Mad About Max. Penny McCusker

unhappy?” She seemed relieved to have that off her chest, but all that revelation did was heat his temper up a few more degrees. Julia had said that a lot. And then she’d left. He paced away, hands in pockets, kicking at the drifts of snow. “If you expect me to say anything remotely helpful, you’re going to have to give me more to work with.” He thought he’d said that in an incredibly even tone of voice, but when he turned back, Sara didn’t seem all that impressed. She appeared…irritated. She sounded it, too.

      “I made the decision to come here six years ago, Max. It was my choice and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

      “And we’re grateful, Sara. More than grateful. I don’t know what I’d have done without you. If I haven’t said that enough—”

      “It’s not that,” she said, shoving his gratitude aside with a wave of her mittened hands. “Much as I lo—” Her eyes lifted to his, then skipped away before he got any clue as to what was going on inside her. “Much as I’d love to spend the rest of my life taking care of you and Joey,” she said so fast the words tumbled over one another, “I want a home and family of my own.”

      “Damn it,” Max said on an outrush of breath that emptied his lungs and left him gasping. And damn her for catching him off guard with something he hadn’t thought about in years—six to be exact. A home and family were what he’d wanted when he married Julia, and he’d gotten them—not the way he’d hoped, and he wouldn’t trade Joey for anything in the world—but damn Sara for reminding him that Joey would be an only child. “Nobody’s preventing you from having those things, Sara.”

      She looked up at him, her eyes narrowing in a very un-Sara-like way. “So it’s okay if I just move out, get on with my life? You should’ve told me a long time ago that you didn’t care if I was around or not.”

      “Who said that?”

      “You did.”

      “No, I didn’t.”

      She snorted. “You’re hardly broken up at the prospect of me leaving, Max. How am I supposed to take that?”

      “I was trying to be supportive.”

      “You mean you were humoring me.”

      “No, I wasn’t….” He rubbed at his temples. It felt as if his head was going to explode. “You’ve been so confused lately. I just…didn’t think you were serious.” He dug at a half-buried log with the toe of his boot and jammed his hands in his coat pockets, looking up at her without lifting his head. “Are you?”

      “Would you be upset if I left?”

      “Joey—”

      “I’m not talking about Joey.” Sara closed the distance between them, waiting until he met her eyes. “How would you feel, Max?”

      Max found himself standing behind the woodpile without knowing how he’d gotten there, except that panic had something to do with it. One minute everything was fine, then suddenly Sara was unhappy. Talking about leaving. The next thing he knew, she’d be out the door, exactly like Julia. Except in Sara’s case she’d go back to her family in Boston, probably marry some junior VP handpicked by her father. And when she left, he’d have to pick up the pieces as he’d done before. Unless he made sure he wasn’t breakable this time. “What do my feelings have to do with it?” he demanded.

      “They just do, Max.”

      “It doesn’t sound to me like you even know how you feel about it.”

      She tried to answer, but he walked away while he still could.

      “Let me know if you ever figure it out,” he said over his shoulder.