The Second Man (9 page)

“Yet.” He crossed his arms over his wide chest and took her in with one hot glance. “I have no right to say this, but the next time I kiss you, I am not going to hold back like I did last night.”

“That sounds like a warning.”

“It is.”

Her lips hurt, she wanted so badly to kiss him. Instead, she turned and reached into the cabinet. “I think I will have some of that wine.” She took two flutes out and placed them on the counter.

Max poured two glasses.
“Skol!”
He handed her one.

Jill raised her glass. “And let me toast you, old friend.” The wine went down crisp and cool. “So what do you say? Shall we light the grill?”

“Yes.” His eyes warmed. “I’m very, very hungry.”

“Well then, follow me.” She balanced her glass on the platter of food and headed outside, feeling as if something had been decided between them.

He tilted his chin up and pointed to the food. “You’re sure you have enough to fill me up?”

“Oh, I have enough.” She turned and smiled at him. “Don’t worry. I won’t send you back to the hotel hungry.”

Chapter 9

One thing hasn’t changed a bit about Max
, Jill thought.
He can still eat his weight in hamburgers.

She had made four for the two of them. He ate three. And potato salad. And fruit salad. And now they were tucking into the cream cheese frosted brownies he had bought at Helen’s Sweets, her favorite bakery in Santa Barbara.

“Shall I open another bottle of wine?” he asked.

“Why not?” So far her stomach was handling the bombardment, and she was content to sit in the April dusk forever.

Max went out to his car for more wine and came back to the table with the second bottle, as well as the envelope Dr. Millard had left with him.

He pushed the package toward her. “I spent an hour looking through that stuff after I left you. There’s a program from the senior class musical inside, and some photos. Also a couple of newspaper articles about the car accident.”

“Wow.” Jill emptied them out in front of her. The first, from the Santa Barbara Beacon, had a headline on the front page. “Vigil for Swedish Exchange Student.” A photo of the twisted wreckage killed her appetite.

As she scanned the story, images from the night Max was nearly killed unspooled inside her brain.

It was the middle of May. She had bought a new dress that afternoon, a short flowery sundress, and new shoes. High heels with straps that went around her ankles. Telling her folks she was not going to eat with them, she sat quietly through dinner and the clean-up, getting more aggravated with each passing minute that Max was so late.

Then the phone rang. “Oh my god, Jill! Something’s happened,” Carly had screamed through tears.

The cops had come to the Hart’s door and told Dave his vehicle was involved in a one-car accident, and that the driver was not expected to survive.

Jill, her father, and the Harts, along with many of their St. John’s classmates, had rushed to the hospital, only to be told by the doctors no one could see Max.

Jill stared at the photo of the car.

Dave’s compact sedan lay on its side, split open like a cat-food can by the emergency responders so they could pry Max’s body from the twisted steel.

“I don’t remember seeing this photo before.” It was from the local Sunday paper, and the colors were still strong. Green trees, black road, blue sky above twisted white car parts.

“It’s gruesome. I’m surprised they published it. Looks like blood spatters all over the ground, doesn’t it?”

Jill peered closer. Splotches of dark brown blotted the ground and stuck to the metal wreckage. She turned it over and slid it back inside the envelope. The second article, written a month after the accident, noted Max had been flown home to Sweden for further treatment. Underneath was a group shot of St. John’s students at a vigil on graduation night.  

Jill’s eyes widened. She was standing in the center of the group, dressed in cap and gown. Tears ran down her face as she stared at a lit candle clutched in her hand.

“This was taken graduation night. I don’t remember much of it,” she said softly.

“It was humbling for me to see how your classmates remembered me on their special night. And disconcerting, as if I was looking at photos of my own funeral.”

A shiver went down Jill’s back. “It was unreal. I mean, I saw you the morning of the accident. We made plans to go out, and then ten hours later, everything was over.”

“I’m very sorry.” Max sighed as he stared up at the stars winking to life in the purple-orange sky. “I caused you and your family so much sadness, and I ruined your graduation.”

You ruined my life
, Jill thought.
But not forever.

She stared down at the photo. Carly stood beside her, her arm around her shoulders. Jill squinted, recognizing several faces in the crowd. Including one young woman in blond cornrows. Marissa Pierce, standing behind Carly. Andrew was there, too. At the far side of the crowd, his expression feverish and excited.

