Some Like It Hot

CHAPTER TWO

MAX SLAMMED HIS car door and hotfooted it across the little parking lot to the back of Jenny’s cottage. He took the stubby flight of stairs up to her mudroom in two big steps.

He hadn’t deliberately been late for her dinner party. After leaving Jake’s he’d gone out to Cedar Village, the group home for at-risk boys a few miles out of town. And he’d ended up staying longer than he’d planned.

Which was hardly a surprise, considering it was the same thing he did every time he went out there. At one time he’d been an angry teen himself. He knew what it was to get into his share of trouble, knew about having anger he didn’t quite know how to manage. So he liked volunteering some of his free time to work with the kids. He understood where they were coming from.

But he’d let the time get away from him. The boys had roped him into a vigorous game of basketball, and the demand that he join them had been the first sign of softening he’d seen from a couple of the kids. If he’d blown off the opening they’d given him, he would’ve risked having them never give him another. That hadn’t been an option.

He was already running late when he’d finally pulled himself away, but he’d had no choice but to go home for a quick shower and a change. Jenny, bless her heart, threw reasonably casual parties, but he was pretty sure she’d expect him to at least shave and throw on something a bit less scruffy than his day-off knock-around clothes. Especially when Jake, the love of her life, was one of those GQ-type dressers. And he didn’t even want to think about what she’d have to say if he showed up smelling as ripe as only a guy who’d pounded up and down a court with boys who could run him into the ground could.

He smoothed his hand down the navy T-shirt he’d tucked tightly into his low-slung jeans to get the drawer wrinkles out. Straightened the button placket of the loose weave, sage-green short-sleeved shirt he’d worn open over it to dress things up a little. Shifting the six-pack of Fat Tire beer that Jake preferred to the Budweiser Max would have chosen were it just for him, he rapped on the mudroom door.

It whipped open, and the sound of dishes clattering and women laughing in the kitchen poured out at him. He looked down into the face of his nephew, Austin.

“Dude!” The fourteen-year-old, who was at that all shoulders, arms and legs stage, grinned at him. “Thank God—we need more guys here. Jenny invited way more chicks.”

“Oh, way more, my butt.” Jenny stuck her head into the room, her shiny brown hair catching the overhead light. “I invited a couple of women from work who didn’t have plans. Hey, Max.” She crossed the small space at the same time he stepped into the mudroom.

Having learned her ways, he obligingly bent so she could give him a hug. That was something new to him, and he always stood stiff as an oar in her embrace. Considering she kept doing it every time he arrived or left, however, Jenny apparently didn’t mind.

And he had to admit, there was something nice about it—even if it did make him feel awkward as a working girl at a revival.

Jenny was a tiny woman who somehow failed to realize it, and she gave him a quick, fierce squeeze before stepping back. “The men are out on the front porch doing the barbecue thing,” she said, patting his arm. “Why don’t you take your beer out there—we put a cooler with ice and soft drinks to the right of the door.”

She turned to Austin. “What are you doing this close to the kitchen if you’re so uncomfortable with all the women?”

The kid puffed up. “I’m not uncomfortable,” he protested. “I’m just saying there’s a bunch of ’em, and we guys are outnumbered. I only came out here ’cuz I’m lookin’ for the croquet set. Dad said maybe we could play a game after dinner.”

“Color me corrected.” Reaching up, she ruffled his dark hair. “Set’s in the shed.”

Austin grinned at her and loped out the door.

Not all that certain he was ready to face a kitchen full of females himself, Max took a step back. “Well, I’ll just head for the porch. Nice day, huh?”

She flashed him a smile he was pretty sure said, Yeah, right, like you’re fooling anyone. But she truly was the nice woman he’d always considered her, because she simply rubbed his arm again and said, “You bet.”

Jenny’s best friend poked her strawberry-blond head in the room. “Jen, where can I find— Oh, hi, Max.”

