Max pressed his thumbs into his eye sockets. “Willa—”
“I know. You’re big and badass and tough, and I get it, you don’t do gentle. But maybe, for Rory, you could try.”
Once again he looked in the truck. Rory was talking to Carl, smiling while she was at it. But once upon a time, not so long ago, she’d been hurt. Badly. And that killed him. Fuck. “Yeah. I guess I could try.”
He heard Willa suck in a breath clogged with emotion. “Merry Christmas, Max,” she said softly. “You deserve it.”
Actually, there was someone who deserved it far more and the hell of it was, it was the last person he’d expected it to be, and she was sitting in his truck hugging his big, silly dog.
Chapter Three
WHEN MAX opened the truck door a few minutes later and found Carl in his seat, he gave the dog a long look.
Carl hefted out a huge sigh and got into the back.
“Thank you, Carl,” Rory said pointedly with a glance at Max that said he was clearly an idiot.
Max was an indeed an idiot, but not for not thanking his dog.
He was going to do as Willa had asked. He was going to be . . . Christ . . . gentle, even if it killed him. And it might. He was also going to get his own emotions under control, because at the moment he was filled with a cold fury over what Rory had suffered and he had nowhere to vent it.
“You were on the phone,” Rory said.
“I was.”
She looked at him, clearly waiting for more, her pretty eyes not giving much away. She was so petite a good wind could blow her away, but that analogy implied she was fragile.
Rory was anything but fragile, and in fact her inner strength was even more attractive to him than her beauty.
“It was Willa,” he said, willing to give her that. Besides she was more curious than a cat and he wanted to appease that curiosity and fast, before she figured out the rest.
She looked at him, surprised. “What did she want?”
Shit. On top of curious as a cat, she was like Carl with a damn bone. He twisted around to buckle Carl back in and then put on his own seatbelt. He turned the engine over and cranked up the radio.
Rory turned it off. “She already made you drive me, so what now?”
“Nothing.”
Rory turned in her seat to fully face him. “Was she checking to see if we’d killed each other?”
He smiled at that, a thought that had been so close to his own, but she narrowed her eyes, not amused. “What did she want, Max?”
He went to put the truck in gear but she leaned into him to turn off the engine and grab his keys. Her breast brushed against his arm, giving him another zap of awareness.
“Come on,” she said. “This is Willa we’re talking about. I love her, but she’s incapable of not sticking her nose in where it doesn’t belong, especially when it comes to me. What did she want?”
Shit, it’d been two minutes and he was already regretting his “gentle” promise. He looked her right in the eyes. “Nothing.”
Her eyes went to little slits. “Liar.” She opened her door, revealing that the slush had turned to snow, as she swung his keys from her fingers. “Tell me or say goodbye to your keys.”
“That’ll strand you too,” he pointed out.
She raised her eyebrows and he got the message. She didn’t care.
“Fine,” he said. “She told me to be nice to you. Actually, she said gentle.” While she gaped at that, he snagged the keys from her lax fingers, feeling like an asshole when he leaned into her, reaching past her to slam her door shut.
She didn’t shrink back, which meant that their bodies once again bumped up against each other, and it was like they knew what his brain couldn’t seem to comprehend—he wanted her. He was a little thrown by that, and the now familiar zing of electricity, only slightly mollified to realize by the way her breath hitched that she felt it too.
“If you even try to be gentle,” she said, “I’ll get out and walk.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and laughed. He couldn’t help it. She drove him insane. “Got it.”
“I mean it.”
“I believe you.”
“Good,” she said, sounding only slightly appeased. “Now tell me what she told you to make you agree to such a thing.”
Christ, she was good. “How do you know she told me anything?”
“Again, it’s Willa,” she said. She crossed her arms and stared at him, and for a second he was pretty sure she could see right inside his head and read his mind. “She told you something to make you feel sorry for me,” she guessed.
He schooled his features into a blank face, or so he hoped. “I don’t feel sorry for you,” he said.
“Ha!” she cried, pointing at him. “She did! What was it? That I applied for an internship at a local vet, which I need for the animal tech credential I want, and got turned down flat for lack of credible references?”
Shit. No, he hadn’t known that and his heart twisted for her. “Why didn’t you ask someone to give you a reference?” he asked. “Archer, Joe, Spence, Finn . . . me? Any one of us would’ve jumped to help you.”
She hadn’t taken her eyes off of him. “Okay,” she said slowly. “So it wasn’t that.”
Yeah, this conversation was about to go south fast. He reached to start the engine again because no way did he want this little guessing game to take a dark turn, which it would if she landed on the truth.
“There was only one other thing she could’ve told you that would have made you feel sorry enough for me to give me a ride,” she said, staring at him. “But if she’d told you that, I think I’d be able to tell.”
He met her gaze and she gasped softly, her eyes holding his prisoner. “Oh my God,” she whispered, leaning back away from him. “Damn her.”
“You were attacked in the park when you first landed in San Francisco,” he said quietly, finding it a shocking effort to keep his voice calm. “That shouldn’t have happened to you. It shouldn’t happen to anyone.”
She turned away. “We’re not discussing this.”
“Did you press charges?”
She looked out into the starry night. “Drive.”
“Rory, please tell me he’s rotting in a jail cell.”
“Drive, dammit.”
“Hang on a sec—”
“I didn’t press charges and he’s not rotting in a jail cell because I don’t remember what he looks like!” she burst out. “I accepted a drink from a stranger, he drugged me, and I remember nothing. Not his face, not anything about him, and not a single second of that night at all. So no, I didn’t turn him in. I had nothing to turn in. I was an idiot, okay? I was a complete idiot and I paid the price, and now if you don’t mind, I don’t want to talk about it ever again.”
“I get that, but—”
“Not. Ever. Again,” she said tightly. “And I mean it, Max. Bring it up and I’m out. I’ll walk to Tahoe, I don’t care.” She turned to him then, eyes blazing with strength and temper. “We clear?”
Her strength was . . . amazing. “Crystal,” he said quietly.