Max straightened and turned to Dad. “Not one fuckin’ thing gentlemanly about protecting what’s yours. Looks like you’re gonna lose it, you do everything you can to stop that from happening.” Max looked back to Niles. “And you didn’t do that. She was a week away from me, she walked into a room I was in holdin’ another man’s hand, I’d lose my fuckin’ mind. Not at her. Wonderin’ where I lost my way and I’d talk to her about how to find my way back.” I heard my mother make a noise from behind us but I was too busy staring at Max’s profile, letting his words sink in and noting, as they were doing that, how good they felt. When Niles didn’t respond, Max finished, “Christ, you stand there, starin’ down your nose at me and you don’t even get it’s you who doesn’t deserve her.”

Moments passed and I continued to stare at Max’s profile, his words rocking me in a good way but also wondering how rude it would be if I made out with him in front of Niles.

“Nina,” Niles called and I started, my eyes, with effort, leaving Max and going to him. “Perhaps we can speak alone,” he suggested tardily.

“Too late, asshole,” Max muttered, turned from the table and dragged me out of the restaurant.

This was because things had gotten ugly and therefore, as Max promised, we were out of there.

We exited the restaurant, Mom and Steve on our heels, and I was still trying to come to terms with all that was said and all I’d discovered inside. Max, however, had already come to terms with it and the terms he’d come to was him being annoyed at me.

“Said it yesterday, babe, you didn’t listen,” he muttered, dragging me down the wooden plank sidewalk with Mom and Steve following.

“Sorry?” I asked, walking swiftly to keep up.

“Said you ain’t goin’ to that showdown, them fuckin’ with your head. Did you listen? Nope. Said you wanted to go. Jesus,” Max explained tersely and I tugged on his hand to stop him which he did, right outside The Mark.

“Are you insinuating that was my fault?” I asked.

Max looked down at me and replied, “Babe, we were all there because you wanted us to be.”

“Oh my God,” I snapped and tried to yank my hand from his but this effort failed so I gave up and went on. “Are you serious?”

“You were gonna marry him, Nina, did that scene surprise you?” Max asked.

“Yes!” I shot back. “Yes, it did. I’d never seen Niles like that in my life.”

Max’s brows went up. “Honest to God?”

“Honest to God!” I cried. “I’d never marry that.” I looked at Mom who was staring at me with a mixture of anger, shock and distress and carried on, “I can’t even… I don’t even…” I stopped, the entirety of what just happened hit me, I tilted my head back then I shouted, “I almost married that man!”

“Honey –” Max murmured, pulling at my hand but I yanked it away, successfully this time, and took a step back.

“I almost married my father,” I whispered aghast as I fully processed this monstrous realization.

“Duchess, baby –”

“He offered you money,” I told Max.

“So did your father,” Mom put in informatively.

“Nellie,” Steve said low.

“I mean, who acts like that?” I screeched.

“It doesn’t matter, it’s over. You returned the ring. Done,” Max stated, no longer annoyed, apparently now in control-another-one-of-Nina’s-wild-hairs mode. He knew me enough by now to know, he didn’t control me, I’d march back to that restaurant and wring Niles’s neck and my father’s, for that matter.

But Nina was not to be controlled.

“Two years, two years I wasted on him. Oh. My. God.” I threw my hands out. “What a fool! I’ll never get that time back!”

Max looked over my shoulder then at me and said quietly, “Babe, calm down, let’s go in, get food –”

I interrupted him, still ranting, “All that time I kept thinking and thinking, was I doing the right thing? Would I hurt him? How could I hurt him? He’s a good man. Wondering, worried, my head filled with rubbish. I swear, I made myself sick with it. I did!” I shouted. “You were there! I actually made myself sick with it!”

Max caught my hips and pulled me closer to him. “Nina, it’s done.”

“I spent two hours writing an e-mail to him, Max, making certain it didn’t hurt too much and he didn’t even read it.”

Max’s hands gripped my hips harder and he said softly, “This isn’t anything to be angry about.”

My eyes grew wide and I yelled, “You didn’t waste two years of your life on him.”

“And you realized it was a mistake. You did the right thing, the smart thing. You made the right decision and now you’re free to move on with your life.”

I glared at Max because he was right and I wanted to be loud and angry for at least a little while longer.