“Hey, Tasha. How’s it going?”

“Pretty darn good.” She eyed him where he stood with one foot in the door and the other out on the stoop. “You coming in?”

“I was just gonna duck around to the front and say hi to the guys.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Intimidated by the number of women in the kitchen, huh?”

“Completely—and that’s without even knowing exactly how many that is.” He got a sudden vision of how ludicrous he was being and smiled.

Tasha blinked. “Whoa,” she said. “You really oughtta do that more often.”

“What?”

“Smile,” Jenny filled in for her friend. “You’ve got a great one, but you hardly ever use it.”

“That’s because I save ’em up for the prettiest girls,” he said with rare flirtatiousness. “Annnd I really am going to the front now.”

He heard them laugh as he strode down the stairs.

Climbing the front porch stairs a moment later, he spotted Jake and Mark, Austin’s best bud’s dad. “Whoa. This is it? Austin wasn’t kidding when he said we were seriously outnumbered by chicks.”

“Wendy Chapman brought her new boyfriend,” Mark said, then shrugged. “But he’s in that shit-faced-in-new-love stage, so he’s hanging with the women in the kitchen.”

They all shook their heads at the mystery of that.

Jake looked at the six-pack in Max’s fist and laughed. “Hey, you brought the good stuff. There’s some Bud in the cooler for you.”

Refusing to acknowledge the blanket of warmth his half brother’s thoughtfulness wrapped around his heart, Max made room in the cooler for the Fat Tire bottles, then fished out a Budweiser. He drank the beer, stuck his two cents in on how best to barbecue the steaks—because, really, what guy could keep his opinions to himself when fire, sharp utensils and red meat were involved?—and jawed with Jake and Mark.

He set up a long table when Jenny asked for a volunteer and Jake refused to relinquish the barbecue fork—then eyed a couple of the women as they decked it out with a tablecloth before dealing out festive plastic plates, silverware and napkins. They even plunked down a vase of flowers in the middle.

Then Harper carried out a big bowl of salad greens, and he was hard pressed to keep his gaze from following her every move.

Sometimes there was a stillness about her that made her look like a queen. Maybe it was the way she was put together: all exotic coloring, long lines and good bones. Or her posture, so proudly tall. Hell, maybe it was the solemnity of her full mouth in repose or the heavy-lidded eyes that gave her that appearance of aloof distance. Whatever it was, it reinforced the well-educated rich-girl image that never failed to tie his tongue in knots.

He didn’t know where it had come from, this awkwardness he had around the silver-spoon girls. Surely it didn’t go all the way back to the sixth grade crush he’d had on Heather Phillips. His mother had pointed out, with her usual I’m-unhappy-with-the-world surliness, that the girl was too damn rich for the likes of him.

Hell, it wasn’t like he’d been bothered by Mom’s flatly stated warning that he’d better not expect an invitation to any of that kid’s parties anytime soon. She hadn’t been wrong. And even if she had been, aside from the subject of his father, he’d mostly blown off Angie Bradshaw’s negativity. If he’d allowed it to stop him from doing things or going after what he wanted, he would’ve been paralyzed a long time ago.

Because, face it, the woman bitched about everything, and had from the moment his dad had left them for Jake’s mom.

But coming back to Harper, well, he oughtta cut himself some slack. He’d done all right earlier today. Besides, she hadn’t been all that aloof when he’d caught her shaking her very nice butt and singing along with music only she could hear. She was also smiling and laughing with Tasha now as they carried out more salads, bread and a fruit platter and arranged them on the table. When she was like this, she radiated a friendliness, a charisma, that was electric.

“Meat’s done,” Jake said and piled steaks onto a platter.

Jenny carried out a pitcher of sangria damn near as big as she was, and Mark went around to the side of the cottage to call the kids who were setting up a croquet course there. For the next several moments pandemonium reigned as people took seats at the table.

