Authors: Bonnie Pega
Caitlin laughingly admonished him, “Jordan, you scamp, get off him right this minute. It’s rude to go around squashing people.”
“Can I really squash people, Mom?” Jordan asked as Max carefully sat up, brushing his shirt-sleeves clean.
“You sure can. You’re quite a big boy now.”
“Can I squash you, Mom?”
“Certainly—ooph!” Caitlin gasped as Jordan’s arms wrapped around her and gave her a mighty squeeze. She went limp.
Max scrambled to his feet in alarm, then relaxed as Caitlin opened one eye and gave him a conspiratorial wink.
Jordan giggled. “Look, Max, I squashed her to sleep.”
“So you did,” Max said, settling back down on the grass. “Do you know how to wake her up?”
“Sure I do. She’s real ticklish.”
“She is, is she? Interesting thought,” Max said suggestively, though he gave an innocent smile when Caitlin’s eyes flew open.
“Hey, Mom! You’re supposed to be asleep,” Jordan complained.
“Oh, sorry.” Caitlin closed her eyes again, but not before giving Max a warning look. She’d heard that satisfied purr in his voice.
“Patrick’s here,” Jordan suddenly shouted as a car horn beeped. “We’re going to the park to ride the paddle boats,” he said to Max. “Bye, Mom.” He took off, running.
Caitlin levered herself up on her elbows and watched Jordan to make sure he got off all right. She turned back around to find Max watching her.
“Ticklish, huh?” he said.
“Not at all,” she told him with a vigorous shake of her head. “Jordan was just saying that.”
With a gleam in his eye Max said, “So you’re saying that Jordan fibbed.”
“Of course not!” Caitlin protested indignantly.
“I didn’t think so.” He stretched out his hands toward her ribs.
“Don’t you dare!” she squealed. “Or I’ll retaliate.”
“That may well be the high point of my whole week,” Max murmured and tickled her, grinning at her laughter.
“Vengeance is mine!” she declared with glee, and made a jab or two at Max’s ribs, gratified to hear a chortle burst from his lips. Caitlin leaned forward to try again, and lost her balance, falling fully against him. The laughter died on her lips when she looked down, her face only inches from his.
Max reached up one hand and cradled her face tenderly in his palm. “I love hearing you laugh,
Caitlin,” he whispered. “You have no idea how much.”
Caitlin held her breath, waiting for the ugly panic to strike, only it didn’t. Not even when Max’s thumb ran across her bottom lip. Not even when Max urged her head down to his and brushed his lips across hers.
Not even when he slipped his tongue between her suddenly parted lips and ran the tip lightly over her teeth. And not even when his hand stroked lightly over the front of her T-shirt, causing her nipple to tighten and throb at his touch.
All too aware of the tenuousness of her compliance, Max pressed one more feather-light kiss on her lips, then drew back, searching her face. Instead of the dread he had feared to see on her face, he saw only bewilderment.
Although Caitlin felt a lot of emotions at the moment, not one of them was fear. Slowly she sat up, her eyes never leaving him. “I, ah, think I’ll go fix us both a cold drink. Would you rather have herb tea, regular tea, or club soda?”
“Regular tea,” Max said. “Hold the lemon.” He smiled as he got to his feet, then followed her into the house. He was not at all upset with the way things had gone. Not at all.
While Caitlin prepared their drinks, Max sat at the kitchen table—after removing a large stack of newspapers from the chair. He pushed aside puzzle pieces and G.I. Joe men from the table to clear a place for the glasses. When he saw breakfast and lunch dishes piled in the sink and another large stack of newspapers on the floor next to the stove, he sighed.
“Thanks,” he said when she set his tea in front of him.
“No lemon.” She smiled.
“Great. Could I ask you a silly question?” he ventured as he spied yet another stack of newspapers—this one about three feet tall—in the hallway.
“Sure.”
“What’s with all the newspapers?”
“Oh,” she answered breezily, “I just cleaned them out of the bedroom. I got tired of climbing over them to get to my bed.”
“Did the thought ever occur to you that you might throw them away?”
She looked horrified. “Whatever for? I’ve spent months collecting these.”
“Why? Is some organization having a paper drive?”
“Well, no, but someone might, and then I’d be ready for them. It’s recycling, you know.”
“You mean you’re collecting these just
in case
?” Max asked, incredulous.
