“Precisely.” Max had a pen in his mouth, which made his accent more pronounced for some reason.
“With those kinds of big plans, it’s a good thing you found yourself such a great girl to marry under false pretenses.”
Max chuckled, the pen still clutched between his teeth. “I thank my lucky stars.”
“One who gives you wild pretend make-up sex.” I smiled at the frying pan I was melting a pat of butter in.
“She is a freak of nature in the sack. Says the filthiest things. Drives me wild.” He’d stopped chewing on his pen and was looking back at me at the stove
“I hope you’re paying her a lot. Like, a lot a lot.”
“Oh, I am. Plus, I give her mind-blowing pretend orgasms.” Max’s wicked smile slid into place, but I kept my attention on spreading that pat of butter around.
He had no idea how close I’d come to a not-so-pretend orgasm last night. He was never going to get an idea either.
“Do you ever think one day, after all of this, you’ll marry again? For real love?” Max twisted in his chair, so he was more facing me than his laptop.
I shook my head and pulled a couple of pieces of bread from the bag on the counter. “Nope. No way in hell.” I shook my head again. “I’ll never marry for love.”
Max’s head tipped as he continued to study me. “Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t work.” I found my grandma’s old biscuit cutter in the drawer and cut a couple of circles out of the center of the bread. “Marriage and commitment don’t work together. Marriage and love don’t go together. I’ve seen it again and again. It’s a sham.”
Max watched me for another minute before getting back to his computer. I focused on the sound of the coffee percolating to calm me down after that topic.
“Have you never been with someone you’ve thought that yeah, maybe?”
When the first piece of bread dropped into the pan, the butter sizzled and spit around it. “Not once.” I threw the second one down beside it. “I’ve never let anyone get close enough.”
The only sound for a minute was the butter sizzling and Max typing.
“So you’re against marriage because you’ve never let anyone in, and I’m against it because I’ve let too many people in.”
I cracked the first egg into the hole of one piece of bread. “I guess so,” I said, cracking the second egg into the other piece. “How many people have you let get too close?”
When Max didn’t answer at first, I glanced over. His back was tense, his shoulders stiff.
“From my experience,” he said slowly, “one’s too many.”
I kept watching him, spatula in hand, wanting to ask so much more. I’d read about there being one woman in Max’s past. One he’d been in love with. One he’d almost married. He hadn’t gone into much detail other than to write that it had ended. Some of me wanted to know everything about her and what had happened—most of me didn’t want to know anything more than I already did.
“So it was just you and your grandma in this house when you were growing up?” he asked as I flipped the bread-and-egg combo.
“Pretty much, yeah.” I went along with his agenda to change the topic. God knew if I’ve had my heart drawn and quartered by someone who’d turned me off to the whole idea of marriage, I wouldn’t want to talk about it either.
That was why I’d never let anyone get close enough to do that.
“My mom came and went until I was seven. Then she just . . . went.” I swallowed, forbidding myself to feel anything for that woman. I’d felt enough for her as a child without getting anything in return.
“What happened to her?” Max’s fingers stilled over his keyboard.
“Don’t know. Don’t care.” I checked the underside of the bread. Still needed another minute. “She followed Loser Number Thirteen out that front door seventeen years ago, and that’s the last I saw or heard of her.” I inhaled when I felt my throat tighten from remembering the wave she’d given me before rushing out the door. I’d known it was a good-bye wave—I just hadn’t known it was a good-bye forever wave. “Her lucky number thirteen.”
“You never heard from her again?” Max asked.
“Oh, you know, the occasional postcard from Reno here, collect phone call from Tampa there. After a few years, even those stopped coming.” I pulled a couple of plates from the cupboard. “We were better off without her. Better off without all of the guys coming and going, seeing the things they’d done to her face the next morning at the breakfast table. Seeing the things she’d done to herself from the bruises and damaged veins.” I slid the first piece of bread onto a plate. “We were better off without her. She was better off without us too.”
When Max’s phone chimed, he silenced it. “You never knew your dad?”
“Nope. They were good and divorced, and he’d good and bailed before my third birthday. Not much to remember.” Setting a couple of forks on the plates, I carried them to the table.
“And your grandpa left your grandma after your mom was born, right?” When I slid his plate next to his spot, he added, “Thank you.”
“Yeah, I never met him, and Grandma never said much.” I headed for the coffee because I needed some caffeine in me to have this kind of conversation. “But look at what she did all on her own. This house. She worked, supported herself in an era that was not particular fond of or used to women in the workplace. She raised my mom and me. She was better off without him, my mom would have been better off without all of the hims, and I’ll be better off without any him.”
Max had twisted around in his chair and was watching me. The skin between his brows was drawn in a hard line, his eyes clouded. “I’m sorry, Nina. I don’t understand how anyone could do that to you.”
My weight shifted. “Human nature. Commitment isn’t part of it.” I poured some creamer into my cup and left Max’s black.
“But what about your grandma? Seems like she knew a little something about commitment.” He peaked his brows at me as I carried our coffees to the table.
“My grandma was special. One in a million.”
