The Millionaire Tempted Fate (A Novella) (Sweet and Savory Romances) (8 page)

1/3 cup granulated sugar

2 tablespoons water

2 egg whites

3 tablespoons rum

6 ounces cream cheese, softened

8 ounces strong coffee, cooled

9 lady fingers, split in halves

2 ounces semisweet chocolate chips, chopped

After the last few days, you need something that starts with alcohol and ends with chocolate. For sure. Make this one before you get too deep into the Bacardi’s bottle. In a saucepan, bring the sugar and water to a boil, stirring often. Boil one minute, then remove from heat. Beat the egg whites to soft peaks with an electric mixer. Pour in the sugar syrup and beat until the whites are stiff and glossy, kind of like the tears brimming in your eyes.

Beat for another two minutes, until the mixture cools and your thoughts are clearer. Add the cream cheese and beat until smooth. Now comes the fun part. In a separate bowl, combine the coffee and rum. Feel free to add more rum, as misery dictates. Dip the lady fingers in the coffee mixture, then arrange on the bottom of a serving bowl. Spread half the cream cheese mixture on top of the lady fingers, sprinkle on half the chocolate chips, then repeat layers. Drizzle with any remaining coffee mixture. If you need that chocolate and alcohol relief, go ahead and eat it now. Or refrigerate for 12 hours and serve. In the meantime, try not to think about the man who breaks your heart at every turn.

And whatever you do, don’t sleep with him. Bad decisions are made over too many rum and cokes.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

Angie spent the entire next day wallowing in regret. Well, Chewie didn’t let her do much wallowing. The puppy’s energy went from sleep to run in less time than a Ferrari could hit 100mph. So she walked the dog, ran with the dog, played with the dog, and in general, avoided thinking about kissing Max and what Max had said.

Was he right? Was she ruining the friendship she valued above all others? Was she making a huge mistake, trying to combine love with their relationship? Or was she looking for something that just wasn’t there?

Either way, she didn’t want to see Max. It hurt too much. The way he’d run out of there after they’d kissed—

God, what a fool she had been.

She texted Max a little after ten to say she wasn’t feeling well and was canceling their regular Friday night takeout and movies plan. When he texted back with a question mark, she ignored it. And ignored the next text after that, and the one after that.

Stop being so afraid of being in love.

His words kept coming back to her. He was right—she was afraid. She felt the emotion, but then didn’t say a word. Because she was afraid of exactly what had happened—

Rejection.

All this time she’d thought Max had been the one living his life by a set of stringent rules, a checklist of do’s and don’ts. When it turned out, she was the one keeping up walls. Walls kept her heart safe, kept her from being hurt. And kept her from the truth.

That despite everything she had done, she was still too afraid to come out and say the words to Max.

Chewie climbed onto Angie’s lap, slobbering all over her face and planting his paws on her thighs, her shoulders. "Silly puppy," she said, laughing and cradling the dog tight to her chest. "You have no boundaries, do you?"

In answer, he started eating her ponytail. That lasted about five seconds, then the dog apparently reached his play limit, headed off for his doggie bed and fell asleep.

As Friday afternoon edged into evening, Angie’s phone buzzed with invitations from her other friends to go to movies, to go out for a few drinks. She thought about all the effort of getting dressed, and then putting on a happy face, and decided she’d spend some quality time with Netflix and that bottle of Bacardi’s that Max had given her at Christmas.

Two romantic comedies and half a bottle of rum later, Angie was right back to wallowing. Valentine’s Day was only a couple days away, which meant Becky was going to come back, Max was going to propose, and the two of them would go off into the sunset, together. Forever.

"Maybe Max and me aren’t meant to be," she said to the dog. "Even with a bad rhyme like that."

Chewie was busy with a rawhide bone and thumped the floor with his tail in response.

"Maybe I should just go over there," she said, and for a second, couldn’t remember where there would be—Max’s apartment? Becky’s pretty little studio off of Mass Ave?—and decided it didn’t matter because she wasn’t going to do it anyway, "and tell him how I feel. Just flat out say, I love you, Max, and see what happens."

The dog wagged his tail some more. Across from Angie, Meg Ryan was declaring her love for Tom Hanks, and happy music was playing, as the credits began to roll.

That’s what she needed. Happy music. She got to her feet—whoa, the room spun a bit—and flicked on the stereo, then turned off the TV. She refilled her rum and Coke, skipping the Coke this time, and turned to Chewie. "Here’s the deal, Chewie. If Max comes over here right this second," she pointed at the floor to emphasize the point, "I’ll shpill the beans. If not…" She threw up her hands. "He can marry Betty. Benny. Becky, whatever her name is, and I’ll sit there and hold my peace. Though I might need another one of these," she held up her drink, "to do it."

*~*~*

After he left the office on Friday, Max logged eight hard miles, running from his apartment and through the city, ignoring the winter blast that had kept most sensible runners inside. By the time he got home, he was cold, he was hungry, he was sore, but he hadn’t come any closer to figuring out why he had kissed his best friend—

And why he had wanted to do so much more.

It wasn’t that Angie wasn’t a desirable woman. With that long dark hair and her sleek runner’s body, she was—and always had been—a knockout. A woman who stopped men’s conversations when she walked into a room, a woman who turned heads wherever she went. She had a natural, easy sexuality about her, something he didn’t even think she knew. Except for that awkward kiss in middle school and single high school date, he’d never acted on those feelings, keeping their friendship up as a wall.

