Spring River Valley: The Winter Collection (Boxed Set) (15 page)

“Thanks for this, Jared. I appreciate it.” Max said as he pressed his foot steadily to the gas to rev his engine.

“Least I could do for a guy who had the worst date of his life. Right?”

Max shook his head. “Not the worst.”

“You said she wanted you to freeze to death.”

“And I’m sure she’s still hoping I will.” Max eyed the cozy glow of the second-floor living room window and thought of the smooth swell of Audrey’s plump lower lip giving beneath his. His nerves were still on fire from that half kiss, and he wondered what would happen to him if he ever actually took that live wire in his arms and made love to her.

“Sounds like the worst date ever to me.”

Max grinned and gripped the steering wheel. “Nah. I think it’s going to turn out to be one of the best.”

“Are you sure you don’t want a ride to the ER?” Harper asked as Audrey climbed into her car the next morning.

“I’m fine. It looks worse than it is.” She set her sore foot down on the floor of the car, leaned her head back, and closed her eyes. “Besides, I have to be at work at six tonight. I’ll go in a little early and have
one of the residents take a look at it.”

“Are you going to be able to drive your car home? I can call Grant to come and help us.”

“No, he’s busy. Don’t bother him.” Audrey knew Harper’s boyfriend Grant had a big event scheduled tonight at Taverna Fiora, the catering hall he ran. He’d be busy setting up and coordinating the kitchen staff and the decorations which Harper helped design.

“It’s not a big deal.”

“I’m fine. Drive.” Audrey attempted to glower at her friend. “You worry too much.”

“Somebody has to worry about you. You go on a blind date and the next morning you can barely walk and you have a head injury.”

“My head is fine.” Aside from the monster headache, but she figured that had more to do with lack of sleep than anything else. She’d spent a good portion of the night lying awake, thinking of pithy remarks to zing Max Shannon with and watching late night TV to keep her mind off the electrifying touch of his lips.

Harper pulled her car into the light Sunday morning traffic and headed for Colette’s where they faced digging Audrey’s car free of the ten inches of snow that had fallen the night before. “All right, now that you can’t escape, give me all the details of last night. All I know is he was a nut job
, and you’re practically in traction. This has to be some story.”

Audrey contemplated her evening. She still wasn’t sure how to categorize this last dating disaster. On a scale of one to ten, did it fall above or below the guy with the pet goat? “He’s basically a wise guy, always cracking jokes. I was never sure if he was insulting me or trying to flirt.”

“Seriously? I thought Cassandra knew what she was doing. Everyone I’ve talked to since I met her says she’s phenomenal.”

“Well, she dropped the ball last night. He was a fill-in for the guy she really set me up with who got appendicitis.”

“He should have come anyway. It wouldn’t have been the first date you spent in the ER.”

“Ugh, did you have to bring that up?” Early last year, one of her dates had broken his finger trying to impress her with a handstand in the parking lot of the movie theater he’d taken her to. She’d ended up sitting with him in an overcrowded ER waiting for X-rays and a splint.

“I could have assisted in the surgery and shared his Jell-O with him in recovery. It would have been romantic.”

“So this guy was worse than
Finger Guy?”

“This guy was
your
photographer, believe it or not.”

“Max? I thought the guy Cassie fixed you up with was named John.”

“That’s Appendix Guy. Max is her cousin.”

“Yeah, I know. He’s really nice. I mean
, really nice
and good-looking.”

Audrey tried not to dwell on the good-looking part, the part where she’d almost drowned in his eyes. “Okay, he’s good-looking, but he must reserve the nice for his customers.”

Harper eyed her sidelong as they stopped for a traffic light. “You didn’t censor yourself, did you?”

“What? How is this my fault? He was constantly cracking jokes, making snide remarks. He even told me he was married. I almost choked on my omelet.”

“Is he married?”

“Then he said he wasn’t. I assume he was kidding, but who knows? He had me so confused, I didn’t know which way was up. I wasn’t sure whether to kiss him or slap him.”

Harper smirked. “You considered kissing him?”

“I did…”
Uh-oh.
She hadn’t wanted to mention that at all. The thought of it made her stomach flip around and her knees a little weak. “He kissed me.”

“Details!”

“Just a little bit. It was more like he whispered something really close to my mouth and…” God, her skin suddenly felt two sizes too small, and parts of her body tingled that she’d forgotten could tingle.

“I need to pull over. I’m burning up from curiosity.” Harper fanned her face. “What did he whisper into your mouth?”

“Not into…all right, he said I was damn near perfect.”

“Oh, God. Audrey, that’s so hot!”

“It’s not. It was a prelude to him telling me he wanted to have sex with me.”

Harper hit the brake. “Miss Desmond. I thought we had a deal that all succulent details would be shared within two hours of the end of a date unless said date resulted in a sleepover of the boy/girl persuasion.”

Audrey rubbed her aching forehead. “There were no succulent details. I kicked him out, and that was that.”

Harper stared at her. “I’m missing something here. How do you go from a guy telling you you’re perfect and wanting to sleep with you to kicking him out in a snowstorm?”

“Harper, we met at seven-thirty last night. It was like nine o’clock when I shoved him out the door. Should I really have jumped in the sack with him? Clearly, he was putting me on. He just wanted to get a reaction out of me. I don’t think he took me seriously for one second. Cassie dragged him into the date because John couldn’t make it, and he was just fooling around, killing time.” That admission stung, and despite her best efforts, Audrey’s throat tightened just a bit. She would have liked the sexy sentiment Max expressed when he’d almost kissed her to be real, but how could it have been? He was trouble, and she had to get him out of her mind because a guy like that could break hearts.

“So you don’t think he meant what he said?”

