Chapter Eight
Max got Mateo and T-Bone settled on his bed then went to his bathroom. He needed to pull himself together. He’d swung between wanting to shake Gina to wanting to drag her lush body up against his and resume that interrupted kiss that hadn’t been far from his mind for days to resigned horror as he realized what was going on with her family.
Of course, he’d had to invite them to stay and decorate, because Gina couldn’t take them to her apartment. All the dog stuff over there would clue them into the fact that T-Bone wasn’t actually Max’s dog. How exactly had his blackmailing her into being his fake girlfriend turned into becoming a co-conspirator with the dog?
Max pinched the bridge of his nose and wondered where exactly his life had taken a wrong turn. Oh, wait. Thanksgiving would be the moment. He only had himself to blame for unleashing Gina’s brand of chaos on his well-ordered life. A few weeks ago, he’d have said there was no way in hell anything like this would happen.
I’m never going to lie to my mother again. This was karma. Pure and simple. If he could turn back time… But he couldn’t.
He refused to acknowledge how the thought of not meeting Gina left him feeling strangely hollow.
With a resigned sigh, he returned to his family room and flipped on some Christmas music before he picked up a box and helped Gina unpack all his new decorations, breaking down their boxes as he went.
Gina hummed along to a particularly cheerful song as she studied the decorations and his apartment, hands on her hips, lips pursed. With purpose in her stride, she grabbed some garland and moved to the fireplace.
Max waved the box he held. “We’re not done unpacking yet.”
“I got most of it. You keep going, I know where I want to start.”
Already?
His question must’ve shown on his face, because her mother chuckled. “George had her do the holiday decorations every year. He said she was a natural with details and color.”
He glanced Gina’s way. George?
“One of my stepdads,” she explained. “It’s because of him I got interested in set design.”
“Sounds like a supportive dad,” Max said, folding up the garland box. Safest comment he could come up with on short notice.
“He was.” She returned her attention to surveying the fireplace. “While it lasted.” She muttered so quietly he barely caught the words. Given that Virginia didn’t react, he knew she hadn’t heard, but now he was curious.
“Stepstool?” Gina asked.
“Utility room off the kitchen. What happened to your fear of ladders?” he called after her.
“Stepstools don’t count,” the reply floated back.
“Ladders?” Virginia asked, not tracking with the inside conversation.
“Nothing, Mom,” Gina said as she returned.
By that time, Max had pinpointed what about her casual comments had bugged him. “You said one of your stepdads?” He put a candle in the neat pile he’d made of all the candles then glanced between mother and daughter.
Gina stiffened as she climbed up the stool but kept her back to him so he couldn’t catch her expression. “Seven, actually.”
What the hell was he supposed to say to that? Max racked his brain for an appropriate comment but had nothing. So this is what a deer caught in headlights of oncoming doom felt like.
Virginia saved him by laughing. “I know. It’s a lot.”
Gina glanced back and rolled her eyes before returning to her task. “Mom had me young, and my dad wasn’t in the picture.”
“I married the first nice guy to come along.” Virginia sighed. “I thought it would make things…easier. That didn’t work out like I thought.”
Max could read between the lines—young meant teenaged, he was betting, especially given the sixteen year gap between Gina and Mateo. Virginia looked on the youthful side. Her wide brown eyes so like her daughter’s barely showed signs of lines, her skin still smooth.
“I guess you moved a lot?” he said, more as filler, because there was nothing else he could think of. His parents still lived in the same house they bought when he was five.
“No more than military kids,” Gina said. There was definitely a defensive note in there. Why wouldn’t she face him? It’s not like he was going to blame her for the past.
“That must’ve been hard,” he murmured, hoping to get that point across.
“It wasn’t easy,” Virginia agreed. “But I wouldn’t trade my life, or Gina, for anything.” She gave Gina’s arm a squeeze.
