In an attempt to prove to Elena that the steeply angled roof of the cabin wasn’t going to come crashing in on them at any moment, Max decided an evening in town was just the thing. The city of Ione didn’t have tons to offer in terms of family fun and entertainment, but it did have telephones. It also had people—people who had lived through many a winter snowstorm and lived to tell the tale.

The trip down wasn’t fun, of course. Elena put on a brave face for Tina’s sake, but the slow, careful drive over the mountain roads did a number on her normally cheerful façade. Mile by mile, her smile faded and her knuckles grew white, fear taking hold and spreading like frost.

He didn’t like it. Even more important, he didn’t like that he didn’t like it.

“Okay, our choices are a dive bar that, to my recollection, has exactly one table that isn’t being propped up by a stack of coasters, or a pizza restaurant and arcade,” Max said as he pulled into a parking spot along Main Street. He kept his tone light to give Elena a moment to compose herself. She was good at being upfront about her fears—better, probably, than any person he’d ever met—but that didn’t mean she wanted an audience while she swung wobbly legs out the front seat and tried to breathe some color back into her cheeks. “Personally, I vote for the dive bar. We could play Frisbee with the coasters.”

“Da-ddy!” Tina cried, just as he knew she would. “I can’t go to a bar. I’m only seven.”

He feigned a long-suffering sigh. “Oh, man. I forgot. Pizza and Pac-Man it is, I guess. But I can tell you right now—absolutely no pineapples.”

“Pineapples are the worst,” Tina agreed and then dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “But you have to pretend to like them because they’re Elena’s favorite.”

“Oh, dear. What’s the matter with her?”

Tina giggled. “Lots of things. She has anxiety.” At the sound of that word, so grownup on such little lips, her laughter fell just as quickly away. “But I still like her more than anyone except you and Mommy. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

“Oh, Peanut.” Max dropped to her level, his knee hitting the snow-crusted sidewalk with a crunch. “Of course it’s okay. There’s lots about her to like.”

As he said the words aloud, he realized how true they were. Elena Villanova was so many wrong things. She was too young, too anxious, too tied up in his complicated family dynamics. If a person could be dressed up in a red flag, she’d be walking around swathed in nothing else.

But there were still so many things about her to like, to admire. To want.

And he didn’t mean that because the idea of her, stripped down and draped in folds of red fabric, fueled his every waking desire. As much as he longed to expose each part of her body for his delectation, the thing that cleaved at his chest was hearing her voice while he did it. Her laughter, her sighs. Her entreaties for more.

Just her.

“Well, you may have to knock me unconscious to get me back up that stupid mountain, but we’ll cross that concussion when we come to it,” Elena announced from behind him. “What’s the plan now?”

Max shot to his feet, his heart dropping in the opposite direction. He had no idea how long she’d been standing there or how much of their conversation she’d overheard. Turning his head to look at her provided no clues, because she was dressed as she always did when she ventured outdoors—in about twelve layers that obscured her face.

In order to get a good look at her, he’d have to push that hood down, pull the woolen cap from her head, and unwind at least two scarves. But in order to preserve any semblance of control he had over his own body, removing items of clothing from her body was out of the question.

She needed to stay dressed. She needed to stay wrapped up in that red flag.

“Pizza,” he announced, unable to think of anything else. He could hardly be blamed for it—the wonder was that his tongue worked at all. “With extra pineapples.”

“Good.” She rubbed her hands together. “I was hoping you’d say that. A food coma is the next best thing to an actual one.”

“Oh, really?” Max asked as he led them toward the blinking neon lights of the pizza parlor. The red appeared almost pink through the snowfall that still fluttered around them. “Are you saying I could stuff you so full of breadsticks you’ll forget all your fears?”

Elena flashed him a mischievous smile over Tina’s head. His daughter had taken a hand from each of them, slipping and sliding over the walkway with delight, oblivious to anything but gravity.

Max wished he could say the same. Gravity was the last thing on his mind when Elena said, “You could stuff me full of lots of things to make me forget my fears, Max. Ask me later, and I’ll give you some suggestions.”