I mean, my God, I nearly married my father. And I hated my father!

“You know what’s annoying?” I asked Max and his hands slid around my hips to the small of my back, pulling me closer.

“What’s annoying?” he asked back but I saw he was no longer in Control Nina Mode, now he looked amused.

“When you’re right and I want to be angry and you being right means I can’t be angry anymore,” I informed him.

“Baby,” he muttered through his grin.

Yes, amused. My eyes narrowed on his grin and my stomach growled. I decided I could be annoyed at Max while I ate.

Therefore I demanded, “Feed me.”

“I’m guessin’ about now if I told you that you’re cute, you’d get pissed.”

“Absolutely,” I snapped.

“Then I won’t tell you you’re cute.”

I put my hand on his chest, gave an ineffectual push and demanded again, “Feed me, Max. I need homemade granola and you better hope they have yogurt or all hell’s going to break loose.”

His grin turned into a smile, he bent his neck, kissed my forehead and his lips still there, he murmured, “Granola.”

Then he dropped his arms but caught my hand and, glancing at a now-smiling Mom and Steve, he led us into The Mark.

***

It was clearly past normal breakfast time for mountain people because the restaurant was only a quarter full.

There was no Sarah, it was Trudy who led us back to the corner booth we’d had that first night and she did it while chatting to us, especially me, like she’d known me my whole life.

We sat, Max and I with our backs to the wall, and barely got ourselves sorted before Arlene marched up to our table, introduced herself to my mother and Steve and then launched into a tirade about the proposed new plans for some strip mall. This tirade was directed mostly at me in a way that made it seem like Arlene and I had been in cahoots during a variety of shenanigans and therefore Arlene thought I’d agree wholeheartedly with her and together we’d start arranging meetings where we’d create signs and banners and organize townsfolk to picket the building site. Then she declared she needed to “get wrecked” and we were to meet her at The Dog at eight o’clock that night. Then without waiting for us to accept or decline this invitation she marched away.

Trudy came back, took our orders (lucky for Max, they had yogurt but no berries) and walked away but when she did a woman approached. I remembered her from the night of Max teaching Damon a lesson. She was the one who ran in to get Mindy and my bags. She was also, I discovered, the designer who made my earrings and ring and although we’d spoken less than a dozen words to each other she chatted animatedly to me and Mom, Max and Steve like we’d all been present when they’d taken the training wheels off her bike. Then a mountain man across the room called her name in much the same impatient tone as Max spoke to me before we left his house. She smiled at us, gave us a finger wave and told me, specifically, she’d see me at The Dog as if we met there frequently for Girl’s Night Out then she left.

Everyone but Max watched her go.

Then Steve turned to me and said, “How long you been here again? I thought it was a week.”

Max slid his arm along the back of the booth and burst out laughing.

I ignored Max’s laughter and explained, “People here are friendly.”

“I’ll say,” Mom muttered and I heard Max’s phone ring.

He leaned forward, pulled it out of his back pocket and looked at the display.

I did too, it said “Bitsy calling.”

“Sorry, gotta take this,” Max murmured and slid out of the booth, flipping it open.

I sat in the booth watching him walk to the entry as he put the phone to his ear and deciding I liked the way he walked. He was tall, big, his body muscular but his gait wasn’t lumbering. It was agile, fluid, almost graceful in a manly, macho way.

“Can I just say…” Mom started and I looked at her to see she was also watching Max, “that I don’t like him.” She looked back to me, leaned in, her eyes alight and she finished, “I love him.”

“Mom –”

“No, I adore him,” she amended.

“Mom –”

“No, I want to adopt him. But if I did that might make it weird, seeing as you’d be brother and sister, in a way, so I’ll just wait for him to become my son-in-law.”

“Nellie,” Steve said through a smile, “enough.”

“I’m moving to Colorado,” I blurted my announcement and both Steve and Mom stared at me.

“Come again?” Steve asked.

“I’m moving to Colorado.”

Mom clapped loudly and cried, “Yay!” even louder.

I leaned forward and hissed, “Mom, be quiet! Max has asked, kind of, in his Max way which means he told me I was moving here but I haven’t agreed, yet. He doesn’t know I’ve decided. I want to tell him, special if I can.”