“Are you serious?” I breathed, my eyes wide.

He looked at my face a second then burst out laughing.

When he was done laughing but he was still smiling, he instructed, “Don’t bother answerin’ the question, babe.”

“Okay,” I whispered, too overcome with happiness that this meant another week with him in his A-Frame and two more with him in Charlie’s house.

I could show him pictures of Charlie!

“For once, I don’t know what you’re thinking,” he broke into my thoughts, his smile now a grin, “except it’s good.”

“I’m thinking, if you come to England I can show you pictures of Charlie,” I shared happily and watched with no small amount of fascination as his face got soft but his eyes grew warm.

“I’d like that,” he muttered.

“Nina!” Niles’s voice snapped from my left.

My head twisted to the side and Max’s hand moved from my neck as I stared in shock at Niles in tan, large whale corduroys, a navy pea coat with a navy turtleneck showing out of the collar, standing on the wooded sidewalk facing Max and I, his tan, leather glove-covered hands on the wooden railing. He was wearing this get up even though the weather had again turned and it had to be at least sixty degrees Fahrenheit.

The minute I looked at him, his face paled and his eyes grew huge.

Then, his voice almost shrill, he asked, “What happened to your face?”

“What are you still doing here?” I asked back.

“What happened to your face?” he shouted then his eyes went straight to Max and he demanded to know, “Did you do that to her?”

“I’m gettin’ tired of that shit,” Max murmured as his body got tight in my arms.

“No!” I answered Niles sharply, giving Max a squeeze. “I have a mountain man gone bad stalker.”

“A what?” Niles asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” I told him, reluctantly dropping one arm from Max and turning to face Niles and when I did, Max turned too, his arm going around my shoulders and my other arm dropped to his waist, my thumb hooking in his side belt loop as I went on, “I asked, what are you still doing here?”

“I called you four times yesterday,” Niles told me, not answering my question.

“And?”

“You didn’t take any of my calls.”

“And?”

“I’d like to speak to you,” Niles clipped.

I pointed out the obvious, “Niles, honestly, I think we’ve said all there is to say.”

Niles’s face went hard and he informed me, “And I think the least you could do is allow me a moment to speak to you,” his eyes went to Max before he finished, “privately.”

Unfortunately at this point, seeing as Niles had interrupted a nice moment between Max and me, and he was being kind of a jerk, I was starting to see red.

“The least I could do?” I asked irately.

“Duchess,” Max muttered at my side.

“The least you could do,” Niles affirmed.

“You’ve had two years of me talking with you privately and you never listened,” I reminded him.

“But –” Niles started.

I was moving forward taking Max with me, heading to the two step opening at the railing by the Police Station just down from Niles. I wasn’t going to get into this with him, not now, not ever. It wasn’t worth it, he wasn’t worth it.

Therefore, as I headed that way, I told Niles, “I need to go press charges.”

“Against who?” Niles asked.

I stopped, glared at him and answered impatiently, “Who else? Against my mountain man gone bad stalker!”

“Nina! Max!” I heard shouted and looked to the left to see Linda bearing down on our party, she got a good look at me, came to a juddering halt and kept shouting, “Oh my God! What on earth happened to you?”

“Damon,” Max answered without hesitation and my head snapped back to look at him.

“Max!” I hissed.

“Everyone’s gonna know,” Max told me.

“They will now,” I mumbled.

“Damon!” Linda yelled very loudly, proving my mumbled point.

“I’m fine,” I told Linda.

“Nina, that word I’d like to have privately…” Niles butted in.

“Babe, seriously, get rid of him,” Max’s voice was getting a little scary.

“Niles, go home,” I said to Niles.

“You don’t look fine,” Linda said to me, ignoring Niles.

“I am,” I promised her. “Really, it just feels a little bit tight.”

“That Damon Matthews,” Linda spat. “You know, take one letter out of his name and it spells ‘damn’ as in ‘damn, that kid’s a worthless sonovabitch’.”

“Nina! Max! Hey!” I heard and looked to the right to see Becca approaching. Then she caught sight of me and skidded to a halt two feet from Niles. “Whoa! What happened to your face?”

“Fuck me,” Max muttered.

“Damon,” I told her, talking over Max cursing.

“That dick!” Becca screeched.

“Nina! For God’s sake!” Niles bellowed and I looked at him.

“Niles! Go! Away!” I shouted at him.

Becca’s torso reared back, her eyes got wide and they were on Niles.

