Dead to the Max (26 page)

Maybe Max only felt what Wendy wanted her to feel.

“She was so different from my wife, so undemanding. I felt...peaceful around her.”

God. Wendy the chameleon. She’d known exactly what Nick had wanted. Who had fallen into whose trap?

“But not that day,” Nick said. He moved to sit two steps below her. Max felt his heat. “She was crying. I think I would have done anything right then to make her stop. And just like that,” he snapped his fingers, “I was hooked. She needed me.”

He shrugged his shoulders. It had been that simple, that important, that transparent.

She hated him for falling so easily. Hated Wendy for being so weak.

Mostly she hated herself for driving Cameron away.

Nick was the closest person to take it out on.

“So, when did you start fucking her?”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Max thought he’d get pissed. Instead, Nick leaned his head back against the wall and gaped up at her with those pale blue eyes, a mixture of guilt and pain swirling in their depths.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I could smell her as soon as I walked in the door, she wore this perfume. It just seemed to lead me to her no matter where she was. And she had the sexiest laugh, the sexiest voice, especially on the phone.”

“You called her at home?” Damn, he was an idiot.

“Just interoffice. If she needed something in the back, she’d call. And I’d say something so she’d laugh for me.”

Max smiled slightly. “God, you were sickening.”

“That was only the beginning. I told her things about my life. She told me things about hers, about her husband, their sex life. Why she married him.”

“And why did she?” Max curled her arms around her knees, leaned closer to him, avid for the information, the confirmation.

“Her father. The law firm. He made Hal a partner when he married Wendy. The guy was secure, dependable.”

“Dictatorial.”

“Wendy didn’t mind. It kept her from drifting off course.” Yet another point of view. Maybe they all had some validity where Wendy was concerned.

“Her father’s course?” She tasted something sour just thinking about the man.

“Yes, Hal’s and her father’s.”

“But she drifted with you.”

“She drifted because of Remy. In ways, he was worse than Hal, always pushing, always finding fault. I listened to her, tried to tell her she wasn’t to blame. Remy was born a dickhead.”

Yes. Hadn’t she used the same expression herself. “Did she believe you?”

He gave a snort of laughter. “Her father and Hal did way too good a job on her.” He paused, scraped at his chin with blunt fingers. “I helped for a very short period of time.”

“Maybe you helped her finally find the courage to leave Hal.”

“All I did was get her killed. If we hadn’t...if I had...”

The debate wasn’t worth it. Hairshirts weren’t removed as easily as they were donned. “So neither Hal nor her father listened to how bad it was with Remy?”

“If they’d said she could quit, she would have. As it was, they both told her she needed to buck up.”

Max laughed, shook her head. “Jesus, I can hear Bud saying it. Buck up, girl.” She did a fine imitation. “She could have quit without their approval.”

He looked at her oddly. “Sometimes you seem to know her like a sister, and other times, you’re so off, it isn’t even funny.”

“You’re right. Wendy wouldn’t have quit with them against her.” She rested her chin on her hand. “What did you tell her in return for all her confessions?”

“I told her about my wife, that I loved her no matter what she’d done, that she never let me prove it, that she didn’t need what I could give. That all I’d wanted was to help her.”

Max wondered if that was the very thing Cameron had needed from her. The very thing she couldn’t seem to give. Unconditional acceptance of his help.

“You gave and you gave,” she whispered, knowing she’d never really learned the things Cameron had tried to teach. Not even how to make love.

Nick cocked his head, regarded her with unfathomable eyes. “That’s what Wendy said.”

She closed her eyes, savoring a vestige of Cameron’s voice inside her, then erasing it. “What else did Wendy tell you?”

Nick didn’t answer directly. “I’d dream about her at night. Then one day she came back to the warehouse. A problem shipment...something, hell, I can’t remember what. I just remember the guys were out to lunch. The place was deserted. Empty except for Wendy and me.”

He swallowed. Max figured he’d forgotten she was even there. Her throat tightened. Her pulse rate rose a notch. She felt like a voyeur, and yet she didn’t make a sound to stop him. Wendy wanted to hear. Badly.