---

“You’d think it was summer vacation and these people had nothing more pressing on their minds than whether they remembered to pack sunscreen.” Elena sat sipping a Diet Coke and watching as what appeared to be the entire city of Ione gorged on pizza and twenty-five cent video games. “It looks like the literal apocalypse outside, yet here they are.”

Max sat on the opposite side of the cozy booth in the corner they’d claimed for themselves. It offered a clear view of the entire restaurant, which meant Tina was free to roam and enjoy herself at will. Which, having found a family with twin daughters her own age, she was well on her way to doing.

“One could say the same thing of you,” he said as he toyed with his straw wrapper.

He’d already crinkled up about seven of those wrappers. As he was normally such a restful man, she couldn’t help noting the fidgeting movements. In fact, she was so busy watching the way his fingers—those wide, callused appendages that had taken him to such heights—kept twitching that it took a moment before his remark registered.

“Huh? What do you mean?”

He nodded at a woman sitting next to her husband a few booths over. “How do you know that lady isn’t terrified right now?”

Elena took a moment to give the woman a better look, though she did it as clandestinely as possible, her eyelids half-lowered over her eyes. “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” she asked after a brief pause. “I mean, she’s laughing at something her husband said and her feet are up on the opposite side of the booth. Besides, she’s eating pizza in a blizzard. That takes nerve.”

“Yes,” Max said. “It does.”

Since he didn’t follow up on that statement, Elena glanced over to see what had drawn his attention. The answer, she soon saw, was her. More specifically, it was the slice of pineapple-laden pizza she was in the act of bringing to her mouth. She dropped it to her plate with a flush.

“That doesn’t count!” she protested. At his look of disbelief, she laughed. “Anxiety burns a lot of calories, I’ll have you know. The human metabolism is closely tied to the fight-or-flight response. Maintaining neuroses like mine takes a high caloric intake.”

“Which leads me to repeat… How do you know that lady isn’t terrified right now?”

“I don’t, I guess,” she was forced to admit.

“Well, I do,” he said in a maddening contradiction. He gave up on the straw wrappers and leaned across the table. “With the exception of you, Elena Villanova, there’s not a single person in this restaurant who’s worried about the current weather conditions. Yet here you are, eating pizza. Laughing.”

She laughed again, though there was a nervous vibrato underlying it. Just what was he getting at? And why did his stupid, kissable face have to be so close to hers while he did it?

For the next twenty seconds, his stupid, kissable face remained exactly where it was. He was doing that thing again—the curious stare, the awakening inquiry. She wished she knew what he found so puzzling. Nothing about her was a mystery, as he well knew. She couldn’t even hide a crush like a normal person.

He went some way in providing an answer by asking, “Did you learn all that stuff about metabolism and anxiety at college, or is it information you picked up along the way?”

Elena blinked, a little taken aback. Given the way he usually reacted whenever their faces drew close to one another, it would have been a fair assumption to say he was changing the subject to more neutral territory on purpose. But he seemed genuinely interested in the answer—and in her.

She wasn’t sure what to do with that concept. Max’s attention, his interest, was everything she’d ever wanted. Like a princess making a wish on a frog, however, she’d never actually expected to get it.

“A little of both, I think,” she eventually said. “I mean, I started reading about the physiological effects of fear on the body in my teens—for obvious reasons—but it wasn’t until I was an undergrad that I considered making psychology my profession.”

“You want to help kids like you?”

“Well, not exactly.” She squirmed in her seat. The movement caused her foot to brush against Max’s leg. It was a totally innocent gesture—and one that happened to people in compact booths all the time—but it still felt like electricity jolting through her. He didn’t move his leg out of the way either, which resulted in a different kind of jolt. This one rested between her thighs, a warm, pooling flood of sensation that made her acutely aware she was wearing a puffy insulated skirt layered over tights—the closest thing to a cute outfit she was willing to wear out here in the wild.

To cover that sensation—distance herself from it—she rushed on, somewhat defensively, “I’m not broken or anything. I don’t need fixing. I had a normal, happy childhood without any major traumas. No one forced me into a dark alley one night and made me this way. It’s just my chemical makeup. It’s just who I am.”

His voice grew quiet. “I never said you were broken, Elena.”