Max had been talking to Gina, but he kept that to himself. He could picture Gina as a little girl searching for stability and getting constant upheaval instead. How could she have come out so…positive?
“We had some fun times, too,” Virginia said hesitantly. Her sunny expression tipped into concern. Maybe she wasn’t quite so oblivious to how her life might have affected her daughter.
“Yes, we did,” Gina agreed in reassuring voice.
Suddenly the parent-child dynamic between the two women became obvious. Gina was the grownup. Probably had been for her whole life. A protective kind of anger bubbled up inside him. How could a mother do that?
But at the same time, the love between the two was obvious as Gina came down and gave her mother a hug. She didn’t seem to harbor any blame or recriminations.
“I think the hot dogs were my favorite,” Gina teased.
To Max the words were an obvious distraction, but Virginia brightened. “Me, too!”
“Hot dogs?” Max asked. He couldn’t imagine how hot dogs fit into the conversation.
They both glanced his way and laughed. “My second dad was a hot dog vendor,” Gina explained. She grabbed the string of star lights from the bottom of the pile of lights he’d made, upending the entire stack, and stepped back up on her stool. “Thank God I loved hot dogs, because we at them. A lot.”
Mother and daughter both laughed, and Max gave in and smiled. If Gina wasn’t angry, then he damn well had no right to be. He tidied up the stack of lights and moved on to the garland that had somehow turned into a tangled mess.
The doorbell rang.
Virginia jumped up. “That’s the pizza. I’ll get it.”
Gina hopped down to pick the framed glass NOEL sign made to look like a window from an old farm house, but straightened as she assessed what he’d been doing this entire time. She bit her lip.
Max paused, messy ball of garland in hand, and looked at the neat stacks he’d made. “What?”
“I need you to not clean up behind me while I work.”
Max stared at her. “You want to leave it a mess?”
“It’s not a mess. I had everything grouped together and laid out by where I plan to decorate.”
“All over the floor?” He held up the garland. “And tangled?”
Her lips twitched like she was holding back a smile. “Yup. It’s my process. If you reorganize behind me, then I’ll just have to redo it.”
Before he could begin to address how crazy that sounded, Gina quickly picked through his neatly organized piles and regrouped everything, laying it all out on the floor.
Max blinked at the rearranged decorations and tried to make sense of Gina’s process…and failed. He was great with numbers and patterns, but her logic defied reason. How could she function with stuff scattered everywhere, let alone know what to do next?
“Pizza’s ready.” Virginia carried the boxes through to his kitchen.
“I just want to finish up the fireplace, Mom.” Seemingly satisfied with whatever she’d done with the decorations, Gina went back to work decorating.
With a grunt, she hefted the NOEL sign over to the fireplace and balanced it against the stepladder as she climbed back up. Seeing what she intended to do, Max was across the room as she attempted to heave the thing up. He had to reach around her body as he caught it. “Here. Let me.”
The fruity scent that clung to her skin and hair floated around him, so Max held his breath. Moving onto the first step behind her, while she occupied the second, he did his damndest to ignore her curves pressed into him. Gritting his teeth, he lifted the frame onto the mantel.
“Good?” He hoped she didn’t notice how tight his voice sounded.
“A little to the right?” Her own voice came out breathless, which only added to his discomfort as he imagined similar breathy sounds when he kissed her.
He would’ve caught how the sign was off-center if he hadn’t been so wrapped up in the woman in front of him. Max angled his hips so that his erection wasn’t jutting into her backside. “Sure.” He tweaked the decoration, trying to pay closer attention. “Better?”
“Uh-huh. Yup.”
What would she do if he stayed there? If he pressed into her? If he lifted aside the heavy fall of her hair to kiss the back of her neck?
Forcing himself to move, Max stepped down. Get your head out of your pants, Carter. “So, a hot dog vendor and a valet, huh?”
“Don’t judge,” she snipped in a low voice.
“I’m not.”