“And no one else could be special in your life? No one else could be that one in a million?” He scooted his paper and laptop over when I slid into the seat beside him, setting our coffees down.
“Everyone’s left me, Max. Even Grandma now.” I chewed on the inside of my cheek for a second, wondering why I was even telling him all of this. He wasn’t my best friend or my closest confidant. He was some guy paying me to marry him. So why did I feel like I could tell him anything? Like I could tell him everything and he wouldn’t blink an eye? “I’d be a fool to expect anything different from a relationship. I’d be setting myself up for failure.”
He took a drink of his coffee, watching me over the side of the cup. He drained half of it in one long drink. “If you look at the odds, sure. Statistically speaking, you’re right. But haven’t you ever heard that love defies the odds?”
My head shook as I huffed. “Yeah, I think I have heard that. In those fairy tale book things.”
Max laughed and cut into his breakfast with the side of his fork. He stabbed a chunk and stuffed it into his mouth, somehow managing to not get runny yolk all over his suit. He kind of moaned as he chewed. “What is this?”
“Eggy in a basket.” I tried not to stare when he shoved another big bite into his mouth. In his suit, with his laptop flashing with the markets changing, he looked so dignified. At least until he started to eat.
“It’s . . . it’s . . .” He searched for the right word, continuing to chew.
“Good?” I suggested.
Max shook his head and finished chewing. “It’s the breakfast equivalent of what we did last night. That’s what it is.”
Thinking about last night made my legs squeeze together. I was just taking a sip of my coffee when we heard the sound of a garage door opening. Max leapt out of his chair and powered toward the window by the door.
“Mission fucking accom
plished,” he crowed from the door as I came up behind him.
I caught a glimpse of Nathan’s hybrid whipping out of the driveway. He usually drove slow and defensively, like he was expecting some kid to come cruising past his driveway on a bike at any second. This morning, he was driving like he was in training for NASCAR.
“I didn’t know Priuses had so much get up and go.” Max whistled as Nathan’s wheels screeched as he accelerated down the road.
“Think he heard anything last night?” I teased, nudging Max.
“Liebling, that is the way a man drives when he realizes all of that sexual frustration that’s been building up is getting worked out in his hand instead of the hot neighbor.” Max fired a wink at me.
“Well, one problem solved. We’ve probably only got a thousand more to make it through before this is all said and done, right?”
Max’s smile started to drift away. “Probably.”
Exhaling, I walked back to the table. I had six dogs to walk at seven. “Something to look forward to.”
“Nina?” His voice stopped me. When I turned around, I found him facing me, his forehead lined. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
My lungs strained from the way he was looking at me. My heart ached from his question. There was sincerity in his tone, concern in his expression. How could someone who’d sought me out for the purpose of using me be so convincing? How could he make me feel like I was special to him when really, I was only a means to an end?
I knew better though. I’d learned from experience. It didn’t matter what he said. It didn’t matter how he looked at me. Eventually, he’d leave just like the rest of them.
“Yeah,” I answered, walking away. “You can keep your promise to not fall in love with me.”
Max was home. Or Max was here.
Him moving in was still weird, and thinking of him and home in the same thought was a stretch.
As I clomped up the porch steps, I noticed the front door was open slightly. Then Max’s head popped into view. His eyes softened when he saw me, then he pulled the door open.
“What are you doing?” I asked as I appraised the scene just inside the door. There was a toolbox and Max was in . . . jeans. And a T-shirt. I hadn’t thought he owned such pedestrian clothing.
“Romance,” he said with a shrug.
I felt my forehead crease.
He motioned at the door. “Fixing your whiney hinges. Romance, right?”
That was when I noticed the can of WD-40 on the porch at his feet. “I can’t believe you remembered that.”
“Why not?” Max pulled the screwdriver out of the back of his jeans and got back to work.
“’Cause you’re a guy. In one ear, out the other.” I was staring at him as he worked, pretty much stupefied. “Especially if it’s romance related.”
“I’m not just any guy though.” He lifted his screwdriver for a moment before putting it back to work. “I’m the one who’s spending the next couple of years with you. The guy who’d like to stay in your good graces. Besides, look who’s talking?” He glanced at the armful I was wrestling with.
“I picked up your dry-cleaning. Looks like it was just in time too.” I waved at his jeans, letting my gaze linger maybe a bit longer than I should have. Thanks to Max’s suit jackets, his backside was almost always hidden from view. I supposed that was a good thing since I couldn’t seem to stop staring at it.
So what? He had a nice butt. And a nice face. And a nice everything else in between. So he was fun to look at.
It wasn’t like he . . . waited to take a shower in the morning so I could have the hot water. It wasn’t like he . . . had my coffee ready when I emerged from that hot shower. It wasn’t like he . . . took time to fix my damn whiney door hinges.
Ugh. My mission of hating Maximilian Sturm was getting harder and harder by the minute.
“How did you know what shop I use?” Max asked as I laid his stack of suits over the back of his chair he’d moved into the living room.
