No I’m cool with pining away on an unrealizable crush forever.Julia peeled the label away from the whiskey bottle in a long, sticky tear. “Having a partner has never been important to me. If I do get a boyfriend I want him to bring something to the table other than drama, you know? Until I meet someone like that, it’s not worth the hassle.”
“So you want someone who can look after you?” Max made a face. “I don’t mean like financially, I mean do you want someone to share things with? Fuck, this isn’t coming out right at all…”
Julia handed Max the whiskey. “Here, this might help you better articulate your thoughts.”
Yep, she was drunk. She always talked like the Duchess of Cornwall when she got wasted, spouting flowery phrases, and nodding politely at everything. She needed to slow down. Or speed up to the point of blacking out…
Max took a deep gulp of liquor, his powerful throat contracting as he swallowed. Actually, she might need to speed up her drinking. Leap right past tipsy into unconscious human territory…
“If you want a certain kind of guy in your life, you should have one,” Max said in a low rumble. She was clearly wrong about his bigness counteracting the alcohol, he was as near to plastered as she was.
“Ah, thanks, man.”
“I mean it. You deserve to have someone who treats you well.” His ears went red.
“Every woman deserves that…Unless they’re lesbians and then they deserve other
women.”
“What if they’re asexual and just want a lot of good friends?”
Max flushed. “Everyone should just be happy and well treated.”
Julia laughed. Max really was a very nice, super handsome guy. If she could summon the courage to mention his wife she would say Bonnie was really lucky. But she couldn’t.
“Well, if you know someone who isn’t a psychopath, set me up. I’d be more than willing to get what I deserve.”
Max frowned. “I don’t…I thought you didn’t want a boyfriend.”
“Hey, I like boyfriends. I just—” Julia noticed the bottle in his hand. “Hang on, you’re drinking without winning a round! What the hell? We’re playing a game here, Maxwell.”
He looked mildly impressed. “How do you know my name’s Maxwell?”
“Employee e-mail. What’s the deal with that, by the way? Your mum aGet Smartfan?”
“Nope, it’s a family name. It means ‘great stream’ in Gaelic, Yulia.”
She poked him with her foot. “Shut up. Anyway, you lost so you need to tell me three things if you want to drink again. Make them good.”
Chapter 6
I'Mthirty-three, about to get divorced and I want to pull your panties down with my teeth. Oh wait, those are all true.
Max was drunk. He had that strange floating feeling like the whole world was coming loose at the edges. Half a bottle of whiskey on an empty stomach will do that to a man. He watched the lighting play over Julia’s skin, exposing the freckles on her collarbones, the smooth swells of her breasts. He wanted to trace them with his tongue. Wanted to pull her into his lap and kiss her until she squirmed.
He hadn’t felt this kind of attraction since he was a come-dumb teenager and, as much as he wanted to pin it on post-breakup hormones, he knew it wasn’t.
He’d been with a few women since his separation. Dean had practically forced him into pick-up joints, convinced he’d forgotten how to interact with anyone other than criminals. He hadn’t. It wasn’t that hard to pick up women. You bought them a drink and asked them about themselves. You wore a nice shirt and didn’t high-five your buddies like a fuckwit when they agreed to go home with you. It wasn’t like sex had changed in the five years he’d been in a relationship, it just appeared that he had.
When he was single, he’d lived for one-night stands, but this time around it felt totally one-sided, like jerking off with someone else in the room. At first, he’d written it off as a side effect of his failed marriage but as women paraded through his bedroom in a blur of lipstick and white wine-flavored mouths, his discomfort only seemed to intensify. One night he’d been chatting to a cute blonde at a bar and realized he was trying to talk himself into screwing her. Giving himself a pep talk like it was jumping out of an airplane.She’s got a great ass, go with it, it’ll be fun.He stopped having casual sex after that. He didn’t care if Dean said he was going to die alone surrounded by used tissues. In order to die alone, Dean would have to move out and the bastard showed no sign of doing that. Dean. What would he say if he could see where the allegedly well organized and responsible Max Connor was now? He looked over at Julia and found her bending over to change the song. Her top had ridden up, exposing two dimples at the base of her spine. What did the guys at school use to call them? Thumb holders. Max felt his cock grow heavy against his thigh. He could just see her kneeling in front of him, his hands around her hips, thumbs buried in those dimples while he—
He shook his head, trying to get his fucked-up thoughts to come loose.
Julia hummed along to the new song, completely unaware that the sight of her lower back was more arousing than any actual sex he’d had in months.Bad. Bad still-married police officer.
He racked his brain for three things to tell her. Two truths, one lie. He’d lied to her earlier. He and Bonnie weren’t going to the football. He was meeting her at Sake, her favorite restaurant to sign their divorce papers. Bonnie called it an amicable separation. Dean called it ball-busting torture. “She cheats on you, leaves you and then she makes you pay two hundred bucks for raw fish. What a shit deal.”
Max had told Dean to shut up, but privately he agreed. He hoped Bonnie’s new boyfriend liked sushi because once his marriage was dissolved, there was no way he was choking down wet salmon ever again.