I laughed humorlessly and then stopped abruptly. I was going to give him some examples, but my Max confusion had consumed my brain again, and I couldn’t fully remember what he had done that I had found so offensive earlier. Except cute. I remembered cute.
“No, I guess you weren’t so bad,” I conceded with a hesitant sigh. “But please understand I’m grading on the Cavanagh scale—not any sort of normal scale. By your standard, you weren’t so bad.”
His fingers fell away, releasing my hair to cover my eyes. I lifted my head and saw that he was sitting back in his chair, with the most ambiguous expression on his face.
“Remember when I said we should practice?” he asked, his voice low and raspy. “For Renowned, I mean.”
“Yeah.”
“They’re pitting us against each other.”
I scoffed. “I think we do a pretty good job of that on our own. Don’t you? That’s why we’re both on this season. Remember?”
He shook his head and then stood and looked out the window, into my pitch-black backyard. I felt the strongest desire to stand behind him. Wrap my arms around him. Feel the muscles in his shoulders under my fingers. Maybe even invite myself into the comfort that I just knew would be found under the crook of his arm. Against his chest. What would he do if I did?
“When do I get to prepare my signature dish, Hadley?”
“What do you—”
“From the moment Marshall Simons got here tonight, he was pitting us against each other.” He turned to face me. “Think about it. If you think about it, you’ll realize I’m right.”
I thought about it. Or I tried. But staring at Max, I wasn’t going to be able to think about anything except how far away he was, there on the other side of the room, and how lonely my lips had gotten.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I can’t look at you right now,” I replied softly, with a quick peek through my fingers, which were covering my eyes.
A warm laugh filled the space between us. “Why? What did I do this time?”
I sighed and muttered, “You know what you did.”
“No, I really don’t.” When my hands dropped from my eyes to my lap in exasperation, I spotted his mischievous grin. “You might need to remind me.”
Uh-oh. My hands flew back to my eyes and I got up and turned away from him. I heard him chuckle lightly, but I decided I’d just have to ignore that too. There was something I was supposed to be thinking about. What was it . . . ?
Nope. Thinking wasn’t going to happen.
I felt him before I heard him. He brushed my hair away from my neck and over my left shoulder, as he began planting soft kisses where my neck and shoulder met on the right. His skilled, expert hands—that had climbed Kilimanjaro, caught scallops during a free-dive in Scotland, and prepared dinner for presidents and kings—wrapped around my waist.
“I’m supposed to be thinking,” I whispered as I melted into him.
“So, think,” he breathed against my skin.
Suddenly my eyes widened and I pulled away. “When are you going to prepare your signature dish?”
Max ran his hand through his hair. “Or maybe don’t think . . .”
“No, you’re right! They had me make mine. When are you supposed to make yours?” The thoughts were running wild and rampant all of a sudden—and in a decidedly less romantic direction. “What is your signature dish?”
“Beef Wellington. Well, and my wild mushroom risotto.”
“Sheesh. Maybe they just didn’t want us to be here all night. Maybe if your signature dish was meatloaf . . .”
“But no one even mentioned—”
“No one even mentioned it!” I exclaimed, every thought I was having totally original, of course. “And . . . hey! The way Chef Simons was practically ignoring you? I mean, I just thought he liked me better than you, and let’s face it, he probably does—”
“Thanks for that.”
“But it was a little weird, now that I think about it.”
He nodded. “It was just pushing buttons. Wanting us to talk about our ‘shared history,’ two hours into this whole thing? I mean, c’mon. They definitely know how to push the right buttons to get us to act the way they think we need to, in order to get the show they want.”
I decided to embrace the hopeful glimmer in my mind. “And that’s why you were such a jerk?”
One corner of his mouth inched upward. “Doubt it. But it sure didn’t help.”
17. Allow to cool.
MAX
“So, what do we do?” Hadley asked as she walked into her dark kitchen and began rummaging through a drawer.
Max smiled at her as she fumbled around, unable to find what she was looking for in the drawer, but also unable to remember where the light switch was. Finally, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and turned on its light.
“Well, here’s an idea. Just thought of this. We could practice.”
She pulled two forks out and held them up, and Max went hurrying in to grab one of them. He hadn’t been kidding about needing more Bouille Hadley. She had an uncanny way of making him throw self-control out the window.
He hadn’t meant to kiss her, after all. And he hadn’t even been thinking about it. But there was something about the sight of her in the open door, furious with him for reasons he didn’t even understand, shaking her phone at him. He’d just needed her. That’s all there was to it.
“Give me that,” he insisted, pulling the plate of cake away from her.
“Okay,” she began, cake still in her mouth. “What do you mean? Practice how? Practice what?”
He stuffed another bite in before he had swallowed the last. The woman was a dessert genius. “Being in the kitchen together. I think if we refuse to let them manipulate the situation—”
Hadley pointed her fork at him. “See, that’s the thing. Don’t you think we can just agree to not let them manipulate the situation . . . and then they won’t be able to manipulate the situation? Do you really think we need to practice that?”
The last crumb of the dessert was lingering on her bottom lip, and Max wasn’t sure if it was a final taste of Bouille Hadley or its creator’s mouth that he was more eager to capture. She licked the crumb away before he had the chance to attack, but when the eagerness didn’t go away, he figured his question about preference had been answered.
For heaven’s sake, Max. At least show enough self-control to get through this conversation.
He cleared his throat and scratched his neck at the spot where the beard began. “We walked into this kitchen as friends today. And it took . . . what? Ten minutes? We were at each other’s throats in ten minutes.”
“That’s just because you turn into a jerk on air.”
“And you turn into an episode of Designing Women.”
“Excuse me?”
Max looked into her eyes and saw the humor behind them, and he understood it was okay to tease.
He took on a dialect that was, admittedly, more Deliverance than Designing Women. “Let’s see . . . a pinch of salt . . . a smidge of cream . . .”
She laughed a deep, throaty laugh. “I would never say a smidge of cream!”