Along Came Mr. Right (7 page)

CHAPTER NINE

Saturday afternoon came and went without Olivia meeting Max at the Waterfront Sculpture Park as she’d mentioned in her note. She knew he would be there by the stairs, waiting and wondering what had happened. Even though Olivia had no purpose in going to meet him, that didn’t stop a twinge of regret from settling in her chest or prevent her from pacing her apartment for the next two hours.

From the window of her condominium overlooking Seattle, she could see twilight spreading subtle fingers across the skyline. She wondered how long he would wait for her, or if he’d waited any time at all.

Olivia released a frustrated growl as she turned to pace from the window to the kitchen and back again. She had to shut Max out of her heart. The man was a liar and a cheater. It would be far too easy to give herself over to the tears that threatened, tears like those she’d shed for Damien in great quantities after their broken engagement. But she was stronger now. That relationship had taught her many things. Mostly that she couldn’t trust men and could rely only on herself.

In spite of that strength, she struggled not to close her eyes and let her other senses take over. She’d known Max for only a week, but in that week he’d made her feel alive again.

With one picture that was gone. All that remained was for them to see Paige pass tenth grade. To do that in Max’s presence she’d have to be resilient. She’d done that before; she could do it again.

Olivia put her resilience to the test Monday afternoon. She paused just outside the door of Max’s classroom at the high school. Her palms grew damp, and a tiny hammer of panic she’d thought she’d wrestled into control began to pound in her head.

I can’t do this
.

She
had
to do this for Paige’s sake.

Drawing herself up, she stepped into the room. Max and Paige had already started working on her geometry, if Paige hunched over a piece of paper was any indication. At her entrance, Max looked up and smiled.

Pain and confusion bubbled up inside her as a traitorous flare of warmth rushed through her limbs. Her body didn’t care that Max had betrayed her, but her sense of self-preservation did.

He unfolded himself from one of the student desks and fixed his gray eyes on her. The raw hunger she saw there made her shiver as he came to her side.

“I missed you Saturday afternoon.” He took her hands in his.

“Something came up.” She pulled her hands away to work on the buttons of her coat. With exaggerated care, she removed her coat and set it on the back of the chair.

“My algorithm got to you, didn’t it?” he asked, his tone serious.

“No,” she lied.

He hesitated a moment more before he handed her a math book. “If you don’t want to talk about that, then are you ready for some tutoring?”

Olivia accepted the offering without making eye contact. If she looked at him, directly at him, her heart would fall to pieces even more than it already had.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Everything is as fine as we can make it, given the circumstances.” She had to put his offenses out of her thoughts for now. She was here for Paige’s sake. That’s what she needed to focus on. She opened the math book to a random page. She tried to focus on the equations. Instead her gaze lifted, and, against her better judgment, she looked at Max.

He responded with another smile.

Her pulse leaped. What was it about him that made her unable to look without wanting to taste?

Olivia drew a long, deep breath, hoping the action would help her get herself under control. “How can I help?”

He narrowed his eyes on her. “I’m having her take a standardized test to find out what she knows, beyond what I’ve taught, and where she needs help.”

With an effort, Olivia pulled her gaze away from his, looking out the window instead. “That makes sense.”

“Are you certain everything is okay? Because you seem different today.”

Paige looked up from her papers with a frown, her gaze flitting between the two of them.

Olivia wished she and Max could talk about what she’d seen on the Internet or in the newspaper this afternoon. She shrugged as she moved to sit at a desk near Paige.

“Let’s just say I woke up from the dream this morning.”

Confusion that couldn’t have been fake darkened his eyes. “You’re not making any sense.” A fierce frown creased his brow.

“How’s the test going?” Olivia asked.

“Fine.” Paige drew out the word as her eyes narrowed. She knew something wasn’t right between Olivia and Max.

“You’d better get back to your test,” Olivia said, forcing a smile she didn’t feel. She’d have to explain things to Paige when she herself understood why Max had lied to her.

Olivia stood and headed for the door, signaling with her finger for Max to follow. She wouldn’t talk about his deception in front of Paige. The girl had had enough disappointments in her life. She didn’t need to know that Max was no different from all the other men who’d deceived her.

Such dark thoughts, however, didn’t stop her heart from leaping just a little when he looked at her the way he did now. They stood outside the door, almost toe-to-toe, so close she could reach out and touch him if she wanted to. He waited for her to speak, his expression one of hopeful understanding.

“I don’t want anything to do with you anymore. Other than tutoring Paige, we have no reason to see each other.”

“Olivia! You can’t mean that. The test was wrong. The program’s corrupted.”

“It’s not because of the test.”

His jaw tight with frustration, he asked, “Then what changed since Friday night?”

“Maybe you should ask your fiancée . . .”

“Fiancée?” His croak echoed in the silence of the hallway. “You know about that?” In the depths of his eyes she saw pain and something else, something she couldn’t name. With gentleness he reached out, touched her.

She didn’t pull away, but she didn’t encourage him either. “Why?” Her voice trembled. “Why would you make love to me when you were engaged to her?”

“It’s not what it looks like.”

