White Plains, New York
"He'll be here, " Maxine Stuart said as she smoothed packing tape over the flaps of a cardboard box. "There's no way he'll let me leave without coming to say goodbye. He's nuts about me."
Stormy leaned over the box with her black marker and scrawled Kitchen Stuff across the top. Then she capped the pen and put it back into her pocket. "That's it, " she said. "That's the last of it." She picked up the box and started for the door.
Max snatched it from her hands. "I told you, no heavy lifting."
"Knock it off, Max. The doctors say I'm fine."
Subconsciously, perhaps, Stormy ran a hand over her short hair. It had grown back by now, short, spiky, platinum blond and overly moussed, just as it had always been. Her hair covered the scar where the bullet had rocketed through her skull only a few months ago, plunging Stormy into a coma and nearly killing her.
But though Max couldn't see it, she was acutely aware that the scar remained. She would never forget how close she had come to losing her best friend. It shook her still, to remember.
"Stop looking at me like that, " Stormy said. "Like what?"
"Like those coppery curls of yours are going to catch fire from the intensity. I really am fine."
"You'd better be." Max shook off the melodrama, knowing Stormy hated it. "Get the door, would you? My arms are breaking here."
Stormy opened the door, and the two walked out of the cozy white Cape Cod , down the concrete front steps and around to the back of the bright yellow rental van that waited in the driveway. Its back doors were open. Max climbed aboard and crammed the final box into the one remaining spot, near the top of the pile. Her whole life, she thought, was in that van. Sighing, she jumped down and closed the doors.
"Excited?" Stormy asked.
"To be starting a whole new life, yeah. I am. Are you?"
"If I wasn't, I wouldn't have agreed to come with you. Besides, what's not to be excited about? We're moving into a restored mansion, for crying out loud. Hanging up our shingle. Starting a new business."
"Think it will succeed?"
"I think it will kick ass, " Stormy said. "What with those flyers we sent out with both our pics on them, full color, no less? They made us sound like the best detective agency since Sam Spade's. And besides, we're hot."
"We are hot, " Max said.
Stormy pursed her lips. "You don't look very excited, Maxie. You look as if your heart's breaking"
Max leaned back against the van and eyed the house where she'd grown up, its neatly trimmed hedges and freshly mown lawn. "I'm a little bummed we're going to have to make two trips. I mean, if I trusted myself to drive this van with the car behind it, I'd use the tow bar that came with the thing. But I'm not that confident."
"Uh-huh." Stormy crossed her arms and tapped her foot, giving Max a look that said she knew perfectly well that was not what was bothering her.
Max nodded and gave in. "I really thought Lou would agree to go into business with us. I mean, you and I have two P.I. licenses and some pretty powerful contacts-"
"Even if they are mostly dead, " Stormy put in with a wink.
"But none of that adds up to a retired cop with twenty years under his belt."
"I think there's other stuff under his belt that interests you more."
"Yeah, well, short of bashing him over the head and attacking him, I don't think I'm going to get within a mile of his belt. Much less what's under it."
Stormy tipped her head to one side. The sun caught the rhinestone in her nostril and winked. She'd given up the eyebrow ring. During her coma they removed it and the hole had closed up. But to celebrate her recovery she'd added the nose stud. Personally, Max liked it better. It was petite and daring, just like Stormy.
"Are you telling me, " she asked Max in a tone of disbelief, "that during the whole time I was in the coma, and you two were up in Maine saving your sister from notorious vampire hunters and tracking down the bastard who shot me, that you never once-"
"Like you don't think I'd have told you if we had?" "You'd have rented a billboard, " Stormy said with a sigh. "So now you're giving up?"
Max pursed her lips. "If I'm living in Maine and Lou insists on staying here in White Plains , I don't see what choice I have."
Stormy looked at her, a mix of pity and skepticism in her vivid sapphire eyes.
Slowly, Maxine straightened off the van, looked down toward the road and smiled. "I'm not beaten yet, though. Here he comes." She nodded toward the oversize rustmobile that was pulling up to the curb, since there was no room in the driveway. The small square of blacktop held the rental van on one side and Stormy's little red Miata on the other. Max's green VW Bug was in the garage.
