Chapter Three
I slipped into the office and pealed my suit jacket off, just barely looking in the direction of his private office. The door was slightly ajar. I unbutton the cuffs of my shirt and rolled them up. The rest of the day was going to be devoted to paperwork. I didn’t think I needed the jacket on for that.
“Is that you?” he called out from beyond the door.
Everything inside of me jumped. “Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Yeah, it’s me.”
“How was lunch?”
My heart fluttered. “Fine.”
“See, I told you so.”
“What?”
“If you had gone to Shay’s like I told you to, you would have had a good time. Not just ‘fine.’’
I had to laugh. “Max, sometimes I think you’ve got issues.”
He laughed and I felt unstable once more.
Clearing my throat again, I pressed forward. “Did you eat the lunch I gave you?” I asked as I sat down at my desk and began clearing through the stacks.
Max moaned. “It was cold.”
“It was a sandwich. It was supposed to be cold.”
“I don’t like cold lunches.”
“Did you eat it?” I continued, trying not to sigh too loudly. Honestly, sometimes he was such a child.
“Yes, I ate it.” He sighed louder than necessary for dramatic effect.
“Thank you. I’ll make sure they send up a hot sandwich next time.”
There was silence between us for a while. My nerves settled down and I kept working. It seemed like everything was going to be okay. Even if I did have feelings for Max, we could still go on with life. He didn’t need to know and I didn’t need to think about it anymore.
“Maddy, could you call Mr. Lucas for me?” his voice said so close my concentration shattered.
I started violently and I shoved my rolling chair back into the wall.
“Whoa, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Max said, honestly sounding concern.
I looked up to find he had walked out of his office and was leaning over my desk. “I-I just didn’t notice you’d come out,” I stammered and blinked hard.
He laughed softly. “You’re too focused for you own good sometimes, Maddy.”
I couldn’t have told him what I was focused on the moment before. I probably couldn’t have counted to ten at that moment. All I could do was stare at him. Max. My Max.
Ten years had thinned his hair a lot more and thickened his glasses. Almost nobody saw him without those glasses. Just me, on nights we worked so late we didn’t bother going home. His eyes would start to blur around two AM. They always did. He’d take those glasses off and rub his eyes and for that moment I could see how perfectly blue they were. Usually I would lean over and take his glasses so he couldn’t start reading until he took a few minutes break. He’d come complain at me, then smile and say he’d probably be blind if I wasn’t there. He was right.
That’s when I realized it was true. I really did love Max. And it wasn’t the sort of love I could just ignore and tell myself it really didn’t matter. It was the sort of love that needed a response, affection, something more than just the acknowledgement of my secretarial skills.
Max smiled as if he didn’t realize I was staring at him like I’d never stared at him before and said, “Anyway, can you call Mr. Lucas? I have a few minutes to spare tomorrow morning so if he doesn’t mind I’d like to move his appointment up.” He didn’t wait for my reply. Just turned around and headed back to his office.
“I quit,” I said rather flatly without the slightest thought. The words shocked me right to the core.
Max stopped walking and slowly turned around. He looked like I had just attempted to conduct a conversation in Spanish.
“What?”
I was silent for a long moment, trying to decide why I’d said those words. Why? I knew pretty quickly why. I couldn’t stand the thought of working alongside him, same as always, knowing how I felt. It would drive me crazy.
I sighed loudly as the urge to curse at Georgia like my father use to curse at the television every time a political candidate came on over took me. It was official. Georgia had ruined my life.
“Maddy,” Max said slowly. His eyebrows rose.
My eyes ran back and forth between the door and Max. A sudden burst of energy propelled me out of my chair and towards the hook I’d hung my jacket on.
“I quit, Max,” I said and tried to avoid his gaze.
“Quit?” he said as if he wasn’t sure what the word meant. “As in, not work for me?”
“Exactly.” I pulled my jacket off the hook, but he reached over and took it out of my hands, coming remarkably close to me. His presence had never bothered me before, but suddenly the closeness threatened to throw my sanity over a cliff.
“Maddy, you can’t quit.” There was a tone in his voice that suggested he thought the idea was amusing. “I mean, what else would you do?”
Indignation started to surge in my gut. It was as if he was saying I wasn’t capable of doing anything else but care for him. I pushed back, effectively knocking into him and shoving his presence away from me. When I turned to look at him his eyes were bugging out like that first day when I’d answered the phone. He couldn’t believe I’d actually gone so far.
“Stop it, Max,” I said. “I can leave if I want to.” I sounded every bit like the child I’d often accused him of being.
Still looking disorientated, he actually had the audacity to say, “Is this one of those emotional issues females have?”
That snapped any semblance of self-control I had left. “No,” I shot back and stamped my foot. “Why do men think women are incapable of logic? Women don’t run entirely on emotion!”
Of course, at that particular moment I was running purely on emotion, but I wasn’t about to let him get away with that line.
“Fine, then explain this sudden…strange behavior.” He squared his shoulders and stared at me with the look I’d seen him use on witness he thought were lying in the courtroom.
I swallowed hard and stared back, fully aware that I couldn’t explain it. Not without saying, “I love you Max and I can’t go on like this.” If I did, I’d lose everything I had built up over the last decade. Well, I was going to lose it either way, but if I walked out on my own at least I’d have a shred of dignity left. No sanity, but dignity.
I took a deep breath and turned toward the door, but before I could take another step it swung open and cracked into the wall. I involuntarily stepped back at the sound, but eased forward again when I saw the man walk in.
He was tall, but not extreme. Dressed in wrinkled, but clean clothes. His was face was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it at the moment. All I could think about was the strange ash color his skin held. It was almost like he was half dead.
I straightened and assumed my professional stance. “I’m sorry, sir, we don’t have any appointments today.”
The man’s eyes barely brushed over me then settled on Max. “I want to talk to you,” he said.
Max gently shook his head. “If you’d like to schedule an appointment my secretary can help you with that, but I’m busy today.”
“No, today.” His voice was almost ghost like. Deep and flat. There seemed to be a soft echo in it, but then again I wasn’t in my right mind.
“I’m sorry, but—”
A flash of red hot anger hit the man in the face. I barely saw him twitch, but there was a gun in his hand, pointed straight at Max, an instant later.