Vivian Arend - Turn It Up

Lila.

Max watched his wife wander through the family room in his Gramma’s enormous home, chatting with everyone, older and younger.

His wife.

There was an immediate heart-wrenching, stomach-twisting response to that word every time he thought it, and he thought it often just to enjoy the sensation. Tasha was exactly what he’d longed for. Yeah, the past few weeks she’d spent a lot of days a pale shade of green, but his attraction to her was based on more than her natural beauty. Her sarcastic wit may have been a trifle slower in the mornings, but now that she’d reached her second trimester, the old spunk and devil-may-care attitude had snuck back into play, and he was even more in love than before.

Adding in the fact that was his baby growing in her belly? Over the moon. He could barely breathe every time the reality of it hit him.

The only taint in paradise was that she still had some kind of wall raised between them. At times she would laugh with him, cry with him. Whisper his name as they made love—and even thinking about sex with Tasha made his body tighten. But occasionally he caught her staring off into space with a sad expression, or in the middle of laughing with him she would almost physically pull back. Retreat. Straighten her shoulders and slide that damn wedge between them again. When he’d started this relationship he’d assumed that the details would fall into place—it was proving far more difficult than he’d imagined.

He obviously needed to increase the romancing again, but that had been difficult when her head was so often in the toilet.

“Hey, stranger.”

Max twirled at his sister’s call and hooted with delight. He grabbed her for a hug. “I’ve missed you.”

She squeezed him back, even as she laughed lightly. “Yeah, yeah, I don’t think missing me has been on the top of your things-to-think-about list lately.”

Maxy backed away and waved as she looked over his shoulder. He pivoted in time to see Tasha respond and that shot to his gut went off again. “It has been busy, between the house and the—”

“Give me a break, I’m not complaining.” She smirked at him. “I certainly hope when I’m a newlywed you don’t expect me to be concentrating on too much outside of my immediate area. You guys are still on your honeymoon as far as I’m concerned. That excuses a lot of mental lapses and…ahem…skipped emails.”

A streak of guilt ripped past him. “I was supposed to send you a few projects to proof. Shit, I can’t believe I forgot.”

She grinned. “Sorry, couldn’t resist giving you grief. I’m serious—I don’t expect you to be perfect right now, bro, but I do need a little guidance next week, or right after New Year’s, if you don’t mind. There’s a section in that project you gave me where I’m fudging a step—and I can’t untangle my coding errors, so it’s not working.”

“No trouble.” But not during the holidays. Those romantic memory-making things he wanted to put into place included a lot of private time for just him and Tasha. “At the start of January we’ll get together and work it out.”

A couple of the younger clan members darted underfoot and they both shifted their footing easily with the experience of years of attending crowded family events. “You two want to join me and Jamie after dinner for a walk?”

Max jerked upright. “You still seeing that guy?”

She grumbled back, “Yes, I’m still seeing him. We’ve been going out for the past three months.” The front door opened and she peered hopefully in its direction. Max followed her gaze, but it was just kids running in and out from the porch to the main house.

“So, where is he now?” Max asked.

“He’ll be here.” Her cheeks flushed and he wondered what the hell was going on. Protective instincts kicked into high gear.

“Maxy, is something wrong?”

She shook her head rapidly. “Of course not. He’s…not very punctual. It bugs me a little.”

“Jerk. He’s not pushing you anymore, is he?”

She flapped her fingers rapidly, motioning him to silence, then tugged him into a corner where they were no longer in the middle of the action. “Don’t do that. It’s bad enough you’re giving me the third degree, I don’t need everyone in the family asking what’s up.”

Max leaned back on the wall. His position let him see his sister, and still keep an eye on Tasha as she visited. “Sorry, you’re right. But ever since that date when he pushed you too hard… I don’t trust him, okay?”

Maxine fluffed her bangs, her fingers fidgeting. “He didn’t push, only he wanted to go faster than I wanted to. It was no big deal.”

Since it had interrupted his and Tasha’s first sexual encounter, maybe the incident was etched harder on his brain than on hers. “So you’re saying he’s not doing that anymore?”

“He’s not making me do anything I don’t want to do, no.”