He was probably high.
Jill slipped the clipping in with the other and picked up her wine. “You didn’t get anything back after looking at these morbid mementoes, huh?”

“Nothing.” Max brushed a stray lock of hair behind his ear. “I realize I may have to soon accept that a year of my life is gone for good. It’s disappeared into a void and may never come back.” He tapped her on the nose. “Which means I can’t get us back.”

“I’ve still got us.” She tapped her head. “Up here.” She tapped her heart. “And in here.”

Max leaned closer. “How are you feeling about us right now?” His eyes moved up to her forehead. “In there?” He placed his hand on her heart, gently, the swell of her breast beneath his palm. “And in here?”

“Confused, more than anything,” she whispered.

“Confused?” He moved his mouth an inch from hers, cupping her breast, he rubbed his thumb against the light fabric. “I’m not feeling at all confused about you.”

“No?”

“No. I don’t remember you as a college girl, but in these past three days I’ve come to know you as the woman you are now. Kind. Caring. Gentle, but strong. I like you, Jill. A lot.”

“Humm. A lot, huh?”

“Yes. How are you feeling about me?”

She cleared her throat, aware of her increased pulse. “Pretty good.”

“Well then.” He met her eyes and the years separating them from who they were then and who they were tonight melted away.

Jill had only one thought, and that was to kiss Max. So she did, burying both hands in his hair, she pulled them together. His lips were taut and smooth and warm and she felt a rush of heat and want and relief. She opened her mouth to him and he claimed her completely.

He stood and pulled her into a full body embrace that lit-up the rest of her willing flesh like a Christmas tree. Moving his hands down her back, Max dug his fingers into her bottom as she grasped his shirt.

She wanted to lick him and undress him and touch every plane and muscle and bone. Max slid his hands under her shirt onto her shoulder blades, massaging them as he ground his pelvis against her.

“Let’s go inside.” She broke free of his mouth, her lips swollen with his taste.

“You’re sure that’s a wise idea?”

“No.” She blinked. “But I want you.”

Max picked her up in his arms and carried her inside, down the cool hallway to the bedroom. He put her on the bed and pulled his shirt off in a single motion.

Jill lay looking up at him, admiring his muscular arms, and the thick hair across his broad chest. Her breathing was shallow and excited. She pulled down her jeans and panties and kicked them onto the floor, and then wrestled her tee shirt and bra off her heated body.

Max watched her from the end of the bed, gasping when she got up on her knees, facing him. She opened her arms wide. “Come here,” she said. “Let’s make some new memories.”

He unzipped his pants and slid them off, but stood where he was. He was fully aroused under the snug briefs, but he seemed to be waiting for her to look at him, all of him, before he made another move. 

He stuck his thumbs in the waistband and pulled his briefs off. The light in her bedroom was dim, but the reason he was waiting for her to look at him was suddenly obvious.

Jill caught her breath and sat back on her haunches, her arms falling to her sides. She stared at Max’s left thigh and groin area, where a swarm of angry, arcing scars marred his once-perfect body. The disfigurement was the worst on his hipbone, where the damage was centered in a smooth, sculpted hollow, below which stretched a five-inch scar line glimmering like a river against his skin.

Surely the remnants of a post-accident operation which had repaired, but forever marred, his beautiful body. “The accident?”

“Yes. I took the steering wheel to the gut. Crushed my hipbone. It’s been replaced, but I was lucky to not be, ah, mangled any worse than I am.” He grinned and touched his hip. “I set off alarms whenever I go through airport security. And my leg is pretty horrible to look at, isn’t it? I’m sure I’m not the man you remember.”

Jill heard vulnerability, and a kind of plea, in Max’s voice, as if he feared she might be unwilling to accept him, all of him.

“No one’s the same as they were before.” She ran her hands over her breasts and belly. “I’m fatter, and I think I have some stretch marks on my ass.” She smiled. “But I’m betting you can look past that.”

His eyes narrowed and his voice lost the joking hesitancy of the moment before. “You’re a vision. And more desirable than I imagined, which I did all night the last two nights, by the way.”

Jill crawled across the mattress, well aware of the effect her breasts were having on him. She sat on the edge of the bed and pressed her hand against his body, thrilled by the tension she felt in his body. She put her mouth on the scar field and kissed it, licked it as Max trembled and placed his hands on the back of her head. She moved her lips in a line across his abdomen and then put her mouth on him.