Olivia sputtered. It was the oldest line in the
Cheater’s Handbook
. She dug deep for control and poise, wanting to know the truth. “Are you engaged, or are you not?”

A ragged sigh slipped from his lips. “Technically, yes.”

She pulled her fingers from his as a shimmer of tears glazed her eyes.

“Let me explain.”

Another line from the
Handbook
? “Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.” Tears fell to her cheeks. “I don’t know what else there is to say.”

“There’s a lot to say, but there are also things I can’t tell you. Not yet.”

His expression grew tortured. Despite her crushed heart, something in her ached to touch him. She barely held herself in check.

“I wasn’t expecting you to come into my life. You must know from the short time we’ve spent together I would never do anything to willingly hurt you. There is a lot more to the story.”

She offered him a skeptical look. “What? Is this some sort of arranged marriage?”

He shook his head. “It’s an arrangement of sorts.”

“Did you ask her to marry you?”

“No.”

She wasn’t sure why, but that simple answer made her feel infinitely better. Batting the tears away from her cheeks with the back of her hand she asked, “Did she ask you to marry her?”

“In a sense. There was a situation, and it seemed like the right thing to do. And please don’t ask me about the situation. I can’t tell you that right now.” He said the words as though he might tell her in the future.

“Did she take your Matchmaker test?”

He laughed at that. “Yes, she took the test. We aren’t a match.”

“Well, at least we have that in common.”

His gaze narrowed on her again. “The program is corrupted. I’m trying to fix it, and when I do, watch out.”

She shook her head, amazed at his self-confidence. “It doesn’t matter whether we match or not, Max. You’re engaged to another woman.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but she stilled his words with a wave of her hand. “Until your availability changes, we have nothing to talk about—except Paige.” At her statement, a staggering sense of loss moved through her. It was too much to hold in. She fled.

Olivia looked up at Max from under her long, wet eyelashes. She’d returned to his classroom after thirty minutes in the girls’ restroom. His heart hammered at the vulnerability he saw there—at the vulnerability he’d put there. Her disappointment touched him on a level he wasn’t prepared for. He hadn’t felt this way about a woman in a long time. He should have told her the moment he realized . . . he knew what he was feeling wasn’t simply lust. There was a bond between them, as if they were somehow two parts of a whole. And he couldn’t do a damn thing about it because of his promise to Annalise.

At least they had Paige to force them to interact, or Max was certain Olivia would have left for good. The look in her eyes told him more than she probably wanted him to know. She was angry, but she was also conflicted. She’d felt the connection between them every bit as much as he had—an undeniable pull that neither of them could put out of their minds. But the one bright spot was that that connection would serve him well until he figured out this whole mess.

“Olivia, will you come with me to the math lab to grade Paige’s test? I’d like to talk to you.”

She frowned. “You can’t grade it here?”

“It’s a standardized test. We run them through the Scantron machine.”

With a reluctant nod, she followed him out the door and down the hallway. He slid the dot sheet into the machine and turned to Olivia while the program produced the results. “If we can’t talk about us, can we talk about Paige?”

“There is no us.” She straightened but kept her gaze trained on her black leather boots. “But yes, we can talk about Paige. Is something wrong?”

“I’m actually quite impressed with her determination lately in the classroom. She’s pushing herself pretty hard. A little too hard, which worries me.”

“How can determination and working hard be a bad thing?” Olivia asked. “If Paige doesn’t push herself, how will she ever pass her classes or make anything of herself?”

“It’s not the pushing that’s a problem. It’s the highs and lows she’s been exhibiting when she does push herself that worry me. One minute she’s on the top of the world—the next she’s depressed, angry, and defiant.”

Olivia frowned. “That sounds like normal teenager behavior. I’ve seen the same kind of thing when the two of us have done activities together as part of the Gals and Pals program.”

“Not like this,” Max said. He’d been teaching for only five years, but already he could see patterns in his students’ behavior. Paige’s behavior warned him that something else was wrong beyond her struggles with school. “Is she getting pressure outside of school about anything?”

“Not that I know of.”

He pressed his lips into a thin line. “Why don’t you check at home, and I’ll ask some of the other kids if they know anything or anyone who might be putting pressure on Paige.”

Olivia nodded. “I’ll talk with her foster mother today. She’s usually pretty tapped into how her foster kids are doing.”

Max felt a tic in his jaw as he asked the question he knew she wouldn’t like to hear. “Could there be a problem with her foster parents?”

“The Millers?” Olivia seemed startled. “Not a chance. They’re a model foster family.” Color brightened her cheeks. “Whatever is wrong with Paige, it has nothing to do with them.” Her voice hardened with the weight of her conviction.

He held up his hands in supplication. “I meant no offense. Just exploring all the angles.” Despite the seriousness of their discussion, Max couldn’t help but think Olivia looked spectacular when riled. The fire in her golden-brown eyes gave her face an animation that made him want to keep her in her current state of breathlessness. He wanted to close the distance between them and touch her lips to his, to taste her passion fully.

Max fisted his hands at his sides, fighting the urge. He could feel his blood pounding through his veins as he stared at her rich, full lips. The woman was temptation itself, but he had no right to touch her. None at all.