The noise level dropped to zero when Lou shut off his engine; then the heavy driver's door swung open. Lou got out, and Max drank in the sight of him. God, he was something. Oh, he tried real hard, especially for her, she thought, to pull off the saggy, burned-out ex-cop routine. With his loose-fitting suits and always crooked ties, and slow-talking, slow-walking ways, he tried to be the living proof that forty-four was over the hill. And way too old for a twenty-six-year-old. But she saw through the act. He wasn't too old; he was just too damn wary. The only thing burned out about Lou Malone was his heart, though she didn't know why. She'd always intended to fix it, whether he liked it or not. Now, she thought she was about to run out of time.
He came across the driveway to where she stood, glancing at the van, then at her. His eyes met hers, held them, and she thought she saw something sad in them before he covered it with a smile. Could he be sorry to see her go?
He broke eye contact and nodded hello to Stormy. "Hey, Lou, " Stormy called. "We'd just about decided you weren't coming to see us off."
"Wouldn't miss it. How are you feeling, Stormy?"
"Fine, except for being sick of everyone asking how I'm feeling." She softened the words with a smile. "You?"
"Can't complain." He eyed the van, his glance tripping over Max's tummy on the way. Good, she thought. It would have been a waste of good low-rise jeans and a cropped-short T-shirt if he hadn't even noticed the bared section of skin in between.
He cleared his throat, nodded at the van. "Are you going to have to make a few trips with that thing, Max?"
"Nope. Everything that's going is packed up and ready. Except my car, anyway. I'll have to come back for that."
"Everything?" He lifted his brows. "You couldn't have fit furniture in there."
"You've been to my sister's house, Lou. Morgan's will left me everything, furniture included." "Still, seems like you'd want some of your own."
"Most of the stuff in this house isn't my own, anyway. It's nearly all hand-me-downs from my parents." She never qualified the word parents with the word adoptive, even though it was true. "Besides, what do I have here that would fit there? That place is...opulent"
"Yeah, but it's not you."
She planted her hands on her hips and frowned at him. "What's that supposed to mean? I'm not opulent?"
He lifted his brows. "It wasn't an insult, Maxie, just an observation. Morgan's house is-hell, it's Morgan. Dramatic, dark, rich. You should be in a place that's...I don't know. Cute, quirky, fun."
"Sexy?"
He sent her a quelling look.
Maxie sent him back a wink. "That's what you meant, and you know it. But don't worry, Lou. Once I get settled in, I'm going to redecorate a suite of rooms just for me. I can't exactly do the whole place, though. It's not like Morgan's really dead, after all."
"No, I suppose not." He lowered his head, shaking it slowly.
"What?" she asked.
"We talk so matter-of-factly about it. Like it's nothing. And then every once in a while it hits me. Everything that happened. Everything we saw. Stuff I thought was nothing but superstition, turning out to be real. The fact that one of Mad Maxie Stuart's conspiracy theories turned out to be dead on target."
He said it with a teasing smile that made her want to lean up and kiss it right off his face. Instead, she only shrugged. "I wish you were coming with me."
"Yeah, well, I told you, I didn't retire from the force with the goal of going back to work fulltime."
"Right. Instead you're going to buy a fishing boat and spend your time lying around, smelling like-bait and growing a beer belly."
"Sounds like paradise, doesn't it?"
"Yeah, for a seventy-year-old in failing health, maybe. Not for you."
He eyed her, maybe seeing a little beyond the words she said out loud, so she averted her eyes. She hadn't meant to sound petulant or pouty. Childish was the last way she wanted him to think of her.
"I'll visit, I promise."
She shot her eyes back to his. "When?"
"When? Well...I don't know."
"How about now?"
"Now?"
"Today."
"Maxie, sometimes I don't even know how to follow your conversations."
She rolled her eyes. "Hell, you're going to make me admit it, aren't you?"
He held up both hands, shaking his head, as if she'd lost him.
"I'm not sure I can drive that...thing." She nodded toward the van. "It's huge, and I can hardly see over the steering wheel. It steers like a truck, shifts like a tank, catches every breeze like a sailboat. It wobbles and rocks, and I can't see behind me with those stupid mirrors."
