The Cottage on the Corner (13 page)

“These look good,” Max said as he peered into a box of scones. “They smell good, too.”

“Is that a hint?” she joked, trying to keep the conversation light and easy and free from any of the tension that had been between them the night before.

It had been late. They'd both been tired. The room had been romantic and sweet. She'd come up with plenty of reasons for that momentary lapse of judgment, but she hadn't been able to forget it no matter how much she tried. And God knew she
had
tried.

“I'm not much for hinting. When I want something, I make it known.” His gaze dropped to her lips, and she could swear she felt his kiss again.

She looked away, cleared her throat. “Good to know.”

“So since I'm not much for hinting, I'm going to make it very clear that I would love to have a scone. Zuzu kept me busy this morning, and I haven't had time to eat.”

“What kind do you want?”

“What kind do you have?” He leaned over the box, his hand flat on the table, all tan and large and masculine. Just thinking about the way that hand felt against her skin made her muscles weak with longing.

She sighed inwardly because there was no way she was going to sigh out loud.

The fact was, Max was a very attractive man, and she was a woman who'd spent too many hours working lately and not enough hours pursuing friendships and fun. She needed to loosen up a little, let her schedule go once in a while. That way her head wouldn't be turned by handsome faces and big muscles.

A
handsome face.

Max's handsome face.

“Should I just guess at what kind of scones they are?” he pressed.

What kind of scones had she brought?

That should be easy enough to answer. She'd been up since five baking them.

“Pumpkin?” Maybe. “Lemon.”

“Ida said you were making blueberry.” He helped her along, and she nodded.

“Right. Blueberry.”

“I'll take one of those. If you don't mind.”

She didn't mind.

But she'd have to figure out which scone was blueberry before she handed it to him. Usually that wasn't a problem. She knew her scones. She'd made hundreds of them.

For some reason her brain didn't want to work, her thoughts muddled and scattered. Not because of Max. That was for sure. She'd blame it on a sleepless night, the old creaking house, and the attic above her bed.

She looked into the box, grabbed the scone most likely to be blueberry, and handed it to Max. “Sorry I don't have napkins. Ida is providing them.”

“Bet they're going to be cloth and as fancy as those silver plates.” He bit into the scone and closed his eyes. “God, this is good, Charlotte.”

“Thanks.” She busied herself placing scones on silver trays she found in the hutch, because watching Max enjoy his scone felt a little too intimate.

Strange, because she watched people eat her baked goods all the time. Old, young, in between—she'd fed just about everyone in Apple Valley, and she'd never felt the need to turn away when someone was enjoying one of her products.

Until now.

She covered the trays with plastic wrap she'd brought from home. There wasn't anything else to do. Ida was easy that way. She provided napkins, centerpieces, plates. She'd probably have provided her own scones if she hadn't wanted to support Charlotte's business.

She was that kind of mayor. When someone started a business, Ida did everything she could to make sure that it was successful.

“Finished?” Max asked as she grabbed the empty boxes.

“Yes. I've got to head out to my next delivery.”

“Who's on your schedule?” He took the boxes.

“I can get that myself, Max.”

“I know, but why should you?”

“Because . . .” She couldn't think of a reasonable answer. At least not one that didn't include mention of Brett.

He waited a few seconds, eyeing her dispassionately. “Can't think of a reason, can you?”

“I can.”

“But?”

“It's not one I want to share.”

“You know what the problem is with telling me something like that?” he asked as he led the way out of the dining room and shouldered open the front door.

“What?”

“It makes me want to know exactly what it is you don't want to share.”

“Nothing exciting,” she murmured, hoping that he'd drop the subject.

She should have known that he wouldn't.

Max had a reputation for being doggedly determined when it came to getting what he wanted. That worked out well when it came to his job. She wasn't sure how it was going to work out if he decided he wanted to know about her past. He had the means and the know-how to find out anything he wanted to.