“I told her I’d daydream on the drive home. About her. And she asked me what I’d been thinking. She didn’t look at me, but I had her crowded up against the worktable. I could hear her breath, it was fast, and her skin was flushed.”

He looked up then. He hadn’t forgotten Max, after all. Her breath came harsh, too, her skin felt like he’d scorched her with a blow torch, and the neckline of her robe had fallen open. A cool draft of air fingered across her breasts. She couldn’t move.

“I told her I’d been dreaming about going down on her.”

Ripples of desire and alarm ran across her breasts. She should have been horrified. She wasn’t. Neither was Wendy. The woman needed to hear it all again, and she dragged Max along for the ride.

“I shouldn’t have said anything. We could have gone on with longing looks and sexual innuendo. Everything would have been fine. But I asked her to meet me early the next morning.”

“At five,” Max whispered.

“No one else got to Hackett’s until six.”

“And her husband didn’t even wonder.”

“Hal wouldn’t have figured out a thing, because he thought he’d wound Wendy around his finger so tightly she couldn’t wriggle loose.”

“What about your wife?”

“She thought I was doing overtime.” He gave a quick, derisive laugh. He put a boot up one step, draped his arm over his knee, stared at her. “I went down on Wendy on a swivel chair in the warehouse. She was real quiet when she came, and then I made her stand up and took her against the table. I would have made her come again if I could, but she thought she heard a noise up front.”

Max leaned forward against her thighs, her head almost on her knees. “Why are you telling me this? You want to see some reaction? It’s some sort of test?”

The rain had dried in his hair, on his face, and his shirt no longer stuck to his chest. He was close enough to raise one hand from his knee and stroke her shin with the back of a finger, his flesh cold from the rain. Hers was hot. Fire shot up her leg.

She wanted to think of Witt touching her, even of Cameron taking her in the dark with her fingers wrapped tightly around the headboard as he pressed tightly behind her. But Wendy controlled her now, and Wendy wanted only the things Nick could give them.

“Maybe I just want to talk to you about it,” he whispered. “Let me tell you, Max. It’s all I have left to give Wendy.”

“To immortalize her with tales of your sexual prowess? How macho,” she muttered sarcastically, but God help her, she had to hear more. She was no longer capable of distinguishing between her own feelings and Wendy’s. Nick simply turned her bones to jelly, made her fantasize about his tongue between her thighs.

Slut. Whore. Tramp. Call it whatever you like. That’s what she was.

“That was the only orgasm I ever gave her during those early morning sessions.”

“So much for sexual prowess.”

He laughed softly at himself. “She cried after I did it. At the time, I thought it was because she’d never...”

“Committed adultery?”

“Yes.”

“Had you?”

“No.” Then he waved away the admission. “Later I realized she always heard a noise, pulled away. She’d get me off, and then...she found a way to stop the rest. I thought it was guilt.”

Max realized it was the thing that had bothered him the most about the affair. Wendy simply wouldn’t let him take care of her sexual needs. “Maybe it was her power.”

He considered that a moment. “Meaning that when she took me in her mouth, she had all the power?”

“When you came, that was all she needed.”

In a far corner of her mind, she saw the strangeness of the conversation, but all she felt was the intense intimacy of it, his hand on her leg, stroking, making her hot and wet.

She went into attack mode hoping to short circuit her body. “Neither of you cared about the risks as long as
your
needs were met.”

His jaw tightened. “You should know about risks. They’re worth it when you want something badly enough.”

“Score one for you, Nickie. Except for your wife and Wendy’s husband, of course, everyone knew what was going on.”

He shrugged, unconcerned. “A small shop, no one cares about affairs. But I never touched her if someone could walk in on us.”

“Never?” Max held her breath. Wendy wanted to know his answer.

He regarded her a moment, then let a slow smile creep across his lips. “I won’t ask again who you are. I won’t even ask why Wendy never told me about you. And yes, there was once. It was after that first time. She was in her office, alone, with a...look on her face.”

“You wanted to hold her.”

“I needed to hold to her, to let her know it would be okay. But I didn’t.”

Max closed her eyes. “What did you do?”

“I kissed her. On the lips. It was quick.”