And wasn’t that a non-answer to his question. Before he could dig any deeper, the front door opened again and this time they both reacted. Not only had Jamie finally arrived, he’d shown up at the same time as Lila. Max couldn’t let that situation go on any longer without intervention.

He gestured politely, motioning for Maxine to go ahead of him. “I guess we should go say hello to Twinkle Toes.”

She slapped his arm. “Don’t be a turkey.”

They walked together toward the door. “Sorry, brotherly territorial rights and all that. Just…” He pulled her to a stop for a moment. “Be careful, okay? I don’t think he’s a bad guy, but I think you could do better.”

She patted his cheek and went to grab a horrified Jamie away from the children circling his ankles. Max stopped himself from sniffing in disgust. Okay, that was it. He was moving Maxy and her pretty boy up the to-do list. Maybe a few choice questions over dinner would be enough to either scare the guy off or make him shape up, because right now? Max wasn’t too impressed.

He turned to his cousin, offering his hand to take her coat. She was another one he wasn’t too impressed with, but with her, at least, he had the ties of family. That gave him the right to let her know what he thought without any farting around.

“Afternoon, Junior.” She turned to walk away, but that wasn’t good enough.

“We need to talk.”

Lila glared at him. “I don’t know that we need to do anything, but since you asked so politely…”

She strode across the room to nearly the same spot he and Maxine had been standing, the tall floor-to-ceiling windows letting in the December sun and filling the area with a lot more warmth than came from his cousin and her sour expression. One deliberate crossing of her arms later and her body language screamed shut up. He laughed.

“Very nice, now how about you throw a bucket of cold water on me and announce to the room that I’m a blood-sucking lowlife. I doubt it will make you feel any better, but you’d get it out of your system.”

“Don’t be stupid, you haven’t done anything wrong.”

Max fought his temper. “But you’ve refused to speak with Tasha for almost three months, and you ignore her at family functions. You only answer the phone if I call or email.”

“Right. See? I’m not mad at you.”

Damn it all. “You’re supposed to be older than me and more mature, stop acting like a pouty twelve-year-old.”

Lila narrowed her eyes. “Yes, I am older than you, aren’t I? Gee, like ten years or so. Maybe I’m a totally different generation than you, and I don’t see things the same way.”

He wasn’t going to step into that trap. “Or maybe it’s not the years but the lack of maturity after all, at least on your part. You’re telling me this is all because I’m younger than Tasha? You’ve turned your back on years of friendship because I fell in love with her?”

“I’m sorry, but I simply can’t see your relationship as anything other than a mistake.”

Max held up a hand to stop her from turning away. “I don’t understand why you won’t at least talk about it. Whatever the specifics are of this…” he waved his hands in the air, feeling very ineffective, “…misunderstanding between you. Can’t you get together for a drink and try to smooth it over?”

She shook her head. “This isn’t your business, and it’s not really something I want to talk about at a family event. I promise to stay on the other side of the room, and if you’ll do the same, we’ll have no problems. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to go say hello to everyone before I have to leave. I can’t stay for dinner, so you won’t have to choose your seating to avoid me.”

She walked away, her body tight and awkward as she carried her tension with her. It made no sense to him, the depth of her anger, and yet that emotion was definitely there. Something harsh must be hurting his cousin that she could be this bitter, this quickly.

Enough. There was other family he wanted to celebrate with, others who had completely welcomed Tasha as a new member.

As always, there was nothing quiet or calm about the gathering. Max spent the next two hours moving from group to group, visiting with aunts and uncles, teasing his nephews. The whole time he kept an eye out for Tasha, enjoying seeing her smile, hearing her laugh. She winked at him across the room right before he got hauled into an impromptu game of jacks with his nine-year-old cousins and impressed them all with his skills.

When he finally managed to pull himself free and track down Tasha, he found her with a group of the toddlers. One sat in her lap, another draped over her shoulder as they peered at the picture book she held. The expressions on Tasha’s face grew exaggerated as she changed her voice to match the wild monsters in the story, or the fairies coming to the rescue. The realization that she’d be doing this with their child in a few years’ time choked his throat so tight he had to turn away and retreat to the kitchen for a glass of water to calm himself.