CHAPTER NINETEEN
“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Vella said, shivering next to me. While I had opted for a Kat-inspired outfit she’d worn on her last American tour topped off by my pink cowgirl boots, my roommate was wearing a black corset and leather pants with stiletto boots and no coat, again.
“I needed you here tonight,” I told her.
“Can we at least go inside?”
My hesitation was enough to tip her off.
“What is happening right now?” She sounded alarmed.
“We’re waiting for someone.”
“For Max?” she asked, and I couldn’t tell what her tone was. Incredulous? Excited? Annoyed? Probably all three. “You have a date with Max and you made me tag along? I’m guessing he doesn’t know that I’m coming.”
“What difference does that make?” I needed her to be a buffer. To keep me from hitting on him.
“I think we’re about to find out.” She nodded her head to the right and I looked in that direction and nearly had a heart attack.
While I had witnessed a couple of different incarnations of Max—casual, in a suit—nothing could have prepared me for the overwhelmingly sexy sight of him in cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. Like every teenage fantasy I’d ever had come to life.
It was freezing outside, but I was perspiring from desperate longing. I actually reached up to my mouth to check and make sure I wasn’t drooling.
“You have to behave,” I said to Vella, but I suspected that I was also saying it to myself.
“Are you threatening me right now?” She was delighted.
“I would, except you don’t own anything valuable or have anything you love that I could hold hostage.”
“Why do you think I wouldn’t behave?”
“You know how you are.”
She had a look of pure evil on her face. “Uh, a total delight? A virtual ray of sunshine? Like a unicorn with a rainbow horn and pink cotton candy hair?”
“Never mind. Let’s just have fun and be ourselves.” Another reminder to both of us.
“With your requirements, I hate to tell you that it’s going to be one or the other. Max!” she exclaimed, holding out her arms to hug him hello.
Keeping my jealousy from spilling over was not easy.
“Good to see you again, Vella. I’m glad you’re here. Everly has told me so many good things about you.”
“Really? I’m not very nice.”
He grinned. “She also told me you were funny.”
“I’m just mean and people think I’m joking.”
When he laughed, she turned to me with a “see?” expression, like he’d proved her point.
“Everly.” He said my name and my heart stuttered in response. He reached for me and pulled me to him. He hugged me, holding me tight. As if he’d missed me.
“Max,” was all I could manage to say in response to being held in his arms. This felt so perfect, like I’d been made just to be held by this man. I couldn’t help myself. I buried my face against his neck, breathing in his warmth and that amazing scent of his.
It hadn’t been that long since we’d last seen each other, but he was acting like he’d just returned home from war.
He let go of me only when Vella very loudly cleared her throat and said, “Should we go inside? Some of us are freezing.”
We walked over to the door and I reached for my purse, but Max held his hand out. “Tonight it’s my turn. I’m taking you out to thank you, remember?”
Oh, I remembered. Very clearly.
“Nice getup, Tex,” Vella told him.
Max smiled at her. “I figured when in Rome.”
He paid the cover charge and we went into the bar. A band I’d never heard of was playing on the stage, and people were dancing in formation. I might have bounced up and down a couple of times in excitement. I hadn’t danced like this in so long.
“You’re going to have to show me the steps,” Max said in my ear, and all of my ramped-up energy focused away from the dancing and to the way his lips were so close to my skin.
“Sure!”
“Country music?” Vella said, leaning against the bar and glaring at everyone. “I’ve never understood it. All the songs by men are about wanting to marry and/or knock up girls in tiny shorts while getting drunk, and all the songs by women are about murdering their husbands.”
“That’s basically it,” I confirmed with a smile.
“And why are there so many men in here with unironic mustaches? Half the guys in here look like they’re villains who escaped from a silent black-and-white movie. I don’t know why I even bother. Men suck.” She glanced at Max. “No offense.”
“Some taken,” he said.
“Should we get something to drink?” I asked, realizing that it might have been a mistake to invite Vella if she was in one of her moods. I supposed that on the plus side, she was definitely making sure that this evening was not at all date-like.
But I was worried she might end up annoying Max and chasing him off. And even though I knew we could only be friends, I wanted to spend as much time with him as possible.
Even if it wasn’t a good idea.
A brave cowboy swaggered up to us, sporting his villain mustache, and doffed his hat at Vella. “Do you want to dance, darlin’?”
She looked over at me with a dramatic expression and said, “I guess I have to do what your farm emo songs suggest and save a horse by dancing with a cowboy.”
“Riding a cowboy,” I corrected, and flushed when I saw from her sneaky smile that she’d set me up for that one. She went onto the dance floor and nobody was more shocked than I was when she fell into line perfectly, never missing a step.
“Shall we give it a whirl?” Max asked, offering me his hand.
There was absolutely nothing on the entire planet that I wanted more than to have him hold me in his arms while we swayed to the music. “Yes!”