Caitlin sat up a little straighter and stuck out her chin. “You have something against recycling?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all,” he hastened to assure her. “It’s just that it might make things, well, a little less cluttered if you put them, say, outside in the garage.”
Caitlin stiffened slightly. Cluttered, huh? “I can’t do that,” she said a tad too sweetly. “That’s where I keep my aluminum cans.”
“Perhaps if you—”
Caitlin stood abruptly, almost knocking over her chair. “If you don’t like my housekeeping methods, Mr. Shore, feel free to leave. I may be too messy for your impeccable taste, but I don’t think I’m in danger of being closed down by the Board of
Health. At least not yet.” Head high, back stiff, she marched into the living room.
Max hurriedly got to his feet and followed her, tripping over yet another stack of papers. He put out his hands to brace himself as he fell, catching the edge of a small parson’s table covered with a collection of plants in little ceramic pots. The table teetered, and the plants slid off directly onto Max’s path.
A horrified no barely escaped Caitlin’s lips before Max landed, hands first, on the ceramic shards.
She stumbled across the room and knelt beside him as he sat up. “Heavens, Max, are you all right?”
“I’m just fine,” he said dryly, glancing down at his hands. “If you don’t mind blood.”
“Goodness! You’d better come into the bathroom so we can get you cleaned up and find out what that cut really looks like.” Her heart sank as she said it. There seemed to be a lot of blood.
To her relief, most of the cuts were superficial—treatable with antiseptic cream and bandages. But one deep gash on his left palm continued to ooze blood ten minutes later. Worried, Caitlin insisted on driving Max to the hospital to have it stitched.
She waited anxiously in the emergency room. Finally, the same nurse who had taken him into the treatment room came out. Caitlin stood. “Is he ready to go now?”
“It’s going to take a bit longer than we expected,” the nurse explained. “He fainted.”
Caitlin gasped. “From loss of blood?” She didn’t think he’d bled that much.
“Not exactly,” the nurse hedged. “Look, he
might not like it that I told you this, but when the doctor took out the hypodermic to give him his tetanus shot, Mr. Shore took one look at it and keeled over.”
Caitlin bit back a smile. The image of the ever-so-self-assured Maximillian Shore fainting at the sight of a needle infused her with amusement, and with a sudden tenderness as well.
“You can go on back and see him if you like,” the nurse offered. “Examining room three.”
“No,” Caitlin murmured. “Thanks anyway. He might not want me to know he fainted. I’ll just wait here.” She sat down, still smiling, and picked up a magazine.
It was another half hour before Max finally came out, his hand bandaged in white gauze. “Hi,” he said, wagging his fingers at her.
“Hi, yourself.” Caitlin set the magazine down on the table and stood. “Gee,” she exclaimed innocently, “how many stitches did you have to get? Must have been a lot, hmm? You sure were in there a long time.”
Max ran a finger around his collar and winced. “Um, a few,” he finally said noncommittally.
Caitlin looked at him, wide-eyed.
“You know,” he accused her.
“Know what?” she said, then smiled. “C’mon, tough guy.” She grabbed her purse, hooked her arm through his, and walked out to the parking lot. “Why don’t we go back by my house and I’ll fix you supper before I take you home?”
“You don’t have to take me home. I can drive.”
“Not with that hand, you can’t,” she said firmly.
Max didn’t say anything for a moment, but his mind was racing ahead. As much as he hated being without his car, he could use this situation
to get Caitlin to spend a little more time with him. He just wouldn’t mention that his sister lived three blocks away from his house. “Well,” he finally said, “maybe you’re right. But how am I going to get to work in the morning?” He waited expectantly for her answer.
“I guess I can come by and pick you up on my way to the greenhouse in the morning. I don’t open the doors there until nine anyway. You probably get to work earlier than that, don’t you?”
“I’m usually there by eight or eight-thirty.”
“Well, you see? It’ll work out perfectly.”
Perfectly, Max thought. He’d gotten her to offer to take him to work. Now, if he could just get her to take him home too. “I really hate to ask you this, but could you pick me up from work? I’ll have to get my car from you.”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that.” Caitlin paused, her mind racing through the list of errands she’d planned on taking care of the following evening. “I guess I could. What time do you usually leave?”
“Five-thirty or six. I’m the boss.” He grinned. “I can leave anytime I want to, so if that’s not convenient—”
“Oh, it’s fine.” Caitlin gave a mental shrug. “I usually close up the greenhouse around five, so that will give me time to pick up Jordie from the sitter.”