Max groaned and Jill trembled as her brain tumbled back to the last time they had made love. She remembered the length, the thickness, the taste of this man she had never forgotten. She had her first orgasm with Max, her first true coupling of flesh and emotion with another person.

And now he was back in her life.

Max grabbed her shoulders and slid her up the length of his body. He plunged his tongue into her mouth as his hands guided her onto him, him into her. He lowered them both to the bed and began to move; sure, urgent, his body demanding her to arch her back more, open her legs wider, move faster with his thrusts.

Jill gave him everything willingly, more than willingly, desperately. When she came, she screamed his name and wrapped her arms and legs around him, leaving the past behind as every nerve in her body reveled in the delicious, astounding present.

At 3 a.m., Jill and Max untangled themselves from her bed sheets to sit in the kitchen and finish the brownies. Max made tea in Dorothy’s favorite teapot, and poured Jill a cup.

“I’m too tired to pick it up.” She stirred in a cube of sugar.

“I’ll hold it for you.” Max lifted the cup to her mouth. “Drink.”

She took a sip and smiled.

Max sat across from her, naked save for his briefs, and bit into a brownie the size of his hand.

“My mother wouldn’t approve of you sitting at the table without your shirt,” she said.

He swallowed, a smile tipping his mouth. He gestured with his left hand. “Okay, give it back to me.”

She lay her hand on the pale yellow polo she was wearing. It was turned inside out, the green alligator logo sat over the rosy flesh of her left breast. “Nope. I’m keeping this forever. You’ll have to drive back to your hotel naked.”

“I’ll catch up on my tan.”

“I’ll rub suntan lotion on your back.”

He put his fork down. “I’ll return the favor.” He reached across the table and touched her face. “After I make love to you three or four more times.”

Her breathing quickened. She was sore and sated but more than willing to go back to bed with him. Although she doubted her trembling legs would carry her.

“My house was burglarized the other night,” she announced.

“What? When?” Max slowly put down the last brownie.

“Easter Sunday. After you dropped me off, I found the house had been broken into.” Jill touched his arm. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. They didn’t take anything that I can tell. The cops said it was probably kids looking for drugs or cash lying around.”

“How did they get in?”

Jill recounted the details, leaving out the complicated sideshow of Andrew’s visit. “I only brought this up so you’d go out and lock the rental car before we go back to bed. If the little bastards are breaking into houses, cars could be next.”

“I think you should have a security alarm installed. You’re here by yourself now.”

“It’s a safe neighborhood. Don’t blow this out of proportion.”

“I’m not.” Max folded his arms, his expression serious. “Has this happened before?”

“No. And I doubt it will again. I’ll be better about locking up.”

“Do you have a gun?”

A beat of silence passed as her smile faded. “Why do you ask?”

“Don’t all Americans have guns?”

“Well, actually I do. My dad’s old service revolver is in the back of my coat closet.”

“Do you know how to use it?”

“Yes, I do. Have you forgotten I shot my ex in the head?” She smiled.

He didn’t. “Is it loaded?”

“Duh. No, I’m the daughter of an ex-cop. No loaded guns in the house.”

“But you know where the bullets are?”

She did not know. Had no idea. But she was not going to tell Mr. Dead Serious that fact. “Yes, of course.”

She took another bite of brownie and eyed his nude torso, wishing she had not blurted out the burglary story. “I’ll let you have your shirt back if you want to go outside and lock the car. And then you can get a box for me in the garage. I think the St. John’s yearbook is in the one marked ‘Jill college.’ The punks who broke in didn’t find anything of interest in it, but we can at least look at photos.”

“They searched through your garage, too?”

“Yes. Boxes of my mother’s things.” She shrugged. “Come on.” She stood and held out her hand. “Put your pants on, let’s go. We’ve got things to do.”

Max’s mouth was set stubbornly. “I think you should call about an alarm system.”

“I hear you. But first things first. Let’s get the yearbook. And then come back to bed.”

Max finally smiled. “Okay.”

A few minutes later, he slipped once again out of his jeans and they collapsed on the mattress. Jill lay on her stomach, his shirt cozy around her shoulders in the cool hours of the morning.