“Lots of people have fears,” she added. She blamed that low voice. Also the fact that he still hadn’t shifted his leg away from her foot. He had to feel it—had to know that the touch barrier was slipping away at an alarming rate. She’d taken off her heavy winter boots almost as soon as they’d been seated, so the only thing between them was her woolen tights and his well-worn jeans. It wasn’t much, and seemed to be growing less by the second. “They learn to deal with them. They go on to live full, happy lives.”

“Not everyone does.”

In her surprise at the continued contact, her foot, which had been hanging out around his knee, slipped even higher. Thigh. She was definitely touching thigh—and a strong, muscled one it was, too.

“What do you mean?”

He acknowledged the touch with a hard flex of his jaw. “I mean that not everyone is as good at facing their fears as you are, Elena. Hell—most of us are too scared to even admit we have them in the first place.”

That sounded so much like a compliment, she was momentarily bereft of speech.

“Don’t look so surprised,” he said, his voice low, rough. “You’re not the only one at this table with fears. You’re not the only one with desires.”

Her mouth fell open in surprise at so unlikely a confession coming from so unlikely a man. The feeling didn’t abate when his hand snaked under the table and came to rest on her foot. She wasn’t ticklish—she’d at least been spared that childish failing—but that didn’t stop her from almost rocketing out of her seat.

Max was touching her foot. He was touching her foot on purpose. Oh, dear. And now he was moving his fingers up and down the length of her arch.

Alarmed, she glanced across the restaurant to where Tina was busy playing air hockey, but the pair of them might as well have not existed for all the little girl cared. Whether by the grace of the weather gods or the combined powers of Cupid and Aphrodite, they were momentarily alone. And touching one another.

“Wh—What are you doing?” she asked. She wished she could play it cool, melt into his lap and just enjoy the moment, but that wasn’t the Elena way. She needed to dissect and analyze, make sure she understood all the dangers before committing herself.

“I’m helping you. Aren’t there supposed to be anxiety-reducing pressure points on the feet?” Max’s voice was casual but his actions were not. In fact, his actions were taking a decidedly carnal turn, slipping higher up her foot until he was firmly in ankle territory. A few more inches, and he’d be touching her calf. It was a short step from there to her knee, her thigh, her—

She gasped as he gave her ankle a yank, bringing her foot almost all the way in his lap. “I don’t think that’s where the pressure points are,” she managed.

“No?” His fingers began working along her inner arch, his fingers strong and his movements sure. “Then where are they?”

To be perfectly honest, she had no idea. Giving herself foot massages in the middle of a panic attack had never occurred to her, and she wasn’t entirely sure she believed in the principles of acupressure in the first place. What she did believe, however, was that if Max kept one strong hand clasped on her ankle like that, holding her in place while he worked magic with the other, she’d no longer be able to think about anything, let alone the storm outside.

A whimper slipped through her lips as he moved her foot closer to his own body, allowing her toes to graze the rising hardness of his groin. There was no mistaking his interest, no way to avoid the fact that he wasn’t just violating the touch barrier now—he was breaking it, shattering it into a thousand nerve endings suddenly sparking to life.

“That spot right there seems to be working.” She squirmed lower in her seat. She was close to falling off at this point, but she wasn’t sure she cared. If this wasn’t such a family-friendly place, there was every chance she’d crawl under the table and do something about that rigid line forming under her toes. Max might be a man of iron-controlled will, but she wasn’t. “But I don’t think what you’re doing is a psychologically sanctioned therapy tactic.”

“No, it’s probably not,” he agreed, running his fingers up and down her calf. She had to bite back a moan as heat flooded through her. “It’s not a very wise tactic either, is it?”

Her squirming movements halted, her pleasure at his touch not far behind. She tried to read his expression, but his rugged features didn’t seem to be expressing anything other than desire.

Which was good—which was great—but only if he meant it. Elena might be desperately in love with the man, but that didn’t mean she was desperate.

“Because we’re in public?” she ventured.

“That’s part of it, yes.”

She sat up, shaking off the magic of his touch, and planted her feet firmly on the floor. Her discarded boots had caused a puddle to form, soaking straight through to her tights. Good thing Quinn told me to pack more. Her employer had been right. It was impossible to keep dry feet around Max.