“Come on? How could he? You can’t tell someone’s perfect in ninety minutes. He was messing around because I hurt his feelings when I called him the ‘understudy.’ The guy’s a player, and he played me very well. He had me going for twenty-four glorious seconds where I thought I might just start pulling his clothes off, but then I got over it and chucked his wise ass out the door. Now I’m done. That was horrifying date number twenty, and I’m finished with men. I’m either going to join a convent or the French Foreign Legion.”

“I think the French Foreign Legion is full of men, so you might want to put that idea on the back burner.”

“Convent it is, then.”

“You’re overreacting. Have you talked to Cassandra? Maybe he told her how he really felt.”

“I’m not ready to talk to Cassie. She vouched for him. She told me he was harmless.”

“It’s usually the harmless guys you have to watch out for.”

Audrey had to agree with that. They’d reached Colette’s, and she scanned the newly plowed parking lot for her car. Instead of a white mound, she found her little Civic drying in the sun, clean as a whistle. Someone had brushed all the snow off of it, scraped the windows free of ice, and dug the drifts away from the tires.

“Hey, look at that,” Harper said. “The plow guys must have done that for you.”

Audrey gaped, astounded. “Wow. Maybe they thought the car belonged to someone who worked at Colette’s.”

“Probably. Well, that saves me having to shovel, so I’m thrilled.” Harper pulled up next Audrey’s car. “I’ll follow you home just in case your ankle gives you problems.”

Audrey opened the passenger door and stepped out of Harper’s car. “You don’t have to do that. Really. I can drive.”

“Stop being so independent. It’s okay to need help once in a while.”

“You know that’s not me. I rely on myself.”

“Well, get over that.”

Audrey waved off Harper’s concern and moved to unlock her car. She saw the white sheet of paper folded under her windshield wipers and winced. Damn, someone had either left her a ticket or a bill for the snow removal. So much for the kindness of strangers.

She grabbed the paper and opened it up, mentally calculating how much a snow-related parking ticket might cost her.

Large black letters on the page read:
You’re Welcome

“Oh. Sarcasm. Nice.”

“Did you get a ticket?” Harper yelled from her car.

“No, it’s a smart-ass note.” She flipped the paper over and found a phone number scrawled on the back and the words: “Call me. Max.” Damn. Worse than sarcasm.

Muttering under her breath, she stuffed the paper in her pocket and climbed into her car. It hurt to put pressure on the gas pedal and the brake, but not enough to stop her from making it home in one piece.

Once back in her apartment, she spread the note out on the kitchen table and stared at it. Part of her wanted to set fire to it and watch it burn up in her kitchen sink. Another part of her wanted to jump on her phone and call him, just to hear his voice.

Choices. Choices. After twenty minutes of ranting to herself about what a fool she’d be to let Max Shannon get the best of her, she decided the best course of action was none at all. She crumpled up the paper and tossed it in the trash.

* * * *

“So she really hasn’t called you yet?” Max sipped his coffee and eyed his cousin who sat across from him idly stirring her tea. The diner was fairly empty this morning, probably due to people still shoveling out their cars after last night’s snowstorm.

“No. I’ve left her a couple of messages, and she hasn’t called me back. I don’t think she’ll ever forgive me.” Cassie looked glum. Something told Max his normally bubbly cousin had more on her mind than his date with Audrey, but he didn’t want to pry.

“What’s to forgive? I swear I was a gentleman.”

“I didn’t get that impression when she called me last night. If you really weren’t into a blind date, why didn’t you just tell me, instead of giving the poor girl a hard time?”

Max spread his hands in supplication. “What hard time? I found her in a sea of people milling around in the parking lot at Colette’s—you told me she was wearing a red coat, which I could barely see through all the smoke, so I figure I did pretty well. I offered her a ride, which she initially refused because she apparently thought I was some kind pervert. Then I got her medical attention when she fell and cracked her head on the road. Then I drove her home because the paramedic told her not to put pressure on her sprained ankle. Then, after my car broke down, I cooked her one of my famous omelets, and I complimented her. For that I got thrown out. What did I do so wrong?” Max had to fight to keep the smile out of his voice. Every time he thought of Audrey, he grinned, and he wasn’t quite sure why. The girl had lived up to the EMTs description of her in every way. She was prickly and stoic and a general high-maintenance pain in the butt, but he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind. When he found himself trudging through Colette’s parking lot this morning to clean the snow off her abandoned car, he decided he must have been the one who’d hit his head and he just didn’t remember it.

On his way to the diner to meet Cassie for breakfast, he’d resisted the urge to pass the pub and see if she’d reclaimed her car and his note. Why was he so anxious to hear from her? Clearly she didn’t like him, so he should just forget her and get on with his life.

“Well, you must have done something. I’ve never had anyone, especially a woman, not call me immediately after a date I set up. You must have really insulted her.”

“I would pay someone to tell me how.”

“You can be a bit abrasive, you know. And you have a penchant for zeroing in on people’s faults and telling them about them. Did you do that?”

“No, I swear.” Well, maybe he’d let her know she was too picky, too anxious, and a tad desperate when it came to shopping for a man, but he’d only done that because something instinctive told him
Appendix Guy would not have been right for her.

“I’m going to wait until noon and call her to apologize,” Cassie said. She pushed scrambled eggs around on her plate unenthusiastically.

“Why not call her now?”

“With you here? No, that would be bad, especially if she’s mad at you.”

“I promise I won’t say a word.” He would have duct-taped his mouth shut if it meant finding out what Audrey really thought of him. He had to shake this sudden obsession. Maybe it was just the fact that she hadn’t been bowled over by his charm that bothered him. He’d been told he had a knack for putting people at ease and making them laugh, a good skill for a photographer who needed people to smile all the time. The idea that he hadn’t been able to put uptight Audrey at ease and make her smile irked him. Yep, that was it.