Colorado 01 The Gamble (63 page)

“I remember that shirt,” Shauna announced
and my eyes went to her over the rim of my mug then I nearly choked
on my sip when she went on, “it was a favorite of mine too.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Linda’s
head jerk and right in front of me I saw both Shauna and Kami smile
delightedly.

“It’s good with your coloring,” I heard
Linda say, luckily before I could utter a word or any of the
twenty-five of them in my head and I looked at her.

“Sorry?” I asked, noting vaguely she had a
bowl out and flour, milk, eggs, maple syrup and measuring cups.

“Your coloring. That shirt. Looks good on
you,” she told me and my mind focused, moving from Shauna’s catty
comment to the look on Linda’s face.

She was making a point, a quiet one, but it
was a point nonetheless.

Moments before I had the irrational desire
to shrug off Max’s shirt, take it outside and burn it. At the
present moment I remembered it was Max’s, it was old, warm and soft
and it was mine to claim when I wanted, not Shauna’s, never again
Shauna’s.

And that was the point Linda was making, not
only to me, but to Shauna.

“Thanks,” I whispered, my meaning deeper
than the whispered word.

“Hope you don’t mind, I’m making pancakes.
Is that okay with you?” Linda asked and I blinked.

Why was she asking me?

“Um… yes?” I answered.

She nodded and turned back to the bowl.

“Mom makes great pancakes, babe,” Max told
me, his finger going into my back belt loop and tugging me closer.
“You’ll love ‘em.”

I looked up at him and said, “Okay.”

He grinned at me then he winked. It was
the wink that got me. Max had never winked at me. I didn’t think he
was the kind of man
to
wink. But,
like all things Wonder Max, he did it great.

Using my belt loop, he positioned my
still-coping-with-his-wink body close to his side by the sink.

“Max, I like that sugar bowl and creamer,
saw it in town, almost picked them up for myself,” Linda noted.

“Nina bought ‘em,” Max told her over his mug
then he took a sip.

“Good taste,” Linda mumbled, looked at me
and said firmly, “Domestication.”

“Sorry?” I asked.

“Cupboards full. Creamer and sugar bowl.
You’re domesticating Max.” That twinkle hit her eye again, I caught
it again but she extinguished it before she finished, “This’ll be
entertaining.”

Oh my God. She liked me!

I couldn’t help it, I smiled to myself and
relaxed into Max’s side. When I did, his arm slid along my
shoulders, his hand dangling casually over the left one.

“You wanna tell me why you’re here and not
at work?” Max asked and I tipped my head back to look at him,
following his gaze to see his eyes were on Kami.

“Day off, Curt’s funeral,” Kami replied.

“You gotta take a whole day off for Curt’s
funeral?” Max asked.

“I’m grieving,” Kami returned.

“Jesus, Kami, I hope they don’t find out
you’re full of shit like they did at your last job. Be hard to keep
that Lexus when you don’t have a paycheck,” Max remarked.

“Don’t worry about me, got my Lexus and
that’s it. Don’t have a barn full of stupid boys toys I wanna fill
with even more boys toys,” Kami shot back, adding nastily, “maybe
you’ll grow up in this century.”

Jealous,
I thought but kept my mouth
shut.

“Kami,” Linda said quietly, mixing
batter.

“What?” Kami snapped but before Linda could
say anything further, Max spoke again.

“Now you wanna tell me why you’re here at
all?”

I looked up at him to see his eyes, cold and
angry, resting on Shauna.

I’d never seen Max cold. I’d seen him angry
but not cold and that cold was glacial. I took a sip of my coffee
and looked at Shauna to see how she was handling it and noted she
had her shields up and seemed perfectly at ease.

“Spending the day with Kami, we’re going to
the funeral together,” Shauna answered.

I felt my eyes grow big and I also felt
Max’s body turn to stone at my side. Further, again out of the
corner of my eye, I saw Linda’s head twist around to look at
Shauna.

“For obvious reasons, Shauna’s grieving
too,” Kami put in.

“You have got to be fuckin’ shittin’ me,”
Max growled.

“What?” Kami asked but Max ignored her and
his eyes sliced to Shauna.

“You ain’t goin’ to that funeral,
Shauna.”

“Why not?” Shauna enquired with what
appeared to be genuine curiosity and I felt my lips part in
astonishment, uncertain I’d ever seen anyone so inappropriately
cavalier.

“I don’t know,” Max clipped sarcastically,
“maybe because you were fuckin’ a married man and his wife, mother
and father’ll be there?”

