CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
If Meemaw were dead, she would have been rolling in her grave right now. It was the one thing she had drilled into my head once I’d become a teenager—I was never supposed to tell a man I was dating that I loved him first. It had always seemed outdated and sexist to me, but given Max’s reaction, maybe it had some merit.
My first inclination was to try to retract it. Take it back and pretend I’d never said it.
But that would be lying and I didn’t want to do that.
“I have to go,” he said.
Now I was the one dumbfounded. “What?”
Max disentangled himself from me, and I was too shocked to react to the sudden loss of his warmth. He stood up and grabbed his shirt and put it back on, doing up only one button, and then got his coat, and the whole time I was thinking he was doing the opposite of what I wanted. I wanted clothes off and him in bed with me, not clothes being put on and him leaving.
My brain was so scrambled from his kisses that I couldn’t process what was happening. I tried, though. “Where are you going?”
“I promise I will call you,” he said. He lingered in the doorway for a moment to look at me and then he was gone.
I lay in my bed, unable to move, all of my limbs short-circuited and nonfunctioning. What had just happened? Or not happened?
Was he really that freaked out by me telling him that I loved him?
I had thought Max was more mature than that. If he didn’t love me back, he could have just said it. Or that he wasn’t quite there yet. He didn’t have to make a great escape and leave me feeling so depressed and defeated.
It was like I had almost had everything I’d ever wanted and he’d just yanked it away from me.
I couldn’t have said how long I lay there for, but eventually Vella came home. When she entered the room, she had one hand over her eyes. “I’m home! And I’m loudly announcing it just in case!”
“Max isn’t here,” I said.
She dropped her hand. “Why are you lying there like a starfish? Are you having to rest after finally sliding into home base?” At my blank expression she added, “Did you score a home run?”
“Only if a home run is when you hit a foul ball that knocks out a little old lady in the stands and the bat breaks and impales the catcher. Why are we talking about sex like it’s baseball?”
“I was doing it for your virgin ears,” she said. She grabbed a chair and brought it over to my bed. “What happened?”
“One minute we were making out and then he just stopped. I thought guys didn’t do that.”
“They usually don’t,” she said, looking faintly alarmed. “Most guys wouldn’t stop even if an asteroid from outer space landed on them. Did you kick him someplace you shouldn’t have?”
“No, I ... I don’t think so.”
“Maybe he’s married?” she offered. “I had a guy abandon me early in an evening once because he had to get home to the wife he didn’t tell me he had.”
“You seriously find the worst people to date.”
“I am in complete agreement with you. But something had to have happened with Max.”
“Well, I told him that I loved him, and if a crime reporter had been describing it, they would have said that he immediately fled the scene.”
“Wait, you told him you loved him?”
“Yes,” I said, worried about her incredulous tone.
“Everly! Why would you do that?”
“You were the one saying that I was in love with him!”
She rolled her eyes. “Which you are, but as my uncle Morty used to say, great Jehoshaphat! I did not tell you to tell Max. Have you met a man before? You never fire unless fired upon first.”
“I wasn’t shooting at him, I was being honest with him about how I felt.” I hadn’t realized that it would be such a bad thing to tell him. I should have known better. But I had been caught up and not thinking all that clearly. “And we have shared so many intimate things with each other about ourselves—things from our past that no one else knows, our secret hopes and dreams. He doesn’t seem to have any problem with those. But we get close physically and he shuts down.”
“It usually works the other way around, just so you know. I expected better from him. I never would have figured Max for a walking cliché. You say ‘I love you’ and he runs out of here like his hair was on fire. Which I might do the next time I see him. Coward.”
“The saddest part is that this is probably the best relationship I’ve ever had with a man. Not that it’s been much of a horse race.”
She patted me on the arm. “Do you want to watch The Bionic Woman with me?”
“Okay.” I tested my limbs and all the feeling seemed to have returned to them. Vella put the chair away and I got up slowly and made my way over to the couch.
It probably wasn’t fair to Max that I had gone from yes, let’s be more than friends to oh, and by the way, I’m also in love with you in a single day.
As someone who had spent most of her life worrying about what other people thought and putting their feelings first, I hadn’t done that at all here. It hadn’t occurred to me how Max might take my confession. I probably should have considered it before I said something.
Then again, I couldn’t regret telling him. In my quest to be more like Kat, I wanted to be more open about my feelings and the things I wanted, and this was part of it. I did love Max and I wanted him to know that.
Even if it scared him.
My phone started ringing and Vella was the one who located it in my purse, which I had dropped on the floor when I came into the apartment. She glanced at the screen and her eyebrows raised as she said, “It’s Max!”
My heart pounded hard and slow and I had to swallow the bitter taste in my mouth. I was afraid of what he was going to say. I waited until the last possible moment and then I answered. “Hello?”
“Everly? I am trying to learn from my mistakes and communicate better. I didn’t want to just disappear on you again.”
“Why did you run out?” I asked, even though I was pretty sure I knew the answer. “I probably shouldn’t have said—”
“No, don’t. I don’t want you to take it back. I’m not afraid. Not for the reason you probably think, anyway.”
“Then why?”
“I need to talk to you, but it has to be in person. And it can’t be someplace where we’re alone and all I want to do is devour you.”
