire to be with her, here or there or anywhere.

“I didn’t expect her to give up, not really,” Miranda continued. “I know her too well for that. But I never expected her to do something so blatant, so... so...”

He grinned. “Obvious?”

“Yes. What does she think, that we’ll fall into each other’s arms the minute we see each other?”

He studied her face and watched the reflection from the table lamp light up her eyes. “That’s not a bad idea,” he mused.

She stood and walked past him on her way to the kitchen. The look on her face was one of determination. “It’s not a good idea, either, but as long as you’re here we might as well make the best of it. I’ll heat up some spaghetti for you. But I warn you, it’s not the kind of food you’re used to.”

“If you made it, I’ll like it,” he promised.

He was just spinning the noodles around his fork with expertise when the boys finished watching the video and let out whoops of surprise when they saw him.

“Hey, Max,” Scott said dragging a chair next to him at the kitchen table. “Want to come to my soccer game tomorrow?”

Max exchanged a quick glance with Miranda. “Who’re you playing?’’

“The number one team in the league, but I think we’re gonna win. Please, Max, my dad isn’t here to watch me. You said you played soccer in high school. And you said sometime you’d show us how to bounce the ball off our heads.”

He met Miranda’s gaze again and saw her bite her lower lip. “Boys,” she said, “leave Max alone. He has other things to do besides go to your game.’’

“Actually Max has nothing to do at all,” he contradicted her. “What about you?”

She leaned back against the refrigerator. “Me? I have to go. I volunteered to take a shift in the snack bar. I’m taking care of the kids so Ariel can get a rest after two weeks at home with the boys.”

Before Max could pursue the subject, Brian invited Max to sleep over on the bottom bunk in his room.

Scott jumped out of his chair. “It was my idea. I get to have him in my room.”

Hearing that, Brian turned brick-red and threw himself at Scott and they fell on the tiled floor and started to pound each other.

“Boys, boys,” Miranda shouted over the din.

Max picked Brian up by his collar and set him on his chair. Then he took Scott and put him, still squirming, on the opposite side of the table.

“Believe it or not no one’s ever fought over me before,” he told Miranda, who was watching the whole scene still glued to the refrigerator door.

“You’d better take advantage of it while you can,” she said.

“You mean I’ve got to choose one of them. Is that all right with you?”

“I can handle it if you can,” she said lightly.

Max shrugged, but in his heart there was hope, hope sprouting like a seed under the New England snow. It was ridiculous and it didn’t make sense, but here she was and where she was there was hope. One more chance to see her, to pretend that anything was possible between them. The last chance, maybe, but still a chance. To make it fair, he tossed a coin, which decided that he’d sleep in Brian’s room.

Scott got up out of his chair, his lower lip trembling. “Then I get him tomorrow night.”

Miranda exchanged a long, helpless look with Max. She ought to say no, Max is going home tomorrow after the game, but she didn’t have the heart to do it. He’d have to tell them himself. But he didn’t. He asked them about their team, who sponsored it and what positions they played. Miranda picked up the dish towel and dried a glass until it shone.

She couldn’t say she wasn’t happy to have him here. Maybe happy wasn’t the right word. It was more a feeling of being alive again after a week of feeling as if she’d been frozen in the snow. The look in his eyes made every nerve tingle, the same nerve ends she’d thought were dead and buried. She knew and he knew that he was not staying just to see a soccer game. They both knew that electricity still crackled between them, right here in the kitchen.

When Miranda announced it was bedtime, Brian insisted Max come with him and get into the lower bunk so he could hang his head over and look into Max’s face. Miranda stood in the doorway looking at them, the little boy on top and the big man, his knees drawn up to his chest to fit into the bed. She climbed up the ladder to plant a kiss on Brian’s cheek, even though he ducked under the covers and pretended to rub it off immediately afterward.

She knew Max was looking at her as she came down the ladder. He’d pulled the sheet up to his chin and his blue eyes had a wicked gleam. “Well?” he said.

“Go ahead,” Brian urged. “You kissed me, you gotta kiss Max, too.”

She leaned over and gave Max a light kiss on his cheek, but the faint scent of pine soap and the smell of the mountain air that clung to his skin were her undoing. She hesitated just a moment and he took her in his arms and kissed her with a tenderness that touched her deeply. She heard Brian’s muffled laughter and then she heard Scott calling for a drink of water from his bedroom but she couldn’t move. She was caught, trapped again, wanting to sink down into bed with him, to taste his lips again, to see where it would lead.

If it hadn’t been for the boys she would have done it. But if it hadn’t been for the boys, he wouldn’t be there at all. So she staggered out of the room to get Scott his water, then wait to the master bedroom, where she fell forward into her sister’s king-size bed.

She was so tired she couldn’t move. Tired of struggling to make ends meet, tired of fighting off the attraction between her and Max. Every time she saw him he was sweeter, kinder and more diabolically attractive. If this really were the last time she was going to see him (how many times had she thought that?) then just this once she was going to stop fighting and give in and enjoy having him around.

