Colorado 01 The Gamble (7 page)

So he wasn’t affectionate. So he didn’t hold
my hand, hug me, cuddle me, hold me when we slept. So he didn’t
call me “honey” or “baby” or give me a nickname like “Duchess”.

He was solid, he had a good job, he worked
hard. He didn’t play hard, just worked hard. He didn’t have a lot
of friends. He didn’t like to go out much. What he liked to do was
sit on the couch watching TV with me at his side. Or DVDs. He was
content with that. In his Niles way, he loved that, just him and
me, watching TV.

And I was content…
ish
. It wasn’t exciting but it was nice…
ish
. It meant
I’d never get hurt again. Truly, there was something to be said for
steady, quiet and predictable.

But was that enough for me for the rest of
my life?

You know the answer to that,
Neenee Bean,
I heard
Charlie say in my head and I jumped, lurching up, and looked
around, seeing no one.

I’d heard Charlie talking to me on
occasion but it was remembering things he’d said or knowing what
he
would
say. He’d
never talked to me
talked
to
me.

“Maybe this timeout wasn’t a good thing,” I
whispered to the room. “Maybe it was a bad thing.”

Charlie didn’t answer, no one did.

And I decided, since I was hearing voices,
that maybe a nap was a good thing.

* * * * *

“Nina.”

My eyes opened and I saw Max’s face close to
mine. I also felt his fingers digging into my hip. I was on my side
in his bed and he was sitting in the crook of my lap.

“Jesus, you sleep like the dead,” he
muttered, pulling back only his head, his hand stayed where it
was.

I saw the TV was blue screen and the sun was
fading. It was getting dark which meant it was getting late.

I rolled my head slightly on the pillow to
look up at him, still not quite awake and asked, “What?”

“I thought it was because you were sick but
you sleep like the dead,” Max informed me then he lifted his hand
not at my hip and he took a bite out of a chocolate chip
cookie.

My eyes narrowed on the cookie. “Are those
my cookies?”

He chewed, swallowed then said, “Yeah,” then
shoved the rest of the cookie in his mouth.

I got up on an elbow and said, “But those
are mine.”

“Honey, they’re in my house, they’re fair
game.”

“I see this sharing the house business isn’t
going to work,” I told him and he grinned.

“They’re fuckin’ good cookies, babe, but
there’re about three dozen of them. You gonna eat them all?”

“Yes,” I bit out.

“Well, you’ll have to eat them all but
four,” he told me.

“
You had
four?
”

“Yeah,” he replied, ignoring my tone and
possibly the lethal look on my face before he went on. “I’m hungry.
Let’s go to dinner.”

“Dinner?”

His hand suddenly moved from my hip to my
shoulder, his finger traced skin there and I felt that my shirt had
fallen down. I yanked it up, sat up and scooted up to the
headboard.

His hand dropped to the bed at the other
side of my thighs so he was leaning across me and he said, “Yeah,
dinner, I’m takin’ you to town for a burger.”

“You’re taking me to town for a burger?”

He tipped his head to the side and asked,
“You gonna repeat everything I say?”

“No.”

“Good,” he said, pushed up off the bed,
grabbed my hand before I could evade his clutch and yanked me to my
feet in a way I could neither ignore nor fight. “Get yourself
sorted out. We’ll leave as soon as you’re ready.”

Then he turned and started to walk away.

“I’m not going to town with you,” I
announced.

He turned back and asked, “Why not?”

“Because you called the taxi company and
told them not to send a taxi.”

“And?”

“And, as delighted as I was to be offered a
beer by Arlene coupled with the opportunity to experience town like
a local, I wanted a taxi.”

He grinned again. “Arlene’s friendly.”

“I think Arlene’s a little nutty.”

“Friendly ain’t nutty, darlin’, it’s
friendly.”

“It would have been friendlier if she sent a
taxi.”

He tipped his head to the bed and noted,
“You got a nap.”

“Yes.”

“And you got your color back.”

I fought the urge to touch my cheeks, won my
fight and said, “So?”

“So, you got rest, except for bakin’
cookies. It’s what you needed.”