I couldn’t help the pleasurable shivers that started running up and down my back. “What if I want to be devoured?”
“That is part of the problem,” he ground out, sounding frustrated. “I’ve discovered that I’m basically powerless to resist you.”
“Then don’t resist me,” I said, only partially teasing. It was an intoxicating feeling to know that someone like Max felt like he couldn’t keep away from me. “But if you’re worried, maybe we can get together tomorrow in some neutral location where there are other people and talk?”
“I have a bunch of appointments for most of the day, and then a family dinner tomorrow night.”
“And I have that work thing tomorrow night anyway, so I wouldn’t be able to go even if you were free. What about Sunday?”
“I can do Sunday. Let’s have lunch together at Roma Vida.”
Aw, that was where we’d kind of had our first date. He was the cutest. “It’s a date. And I’m glad you called me. Shutting down and running off is not a way to deal with problems.”
“I know. And I’ll see you on Sunday,” he said. “I’ll be thinking about you every second until I get to be with you again.”
That reassured me that I hadn’t frightened him off completely. “Okay. Bye.”
When I hung up my phone, Vella was giving me a surprised face. “Newfound respect for Max Colby. Good for him.”
“But what do you think he has to tell me?”
“Like I said, all I’ve got is ‘married.’ I don’t know what else would be important for him to disclose.”
Neither did I. While I was completely relieved that he had called me and still wanted to see me, I felt more confused than ever.
My work event the following evening was the anniversary party for Ambassador Preston Wainscott and his wife, Fiona, and it was easily the swankiest event I’d ever attended. There was a lot to oversee and I could tell that Claudia was grateful I had come to help. There were so many moving parts, and the hotel was one of the most expensive ones in New York and the staff were not exactly easy to work with. A bit snobbish, even.
It also wasn’t simple coordinating tasks with the other event-planning company. Everybody was being a bit territorial, which I understood. If this were an event I had helped plan from start to finish, I wouldn’t want another company coming in at the last minute and putting their fingerprints all over it, either.
Forty different things went wrong and it took all of us to put out each of those fires. Nothing major, just a lot of small annoyances that would have upset our guests of honor if they were aware of them.
For a brief moment I wondered if any members of the Monterran royal family would be at the party. Mr. Wainscott had been their ambassador—it would make sense that he might know some of them and they might come.
A few weeks ago that thought would have filled me with eager anticipation.
But now? I didn’t need a Monterran prince. I had Max.
The guests started arriving and I no longer had an assigned task, so I just floated around, letting the other planners know that I was available if they needed assistance. I would have to stay until the very end, as I’d promised Claudia that I would help with takedown. I felt like I owed it to her since she had done it for me at Hyacinth’s birthday party.
I was also hoping to finally talk with her about my possible promotion. She had blatantly told me that it would happen if the birthday was a success, and it had been. But she had been so busy this last week with this event that she hadn’t had any free time to discuss it with me. I’d checked with her assistant to see her schedule and not a single time slot had been available.
So this would be my chance to make my move.
I was walking around the dance floor, where the DJ was setting up. I had been surprised that this couple didn’t want like, an orchestra, but apparently the DJ had been at their request, as they shared a love for 1980s hair bands and wanted those songs played.
The Elevated CEO, Topher Crawley, was here. He nodded at me and came over to say hello. I always felt anxious around him, like I didn’t know the correct thing to do or say.
“How are you this evening, Everly?”
“I’m good, sir. How are you?”
He smiled and held up his hand. “I’m not old enough to be a ‘sir.’”
What was I supposed to call him, then? If I said “Mr. Crawley,” he might tell me it was too formal, or he might be upset if I used his first name. I wasn’t sure what the right move here was and I could feel sweat beads starting to form.
Thankfully he moved the conversation along. “It is kind of you to volunteer to help out. This certainly doesn’t fall within your job description.”
I knew it might not be a good idea to tell the CEO of my company that I was partially doing it for a promotion that I had been promised.
So I settled on, “I like being a team player.”
He nodded. “Good. And it was nice to see you.”
I let out a sigh of relief when he walked away.
A few minutes later Adrian arrived and I saw that he had Colette with him. I smiled at him, and when he caught my gaze, he smiled back and pointed at Colette. I gave him a thumbs-up. I was glad that they had apparently worked things out.
I was in and out of the kitchen to see where I could help out the most for the next little bit. When I reentered the ballroom, I was shocked to see Sunny talking to Topher Crawley. What was she doing here? Her in-laws had to be friends with the Wainscotts. I could see them being part of the same social circle.
She seemed to notice me at the same time, and her face became more animated. She kept pointing at me and smiling, but Topher Crawley’s expression fell the longer she went on.
What was that about?
It was weird seeing her here, like different parts of my life were all converging at this one party.
Too bad Max wasn’t here, too.
Then ten seconds later, I saw him. Like I’d somehow personally conjured him up. And he was Tuxedo Max again. I internally swooned at the sight of him. It was a good thing there were five hundred other people at this party. He was drinking a glass of champagne, his free hand in his pocket. He looked bored and annoyed.
I walked over to him, barely able to contain my glee at seeing him. “Max?”
“Everly?”
And the sound of utter shock in his voice made me think that he wasn’t quite as happy to see me.