He looked again at the van, then at her. Stormy said, "I'm going back inside, make sure everything's locked up, shut down, turned off, you know."
"You drove it here from the rental place, " Lou said, as if he hadn't even heard Stormy's announcement. Stormy shook her head, sent Max a surreptitious thumbs-up and hurried back into the house.
"Of course I did, " Max admitted. "How do you think I know how hard it is to drive?"
"I think you're trying to twist my arm to get me up there."
"I can think of a lot of men whose arms wouldn't require any twisting at all, " she said.
"Then have one of them drive you."
"I don't want one of them. I want you." She let the double entendre hang there.
He pretended not to notice. It was damned infuriating. He responded to all her flirting that way, either pretending it sailed over his head-when she knew damn well it hadn't by the flash of fire it sometimes evoked in his eyes-or by changing the subject. She was beginning to think he didn't take her efforts at all seriously.
"I'm going fishing for the weekend, " he said. "Leaving from here, in fact. Got my bag all packed in the car, and a friend with a big boat waiting for me at the pier."
"God forbid I interfere with that, " she said.
"You'll do fine on your own, Maxie. You're the most capable woman I know."
She drew a breath, sighed. "Fine. Just fine. Will you at least hang around until I get the beast backed out of the driveway? You can pretend you're a traffic cop again."
"Aah, the good old days" He looked toward the house. "You gonna wait for Stormy?"
"She's driving her car up. And she knows the way." She dug in her jeans pocket for the key, then climbed up into the van and cranked the engine. Through the windshield, she saw Stormy step out of the house and close the door. She sent her friend a secret smile. Stormy frowned, looking worried.
Max shifted the van into Reverse and looked in the side mirrors. She saw Lou standing in the road, making hand motions at her, probably to tell her to back out. She popped the clutch. The van bucked and then stalled.
She started it again, and this time backed up a little before the bucking and heaving began. She kept that up-start, stop, start, stop, jerk, cough, sputter, start until a car came along the road and Lou changed his hands to a "stop" position. Then and only then did she back up smoothly and quickly, over the mailbox, aiming dead into the path of the oncoming car.
A horn blasted. Tires squealed. Stormy shrieked, and Lou shouted.
Max stalled the van again and got out, leaving it sitting there, with its ass-end poking out into the road. The car had skidded to a stop five feet short of the van, and the driver, a neighbor she recognized, got out, looking scared half to death.
"Sorry about that, Mr. Robbins, " Max called, sending the man a sheepish wave and walking behind the van. Lou and Stormy joined her there. She looked sadly at the crushed mailbox and shook her head. "Okay, this isn't so bad, " she said. "I'll just pull in and start over." She looked ahead at the driveway, where Stormy's car was parked. "Um, you might want to move that."
Mr. Robbins was muttering, shaking his head and stomping back to his car. He got in, pulled a K-turn and drove away. Stormy went to move her car.
Lou said, "Didn't you hear me tell you to stop?"
"I did. I just hit the wrong pedal. I'll do better this time, promise." She went to the driver's door, reached up and put her foot on the step.
Lou's hands closed around her waist, picked her up off the step and set her back down on the driveway. She had to forcibly resist the urge to moan in pleasure, because she loved his hands on her. Anywhere, anytime. She really hadn't tried hard enough with him, she thought. Flirting was flirting. But men could be awfully bad at picking up hints. Maybe she should have set him down and told him flat out. She visualized it in her mind. Her looking him in the eyes and saying, "Lou, I want you. I want you in my life and in my bed and in every other way that matters. What do you say?"
He probably wouldn't say anything, she thought. He would probably go speechless with shock. No, she really hadn't tried hard enough. And now it was pretty much too late-unless her hastily devised plan worked the way she intended.
She just blinked up at Lou, her eyes wide with innocence and questions.
He sighed, lowered his head. "You win, Maxie. I'll drive."
Ye-e-es!
"Don't be silly, Lou. You don't have to do that"
"Yeah. I do."
"But your fishing trip..."
"Will wait for another time."
She flung her arms around his neck and hugged him. Lou put his hands on her waist after a moment, though instead of pulling her closer he seemed more interested in keeping her hips a safe distance from his. She didn't resist, because she needed to take things slowly and carefully this time. This was a second chance-she couldn't blow it.
