Some Like It Hot

Damned if even under deadline pressure, Jake didn’t look like Mr. Upscale with his expensively cut sun-streaked brown hair and his pale green hundred-dollar silk T-shirt the exact same shade as his eyes.

Max still found it amazing that he and Jake were developing an honest-to-God relationship after almost an entire lifetime spent hating each other’s guts. Who would have ever predicted that? Not him, that was for damn sure. Yet the fact that they were made it easier to turn around and admit, “It really was pretty awesome to see some of your process for winnowing down all those photos.” His eyebrows drew together. “Doesn’t mean you don’t still owe me, though.”

“Right,” Jake said in a tone that was desert dry. “It being so tedious and all, having to talk to a pretty woman.”

“She’s not pretty, you idiot, she’s beautiful. And have you forgotten the other two times you’ve seen me talk to her?” The way he’d lost all verbal skills when he’d found himself thrown in her company those times was nothing short of pathetic. He was a damn deputy sheriff—hell, a former marine, for God’s sake. He could usually talk to anyone.

Except the silver-spoon girls.

“Oh.” Jake sobered. “Yeah. You were really pitiful.” He gave a decisive nod. “Okay. I do owe you.”

“Damn straight,” he muttered. “Although I will admit I didn’t do as badly today. Which is a damn good thing,” he said drily. “Embarrassing myself like that again doesn’t bear thinking about. Not when I’ve got such ready access to an entire arsenal I could use to put myself out of my misery.”

Jake raised skeptical brows. “Get real. You and I both know you’re too much of a hard-ass pragmatist—never mind that law-and-order thing you’re so wedded to—to ever choose such a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” He shot Max a cheerful smile. “And look on the bright side, bro—you can only improve.”

“Hell, yeah,” Max said sarcastically, heading for the door. “How can I not, with faithful encouragement like that to prop me up? Get to work. I’ve got stuff to do, too—I can’t hang around here all day. I’ll see you at Jenny’s at seven.”

But as he loped down the staircase to the first floor, he thought, From your lips to God’s ear. Because improvement couldn’t come quickly enough to suit him. He let himself out the front door of The Sand Dollar, allowing the screen door to bang shut behind him. Not nearly quickly enough.

For he was sure as hell tired of acting more tongue-tied than a horny thirteen-year-old with his first crush every time he stumbled across Harper Summerville.

CHAPTER TWO

MAX SLAMMED HIS car door and hotfooted it across the little parking lot to the back of Jenny’s cottage. He took the stubby flight of stairs up to her mudroom in two big steps.

He hadn’t deliberately been late for her dinner party. After leaving Jake’s he’d gone out to Cedar Village, the group home for at-risk boys a few miles out of town. And he’d ended up staying longer than he’d planned.

Which was hardly a surprise, considering it was the same thing he did every time he went out there. At one time he’d been an angry teen himself. He knew what it was to get into his share of trouble, knew about having anger he didn’t quite know how to manage. So he liked volunteering some of his free time to work with the kids. He understood where they were coming from.

But he’d let the time get away from him. The boys had roped him into a vigorous game of basketball, and the demand that he join them had been the first sign of softening he’d seen from a couple of the kids. If he’d blown off the opening they’d given him, he would’ve risked having them never give him another. That hadn’t been an option.

He was already running late when he’d finally pulled himself away, but he’d had no choice but to go home for a quick shower and a change. Jenny, bless her heart, threw reasonably casual parties, but he was pretty sure she’d expect him to at least shave and throw on something a bit less scruffy than his day-off knock-around clothes. Especially when Jake, the love of her life, was one of those GQ-type dressers. And he didn’t even want to think about what she’d have to say if he showed up smelling as ripe as only a guy who’d pounded up and down a court with boys who could run him into the ground could.

He smoothed his hand down the navy T-shirt he’d tucked tightly into his low-slung jeans to get the drawer wrinkles out. Straightened the button placket of the loose weave, sage-green short-sleeved shirt he’d worn open over it to dress things up a little. Shifting the six-pack of Fat Tire beer that Jake preferred to the Budweiser Max would have chosen were it just for him, he rapped on the mudroom door.

It whipped open, and the sound of dishes clattering and women laughing in the kitchen poured out at him. He looked down into the face of his nephew, Austin.

“Dude!” The fourteen-year-old, who was at that all shoulders, arms and legs stage, grinned at him. “Thank God—we need more guys here. Jenny invited way more chicks.”