More enthusiastic than I’d intended, but hopefully the band covered it up.
I explained to him the two-step, figuring we should get that down before I tried to teach him the moves for one of the line dances.
But Max was ... bad at it. There was no other way to describe his total lack of coordination.
I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.
“You think this is funny, don’t you?” he asked with a wry smile.
“Not even a little.”
“You’re a terrible liar,” he said.
“You’re trying, and it’s the trying that counts.”
“You mean it’s the thought that counts.”
“In this case,” I countered, “you already did the thought part. So I’m giving you points for the attempt. But those are the only points you’re going to get, because you are not lord of the dance. You’re more like peasant of the dance.”
“Hey!” he protested, but he was laughing.
Vella made her way over to us and said to Max, “Are you okay? You’re moving like you’re allergic to music.”
Her cowboy spun her away before Max could respond.
“Is she always like that?” he asked.
“No, she’s usually meaner.”
He laughed again. The upbeat song ended, and the band started to play a ballad. For one panicky second I wasn’t sure what to do.
“I may not be able to two-step, but I can do this,” he said as he took me into his arms, pulling me against his chest. His hand went to the small of my back and he used his left hand to hold my right. Without thinking, I put my free hand on the back of his very strong shoulder.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
Which part? The internal combustion that made me feel as if he were revving me up like a race car? Or how all of my limbs were uncooperative and were melting against him, so that if he let go, I was going to turn into an Everly pool?
Then he squeezed my hand to let me know that that was the part he was talking about and then added, just in case it wasn’t clear, “If I hold your hand.”
I made an indecipherable sound and then commanded my vocal cords to work. “Y-yes. It’s fine. We’re dancing.”
“What about after we’re done dancing?” he asked, and again his mouth was close to my ear, my neck, and I shivered. I felt his hand at my back flex, pressing me closer. Like he felt my reaction and enjoyed it.
Wanted it to continue.
“Would it be okay then, too?” he asked.
“Yes.” I breathed the word out, not caring what ramifications it had or whether or not this was going to screw up our friendship. In that moment I did not care.
“So is Vella right?” he asked as we swayed together.
“About?”
“That I dance like I’m allergic to music.”
My inclination was to rest my cheek against his shoulder so that I could be even closer to him, breathing him in, and maybe press a kiss against his throat, so I decided it would be better to do something that might put some distance between us.
“You are a terrible dancer,” I said, and he smiled at my response. I added, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know. I’ve never had any complaints before.”
I was sure that was completely true. His past women had probably lied to him about his prowess on the dance floor. “It’s okay. It’s a good thing. It makes you seem more human.”
“What makes me seem not human?”
“Your face.” The words were out even though I hadn’t intended to say them.
“I have a very normal, human face,” he said.
Apparently him holding me this way, with us pressed against each other, was destroying all of my defenses and making me be completely honest. “Uh, no. You have a face that looks like Aphrodite sculpted it personally for her own benefit.”
A long silence stretched between us, and I was internally beating myself up for saying something so blatant to him. I might as well have just announced that I was completely attracted to him and wished he would kiss me.
It wouldn’t have been any less humiliating than how I felt right now. He was going to reject me so gently and kindly, but it wouldn’t take the sting of rejection away at all.
“I can honestly say that’s the first time anyone’s said that to me. With that accent.”
“Accent?” I repeated.
“Ever since we stepped foot into this bar, your southern accent has been on full display.”
I hadn’t realized. “I guess it happens when I get around other southerners or listen to country music. Or when I go home. I didn’t realize it would happen here since it’s the first country bar I’ve been to since I got to New York.”
I was having a hard time paying attention to what I was saying and suspected it was all coming out gibberish.
Why did he smell so good? And why was he so strong and broad and just yummy?
“I assumed this was where you brought all your boyfriends.”
Ha. “I have never brought a boyfriend here.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Didn’t you want to share this part of yourself?”
“I’ve never had a boyfriend to bring.”
“You haven’t dated anyone seriously? I find that hard to believe.”
Well, Max could find it as hard to believe as he wanted, but it didn’t make it any less true.
And he had no idea how far it went. “I have never dated anyone seriously. I’ve never even ...”
But I clamped my lips together. I was not going to tell this beautiful man that I was a virgin. That was sure to make him run screaming into the night.
My heart was pounding so hard that it was the only thing I could hear. Maybe he’d misunderstood. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to fill in the blanks. Maybe I hadn’t just shared my most personal, deepest, darkest secret with the most handsome man I’d ever met.
I wished I could unsay it.
“Really?” he asked in a tone that let me know he’d gotten my meaning completely, and I stifled a groan. This was going to go one of two ways—he would either be intensely curious about it and ask me a bunch of follow-up questions or he would excuse himself and call it a night.
To my complete shock, he went a different route.
“So I guess it would be a bad idea for me to try and seduce you.”