Max sorted everyone out as the food was passed around. There were the teens Austin, Nolan and Austin’s girlfriend, Bailey, plus Nolan’s little brother. The unattached females consisted of Tasha, Harper and Sharon, the latter of whom he really didn’t know all that well since she’d married a local who had graduated a good fifteen years ahead of him. They’d divorced a couple of years ago, and she had stayed to run the housekeeping department at the inn while the local had moved to Tacoma. Then there was him, Jake and Jenny, Mark and his wife, Rebecca, and Wendy, who owned Wacka Do’s Salon on Harbor Street, and her new guy, Keith somebody or another.

The platters completed their circuit, and the laughter and chatter quieted down as everyone dug in.

A while later Tasha leaned forward to look down the table at Harper. “I saw the advertisement in the new brochures for the sunset yoga class you teach. I could use something like that. I’m not nearly bendy enough.” She appraised Harper. “You, on the other hand, look real flexible.”

Harper flashed the smile that changed her entire look. It was wide and heart-shaped and showcased not only bright teeth that looked as though someone had sunk a fortune into them, but a flash of the healthy gums in which they were anchored, as well. “You should drop in sometime,” she said. “I doubt Jenny would mind that you’re not an inn guest, since she told me you’re her bestie.”

“Oh, please.” Jenny, who was sitting next to Tasha, grinned. “Be my guest.”

Her friend gave her a friendly bump, but continued to address Harper. “You know, I’d definitely take you up on that—if it wasn’t right in the middle of my busiest time.”

“That’s right. You’re the owner of the pizza parlor in town, aren’t you?”

“Yep. Bella T’s.”

“I haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but I hear it’s fabulous.”

“Best pizza anywhere,” Austin’s friend Nolan said through a mouthful of corn on the cob.

Mark tousled his son’s hair but smiled at Harper. “The execution could have been more elegant, but the sentiment is dead-on.”

“Then I’ll definitely have to make the effort to get in there.” She looked at Tasha. “Let’s talk after dinner. We can probably come up with a time that’ll work for both of us.”

“What did you do before you came here?” Mark’s wife, Rebecca, inquired.

“A little of everything—much to my mother’s dismay. Since we came back to the States I’ve taken a number of temp jobs. I’ve worked at Nordstrom’s, for a little college press and a remodeling company and did a stint as a contracts coordinator for a midsized construction company—”

Max didn’t plan his interruption, but he couldn’t help himself. “Why were you out of the States?” And who is we?

She tilted her head and looked into his eyes. “Would you like the long version or the short?”

“Long,” all the women said in near perfect synchronicity.

“O-kay.” Her olive-green eyes were mostly blocked from sight behind the dense lashes that formed little crescents when she laughed. “My folks met when they were in college and married within two months. Mom is Cuban, African-American and Welsh. My daddy was the only child of an old Winston-Salem family. It was no longer the South of the Sixties in those days, but his parents still weren’t thrilled with his marriage. In fact, they went so far as to suggest he annul it.”

She shook her head, a small, reminiscent smile curving up her lips. “You’d have to have known my dad to appreciate what a mistake that was. Grandma and Grandpa did know better, but I guess they panicked, probably worried about what their friends would say.” She made a wry face. “Anyhow, Dad’s response was to pack his newly minted civil engineering degree and move Mom to Europe. We lived all over the world. I was born in Amsterdam and my brother, Kai, in Dubai.”

“Wasn’t that hard?” Jenny asked. “Constantly having to pick up and go?”

“No, it really wasn’t. I was not only a daddy’s girl but a chip off the old block. He and I loved getting to see new places and meet new people. Kai and Mom weren’t as thrilled with the constant upheavals.” A faint shadow flitted across her eyes. “I think that’s why my mother’s having trouble with the fact that I continue to travel. She and my brother were beyond happy to settle down after we moved back to the U.S. It bothers her that I haven’t done the same.”

Tasha planted her chin in her hand. “Did your folks ever reconcile with your grandparents?”

