The Millionaire Tempted Fate (A Novella) (Sweet and Savory Romances) (2 page)

"It's a little too much. Big and ostentatious and screaming ‘look at me,’" Angie said. "If it were me—" What was she saying? But the words kept coming, and she reached toward the case, "—I’d go for something simpler. Something like this."  She pointed to a one-carat round stone set in a filigree-patterned white gold band. 

Max picked up the other ring and turned it in the light. "I like this one but I don't know if Becky would. It’s hard to imagine it on her hand. Here, try it on for me."

"Oh, I can't. It wouldn't be—"

Max took her hand in his and slid the ring onto her finger. The protest died in her throat. "Look at that. It fits perfectly."

The soft white light in the store danced off the ring's facets and sent a shower of sparkles onto the carpet, Angie's sweater, and Max's steely features. "I...I..."

He laughed. "I don't think I've ever seen you speechless before. Must be your marriage phobia kicking in again."

"I don't...I'm not..." She tried to push the truth out but it stayed put, a stubborn lump caught between her brain and her gut. Was this all because she was just caught up in the shock of Max settling down and leaving her as the lone single one in their group? She’d never wanted to get married before, in fact, never even thought of it for herself.

Until the last couple of months. Until she woke up one day and realized all the teasing and half-flirting with Max felt different suddenly, as if she’d noticed the man, not just the friend. She’d started stuttering around him, becoming tongue-tied, worrying about things she’d never worried about like her hair and her makeup and what she was wearing, while she worked up the courage to tell him she wanted to take things beyond friends. Now Max was going to go and screw everything up by getting engaged to the wrong woman.

Once again, instead of saying any of that, she caved to her inner coward. "Just thought I'd add a little realism to the moment. You know, the whole O-M-G effect. Do you want me to scream and faint, too?"

He chuckled. "You don't need to go that far, Elizabeth Taylor. But since you're in the moment, let me try out the proposal. I'm so scared I'll screw it up."

"You won't. Everything you do is perfect."

Max grinned. "No need to butter me up, Ang. I already promised to take you to lunch for suffering through this with me."

She gave him half a smile. "You know me. Anything for a barbecue burger."

"A woman after my own heart."  Max cleared his throat, then met her eyes. His ocean blue gaze held hers for one long moment. Then he dropped to one knee, still holding her left hand. "Love is a meeting of two hearts, a risk that we take. I want to ask you to be with me for every sunrise—"

 "Gag me, Max. Oh my God, that’s awful. Did you get out of a book?"

"I was trying to be romantic."

Angie rolled her eyes. "Let me get you some pancakes for that syrup."

"Okay, let’s do it your way. Straightforward, to the point, none of that hearts and flowers bull." He cleared his throat. "Angie, you're the only one in the world who can make me laugh on the worst day of my life. The one person who always remembers I'm allergic to onions, and the one who once gave up her seat on a flight to Cancun to stay behind and nurse me through a man cold."  He grinned and the smile seared itself on her heart. "Will you marry me?"

"Yes," she said, the word a breathless, joyful whisper. "Yes."

Max got to his feet.  "Thanks. I'll come up with something better when I propose to Becky, of course, since that was all about you."

"I thought what you said was perfect."

"Well, if we ever get engaged, I'll remember that."  He gave her a light jab in the arm. "Don't look so panicked. Your marital status is still safely single."

He slid the ring off her hand and handed it to the salesman. Angie had forgotten the guy was even there. She’d been so caught up in the moment, and in the fantasy of Max proposing. For a moment her usual fear of the word "commitment" disappeared.

"I'll take this one," Max said.

"Certainly, sir."  The clerk left with measured soundless steps. 

She looked at Max, at his defined profile, the smile she knew as well as she knew her own, and the truth hit her hard and fast.

Twenty years ago, she had met her Mr. Right, and never realized it until now. At some point, she’d stopped feeling just friendly feelings for Max, and fallen for him, fallen—

In love.

No doubt about it, Angie Wilson was definitely in love with Max Blackwell. Deep, soul-sucking love that was going to hurt like an appendectomy without anesthesia when she watched him marry perky Becky. 

