Only Yours (Fool's Gold #5)(62)

He grabbed her hand. “You’ve been widowed ten years now. You’ve got to be hurting. I’m willing to help, offer what I can.” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

She didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. Frankly, the best idea seemed to be throwing his ice cubes with white wine in his lap. But that would cause a scene and she wasn’t that kind of woman. More’s the pity.

“Goodbye,” she said firmly, as she put her handbag over her shoulder.

She turned and marched purposefully toward the exit. The stone path was a little uneven and as she rounded the corner she nearly lost her balance. Before she began to fall, she felt someone take hold of her arm and steady her. For one horrifying moment, she thought that Art had followed her. That he was the kind of man who didn’t understand the word no.

She straightened and looked at the man who had rescued her.

Frying pan, meet fire, she thought, staring into a familiar pair of dark blue eyes.

She might not have seen Max Thurman in nearly forty years, having spent the past year avoiding running into him, but she sure recognized him. He had the same broad shoulders, the same muscled build. And, dammit all to hell, the man still looked like a god in jeans.

“Denise?”

Max stared at her. She thought he looked more pleased than surprised, but she wasn’t sure. Just as unsettling, her stomach went all fluttery, and she felt nervous, as she had when she’d first met him. She’d been seventeen and he’d been twenty. A man, while she’d still been on that cusp between girl and woman. The night of her eighteenth birthday he’d helped her cross over.

He grinned. “It is you. I’ve been hoping we would run—”

Into each other? Not likely. She’d done her best to make sure that never happened. She’d wanted to avoid any moment like this one.

“I have to go,” she said desperately, interrupting him.

She couldn’t talk to him now, not like this. Not after all this time. What if he saw Art and thought they were together? What if he said she looked old or…

Her mind was close to exploding with hideous scenarios. So much for the years adding serenity and grace.

Then she did the only thing she could think of. She ran.

SIMON STOOD IN FRONT of Montana’s door. He’d done his best to avoid her and instead had found himself missing everything about her. Being intelligent didn’t seem to play into his decision-making process. The need to see her overwhelmed everything else.

He raised his hand to knock, then heard a strange sound from inside. It was almost a cry, but one he couldn’t place. Was he interrupting something?

The thought of her with another man enraged him and he pounded his fist against the door. Who could she be with?

He waited while she called, “Just a minute.” Then the door opened.

Montana stood in front of him, wearing shorts, a cropped T-shirt and little else. Desire joined fury as he pushed past her and entered her living room.

“Where is he?”

He glanced around, expecting to see wine and candles. Instead the drapes were open, along with the windows. There was no evidence of a romantic evening. Where he thought he would find a man, he saw three black-and-white puppies fighting over a sock. One of them yipped, replicating the sound he’d heard before.

He turned back to her and saw she held another puppy in her arms.

“Where is who?” she asked, tilting her head as she stared at him.

“I… No one.” Feeling stupid, he shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. “Hi.”

“Hi, yourself. Is everything okay?”

He nodded. “Should I have called first?”

“Probably, but it’s okay that you didn’t.”

“You have puppies.”

“Four of them. Both their parents are great service dogs, and part of a breeding program. I’m keeping the puppies with me at night for a couple of weeks to help assess them. Max has them during the day.”

“He’s giving you the rough duty.”

“I’m the junior staff member. It’s part of my job.”

He tried to figure out what she was thinking. Feeling. When he’d last seen her, they’d argued. No, that wasn’t the right word. Whatever it had been, they hadn’t been getting along. Although he’d planned to spend the night with her, he’d ended up leaving.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes. Are you?”

Very few people asked him that. He was the one in charge—the one who made the decisions, changed the lives.

“I thought you were mad at me,” he said.

“I was never mad.”

She set down the puppy. It raced off to join the others fighting with the sock. Sounds of their happy yips and growls provided surprisingly pleasant background noise.

“I missed you,” he admitted.

“So you decided I was seeing someone else?”

“Not until I got here and heard strange sounds.”

“You don’t date much, do you?” she asked.

“I don’t date at all.”

“I know there are women. You’re too hunky for them to ignore you. So what do you do with them?”

Hunky? No one had every described him that way. The thought was distracting. He was a freak. A monster. How could she see him so differently?