“I lost Curt too, just like Bitsy,” Shauna
retorted.

“Yeah, but he loved her and was married to
her for fifteen years. You were just convenient pussy,” Max shot
back.

I gasped, so did Linda. Kami and Shauna both
glared at Max.

“Max.” Now Linda said Max’s name
quietly.

“No Mom, she’s not goin’ to that funeral.”
Max’s eyes went to his sister. “And you’ve spoken about a dozen
civil words to Bitsy in the last decade so you shouldn’t
either.”

“I’m not six, Max, you can’t tell me what to
do,” Kami returned.

“No, you’re not, you act it a lot of the
time, but you’re not. What you are is old enough to know better,”
Max shot back.

“We’re goin’,” Kami declared.

“Fuckin’ hell,” Max muttered.

“
I was under the impression,” Linda entered
the conversation and I looked at her to see she was regarding Kami,
“after all that talk I heard in town about what happened with you
two at Max and Brody’s table at The Rooster, that we were here so
you both could talk with Max and Nina about your behavior that
night.” Kami opened her mouth to speak but Linda went on.
“
Not,
” she cut
her off sharply and with obvious practice, “so you two could bring
attitude into Max’s house.”

“I’m sorry, Linda,” Shauna said readily and
looked at me. “You know Max and I have history, Nina,” she reminded
me unnecessarily. “I guess we rub each other the wrong way. I just
wanted to spend some time with Kami today since it’s gonna be a
rough day for me but I probably shouldn’t have come.”

I stared at her, shocked at how good she was
in front of Max’s Mom. Even I almost believed her.

“In case you feel like visiting again,
Shauna, you can take it as read you aren’t welcome,” Max told
her.

“Just because you two have broken up doesn’t
mean you can be an asshole, Max,” Kami defended her friend.

“’Fraid it does, Kami,” Max returned.

I was now stunned. These shenanigans made
my mother and me, even my
father
and me, seem tame. Though, my father, mother, Niles and me
were still the worst, if you didn’t count me slapping my Dad during
the Dad and me fiasco, of course.

“You know, Nina,” Linda said
matter-of-factly as she poured batter into the melted butter in a
skillet, “a mother gets to the point when her kids are kids that
she looks forward to them being adults.” Her eyes came to mine as
she set down the bowl. “I haven’t reached that part of motherhood
yet.”

I didn’t want to say that Max wasn’t exactly
acting like a kid, more like a pissed off mountain man whose bitch
of a sister brought his ex-girlfriend to his house. So instead, I
just smiled.

“Or at least I haven’t with Kami,” Max’s Mom
went on, the twinkle came back to her eyes, it stayed there longer
and my smile got wider.

“Mom!” Kami snapped and Linda turned to her,
leaned forward and morphed into another woman altogether.

“
What’d I say about this crap?” she hissed.
“You two always fightin’ with
you
always startin’ it. Works my last flippin’ nerve. Max is
here, what? Practically never. And instead of enjoyin’ the time you
got, you get in his face. I’ve had it up to here, Kami.” She lifted
a hand up to her neck and continued, “And I’ve had it up to here
with talkin’ to you like you’re five when you’re thirty-five,
dammit.”

“I see, as always, perfect fuckin’ Max,”
Kami shot back.

“Yeah, darlin’, perfect fuckin’ Max.” Linda
shot back. “Max comes over, fixes my sink and doesn’t whine at me
for five hours. That’s pretty fuckin’ perfect.”

Kami flinched then her face shut down.

“Same old shit,” Kami grumbled.

“
The same old shit is, Max has a new
girlfriend and you bring his
old
one
to his house, lyin’ to me about why and makin’ us look bad in front
of Nina. That’s the same old shit, Kami, and I’m sick and tired of
it.” Then Linda looked at me and mumbled, “Sorry Nina.”

“Um… that’s okay,” I told her.

“It isn’t,” Linda replied.

“Oh, so now it’s gonna be perfect fuckin’
Nina,” Kami bit out.

Linda turned back to her daughter but I
moved in quickly with hopes of lightening the mood.

“I’m sorry, Linda, but I don’t know how to
fix a sink.”

Linda looked at me, her eyes caught mine and
she replied, “That’s okay, Nina. Talked to Barb. What you know how
to fix is a whole lot more important than a sink.”

I stared at her, now understanding why she
liked me and Max’s arm curled tighter around my neck.

“What’s this?” Kami asked.