“Yes. Quite early on, actually. I don’t personally remember the rift, just the stories about it. By my first memory, they’d come to love Mom almost as much as Dad did. And they were the greatest grandparents.” Her smile lit up the room and made something in Max’s chest ache.

Jake, who traveled extensively for his magazine, asked Harper about some of the places she’d been, and they compared their impressions from locations they’d both visited. Max sat silently listening...and working overtime not to give in to jealousy. God knew he’d spent far too many years doing exactly that—being resentful of his half brother—already.

But the sophistication of Harper’s upbringing dredged up old insecurities. It was a universe removed from the way he’d been raised, and chewing over the contrasts between their worlds, watching the ease with which Jake conversed with her, it was hard not to regress to feelings he’d thought safely in his rearview. He could feel them crowding in, however, demanding attention. He pushed them back, because damned if he’d allow the same tangled morass of twisted emotions he’d once had for his half brother to regain the purchase they’d claimed when he was a kid. He wasn’t giving way to them now that he and Jake were finally in a good place.

Their mutual father had left Max and his mother when Max was just a toddler. If Charlie Bradshaw had simply left town as he had when he ultimately deserted Jake and his mother, as well, things might have been different. Or if Max had had a different kind of mother...

He gave an impatient twitch of his shoulders. Because neither of those things had happened. Charlie was one of those men who was all about the current family. In Max’s case that had meant Jake and the second Mrs. Bradshaw. He’d seen the old man with them around town sometimes. It had been damn hard to miss, given the size of Razor Bay. So he’d witnessed Charlie acting the way Max assumed a dad should toward Jake, while he might as well have been the incredible Invisible Boy, so concealed had he appeared to be from his father’s sight.

Even with his mind mired in the past, he was aware of Harper across the table, and he tracked her movements as she reached for the pitcher of sangria. The container was still fairly full, the distance wasn’t optimum for her reach and he watched its weight immediately tip forward as she picked it up. Surging to his feet, he leaned across the table to steady the pitcher and slapped his free hand over hers on the handle to correct the forward momentum.

It was as if he’d grabbed the business end of a live wire. Heat streaked like lightning through his veins, and it wouldn’t have surprised him in the least if someone started slapping at his head and yelling that his hair was smoking. He wondered if she felt it, too, or if this began and ended with him. She’d gone very still, and those big eyes were locked on him and rounded in the same O as her lips. But, hell, that could very well be due to the sheer speed of the events from her reach for the pitcher, to its tipping, to him leaping to the rescue like a tattooed, beefed up version of Dudley Do-Right.

The instant the pitcher touched the tabletop again—this time nearer her where its entire weight wouldn’t be dangling from her hand with no arm muscle behind it for support—he yanked his hands clear. Thumped back into his chair.

He did his best to ignore the residual electricity zinging through him from the feel of her skin. Making a point of not looking at her again, he deliberately forced his thoughts back to the relative safety of his old animosity toward Jake.

His mom sure as hell hadn’t helped the situation. Not that he’d seen that at the time; it wasn’t until he was old enough and distanced enough to view the situation with an adult’s perspective that he’d realized if Angie Bradshaw had been a different kind of woman, he probably wouldn’t have suffered much damage from the desertion. Hell, he’d barely been two years old when Charlie had moved out. Most of the memories of actual time spent with his father had come through the home movies Charlie had left behind.

His mother, however, wasn’t a big believer in letting things go. Rarely had a day gone by that she hadn’t reminded him of what they’d lost. All he’d ever heard were acid-etched stories of the slut who’d stolen his father away, and of his little shit of a half brother who had gotten everything that should have been his.

It hadn’t helped that in school his half bro had been a serious student and run with the kids of Razor Bay’s movers and shakers, while he had pulled average grades, run with a wilder crowd and frequently gotten into trouble.

No wonder he was so fucked up when it came to the silver-spoon girls. They were simply the female version of Jake.