“Max, what I need is to –”

He turned and started walking away, saying,
“We’ll talk over burgers.”

“Max.”

“Burgers,” he said before he hit the
staircase.

“Max!” I shouted.

He didn’t answer.

God, he was
so
annoying.

He was hungry? He wanted burgers? He wanted
to talk over burgers? I was hungry too, actually famished. So we’d
talk over burgers.

I went to my suitcase, pulled out my hair
drier and my makeup case and snatched up the converter. He wanted
to go to town to talk over burgers; he’d have to wait until I did
my hair and makeup. I didn’t go anywhere without doing my hair and
makeup.

Unfortunately that morning I didn’t sleep. I
tried but it wouldn’t come. So I made cookies instead. Then it was
time for lunch, so I made lunch. Then I put the sheets in the
drier, cleaned up after the cookies and lunch and tried to read but
I was too tired so I went upstairs and slid open the doors to the
TV and VCR. Max had a selection of shoot ‘em ups, some Westerns,
horror, a few espionage, lots of explosion movies. I picked an
espionage, made the bed, watched the movie, went downstairs and
folded the sheets then went back upstairs to watch another
espionage, which, obviously, I fell asleep while watching.

Now, it was dinnertime.

I blew out my hair sleek, gunked it up with
some stuff I liked that contained any fly-aways and then did my
makeup. Not full-on Nina makeup since I was in the Colorado
mountains and if makeup-less, mountain fresh Becca was anything to
go by the girls in the Colorado mountains didn’t do full-on Nina
makeup. I went light, I might have got some of my color back but
not all of it and I needed a bit of help.

Then I walked out of the bathroom, put away
my stuff in my suitcase ever ready to escape, spritzed with
perfume, put on some gold hoop earrings, a bunch of gold tinkly
bracelets and wrapped a thin, lilac scarf edged with an inch of
gold once around my neck, letting the long ends fall down the
front. I pulled on some socks then my high-heeled tan boots. Then I
stomped downstairs.

“Ready,” I announced when I hit the
bottom.

Max was standing in the kitchen, looking
like he was sorting through mail and he was eating another
cookie.

“You’re eating another cookie,” I
accused.

His head came up and his eyes did a full
body scan before he said, “Duchess, you were up there a year. I
didn’t have another cookie, I’d starve to death.”

I’d made it to the bar and put my hands on
it. “I wasn’t up there a year.”

“Felt like a year.”

“It wasn’t a year.”

His eyes did a full face scan before he said
in a softer voice, “Though, it was worth it.”

That voice and his words made me feel funny
in a way I wasn’t willing to explore.

Therefore I said, “Can we go?”

He grinned before he replied, “Yeah,” then
he put the rest of the cookie in his mouth and dropped the
mail.

“Do you know where my coat is?” I asked.

“Closet,” he answered, going to the dining
room table and nabbing his leather jacket off the back of one of
the chairs.

I walked to one of the doors under the loft,
guessing and guessed right. There was a big storage room, some
hooks on the wall, lots more man stuff. My tan, shawl collared,
belt cinched at the waist, falling to the hip, cashmere coat was on
a hook. I grabbed it and shrugged it on, flipping my hair over the
collar as Max stood at the opened front door.

“You look like you’re gonna meet the queen,”
he said, giving me an indication that even toned down I might be a
bit more fancy than the normal Colorado mountain town look.

“You don’t meet the queen in jeans,” I
explained, walking through the door and cinching my belt.

“You would know,” he muttered.

I swallowed back a growl and headed to the
Cherokee.

He flashed open the locks but didn’t come
around and open my door. This didn’t surprise me. He didn’t seem a
door opening type. Neither was Niles. Then again, Niles didn’t
drive, didn’t know how, never bothered to learn and it didn’t
bother him that he couldn’t. Firstly, I could drive and when we
went somewhere together I did. Secondly, he could take a taxi to a
train and you could take trains most everywhere. Then, once you got
there, you could take a taxi to where you were going. Any town,
even small ones, had more than just Arlene at Thrifty’s.