He received a narrow look, but then she shrugged and followed him off the steps. Max froze as she reached around him for the candles she’d already unboxed. “You know, now that I think about it, I guess stepdad number four, Danny, was the only one with a normal job.” She air-quoted the word normal. “And he hated his job. Always complained about being bored and overworked. I never did figure out how it was possible to be both.”
“Yeah? What’d he do?”
She lifted her eyes, lips twitching. “Finance.”
Max gave his best sarcastic laugh. “Ha ha.”
She winked. “If the shoe fits…” Then she obviously couldn’t hold it in anymore and laughed, the husky sound going straight to his already straining groin.
“I’m only teasing. Actually, you’re nothing like Danny. I get the impression you love your job.”
“I do.”
“It suits you.” She returned to the fireplace. “Mostly,” she tacked on.
“Why mostly?” he asked, intrigued despite himself.
She shrugged, her back still to him as she fidgeted with the garland. “You like control. So the numbers thing makes sense. But I don’t know…” She twisted to consider him, head tipped to the side. “I guess I see you in a more exciting occupation. Something with more action. Like James Bond.”
Max choked. She was way too close to the truth for his comfort. “Hardly.”
“Totally James Bond, actually. The cocky hottie, uber-capable, with the charming smile and an edge of danger.”
That’s how she viewed him? While he was mostly flattered, Max suddenly wanted to be…more.
“Of course, you ruin that image by loving little dogs,” she teased. “And being nice to mothers and ten-year-old brothers.”
“I don’t love dogs.” Knee jerk reaction.
“You love T-Bone,” she insisted. “I’ve seen you give him a secret cuddle when you thought I wasn’t looking.”
Busted. Max lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “You were imagining things.”
After a long, amused stare, she lifted her own eyebrow, mirroring his gesture. “I’m sure you’re right.”
The urge to kiss the laughter from those lips surged through him, but he tamped it down as Mateo came bounding out of his room with T-Bone behind him, the dog’s nails clacking on Max’s hardwood floors. “I smell pizza,” he said.
Virginia was already digging in. She had helped herself to Max’s plates.
“Your closet is the cleanest closet I’ve ever seen,” Mateo commented around a bite of steaming pepperoni pizza.
Gina put a hand over her eyes with a groan. “Matt,” she chided. “You don’t snoop in other people’s homes.”
Only the guilty color in her cheeks acknowledged that she may have done the same thing. Given that he’d found his closet door open that day they met, he’d already figured she had.
“Sorry,” Mateo mumbled. “I didn’t touch anything.”
“No problem,” Max said, though he had to keep himself from checking that nothing had been disturbed. “I like to be organized.”
Mateo nodded like that was a normal thing, and Max relaxed as the subject dropped. “I like your games, even though they’re old.”
“Matt,” Gina chided again. Virginia didn’t say anything.
“What?” Mateo asked around another bite of pizza.
Max chuckled. “They are old. It’s a vintage Atari system,” he explained to Gina.
“Oh. Okay.”
“See.” Mateo rolled his eyes at his sister.
Max chuckled even as Gina shook her head. “Attitude starts early these days, apparently,” she said. But she gave her brother’s shoulder a playful push to take the sting out of the words and got back a cheeky grin in return.
They finished up dinner and Mateo disappeared with T-Bone again, after Gina extracted a promise that he not snoop or disturb anything in there, and they got back to work. An hour later, Gina sent her mother and brother home, insisting he needed to get to sleep at a decent hour.
Yup, the woman had been a mother before her time.
Max managed to keep his distance, and they worked alone in companionable harmony until every decoration had found a home. By the time they finished, three wreaths hung by ribbons from the curtain rods over his windows. The fireplace truly was a focal point with the garland, snowflake lights, and framed glass sign, the red candles a perfect foil for all the white. She’d also put up a set of three faux trees that resembled small maple trees bare of their leaves and wrapped in white lights.
And a pile of boxes lay strewn at their feet.