“Nothing exciting, huh?” He walked to the car and slid the boxes into the back of the station wagon. Bright winter sunlight gleamed in his hair, turning dark blond to burnished gold. He had a clean-cut and polished look that should have been preppy and a little bland, but it came off as sexy and terribly appealing instead.

She really had to stop noticing.

If she couldn't manage that, she had to stop spending time around him.

How hard could avoiding him be?

All she had to do was make sure she didn't hang around Ida's place, Main Street, Riley Park. She should probably avoid the grocery store, too. She'd run into him there a time or two. Basically, as long as she stayed home, she'd be just fine.

He closed the back hatch of the station wagon and turned to face her, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes midnight blue. “Is that another way of telling me to mind my own business?”

“Yes.”

“And you actually think I'm going to?”

“Why wouldn't you?” She slid behind the driver's seat, determined to end the conversation.

“Because I'm a police officer. It's my job to be curious, to dig for answers, to figure out what people are doing, why they're doing it, and what kind of trouble it might cause.”

“If I were a criminal that would make sense.” She shoved the keys into the ignition and the engine roared to life. “But I'm not. I've been in town for a while, and I haven't caused any trouble.”

“Except for the frenzy over your dark chocolate cupcakes,” he said with a grin. “I haven't tasted them yet, but I heard they were great.”

“I'm surprised that one of your girlfriends didn't try to ply you with one.”

“Actually, a lady I dated did try to feed me one a few months ago. I'd already eaten, though, so I didn't take it.”

“That must have been before I stopped baking them.”

“Why'd you stop? From the way women were talking, you could have made a fortune off those things.” His eyes sparkled with amusement, and Charlotte wanted to be amused too. She wanted to grin and act like her double chocolate delights were a big joke.

But she just didn't have it in her. Not so close to the twenty-seventh, and not after a very long day and night.

“I don't believe in making money off of other people's foolishness,” she replied.

“Foolishness? Is that what you think it is?”

“Of course. There's no magic formula for love, and there's no secret ingredient that can make it last.” She smoothed her still-damp hair, irritated that her hand was trembling. She hated talking about this kind of stuff. She always ended up sounding jaded and bitter.

“There's a formula, alright,” he argued. “And several ingredients.”

“Like what?”

“Commitment plus friendship plus shared interests. Toss in some passion and admiration and you've got yourself a winning recipe for success in love.”

“If it were that easy, everyone would have it.”

“It isn't easy, but it
is
simple. My grandparents were married for nearly seventy years. Ida was married for sixty. It's our generation that has problems. Most people are just too selfish and self-absorbed to offer the first two things for more than a couple years.”

“I probably shouldn't point out that you're single, Max.”

“And yet you did,” he responded.

She laughed, some of her tension easing away. “You're right. Sorry.”

“Hey, it's the truth. I'm just as selfish and self-absorbed as the next person.” He leaned down so they were face-to-face and smiled. “Of course, you're single, too.”

“I'm too busy for the kind of commitment you're talking about.” Too old. Too scarred. Too . . . everything that mattered when it came to love.

“Are you too busy for dinner with a friend Friday night?”

“I always make time for my friends,” she assured him, because she didn't want to him to think that she was completely pitiful.

“Good. I'll pick you up at six.”

She shoved her hand against the door as he tried to close it. “What are you talking about?”

“For dinner.”

“I can't go to dinner with you!”

“Why not?”

“I don't date.”

“It's not a date.”

“Then what is it?”

“Just dinner between friends. My thank-you for helping out with Zuzu.”

“I don't think—”

“You know what?” He made a show of glancing at his watch. “I'm going to be late if I don't get out of here. See you Friday.”

“I'm not having dinner with you Friday!” she shouted, but he was already getting in his car and pulling out of the driveway.

He was going to show up at her place Friday.

She was sure of it.

She didn't have to be there.

She could be out with other friends or off at the movies. There had to be something playing at the old movie theater in town.

The thing was, she hadn't been out to dinner with friends in a while. She'd been too busy trying to make and save money for her storefront. That probably explained the mood she'd been in lately.

Dinner out would be good for her.

Plus spending a little time really getting to know Max was exactly what she needed to get him out of her head.