Just a flash of his lips across hers, but Wendy had obsessed over the feel of that kiss. It had said so much, that he understood her pain, her fear, that he cared. It had never been a part of the sexual stuff. It had been natural. Special.

Max let out the breath she’d been holding and changed the subject, tried to barricade herself against the intensity of Wendy’s emotions. “What about the night she died?”

His eyes went distant a moment. “There was something different. She was aggressive, in control. Maybe it was leaving Hal. I don’t know. She wasn’t like the Wendy I knew. I touched her first, but she was the one who climbed on top of me, took me inside her.”

Max listened, her thoughts polarized on the dream images suddenly fresh in her mind, her body tensed to receive him. God, she was so wet and he was so hard and... “She climaxed.”

“Scared the shit out of me. She said she loved me. That she’d left Hal.”

Her lip curled almost involuntarily. “That’s when you failed her.”

“I failed her the first time I told her I wanted her. I was married. I couldn’t promise anything except...”

“Except what, Nick? Furtive sex on the warehouse worktable?”

He stared at her, his fingers wedged in the crease of her knee. He’d laid his affair out for her, dissected his feelings, affirmed his guilt, and allowed her accusations without lashing out. The intimacy of his voice, his touch, and his admissions stole her breath. She was naked beneath the robe except for a minuscule pair of thong panties. If she spread her legs, he would know exactly what she asked for. What Wendy asked for.

She gulped, sought distraction. “Why did Remy fire you?”

“He didn’t. Don’t ask me why. I never did figure that out.”

Maybe it was like Carla said. Remy knew what was going on, and he liked to watch. “So you quit?”

He shrugged. “Three months ago. One last ditch effort at my marriage.”

“Obviously it didn’t work.”

He laughed softly, sadly. “No.”

“Because you kept seeing Wendy?”

With a shrug, he said, “She’d call. Sometimes, I just...” He clenched a fist. “I needed something.”

Living with a dead husband, Max understood that only too well.

Nick raised his eyes to her lips, stared. He needed that indefinable something right now. From her.

“I want you,” he murmured.

As if he could read her thoughts. So like Cameron and yet so different. At least she could hide from Nickie when she needed to.

She took her lip between her teeth, not because she was afraid, but because she knew it would draw his attention, make him think of what her mouth could do. “This is sort of like asking Wendy to meet you early that first day.”

“It’s very different. I’m divorced. You’re widowed.”

She winced inwardly at the term. She’d never thought of herself as widowed. Until tonight. When Cameron left. Her fingers clenched in the folds of her robe. Nick Drake thought he could soothe that pain. He had no idea what he was up against.

“Your divorce isn’t final. You have to
sign
the papers, you know, before it’s legal.”

“That’s just a technicality. Does that matter?”

“I suppose not. Do you have dreams of going down on me?”

His eyes glittered. His fingers tested her flesh on the underside of her thigh. “Yes.”

“Making love to a ghost, Nickie?” Not that Max minded ghosts. She’d had two years of furtive wet dreams with her own ghostly husband.

Oh God, Cameron. Cameron who was gone. Forever and ever. She wanted to scream in agony, in need.

Cameron had left her to this. Deserted her. She looked at Nick, and with Wendy egging her on, she took the plunge. “I’m not like Wendy. I don’t need someone to take care of me. I like orgasms. And I don’t cry.”

“You were crying when I got here.”

The man could scent a needy woman on the wind, but she sure as hell didn’t need to confirm it. “You don’t know what you were looking at. And don’t expect to see it again.”

He came up on his knees one step below her, put his hands on her calves, slid them up to the backs of her knees. “I’ve seen you at the Round Up. You don’t need that. Let me help—”

“Don’t help me. Just fuck me.”

She grabbed him then, put her hands on his face, pulled him in.

He tugged the tie to her robe, untangled it until her lapels fell open. She watched his gaze track the lines of her breasts. Her knees parted. His hands slipped along her thighs beneath the terry robe, and he pushed his body between her legs.

His jeans were rough against her skin. She pulsed in secret places only Cameron’d had access to, despite the number of men she’d been to bed with since.