She opened her mouth to tell him, to say the words that were in her heart. "Max, I have to tell you…"

"What?"

She saw the anticipation on his face, the happiness that seemed to infuse his skin. Becky had brought that to his life and right or wrong, Angie couldn't wipe that look from his face. In the end, Max was her best friend, and the last thing she wanted to do, the one thing she never wanted to do, was hurt Max.

God. This love thing sucked.

Instead, she said, "didn't someone promise me a burger?"

*~*~*

Max sat across from Angie, the ring heavy in his pocket, and the burger in front of him untouched. He watched Angie eat, in that cautious way she had, with small bites, nothing that ever dripped down her shirt or smeared on her chin. When it came to food, Angie Wilson was as precise and particular as a mathematician. In every other aspect of her life, she was wild, untamable, but she took her meals seriously.

He’d known her for as long as he could remember. There was no exact moment he could go back to, a day to pinpoint when he’d met Angie. It seemed like she’d just been there, as constant as sunshine, the only friend he had maintained all the way from James K Polk Elementary through Harry S Truman High School, and beyond.

She’d gone from a short-haired tomboy who dangled off the jungle gym to a beautiful woman with deep green eyes and a sassy mouth. Angie was tall, thin, but with curves in all the right places and a long riot of black-brown curls that cascaded over her shoulders and down her back. He’d seen her more than once in a swimsuit, and knew her dedication to running had paid off in shapely calves, a flat belly and a sexy physique that had most men stuttering in her presence. She was beautiful and tempting, and had absolutely no idea of her power over men.

He’d been tempted by her—many times—but never acted upon those feelings. There was an invisible line between them, one made out of a two-decades old friendship, and as much as he might have thought about crossing that line, he hadn’t.

Tension knotted Angie's shoulders and knitted her brows. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her so keyed up. Maybe that whole mock proposal had unnerved her more than he thought. Of everyone he knew, Angie was the most anti-marriage. She'd once compared the union of a man and a woman to spending your life on death row, chained to someone else's leg. "You know what wolves do in that situation?" she’d said. "They chew off a limb."

That was Angie—as far from a commitment as a shark from a fish tank. It’d take a hell of a man to convince her that marriage wasn’t evil.

"Hey, I'm sorry about what happened in the jewelry store," Max said. "I shouldn't have used you for target practice."

She shrugged and took a sip of her iced tea. Around them, the diner bustled with activity and hummed with conversation. It was a dive, the kind of place shunned by food critics, but the food was amazing and the burgers better than the most expensive Kobe. "I survived." 

He laughed. "So did seven hundred people on the Titanic."

She gave him a cocky grin. "Are you comparing marrying you to hitting an iceberg and sinking into the frigid waters of the Atlantic?"

"Only if you like drowning in my love."

She pretended to gag. "Save me from tacky soap opera lines."

"Remember when we created that whole soap opera thing back in high school?"

"Oh my God, I almost forgot about that." She put her drink down, and her gaze went to somewhere in the distance as she reached back with her memory. "What’d we call it? Oh yeah, I remember. 'As the Locker Opens.' Every day we'd make up a new drama—"

"Or recap one of the real ones that happened." They’d pass notes in World History or English Lit, little scribbled dramatic scenes complete with stick figure illustrations.

"You were all anal about it, making sure we had perfect continuity, never dropped a plot thread, maintained perfect spelling—"

"While you invented crazy motivations for the ‘characters’ when we wrote their pseudo dialogue. Remember Jim Braxton and Kylie Warton?"

She laughed. Her brown eyes danced with merriment and the tension left her shoulders. "The quarterback and student teacher’s secret love, unmasked by the mascot. We couldn’t have written a better scandal if we tried."

"Had to be pretty traumatizing to be interrupted
in flagrante delicto
by a six-foot tall turkey." Whoever had come up with the school mascot when the school was built eons ago hadn’t thought that one through. The Truman Turkeys had been the subject of a thousand jokes. Maybe that was part of what had made Max work so hard to win every game—so the naysayers and jokesters could see the team might have a stupid name but they were not dummies on the field.