The drive to Caitlin’s house was quiet with both Caitlin and Max immersed in their own thoughts. Caitlin wondered how she could arrange her day so that she could pick Max up at five-thirty and still have time to drop next month’s flyer by the printers, pick up her order at the department store, drop off an overdue library book, and do the grocery shopping.
Max, on the other hand, toyed with several ways to get Caitlin to agree to dinner on Monday night. He’d gotten her to say she’d take him to work and even to pick him up. It should be simple enough, he decided, to get her to go out to dinner, if he handled it tactfully enough.
Back at home, Caitlin was brisk and efficient as she threw together a light supper. She set filled plates on the table and Max stared at his, trying to identify the strange lumps in the white sauce over green noodles.
Obviously he had a question mark in his eyes when he glanced up at Caitlin, because she casually said, “Creamed tofu on spinach noodles. It’s my own recipe. Fresh garlic for flavor, roasted sunflower seeds for crunch. Jordie calls it Tofu Surprise because sometimes I add onion or mushrooms or sprouts. It’s very flexible.”
“Right.” Max frowned, then decided to try it. After all, it couldn’t be as bad as the Unidentified Fried Object he’d had last week. Then again, it could be worse since it had tofu. He always walked past the soy bean curd stuff at the supermarket. It sounded disgusting. Let’s hope it doesn’t taste as bad, he thought as he bravely lifted his fork.
Surprise. It didn’t taste disgusting. But it didn’t taste great either. As a matter of fact, Max found it almost completely tasteless except for the garlic. He muffled a sigh and took another bite. The things he would do just to have a few more minutes with her. He fortified himself with the knowledge that he could always call Piggy’s Pizza when he got home. They delivered.
Halfway through the meal Jordan came bounding in, full of his customary endless energy. As he talked nonstop about his day, Caitlin shook her
head a little and smiled. Oh, to be so young and so full of verve. Sometimes she felt tired just watching him. “Hey, fella,” she broke in with a smile. “It might do you some good to slow down enough to take a breath, don’t you think?”
“Aw, Mom.” Jordan didn’t even miss a beat. “Anyway, Max, what we did was so neat. We took the wheels off his skateboard and fastened them on this board. And then we took a coffee can and—I know. C’mon, Max, I’ll show ya. I got pencils and paper and stuff in my room.” With that Jordie took Max by the hand and tugged him upstairs.
“Hey, Max,” Caitlin called after them. “Do you want me to save the rest of your supper?”
Save it? he thought. Heaven help him! “Ah, no,” he replied. “Thanks anyway, but I’m full.”
“But you hardly ate half. Jordie, let Mr. Shore finish his dinner first, okay?”
“That’s not necessary,” Max said quickly. “I’d really like to see what Jordan spent his day building.”
“Well, if you’re sure …”
“Oh, I’m sure.”
I’m sure my taste buds will never be the same, that’s what I’m sure of
, he thought.
“I’ll wrap the rest of this and you can take it home.”
“Gee, thanks,” he said. Maybe Cholly, his golden Lab, would eat it.
“Don’t worry, Max,” Jordan said in a conspiratorial whisper as he stopped on the stairs. “Mom doesn’t always put tofu in everything.”
“That’s good to know.”
“And it’s really okay sometimes. Specially when she squishes it up with honey and cinnamon and puts it on toast. What’d you do to your hand? Did
you have to have stitches? I did once. Three stitches in my knee and …” Jordan continued to chatter on as they made their way to his room.
Caitlin smiled to herself as she scraped Max’s leftovers into a small container. She didn’t expect him to eat it, it would probably find its way into the trash. But it would be fun watching him pretend to be delighted when she handed him the container to take home.
Caitlin stacked the dirty dishes in the sink, then decided to take advantage of the few minutes of quiet to practice her breathing exercises again, along with what Dr. Atlee called creative visualization. Caitlin settled back in a chair and closed her eyes, taking deep breaths. But after a few minutes she opened her eyes and changed positions. There, that was better. She closed her eyes and started all over again.
“Well, shoot,” she murmured, and squirmed around in the chair. It wasn’t working as it was supposed to. She was supposed to be visualizing herself living a completely normal and happy life. What she saw, however, was herself living a completely normal and happy life with Max. “Okay,” Caitlin said to herself. “Let’s try this one more time.”