“I noticed one of your receipts sitting out last week.” I wouldn’t mention I’d “noticed” it in the trash. “Not a big deal. Besides, you’ve been so busy with work I didn’t want you to run out of suits.”
Max crouched down to work on the bottom hinge. “I’m always busy with work.”
“Yet you’re fixing my whiney hinges.”
One of his shoulders raised, stretching the fabric of his shirt across his back. “I had a little free time.”
“And you picked home improvement to fill it with?”
Max looked back over his shoulder at me. His eyes held mine in such a way I couldn’t escape them. “I picked doing something to take care of you to fill it.”
My chest ached when he said that. It kept aching as he continued to look at me with that same expression. It wasn’t until Max went back to focusing on the door that I was able to think again.
“That’s why you went this route, right? Paying for marriage?” I swallowed and leaned into the back of the couch. “You’re too busy to invest anything into making a relationship work.”
“Yes”—Max nodded—“that’s part of the reason.”
“And the other part has to do with?”
He stopped working on the hinge. “I don’t believe in commitment. In marriage. We’ve talked about that. It just doesn’t work.”
Yeah, we had talked about that. Funny that he was the one reminding me of our shared opinion on the topic.
“Yeah, because it’s so realistic to expect two people to not only be best friends forever but to also be the only person they could ever imagine having sex with until they die. Talk about a fairy tale,” I said, kicking out of my sneakers. “With an unhappy ending.”
Max snorted his approval. “Go figure two people who don’t believe in marriage are getting married. How’s that for irony?”
“I believe in fake marriage,” I called back as I headed to the kitchen to grab a water. “Just not the real kind.” After rummaging around in the fridge for a bottle of water, I pulled it out, twisted the cap off, and headed back to the front door. “Could maybe another part of your reason for not believing in marriage and commitment have anything to do with a certain someone from your past?”
When I paused behind Max, holding out the bottle of water for him, he didn’t move. “It could.”
His voice was distant. Almost cold.
“What happened?”
The muscles banding down his neck popped through his skin. “It didn’t work.”
When he didn’t seem to notice the water I was holding out for him, I tapped him on the shoulder with it. “Why didn’t it work?”
Max took the water, smiled his thanks, and drained half of it in one drink. “Because you can’t make love work when the person on the other end doesn’t love you back.”
Leaning into the wall beside me, I stared at him. “But you loved her?”
“At the time, yes, I thought so, but we were young and I was stupid.” Max’s knuckles started to turn white from gripping the screwdriver. “What I learned from that experience wasn’t love. It was a lesson in what love was not.”
I wasn’t used to these flashes of vulnerability from Max. I wasn’t sure if what he needed most was a hug or just to not talk about it anymore. I went with something that fell in the middle. “How did you find out that she didn’t love you?”
He exhaled sharply. “When a friend back in Germany called to tell me that she’d been being unfaithful. For years. With multiple partners.” Max glared at the shiny brass hinge like he was seeing something reflected on it. “That was the day before I was set to fly back to Germany for good. The day after I’d dropped out of my last year of doctorate classes. The day I was ready to give up everything for a woman who was willing to give nothing in return.”
“My god, Max . . .” I exhaled, not sure where to go from here. I’d never guessed he bore this kind of a story—that he wore this deep of a scar. “What did you do?”
He w
as contemplative for another moment before he got back to work. “I pleaded and begged with my professors to let me back into the classes I’d formally dropped, ripped my one-way ticket in half, and adopted a personal manifesto to never let another woman do that to me again. That I’d never let myself wind up in a position where I’d give up everything for what I thought was love.”
Watching Max work, it was hard for me to imagine what kind of woman could do that to him. What type of person could betray him like that. Max had his shortcomings, like the rest of us, but his strengths more than made up for any perceived downside. At that moment, I kind of wanted to kick her cheating German ass, whoever she was.
“Your parents? How long have they been married?” I asked, changing the subject since I could see how it upset him.
“Thirty-five unmagical years.” Max’s voice was dripping sarcasm.
“That shows commitment, right?” I argued, not sure why I was arguing this. I was as big a skeptic of marriage and commitment as he was.
“No, it shows a high tolerance to pain. They both would be happier apart, but they’re too stubborn to admit it.” He reached for the WD-40 can and sprayed one of the screw holes. “I love them, but they have their faults.”
“Just like the rest of us,” I added.
“The rest of us”—Max tipped his head back and forth—“plus a few more. Listen, I appreciate my family, but they drive me insane. Just like I drive them insane. There’s a reason I put that big, huge ocean known as the Atlantic between us, you know?”
Yeah, because if moving out of state wasn’t far enough, there was always the other side of the globe. But it was clear from Max’s posture that was time to move on. Before the vein in his forehead burst or the muscles spanning his back tore through his shirt.
“Hey, I just found out I sold a few photographs. Awesome, right?” I patted the little shoulder purse still wrapped across me. “We’ll be eating good tonight.”
“Nina.” Max sighed, twisting around so he was facing me. “I wish you’d just let me take care of all the household expenses.”
My head shook. Adamantly. “No way. This is a Dutch fake union all the way. Thanks though.”