“None of your business,” Linda said, her
eyes going to her daughter then to Shauna and then she said, “You
two are adults so you gotta do what you think you gotta do but I’ll
tell you, you show up at Curtis Dodd’s funeral it’ll make me think
less of you.” Her gaze hardened on Shauna and she finished, “It’ll
make me think less of you both.”

Shauna’s eyes moved quickly away but Kami
glared at her mother.

“Maybe we should leave,” Kami suggested.

“Since you’re my ride up here, that’d make
it difficult for me to get down the mountain,” Linda replied.

“I’ll take you down, Mom,” Max put in
smoothly.

“Perfect fuckin’ Max,” Kami shot at him.

“What is it with you?” Max shot back.
“Seriously, Kami, I wanna know. Why are you such a bitch all the
time?”

“
I don’t know, Max, maybe it’s ‘cause you
were Dad’s favorite and you’re Mom’s favorite and I could handle
that if my nose wasn’t rubbed into it
all the time,
” Kami returned.

Jealous and
juvenile
, I thought,
staring at her in amazement at her words for her behavior was the
norm, as far as I knew it.

“Honest to God?” Max asked.

“I’m sure it’s hard for you to believe,
seein’ as you have no clue how it feels,” Kami returned.

“Christ, I feel like I’m fifteen again,” Max
muttered, “since we had this conversation when I was fifteen and
fourteen and fuckin’ twenty-five.”

“Whatever,” Kami muttered back.

“The other thing, Nina,” Linda said to me,
flipping the pancakes, “is all kids think a parent has a favorite.
They don’t. It isn’t possible. You love your children, maybe not
the same but always the same amount.”

“Right,” Kami said to her mother’s back.

“Though,” Linda said to me, “you can tell
them that and tell them that but they’ll never believe you.”

“I’m an only child,” I informed Linda or at
least I was now.

“That’s too bad,” Linda replied, reaching in
the cupboard for plates. “I got a sister and brother, love ‘em both
to bits. Wish my kids had that.”

“If Max’ll take you down the mountain, we’ll
skip on the pancakes.” Kami again spoke to her mother’s back,
clearly not allowing a single word her mother said to penetrate her
rabid desire to be the martyr.

“All right, Kami,” Linda replied, not
turning and Kami and Shauna both slid from their stools.

Then Linda continued with her pancakes and
Max stayed still at my side, his arm around my shoulders as Kami
and Shauna walked to the door.

“We’ll see ourselves out,” Kami called
spitefully.

“All right, darlin’,” Linda called back and
handed me a plate of pancakes.

The door closed and I offered the pancakes
to Max.

“You eat, baby, I’ll wait for the next
round,” Max said softly.

“And I’ll apologize for Kami,” Linda said as
she put butter into the skillet. “She isn’t like this all the time,
honestly. Curtis’s death has been tough on her.”

“Then maybe she shouldn’t be friends with
Curt’s piece of ass,” Max muttered as I slid out from under Max’s
arm and walked to the butter.

“Max,” Linda said quietly.

“Can’t imagine why you brought them both
here, Mom, especially Shauna,” Max said and Linda looked at
him.

“I did because a mother always wants to
believe the best of her kids. I had a word with Kami about the crap
I heard in town, she and Shauna came and asked if I’d smooth the
way with you. I had no idea that would happen.”

“They played it so they could act just like
that, get under Nina’s skin and rile her up. Nina’s hell on wheels
when she’s riled and they wanted to make her look bad in front of
you,” Max told his mother and I stared at him, wondering if this
was true and figuring, unfortunately, it was.

“Kami wouldn’t do that,” Linda returned.

“I’ll give you Kami but Shauna?” Max
asked.

“Known her since she was ten, Max, she’s
like one of my kids too,” Linda answered.

“And she’s also been up her own ass since
she was ten,” Max replied. “Christ, goin’ to Curt’s funeral?
Jesus.”

Linda sighed. I poured maple syrup on my
pancakes and stayed quiet.

Linda went on, “Anyway, yesterday, I looked
out the window and what did I see? You and Nina over at Barb and
Darren’s. I also saw you didn’t bring her by to see me. You’re at
Barb and Darren’s, you don’t come to see me?” She shook her head
and poured in more pancake batter. “It’s all over town, you
spendin’ time with Nina’s folks and you haven’t brought her to see
me. So you’ll have to flippin’ forgive me, darlin’, I needed an
excuse to meet my own son’s new girlfriend so I brought ‘em up
here.”