It was also becoming increasingly difficult to keep a level head, even more difficult to keep a level heart.

“What’s the other part?” she asked.

His eyes grew dark, losing none of their sexual intensity in the process. If anything, the widened pupils only served to make him more appealing, hinting at the hard edge that had driven him to such heights in his youth.

This was a man who pushed himself through the most difficult terrain the world had to offer, who looked at insurmountable obstacles and didn’t stop until he’d reached the top. That kind of thing took someone made of physical and emotional steel, and Elena wanted nothing more than to feel that steel for herself.

On top of her. Under her. Inside her.

“You know the answer to that, Elena,” he said. “You’re my daughter’s nanny. Her nanny. It doesn’t get much more clichéd than that.”

“So we’ll wait. After the holidays, I’ll be a licensed clinical practitioner working for the state. There’s nothing cliché in that.” Even as she offered him the olive branch, she knew he wouldn’t take it.

“And what about Tina?”

“What about her? Are you asking whether or not it would be appropriate to tell her about us? The answer is no, of course not—at least, not unless we became serious. It’s rarely a good idea to introduce a child to a partner in the early dating stages. That would be the same regardless of whether it’s me you’re talking about or an entirely different woman you haven’t met yet. What else? Is it my age you’re going to throw at me next? Because I thought we addressed that problem already.”

His pose had been languid up until that point, but at her direct question, he shot upright. Even though her body lamented the promise of his hand moving slowly up her legs, she was pleased to see such a violent reaction.

“Don’t you dare say his name,” Max warned.

She dared. “Stephen Colbert would find your cowardice appalling. Stephen Colbert isn’t afraid to speak out about what’s right.”

Max released a choking sound that was more laugh than outrage. “If I recall correctly, Stephen Colbert is also married to a woman his own age.”

“So were you, once. How did that work out for you?”

It was the worst possible thing to have said. The moment Quinn entered the conversation, all of Elena’s progress disappeared in a whirl of starched, cream-colored pencil skirts. Max’s easy smile dropped, his stance went rigid, and he squared his shoulders for battle. It was almost as though his ex-wife had seated herself next to them, looking down on their foot canoodling with disapproval.

“I’m sorry,” she said, immediately contrite. “That was unforgiveable. Your relationship with Quinn is none of my business.”

“No, it’s not.”

The chill in his voice caused her to cringe. She’d always known that their divorce hadn’t been an easy one, but she’d assumed it was the usual bitterness over a love that hadn’t been enough. Something about the way Max held himself, though…

Her heart clenched. For whatever reason, he still had a lot of unresolved feelings.

“I only meant to point out that age isn’t a guarantee of happiness, that’s all,” she said, hoping to get him to open up. Feelings were one of the few things she was good at. “I mean, my mom was eight years older than my dad when they got married, and they seem to be doing all right.”

“Daddy! Elena!” Their conversation was cut short by the untimely arrival of Tina, her hair tangled and her cheeks flushed with pleasure. She tossed a handful of yellow stubs on the table, most of which had become crumpled and sweaty in her hands. “Look at all the tickets I won. Is this enough to get one of the big prizes?”

Experience had taught Elena a few important life lessons. One of them was that the big prizes in places like this took an investment of at least two hundred dollars. The other was that holding any kind of adult conversation with an exhausted, sweaty child standing nearby was a futile effort.

Since Max still bore the hard, unyielding look of a man who despised youth in all its forms, Elena slapped a smile on her face and took the little girl by the hand. She also slipped her still-wet feet back into her boots and slid out of the booth.

Wet socks and emotionally closed-off men notwithstanding, she still had a job to do.

“I don’t think so, but let’s ask anyway,” she said and prodded the girl in the direction of the prize counter, where she intended to use every last bit of her charm to get something stuffed and pink. She wanted at least one of them to go home satisfied. “Besides—if there’s one thing you should learn today, it’s that you can’t know anything for sure unless you try.”

She paused and cast a look over her shoulder. Max still hadn’t spoken, still hadn’t lost any of that hard edge that dared her to keep pushing.

Once again, she dared. Someone had to.

“And, yes, Max. That goes for you, too.”