Max tilted his head. “What do you mean?”
“Well, for one thing, why do you still have your sunglasses on?”
He removed them from his face, and hung them on the V-neck of his T-shirt. “I guess I’m just used to—”
“Do you really think no one recognizes you as long as you keep your sunglasses on? I promise you that poor thing knew who you were.” Max started to argue but Hadley continued. “So there you are, the great Max Cavanagh, asking her to reverse engineer a pancake with you in her second week of work. Yeah. That’s a lot.”
Max wasn’t sure what he should do. Should he dispute what she was saying? Apologize for being . . . a lot? Whatever that meant. He stared at Hadley and attempted to interpret her mood, but he quickly discovered he didn’t know the first thing about her or her moods. And then he reached the point when he knew he shouldn’t still be staring, but he wasn’t sure what else to do. She seemed to grow uncomfortable under his gaze, but he had no clue what to say. He wanted to ask her if she had done something different with her hair, but he knew that would most likely get him into trouble. He liked it the way it was—long, blonde layers—but to ask if the hairstyle was new would be to admit he hadn’t paid much attention before. Not to her hair, certainly.
“What?” she finally asked, breaking the silence as she squirmed beneath his attention.
An amused smile crept across his face. “That’s not normal what we just did.”
“What do you mean? What did we do?”
And then he laughed. He just couldn’t help it. “Figure out what I wanted to order for breakfast by breaking down whether or not the bananas smelled ripe.” He tapped his nose. “Every chef’s greatest tool.”
It took a moment, but slowly she joined him in his laughter. Hers was more subdued. Much quieter. A little more uncertain. But they were laughing together, and that was certainly something Max hadn’t counted on.
8. Bring to boil over high heat.
HADLEY
The good humor found in our “particular set of skills,” as Max had said with his best Liam Neeson impression, carried the conversation up until the time our food came. And then our mouths were full and we didn’t speak, apart from the occasional proclamation that what we were eating was amazing. But awkwardness started making its way in again, the longer we sat without talking. We were each nearly done with our pancakes, and I realized we still hadn’t talked about anything of substance.
“You knew about Renowned, right?” I asked, blunt as could be.
He had been chewing, eyes focused downward on his plate, but the muscles in his jaw stopped moving and his eyes slowly made their way upward. His Adam’s apple bounced as he swallowed. For a moment I began anticipating his next moves. I started playing it out in my mind—the way he was going to set his fork down slowly, look around the room to avoid my eyes, cross his legs in an attempt to act as if he were relaxed, and then, most likely, play dumb.
I really wasn’t expecting him to reply, “Sure,” and then look back down at his plate and fork off another bite of pancake.
I suppose there was nothing else to say. At least in his opinion.
“That’s it? Not even an apology? No, ‘You caught that, did you?’”
He looked back up at me and tilted his head. He stared at me for a moment, and then he brought his napkin to his mouth and wiped. When he had removed the lingering powdered sugar from his top lip, he set the napkin beside his plate and cleared his throat.
“What should I be apologizing for?”
Ah. There he was. There was the cocky, egocentric Max Cavanagh with the special “something” no one quite knew how to define. Well, I could define it. Not with any words a Southern lady would use, but I could define it all right.
I smiled at Holly as she dropped off our bill and asked us if we needed anything else. Once we had assured her we didn’t, and that everything was excellent, she walked away and the displeased expression immediately returned to my face.
“You should be apologizing for the fact that you showed up at my door under false—”
He held up a finger to silence me, and it worked. Although I didn’t really quit talking as much because of the finger as the fact that he wasn’t looking at me, and he didn’t appear to be listening either. He was watching Holly go, and as soon as I stopped talking, he stood up and hurried toward her. He offered a quick, “Be right back,” over his shoulder, but that was it.
“Pretenses,” I completed my sentence aloud, stunned as he walked away from me in the middle of the very important thing I had been trying to say.
Holly turned to him as he approached. She appeared startled—nervous, maybe. She was probably worried he was going to give her a customer service lesson. Or at least a sense of smell lesson. And for that matter, maybe he was. I figured you couldn’t put it past him. But before long, Holly’s cheeks, which had been drained of all color, began to turn rosy. A smile overtook her lips and a sparkle overtook her eyes.
“Oh, come on!” I whispered emphatically. “She’s practically a child!”
Okay, so she was probably a college student. Not actually a child. But Max was far too old to be hitting on her. And yet there she was, soaking it all up. Hook, line, and sinker.
I turned my attention from Holly to Max and tried to figure out what in the world women saw in him. Confidence, most likely. There was no doubt that the right amount of confidence could be very attractive in a man. Not that Max had the right amount. Not even close. But poor Holly hadn’t had a chance to realize that yet.
And maybe that was the key.
I squinted my eyes and bit my lip as I studied him more closely. He had good hair. I’d give him that. It had been a little too floppy in the past, but now he had more of a side-swept Ivy League style, with a bit of deliberately tousled personality. Less Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral, more David Beckham on a Tuesday. It worked.
I’d seen him wear glasses on TV, I knew, but I wasn’t sure if they were prescription or pretentious. Either way, when he went without, as he did today, you could see just how blue his eyes were. And then there were his arms. I couldn’t remember many times—in person or on television—that I had seen him wear anything other than his trademark black V-neck T-shirt and jeans, apart from the occasional apron, of course. A leather racer jacket sometimes. Maybe a down parka when he was hunting waterfowl or something in Alaska on To the Max. But it all stayed basically the same. And it all seemed designed to accentuate his arms as much as possible. Even the parka, somehow.
I felt heat rise up my neck as I allowed myself to survey him objectively, and I suddenly realized that Max wasn’t as accustomed to eating pancakes as I was. The T-shirt sleeves strained just slightly to their resting point midway down his bicep, and with his arms crossed over his chest, as they were now, you could almost hear an audible sigh from the front of the shirt, as it was allowed a moment to relax from the tightness that Max’s well-toned chest and shoulders usually created. He probably eats just as many pancakes as I do, I thought defensively, but also with admiration as I remembered how much more physical activity was involved in an episode of To the Max than At Home with Hadley. I’d been too scared to mount Marigold, while I’d seen Max ride Arabian stallions through the deserts of the Middle East. He’d earned those pancakes, and he’d earned that muscular build.