Demurely, she said, "Thank you, Lou"
"I'm not staying, Max"
God, how did he manage to see right through her like that?
He took her arms from around his neck, held her wrists in his hands as if to keep some distance between them and looked her squarely in the eye. "I'll drive the van up there, help you unload, and then I'm coming right back. Understood?"
"Well of course it is." She nodded toward his car. "You can leave your car in the garage. I'll drive you back whenever you're ready. Better bring that weekend bag you have packed, though."
He blinked at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. "Honey, I just told you, I'm not staying."
"I know that. But hell, Lou, it's an eight-hour drive. At the very least you're gonna want a shower and a change of clothes before you head back."
He watched her through narrow eyes. "I won't need the bag, " he said. "I'm not staying."
"All right, all right. Whatever you say."
She walked up the driveway, hauling open the garage door. "Hey, if you're driving, then we can use the tow bar and bring my car along, can't we?" she called, as if she'd just had a brilliant idea.
He looked at her car. "There's a tow bar?"
"Yeah, mounted underneath the van."
He nodded, went back to the van, got in and moved it out of its precarious position, parking it safely along the shoulder of the road, on the opposite side of her driveway from where he'd parked his car. He left room behind the van for Maxie's Bug. When he got out, he moved behind it to mess around with the tow bar.
Stormy came walking over to join Max in the garage. "He's coming with us, isn't he?" she asked.
Max smiled. "Well, he couldn't very well let me drive, once he saw how likely I was to get killed on the way. Could he?"
"That was pretty risky, Max. Suppose Mr. Robbins had smashed into you?"
"He had plenty of room to stop. I'm not stupid."
"No, no, you're far from stupid, " Stormy said, shaking her head.
Max tossed her a set of keys. "Do me a favor and pull my car out of the garage and around behind the van, so Lou can hook it to the tow bar?"
"Sure." Stormy got into Maxine's car and pulled it carefully out of the garage, past her own and into the road. Then she pulled it along the shoulder, behind the van.
Max went out to where Lou's car was parked and saw that the keys were still in the switch. She started it up and drove it into the now-empty spot in the garage. When she got out, she glanced into the back seat. There was a big satchel there, stuffed to bursting, along with a cooler of beer and plenty of fishing gear. She glanced outside.
Stormy and Lou were busy behind the van, hitching up Max's car.
Licking her lips, Maxine reached into the back seat and snatched the satchel. She took it into the driveway and tucked it into Stormy's car. "Quick and sly as a fox on a caffeine high, " she muttered. Then she went back to the garage to close it up. By the time she finished, Lou had her car ready to go. She waltzed out to the van and handed him his keys.
"Your Buick is in my garage, Lou. It'll be safe and sound there until you get back."
He looked at her suspiciously.
Stormy tapped him on the shoulder. "Don't lose me. I'll be right behind you guys, okay?"
"Okay." "Keep the cell phones turned on."
"Will do, " Maxie said, wondering why Stormy seemed nervous about the trip. "Honey, are you worried about something?"
Stormy denied it a little too quickly. "I have the directions and everything, I'm just worried I'll get lost. So don't drive too fast " She hurried to her car and started the engine. As far as Max could tell, she didn't even notice the extra bag behind the passenger seat. Not that she would say anything if she did. Storm was on her side in this.
In everything. She was Max's best friend-which was why Max knew her well enough to be worried about the drive. Storm was not herself, and hadn't been, not since the coma.
Max reached for Lou, deciding to take advantage of another opportunity for physical contact. "Help me into this thing?" she asked, standing next to the passenger door.
He pursed his lips, but she didn't care, because he put his hands on her again to do as she asked.
"I'm not staying, Maxie, " he said, one hand on the small of her back, the other bracing her forearm as she climbed into the truck.
"Quit saying that, Lou. I got it already."
Lou walked around to the driver's side and climbed in. Maxie fastened her seat belt, settled in for the long ride, and told herself she had the next eight hours to figure out how she was going to convince Lou to stay with her in Maine .
Failure was not an option she even bothered to consider.