There was a certain family feeling to the whole situation. She and Max as surrogate parents. Only most husbands didn’t sleep on the bottom bunk in the children’s room; they slept in the master bedroom, next to the wife. She stretched her arm out across the bed. No, no one there.

Max certainly had a knack for dealing with kids. He said he wanted a dozen children, and she had no doubt he could handle them. If he were around. If be weren’t working on top of a mountain and unavailable for such family crises as chicken pox. The tension eased from her body as she convinced herself to let herself go, play family this weekend and suffer the consequences later.

Saturday morning found Max in the kitchen wearing corduroy pants and a plaid wool hunting shirt, flipping his famous pancakes in the air to the delight of the boys. The smell of maple syrup bubbling on the stove filled the air with its familiar sweetness. Miranda sat at the table and let him do all the work, laughing with the boys as he flipped a pancake on Scott’s head. No wonder Ariel was so anxious for Miranda to exchange her solitary life for marriage and a family. The warmth, the closeness, had an undeniable appeal and as she looked around the table she felt longing well inside her.

When the boys had stuffed themselves and gone upstairs to change into their shorts, shin guards and cleats, Max sat across the table from Miranda. The look in his eyes told her he felt it, too, so badly it hurt.

She tore her eyes from his and stirred her coffee. “Have you ever been hunting before?” she asked,

“Never,” he said. “But the thought of camping out and sleeping in a sleeping bag under the stars appealed to me.”

Miranda nodded. “You might even have bagged a wild turkey. Rob always comes home with something.”

“So it wasn’t a total fabrication. There are wild turkeys and your brother-in-law does go hunting.”

“Yes. And he probably meant it when he asked you to go along. But then I offered to baby-sit and I guess he forgot to call and cancel the hunting party.” She sipped her coffee and gazed at him over the edge of her cup. “Or at least that’s the story they’ll use when they come back on Sunday night and find you here.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe Rob would do anything like this on purpose. Now Ariel, she’s a different story. She’d stoop to lying, cheating and playing on my sympathy if she thought it would serve her purpose. Now that I think of it, she probably engineered the whole thing. I can’t wait to get my hands on her.”

Max got up and rinsed his cup in the sink. “I’m sorry I barged in on you like this, but I’m having a better time than shooting wild turkeys. The kids are great, the beds are too short, but there are other fringe benefits.” He gave her a sideways look that curled her toes inside her soft white pure wool socks and sucked the breath out of her.

Abruptly she got to her feet and had already started for the living room when she felt his hand on her hip. He gave her a firm pat on the bottom, the kind of gesture that telegraphed familiarity, intimacy and, when his hand lingered, it signaled desire, too. Casually, he followed her to the living room, where she tripped over the soccer ball in the middle of the floor, then lunged for her hooded storm coat, which she’d left on the arm of the chair.

Outside the temperature was rising and icicles were melting. There was a hint of spring in the air. So that was what was wrong with her, this lightheadedness and giddiness, it was spring fever. It couldn’t be anything else. Hadn’t she promised herself she’d keep her emotions under wraps?

Once at the field they split up, the boys to the field, Miranda to the snack bar. Max disappeared. A ton of hot dogs simmered in a stainless-steel vat, waiting to be put into buns and stored in a warming drawer. By craning her neck she could see a corner of the playing field, but she never saw the boys or Max until she was relieved an hour later.

She wandered out to the field where Brian and Scott were running up and down, stumbling, falling, but never stopping. And Max was pacing up and down the field, shouting words of encouragement. Miranda found a seat on a wooden bench, stretched her legs out in front of her and inhaled the fragrance of the damp earth. On a day like this, ripe with the promise of spring, she could believe all things were possible, a farm that paid its way, a husband to help her run it and children who ran and fell and picked themselves up again. Could anyone want more?

Max did, she thought, walking out onto the field, clapping enthusiastically even though she had no idea who had won. Max wanted a job that provided him with a built-in life-style. One that challenged him on a level that ordinary life didn’t. And she couldn’t compete with that. Nobody could.

On the way home they stopped at a restaurant that specialized in Southern-fried chicken. The boys never stopped talking about the game, reliving every minute with Max chiming in.

“Guess where we’re sleeping tonight,” Scott blurted, his eyes shining with excitement.

“If it’s okay with Aunt Miranda,” Max cautioned.

“If it’s okay with you, we’re going to sleep outside in Max’s tent in our sleeping bags.”

“Isn’t it kind of cold?” Miranda asked.

“We’ve got sleeping bags,” Brian informed her. “We won’t be cold.”

“Since I was planning to sleep out this weekend I brought my down bag and my three-man tent. I thought we’d set it up in the backyard. Of course you’re welcome to join us,” he added with a smile.