“Why don’t you take a picture now and send it to your mom,” Gina said from where she was still fluffing the greenery of the wreaths.
Needing a distraction from the mess, he pulled out his phone and snapped a few pictures. “Good idea.” He managed to sneak one of Gina—the soft white lights from the Christmas decorations glowing against her skin, her dark hair tumbling down her back, and a satisfied smile gracing her lips.
She glanced up and blinked at him. “Not of me,” she complained.
“Proof for Mom,” he insisted, tucking the phone in his pocket.
She shook her head but let it go. With a sigh, Gina crossed the room and collapsed on his couch, obviously worn out from hours of frenetic work to get it done.
“See,” she murmured in a tired voice. “I told you it wouldn’t take long.”
“Yeah. Hours is no time at all.”
She ignored him. T-Bone hopped up from his spot on the couch, where he’d stayed after Mateo left, and plopped down beside her, resting his head on her lap. Absently, she tickled his belly.
Max glanced at the mess of a room, then at the woman and dog curled up on his couch. With a mental sigh, he gave in and sat down beside her anyway, close enough to touch, to breathe in the fruity scent of her shampoo.
“Good call on the decorations. My mother will be over the moon.” Possibly a little too over the moon.
She scooted her body so that she was angled sideways, facing him, her knees drawn up. “It was more for you than her,” she admitted.
She really wanted him to like it. He could see it in her big brown eyes. Even T-Bone watched him with an expression that said, just let her have this one. The problem was, if he caved, then she’d think she could do more stuff like this.
“I like it.” The ring of truth in that admission surprised him as much as it did her. He still held up a hand to hold off her grin of triumph. “But no more, okay? I’m not a charity case or something for you to…fix.”
Gina gave a small bounce. “Just this. I promise. I’ll even clean up the mess.” Then she cocked her head. “And I’m not trying to fix you.”
“Okay, then don’t try to help me, either. I’ve told you. I get enough of that—”
“From your family. Okay, okay. No more helping.” She leaned back, still smiling, then closed her eyes. “Don’t forget to send those pictures.”
Max huffed a laugh as she went from agreeing to not help back to mothering him in the space of a sentence.
“What?” she asked, and he didn’t think the innocent bafflement was faked.
“You just can’t help yourself, can you?”
A blank stare greeted the question.
He sighed and changed the subject. “I like your mother and brother. They seemed nice.”
Putting two and two together, Gina sighed. “Thanks. I know how my mother can come off…”
“Hey.” He tipped her chin up so she’d look him in the eyes. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.” Would it be entirely inappropriate to kiss her right now?
She blinked at him warily, almost like she didn’t quite trust his words. “That’s nice, but I saw your face. She may not have been the mother of the year, but I was always loved.”
“I’m glad you were loved,” he murmured. He meant it.
Unable to stop himself, Max lifted his free hand and brushed her tousled hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear. She stared back at him. He could drown in her eyes, willing him to kiss her. The warmth in her gaze licked at him, urged him closer. Everything in Max’s body agreed, wanting him to move in, to claim her lips, to pull those sighs and little noises from her as he had the other night.
Only he shouldn’t. Rules were rules, dammit, and he was already too involved. One kiss was one too many, and playing happy family tonight hadn’t helped any.
Max pulled back, although the disappointment wilting the corners of her mouth almost had him chucking the fucking rules.
But no. Tonight had been too intimate, too real. They needed distance.
So he stood and pulled her to her feet. “You look exhausted. You should get some rest.”
He scooped T-Bone up and placed the dog in her arms, then opened the door, perhaps a little more hastily than manners allowed for, and pushed her gently out into the hall.
Gina flashed him a surprised glance, which he ignored. He needed to get her out of his apartment before he did something monumentally stupid.
Like pull her back inside and show her how much he wanted her to stay. All night long. She’d look fucking amazing naked under those twinkling lights.
And he was losing his grip with every passing day.