Then he went and tore down a little of that wall when he’d kissed her. In the hours since, he hadn’t thought of Becky at all. He’d thought of Angie, of the one woman in the world he had vowed he would never sleep with, because in Max’s experience, sex messed up everything.

After his run, he spent a half hour wandering around his apartment, aimless, before he realized he had no idea what to do with his Friday nights when he wasn’t with Angie. Usually, he’d be grabbing some takeout and a few movies to watch with her. Becky had reserved Friday nights for girls’ night, which left that one night as Max and Angie night, a tradition that he’d held for so long, Max stood at a loss with the empty hours ahead of him.

Finally, he gave up and did what he always did when he was at loose ends—he headed back into the office. At least there, he could spend some productive hours. Friday would blur into Saturday before Max even noticed. He told himself that if he could just get from here to Valentine’s Day, to the day he proposed to Becky, then his world would be set to rights again, and he wouldn’t feel this…

Need.

No, not need, a
craving
. It went beyond sex, and into a part of Max that was deep inside his brain and heart, the part that had been touched by Angie’s friendship, yet still cried out for more.

Insane thoughts. He was just nervous about proposing, that was all.

The light in the office across the hall was still on, and Max beelined for that space first. "I see I’m not the only one working after hours."

Todd Hawking, Max’s partner, looked up from the pile of papers on his desk. Todd was tall and lean, with dark hair and a ready smile. "It’s the only time I can get anything done. No phone ringing, no one stopping in my office to ask me a question, no meetings. Just me and all this fun."

Max settled into the dark brown leather chair across from Todd’s desk. "Working Friday nights is counterproductive to having a life, you know. And didn’t you say that having more free time was your New Year’s resolution?"

Todd took off his glasses, leaned back in his chair and rubbed his temples. "Did I say that at the company Christmas party again? You gotta stop serving bourbon, Max. It makes me maudlin."

"Yup. Just like you said it last year, too. And I think the year before."

"If I remember right, we
both
made that promise. Last year. And the year before."

"I’m the one with an engagement ring already bought."

"Bought, not given yet." Todd arched a brow. "Waiting to be sure?"

"Becky’s out of town. She’ll be home on Valentine’s Day. I’ve got a whole romantic evening planned."

"You’re really going to do it? Propose to someone you’ve only known for three months?"

"She fits all the parameters of the right woman for me—"

"There’s a romantic statement if I ever heard one." Todd chuckled. "God, you sound like an accountant."

"Or a financial advisor?" Max grinned.

"Takes one to know one."

"True." Max had known Todd for ten years. They’d met in college, joined the same study group, and found that their personalities and approach to investing meshed. When they graduated and Max threw out the idea of going into business together, Todd jumped at the idea. Within a year, the pair had taken the company from a drafty two-room office in Southie to their present location a block from Government Center. A staff of forty managed the day-to-day in the Boston office, and plans were in place to open a second location in Manhattan next year. The business had surpassed all their expectations and made both of them very, very rich men. But at a cost, they both knew. A cost of having a wife, children, a life outside the demands of entrepreneurship.

"You know what we’d say to a client that did that?" Todd asked, pushing his work to one side. "Someone who made a checklist of pros and cons and tried to make a financial decision based solely on a spreadsheet?"

"We’d tell them to trust their gut, to go with what they felt deep inside was the right choice."

Todd steepled his fingers and leaned forward. "And why would picking a wife be any different?"

"Are you comparing investing to getting married?" Max snorted. "They’re not even close to the same thing."

"Then why are you treating them that way?"

The words hit Max hard. A hundred justifications leapt to mind, but he knew that’s all they were—justifications. For a man who spent his life in a risk-filled industry, he’d become risk-averse in everything else.  "It just made sense to do it that way," Max said.

Todd laughed. "If there’s one thing that never makes sense, it’s love. I may not be married, but even I know that. The happiest people I know got married for all the wrong reasons. You might try that for yourself."

Max got to his feet. "If there’s one thing I’m not taking a risk on, it’s marriage. Thinking with your dick instead of your brain just leads to bad decisions."

"Maybe. But don’t you want to be with a woman who makes you think with both?"

Max didn’t have an answer for that. So instead, he did what he did best—retreated to the comfort zone of work.

*~*~*

He told himself he should turn around. That the way he was feeling right now, he wasn’t going to make a smart decision. But when Max tried to think of the right choice to make, nothing came to mind. Nothing but raising his hand and knocking on Angie’s door.

He’d spent the entire evening at work, pausing only to order some takeout. It wasn’t until the delivery guy showed up that Max realized he’d ordered all the dishes Angie liked. A clear sign he’d spent way too many Fridays with her, calling for Moo Shu Pork and General Tso’s Chicken so they could work their way through her Netflix queue without interruption. They’d been doing that ever since he was nine and heading to her grandmother’s house instead of staying in his silent, tense home. Even as an adult, nine times out of ten, he opted to hang out at Angie’s cozy apartment, so much warmer and more welcoming than the sterile, ordered environment of his own. Around eleven-thirty, he gave up on working and headed out of the office—ending up here, outside Angie’s apartment. He glanced at the door and realized this destination had always been a foregone conclusion.

Light glowed from under the door and music played from inside. Max raised his hand to knock, and realized he wasn’t choosing one environment over another. He was opting for her, for
Angie
. 

For as long as he’d known her, Angie had had this way of making his world feel right. Of calming his worries, smoothing his troubles. She could read his moods in an instant and transform the worst day into one that had him laughing so hard tears streamed down his cheeks. She knew him, in ways no one else ever had, and he suspected, ever would.