“Dude,” she said low, “you’re Niles?”

Niles just scowled at her so she looked at me.

“Seriously, Neens, Max is way better,” Becca informed me. “Not only is he hotter, he’s taller, has great hair, that awesome rough voice and he dresses nearly as hot as he just plain is.”

Becca was not wrong about that. Any of it. Therefore I had no response.

“Who’s Niles?” Linda asked Becca, finally examining Niles.

“I’m Nina’s fiancé,” Niles answered Linda, now scowling more irately at Becca.

“Ex!” I shouted.

“Jesus, enough!” Max cut in on a sharp, impatient bark and looked at Niles. “Man, it’s over. Deal with it but deal with it somewhere else.” He looked at his mother. “Mom, we gotta go in so Nina can swear out a statement. I’ll call you later.” He looked at Becca. “Babe, Nina’ll call you, yeah?”

“Cool,” Becca said on a grin.

“Is it pasta bake tonight?” Linda asked.

“No,” Max answered instantly.

“When am I gonna get pasta bake?” Linda pushed.

“I don’t know, Mom,” Max replied and I could tell he was losing it.

“Saturday,” I told her quickly. “That’s my parent’s last day here. We’ll have a little party.”

“Duchess,” Max said to me, sounding exasperated, “when I’m in England, we gotta get your shit sorted so you can move here and people’ll get used to having you around so maybe they’ll back the fuck off so I can spend some fuckin’ time with you.”

“You’re moving here?” Niles asked on a loud, horrified whisper.

“Yes, Niles,” I answered him.

“But you said you’d never leave Charlie’s house.”

Now he was hearing what I said a million times over the last year.

“I’m not leaving Charlie’s house, Max and I are going to…” I stopped speaking as it hit me, I looked at Max and whispered, “We can’t do that anymore, can we?”

Max’s arm at my shoulders gave me a squeeze. “We’ll talk about it later.”

I ignored him, remembering what he’d told me the morning before about taking the job in town and how wonderful it was that he’d make that sacrifice for me, taking over Curt’s business, but how he couldn’t do it, seeing as it was Curt’s business and Curt was a jerk, so I announced, “And you can’t take that job.”

“Babe, we’ll talk about it later.”

“What job?” Linda asked.

“Fuck,” Max clipped.

“Nothing, nothing,” I said quickly to Linda. “We need to go in.”

“What job?” Linda repeated.

“Mom, later,” Max bit out.

Linda’s hands came up. “All right, all right. Yeesh. Later.” Then she looked around Niles to Becca and asked, “Do you wanna get a coffee? I’m meeting Barb and Mindy at the café.”

“Awesome,” Becca answered.

“Mindy?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Linda said to me then invited, “You guys finish, you can join us.”

I smiled at her and said, “That would be lovely.”

“Someone kill me,” Max muttered, I looked up at him to see he was looking up at the blue, cloudless sky.

“Darling,” I called, putting my free hand to his stomach, “we need to go into the Station and get this done so I can see Mins and get a coffee.”

Max’s head tilted down and his frustrated gray eyes locked on mine. “Babe, just gonna say, you’re lucky you’re so damned cute.”

That was when I curled my body into his, got up on my toes, pressed close and smiled at him before I said softly, “I know.”

And I did know. At that moment with Max looking irritated but still amazingly handsome and I was tucked firm in the curve of his arm, I knew.

I knew I was possibly the luckiest woman in the world.

And Max proved me correct when his eyes moved over my face, his expression cleared, his face warmed and his mouth came down on mine.

***

We were sitting in the little room that Mick questioned Kami in, Max at my side, his chair pushed slightly back but close to mine, his arm draped around the back of my chair, his legs stretched out in front of him, feet crossed at the ankles.

This seemed like a pose of masculine relaxation but it wasn’t.

I knew this when he clipped, “What’s takin’ so fuckin’ long?”

I looked up from returning the texts my friends had been sending.

Before texting I’d found that yesterday Niles had called four times, Mom three and I had five calls from three numbers I didn’t know. After interrogating Max I found that one call was from his home phone (so I programmed it in), three from his mobile (so I programmed that in too) and the last one was from Arlene (which I also programmed in). Mom had given Max my number, Max had given it to Arlene and her message was mostly about how next time we were at The Dog I couldn’t leave without saying good-bye and partly about her asking when I was making another fish casserole without any mention at all about my heartbroken getaway which, I suspected, she knew would be foiled.