She nodded to herself, because there was no one else around, and headed to the next delivery.

Morgan finally called at five-thirty in the morning, three days after she'd left. Max was dead asleep when the phone rang, but he still recognized her number when he opened his eyes and saw it. He'd memorized it around the twelfth time he'd dialed it. In the fifty or so times he'd called since then, he hadn't even had to look at the business card.

He snatched his cell phone from the nightstand and pressed it to his ear.

“It's about damn time,” he growled.

“I called as soon as I could,” Morgan responded.

“You've got a kid, Morgan. As soon as you could isn't good enough.” He grabbed his jeans from the chair beside the bed and tugged them on. Just in case Zuzu heard him talking and decided to come for a visit.

“How dare you judge me!” Morgan went on the defensive immediately.

“How dare
you
not care enough to call your kid. She's been asking for you every night. She left messages on your voicemail at least five times.”

“I didn't get them until today. My car broke down, and I had to stay in some Podunk little town while it was being fixed.”

“What does that have to do with you calling Zuzu?”

“Just everything,” she said with sigh. She'd decided to change strategies. He'd forgotten how good she was at that. “My cell phone battery died, and I didn't have my charger. It's probably in Zuzu's suitcase.”

“It's not, and I'm pretty sure you know it.”

“Then I left it at home,” she continued as if he hadn't just accused her of lying. She must want something. “And the tiny little town I've been stuck in didn't have one in any of the stores.”

“You could have called from the hotel.”

“Hotel? Do you really think I have that kind of money? I barely had enough to pay for my car to be fixed. I haven't eaten in two days, because I don't have cash to pay for food. Things are tough, Max. Tougher than they've ever been. Some old lady put me up in her trailer home for the night so I wouldn't have to sleep on the street.”

“Uh-huh.” It probably made him a bad person that he thought she was telling him her story from a fancy Las Vegas hotel with a tray of hot food beside her. “Give me a second to wake Zuzu, and then you can tell her all about it.”

“Don't wake her. She needs her sleep.”

“She needs to talk to you, too.”

“I'll call again at a more reasonable time. It's just that once I got my cell phone charged, I wasn't thinking about the time. I just wanted to check in with you.”

“I thought you said you didn't have a charger.”

“I don't. Some guy from the garage that's fixing my car loaned me his. I'll probably run out of battery soon.”

“Then I'd better hurry and get Zuzu so you can talk to her before it does.”

“Max, I don't want you to do that. She gets grumpy when she's overtired.”

“She hasn't been grumpy for me.” She'd been ornery, but that was a different thing altogether.

“Because you're perfect. Because you've become a better parent in three days than I've learned to be in nearly four years,” she snapped.

“Sarcasm suits you, Morgan.”

“Ass.”

“I've been called worse.” He walked into the guest room, determined to wake Zuzu. He'd probably regret it in about ten minutes when she refused to go back to sleep, but he didn't want her to miss out on a phone call from her mother.

Morgan sighed again. “I'm sorry, Max. It's just been a long trip. My interview is tomorrow morning, and I have to be there for it. I really need this job. Without it, I don't know how I'm going to keep feeding Zuzu.”

You're not feeding her.
I
am,
he almost said, but he wanted to hear where she was headed, figure out exactly what she wanted. It certainly wasn't to check up on Zuzu. She hadn't even asked about the kid. “Yeah? Sounds like things are desperate.”

“More than you know. I was thinking that maybe you could lend me a couple of hundred. Just until I get my new job.”

“Sorry. That's not going to happen.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don't believe you really need the money, Morgan.” He nudged Zuzu's shoulder and the little girl turned over, her eyes opening slowly. “It's your mommy. Want to say hi?”

“I told you not to wake her up!” Morgan barked

“Since I'm the one taking care of her and I'm the one who's going to deal with her later, I decided that I got to choose whether to wake her or not.”

He handed the phone to Zuzu, helped her hold it to her ear. She was still half-asleep, her eyelids drooping.

“Say hi to your mom,” he said.