I pulled myself up into the cab, settled and
belted in.

“I’d like you to call Arlene and lift the
boycott on a taxi for Nina,” I told him once he started up, did a
swift, somewhat hair-raising, three point turn and headed down the
lane.

“You goin’ somewhere?”

“I might wish to and, without the keys to
the rental that would be difficult.”

“We’ll see.”

“We won’t, you’ll call her.”

“Not big on women tellin’ me what to
do.”

“Max –”

“Or anyone,” he finished and I turned to
him, incredulous.

“
You’re not big on women, or anyone,
telling you what to do but you’ve essentially stolen my car and
told the only taxi service in town not to give me a ride, which is,
in essence, telling
me
what to
do.”

“In essence,” he agreed pleasantly.

“I… I…” I stammered, “I don’t even know what
to say.”

“Then don’t say anything.”

“I’ve decided to poison you,” I announced
acidly.

He burst out laughing then took a right at
the end of the road. I looked out the windscreen and crossed my
arms on my chest.

“I wasn’t being amusing.”

“Impossible.”

My neck twisted and I looked at him. “I
wasn’t!”

“Let me get this straight, I nurse you
through a fever and you thank me by poisoning me?”

“You’re holding me prisoner.”

“Honey, you rented the house for two weeks,
that’s hardly holding you prisoner.”

“
I rented a house that was supposed to
be
vacant
.”

“Lucky for you, seein’ as you got so sick,
it wasn’t.”

He had a point there.

“And, today, it was, save you,” he went
on.

He had a point there too.

I decided to be quiet.

Quiet wasn’t good because Max seemed
comfortable with quiet and my mind wandered. It wandered to what he
was doing all day. And then it wandered to what he was doing all
day with Becca. And then it wandered to the fact he was with Becca
at all. And then it wandered to wondering who Becca was. None of
this was my business but I wanted to ask even though I knew I
shouldn’t care. Then I realized I did care and I worried about what
that meant.

We hit town and it was busy, busier than I’d
expect for a small town in the mountains on a Tuesday night. It was
also pretty. When I’d driven through it, considering the snowstorm
and my state of mind, I didn’t pay much attention. I knew from the
internet advertisement that it was an old gold mining town that
made it even after all these years, lately because of tourist trade
due to its proximity to popular ski slopes, its shops, restaurants
and the fact that it was pretty. The buildings looked old by
American standards, not, obviously, English. And the sidewalks were
wooden boardwalks with wooden railings like you’d hitch a horse
too. There were more than a few shops that looked interesting. If I
ever got my car keys back, I was definitely going to explore.

After I checked into the hotel which, on our
drive through town, I also noted its location.

“Can you walk in those boots?” Max asked
into the quiet cab.

“Yes,” I answered.

“I mean more than a few feet.”

“Yes,” I answered, this time curtly.

“Just askin’, Duchess, seein’ as we have to
park a ways away.”

“I’ll be fine.”

We parked in town though I didn’t know if it
was “a ways away” from where we were going. However when he parked,
he parked with the passenger side by an enormous pile of snow that
had obviously been created by removing it from the roads. And he
parked so close I couldn’t open my door.

I looked out the window at the mound of snow
then back at Max.

“I don’t think I can open my door.”

He didn’t answer at first. He just opened
his door and got out.

Then he leaned in, reached an arm toward me
and said, “Crawl over.”

“Crawl over?”

“Crawl over the seat.”

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“Do I look like I’m jokin’?” he asked back
and the answer was no, he didn’t look like he was joking.

I apparently had two choices. Sit in the
Cherokee while he had a burger or crawl over the driver’s seat.

That was really only one choice so I
expelled a heavy sigh, unbuckled my belt, hitched my purse up my
shoulder and started to crawl over.

I barely had a hand in the seat when his
hands went under my armpits and he hauled me bodily across the cab.
Automatically I reached out to clutch his shoulders and one of his
hands went out of my pit and around my waist, the other one went
around my upper back and he pulled me to his body. Then, sliding me
down his body, he set me on my feet in front of him. Right in front
of him.
Full
frontal
in front of
him.