“Oh, way more, my butt.” Jenny stuck her head into the room, her shiny brown hair catching the overhead light. “I invited a couple of women from work who didn’t have plans. Hey, Max.” She crossed the small space at the same time he stepped into the mudroom.

Having learned her ways, he obligingly bent so she could give him a hug. That was something new to him, and he always stood stiff as an oar in her embrace. Considering she kept doing it every time he arrived or left, however, Jenny apparently didn’t mind.

And he had to admit, there was something nice about it—even if it did make him feel awkward as a working girl at a revival.

Jenny was a tiny woman who somehow failed to realize it, and she gave him a quick, fierce squeeze before stepping back. “The men are out on the front porch doing the barbecue thing,” she said, patting his arm. “Why don’t you take your beer out there—we put a cooler with ice and soft drinks to the right of the door.”

She turned to Austin. “What are you doing this close to the kitchen if you’re so uncomfortable with all the women?”

The kid puffed up. “I’m not uncomfortable,” he protested. “I’m just saying there’s a bunch of ’em, and we guys are outnumbered. I only came out here ’cuz I’m lookin’ for the croquet set. Dad said maybe we could play a game after dinner.”

“Color me corrected.” Reaching up, she ruffled his dark hair. “Set’s in the shed.”

Austin grinned at her and loped out the door.

Not all that certain he was ready to face a kitchen full of females himself, Max took a step back. “Well, I’ll just head for the porch. Nice day, huh?”

She flashed him a smile he was pretty sure said, Yeah, right, like you’re fooling anyone. But she truly was the nice woman he’d always considered her, because she simply rubbed his arm again and said, “You bet.”

Jenny’s best friend poked her strawberry-blond head in the room. “Jen, where can I find— Oh, hi, Max.”

“Hey, Tasha. How’s it going?”

“Pretty darn good.” She eyed him where he stood with one foot in the door and the other out on the stoop. “You coming in?”

“I was just gonna duck around to the front and say hi to the guys.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Intimidated by the number of women in the kitchen, huh?”

“Completely—and that’s without even knowing exactly how many that is.” He got a sudden vision of how ludicrous he was being and smiled.

Tasha blinked. “Whoa,” she said. “You really oughtta do that more often.”

“What?”

“Smile,” Jenny filled in for her friend. “You’ve got a great one, but you hardly ever use it.”

“That’s because I save ’em up for the prettiest girls,” he said with rare flirtatiousness. “Annnd I really am going to the front now.”

He heard them laugh as he strode down the stairs.

Climbing the front porch stairs a moment later, he spotted Jake and Mark, Austin’s best bud’s dad. “Whoa. This is it? Austin wasn’t kidding when he said we were seriously outnumbered by chicks.”

“Wendy Chapman brought her new boyfriend,” Mark said, then shrugged. “But he’s in that shit-faced-in-new-love stage, so he’s hanging with the women in the kitchen.”

They all shook their heads at the mystery of that.

Jake looked at the six-pack in Max’s fist and laughed. “Hey, you brought the good stuff. There’s some Bud in the cooler for you.”

Refusing to acknowledge the blanket of warmth his half brother’s thoughtfulness wrapped around his heart, Max made room in the cooler for the Fat Tire bottles, then fished out a Budweiser. He drank the beer, stuck his two cents in on how best to barbecue the steaks—because, really, what guy could keep his opinions to himself when fire, sharp utensils and red meat were involved?—and jawed with Jake and Mark.

He set up a long table when Jenny asked for a volunteer and Jake refused to relinquish the barbecue fork—then eyed a couple of the women as they decked it out with a tablecloth before dealing out festive plastic plates, silverware and napkins. They even plunked down a vase of flowers in the middle.

Then Harper carried out a big bowl of salad greens, and he was hard pressed to keep his gaze from following her every move.

Sometimes there was a stillness about her that made her look like a queen. Maybe it was the way she was put together: all exotic coloring, long lines and good bones. Or her posture, so proudly tall. Hell, maybe it was the solemnity of her full mouth in repose or the heavy-lidded eyes that gave her that appearance of aloof distance. Whatever it was, it reinforced the well-educated rich-girl image that never failed to tie his tongue in knots.

He didn’t know where it had come from, this awkwardness he had around the silver-spoon girls. Surely it didn’t go all the way back to the sixth grade crush he’d had on Heather Phillips. His mother had pointed out, with her usual I’m-unhappy-with-the-world surliness, that the girl was too damn rich for the likes of him.