“Max?”

The sound of Harper’s voice snatched him from his stroll down memory lane, and as his awareness raced to catch up with his inner musings, he realized his name hadn’t been the first word she’d directed at him. Looking at her across the table, he felt the same crazy-ass clench of his heart he experienced every damn time he laid eyes on her.

And clearing his throat, he lied without compunction. “Sorry. I was thinking about work for a minute there. What did you say?”

“I was just asking what you did with the rest of your day off after I saw you.”

Okay, this was something he actually liked talking about. “I went out to Cedar Village.” He was surprised to see startled recognition in her eyes and raised his brows. “You’re familiar with it?”

“I’ve heard it mentioned, although I can’t remember where. It’s a...boys’ camp?”

Jake snorted, and Max gave her a one-sided smile. “Don’t mind him, he thinks it’s more like a reformatory. It’s actually a group home for troubled kids—boys. And, yeah, most of them have been in trouble. But, so was I at their age and—”

“Look how well that turned out,” Jake deadpanned.

He grinned at the sarcasm in his broth—half brother’s voice. “I know, damn good, right? For instance, unlike Mr. Shutterbug here, instead of playing with cameras, I have a real job.”

Harper was staring at him, and his smile faded, his self-consciousness resurfacing. But damned if he’d allow it to short-shrift his responsibility to the Cedar boys. He rolled his shoulders. “Anyhow, a lot of these kids come from dicked-up backgrounds—broken homes, substance-abusing mother or father or sometimes both. None of our boys’ parents are physically abusive, but some are purposefully neglectful, while others simply have to work killer hours just to put food on the table or hang on to their house. A few of the boys actually come from warm, involved families—they just lost their way for a while or fell in with the wrong crowd. In every case, they need the attention, the stability that the counselors out there provide.”

“Is that what you are—a counselor, as well as a deputy?”

“Me?” That startled another one-sided quirk of his lips from him. He shook his head. “Nah. I’m on the board of directors, but mostly I just hang out with the boys. But, speaking of my board position...”

Everyone except Mark’s youngest son and the woman named Sharon groaned, and Max laughed outright. “That’s right, boys and girls. It’s put-up-or-shut-up time. Our pancake breakfast fund-raiser is next Sunday. I know most of you have already bought tickets, but we also need volunteers to help man it. I just happen to have a sign-up sheet in my car.”

“Can we be excused, Jenny?” Austin asked, hastily pushing back from the table. His friends Nolan and Bailey followed suit. “We have to finish setting up the croquet stuff.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Max said. “You guys wanna be waitstaff or work in the kitchen?”

“Aw, man! Do we hafta?”

“We have several boys from the Village who’ll be working the event, but we could really use more help.” He looked his nephew in the eye. “These kids haven’t had the advantages you’ve had. It’s for a good cause.”

Austin sighed but nodded. So did his sidekicks. Max turned his attention to the adults.

“Don’t look at me,” said Sharon. “Those boys scare the crap out of me.”

“No, c’mon. They’re just kids.”

She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, they still scare me. I’ll buy a ticket, though.”

He knew better than to feel resentful on the kids’ behalf, but it took a little effort to say mildly, “Thanks, that’ll help. You want the eight or nine-thirty sitting?”

“I’ll take the eight.”

“You can sign me up to help,” Harper said.

Max’s head whipped around. Oh, yeah, baby. Sternly telling his libido it was out of line and to take a damn seat, he raised a brow. “Yeah?”

“Yes, sure. I have next Sunday off and it would be a good way to see the town in action. I’ll wait tables. I can get to know more people that way.”

“Excellent. Thank you.” He leaned back in his chair and looked around the table. “Now, that’s what I’m talking about, people. Harper and the kids just gave us a decent start here. So, how ’bout the rest of you?” He gestured with uncharacteristic expansiveness. “Step right up, ladies and gents. The line forms to the left.”