Angie pushed her burger to the side, half-eaten. Yet another clear sign she wasn’t feeling like herself. Max and Angie had been coming to this diner for three years, and she’d never left so much as a speck of ketchup on her plate. "You still planning on proposing on Valentine’s Day?"

"Yup." The ring felt even heavier in his pocket, but he told himself that was because the whole thought of finally settling down had him a little off-kilter too. This was right, though, he knew it. Becky had every quality a man could want in a wife, and every quality that had been on Max’s personal checklist.

Yes, he was that anal retentive that he had a checklist for the perfect wife. He’d written it twelve years ago, tucked it in his wallet, and kept it there, as a reminder of what he was looking for. He wasn’t a man who wasted his time or frittered away his days. He made goals, and went after them. Marriage was just another goal, and something he had wanted to achieve before he was thirty. And he would, if all went well with the proposal.

"That’s only ten days away," Angie said.

"Yup." What was Angie getting at? She wasn’t just tense, she was distant, all un-Angie traits.

She twirled the straw in her drink, her gaze downcast. "So she fits the list?"

He’d shared his perfect wife list with Angie years ago. She’d laughed and told him he had a better chance finding life on Mars than one person who fit all those bullet points. "Yup."

"Did you ever think that maybe finding a wife by filling in little checkboxes might not be the best method?"

"What, you think I should trust it all to here?" He patted his chest, above his heart. "That’s how people make irrational decisions. And you know me, Ang. I’m as rational as they come."

"Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe you should just let loose, see what happens."

He found comfort in lists. Angie was the one who didn’t mind a detour, a change in plans. Over the years, she had gotten him to loosen up, to not worry as much, while he hoped he’d taught her that a little forethought was a good thing. Still, when it came to relationships, he had seen firsthand the disaster a lack of planning could create, and he had no intentions of doing that. "You’ve known me forever, Angie. How often have I done that?"

"Not often enough, if you ask me." She wagged a finger at him. "You need a wild romance, the kind that sweeps you off your feet and makes you think with your dick instead of your head."

Just the way she said the word sent his mind down roads he never visited with Angie. She was his friend—muddling that with sex would destroy the friendship, which meant more to him than any amount of time in bed.

Back in high school, they’d gone on one date—just one—and it had been a disaster. It had taken a month for their friendship to recover, and Max had no intentions of making that mistake a second time. So even though she had awakened his libido with that one word, he stuffed the feeling away. "Anyway, I think just proposing is letting loose enough. I’ve got the whole thing all planned out. Romantic meal at a rooftop restaurant—"

Angie mocked a yawn. "Sorry. I nodded off there for a second."

"You might not find a romantic evening on the town very exciting, but I’m sure Becky will."

"I’m sure it’ll be perfect for her." Angie gnawed on her bottom lip, a gesture Max knew well.

"Go ahead, say it."

"What?"

"What you’re thinking. You’re stewing about something. I can tell because you are doing that thing with your mouth."

"What thing?"

"This…" He pressed his index finger against her bottom lip. Angie inhaled, and her gaze met his, startled, wide.

Heat curled inside him, sliding through his veins, bubbling like a long simmering pot that had been forgotten on the stove. He jerked back, and let out a cough to cover for the movement. This was Angie, for God’s sake. His best friend. Only an idiot tried to muddle that with sex. "I gotta go," he said, reaching into his pocket and tossing several bills onto the table. "Becky’s car is in the shop, so I’m taking her to the airport."

"The airport?"

"She’s got some kind of dental hygiene convention to go to. Then she’s visiting her mom in Tulsa, so she won’t be getting back until just before Valentine’s Day." He grinned. "Guess you’ll be stuck hanging out with me for the next couple weeks. If that’s not too painful for you."

"I think I can suffer through it." A smile flashed across her face, then she dropped her head and fiddled with her silverware. "Before you go, let me ask you one thing."

"Anything."

She met his gaze. "Have you ever had a relationship that put you on edge? That made you crazy with want? That kept you up at night, wondering what the other person was doing, wondering if they were thinking of you, wondering if they would ever love you as much as you love them?"