“Mommy?” She sat up and took the phone from his hand, her hair a tangled mess. He shouldn't have put her to bed before it was dry. “Where are you?”

He leaned close, trying to hear Morgan's response. All he could hear was a few mumbled words. Something about Vegas and money.

“Okay,” Zuzu responded, shoving her thumb in her mouth as Morgan continued to speak.

She went on for about thirty seconds while Zuzu sucked her thumb and listened.

“Bye!”

Max heard that clear as a bell.

He grabbed the phone from Zuzu.

“Don't hang up!”

But of course she already had.

“Da . . .” He looked at Zuzu. She was watching him with big blue eyes and about the most pitiful expression he'd ever seen on a kid's face. “Doggone it!”

“Doggone it!” she repeated, and then her chin started wobbling and her thumb dropped away from her mouth, and she started wailing like she had the night they'd met.

Only now, he wasn't just hearing a little girl crying for her mother, he was hearing Zuzu, and that was about a thousand times worse.

“Don't cry, Zu,” he said, watching as big tears rolled down her cheeks. He picked her up, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, but she didn't stop crying.

“It's okay.” He patted her back, feeling awkward and unsure. He wasn't used to that. He knew what to do in emergencies, knew how to take down a criminal, how to deliver a baby, how to offer first-aid to people with any number of injuries. What he didn't know, because he'd never
wanted
to know, was what to do with a distraught child.

Zuzu hiccupped, and he wondered if she was about to lose the macaroni and apples he'd fed her for dinner.

“Shhhh.” He patted her back a little more gently. It pissed him off royally that Morgan had spent less time talking to her than she had trying to wheedle money out of Max. “Don't worry, Zuzu. Your mom will be back soon.”

“She going to Vegas, and she's not taking me,” Zuzu cried.

“That's okay, sweetie.” That was what Ida always called her. If it was good enough for her, it was good enough for Max. “We'll have more fun here.”

“But there's castles there. And princesses,” she explained, as if it would make all the difference.

“Are you sure you're not thinking about Disney World?” he asked.

“I'm not going to Disney. I'm going to Vegas. With Mommy.” She patted his cheek as if he were just a little too dumb to understand what she wanted. “You come, too.”

“I have to work. Remember?”

“No, you don't.”

“I do.”

Her face fell, more tears streaming down her cheeks. Poor kid. She deserved a hell of a lot better than a thirty-second conversation with her mother.

“We can't go to Vegas?” she asked.

“Not today.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I have to work then, too.” He had Friday off, but he wasn't planning to make the trip then, either. He and Zuzu had an appointment to get DNA testing. He had to know the truth. One way or another. It was the right thing to do and the fair thing. Once he had the proof of her paternity, he could figure out the next step in her care. He couldn't keep her forever, that was for sure, but the more he thought about sending her back to her mother, the worse the idea seemed. “But I can take you to the park on Friday. You can swing and go down the slide.”

“And eat ice cream?”

“It's too cold for ice cream.”

“Cookies?”

“We'll see.” He set her on the bed, and she curled into a little ball and pulled the covers over her head. She probably hoped that when she crawled out from her cocoon her mother would be there.

He flicked off the light, had his foot in the hallway when she sniffed. “You're not crying, are you, Zuzu?”

“Yes!” she wailed.

He rubbed the back of his neck, told himself that he could tell her to go to sleep and walk out of the room. Kids were resilient. They could go through hell and come out with barely a scratch.

He couldn't make himself do it.

“Why are you crying?”

“I needs a cookie, Maxi. I needs a cookie right now!”

He thought that what she probably really needed was Morgan. Maybe she'd already learned that her mother wasn't always available. A disheartening thought, but probably a true one. Morgan hadn't wanted kids any more than Max had. She'd made that abundantly clear when they'd met, and he'd been very happy to oblige her in that area.

“I don't have any cookies.” If he did, he'd have given her an entire box.

“Charlotte's got cookies,” Zuzu sobbed. “I needs Charlotte.”

“Charlotte is in bed. Sleeping. Like every other normal person in town,” he muttered, but he flicked the light back on. He couldn't leave her crying in bed.

“She's not sleeping. She's baking.”

The kid had a point. If the last few days were indicative of her habits, Charlotte rose before dawn, made her morning deliveries before most people had their first cup of coffee. He could picture her, puttering around in her kitchen, her hair pulled up in a high ponytail, the end just brushing the nape of her neck. She'd be wearing one of her frilly aprons, humming something under her breath while cookies or muffins or scones baked in the oven.

If he'd been there, he'd have been tempted to slide his hands around her waist, bury his nose in her hair. It probably smelled like cinnamon and sugar. That's what her lips had tasted like. Cinnamon, sugar, and some exotic spice that he wanted to taste again and again.

“It's still dark out, Zuzu.”

“It's not dark,” she argued.

“Look.” He carried her to the window that looked out over Main Street. The sky was pitch-black, thousands of stars sparkling in the darkness. In the distance, Apple Valley Community Church stood on a hill that overlooked Riley Park, a lone spotlight shining on the nativity that the church set up after Thanksgiving every year. He couldn't see the nativity, but the light was like a golden beacon, pointing the way to some universal truth, some deep mystery.

“What's that?” Zuzu whispered, pointing to the light. “Is it an angel?”

“No. It's a nativity. For Christmas. You know. Baby Jesus and Mary.” He wasn't sure if Morgan had ever taken the kid to church. They'd gone together on holidays when they'd lived together, but neither had been much for religion.

“And Joseph and the shepherds and the angels?” Zuzu asked.

Obviously she was familiar with the story.

“That's right.”

“Can we go see?”

He planned to say no, but she had a rapturous look on her face and her tears had stopped. She wasn't asking for cookies or ice cream or visits with her mother. She was asking him for something he could actually give her. Even if it was dark and cold and too early for any normal human being to be awake, Max couldn't see any reason to deny her. His shift didn't start for a few hours. It wasn't like he didn't have the time.

“Sure, but we'd better dress warm. It's cold as a witch's—” He cut himself off. He had to watch his language around Zuzu. She copied everything he said.

“Witch's hat?” she suggested.

“Yeah.” He opened the dresser drawer and looked through the clothes that Ida had carefully sorted and folded, pulling out pants and a pink sweater and setting them on Zuzu's bed. Zuzu loved pink. “Cold as a witch's hat. You put these on while I get dressed. Put on socks, too.” He tossed a pair of balled-up socks in her direction, and she giggled as she tried to catch them.

Pete chose that moment to slink out from under Zuzu's bed. No screaming from Zuzu this time. She'd decided she loved the old cat almost as much as she loved pink. Max wasn't so sure how the cat felt about her. He was a good old tom, though. No scratching or clawing or biting. He'd even let Zuzu put him in one of the hats the historical society had brought over.

“Pete!” Zuzu cried. “We are going to see the nateivy. You can come. He can come, right, Maxi?”

No. The damn cat couldn't come. He'd yowl the whole way.

“He doesn't like car rides, Zuzu.”

“He does! You do!” She lay on her belly and looked into Pete's ugly face. “Right, Pete?”

The cat meowed and butted his giant head against hers.

“Tell you what,” Max said, too tired to keep arguing. He needed coffee. Lots of it. “You two work it out while I get dressed.”

“Okay,” Zuzu agreed solemnly.

“And make sure you're dressed and ready to go when I come back.”

“Okay,” she said again, reaching for her clothes.

At least she could dress herself, use the bathroom by herself, brush her teeth mostly by herself. All in all, she wasn't quite as much trouble as he'd thought she would be.

He closed her door and walked into his room. He'd grab coffee and a couple of doughnuts at the coffee shop. Zuzu would probably like some hot chocolate with a little whipped cream on the top. Not the best choice of breakfast for a growing girl, but it was about all Max had the energy for. With any luck, she'd fall asleep in the car on the way to see the nativity. If she did, he might just be tempted to take a little nap himself.