Dare to Seduce (NY Dares 3)

She blew out a shuddering breath, and Max waited patiently, his hand wrapped solidly around hers.

She swallowed past the lump in her throat and tried to explain. “It was easier for me to be alone and keep an emotional distance from the people I love when I was in California. It’s harder being right here.”

He wrapped a hand around hers. “Why do you feel like you have to keep that distance?” he asked, pushing for more answers.

She was past the point of holding back. “So I can’t be hurt when they go away. Or don’t have time for me anymore…”

“Or die,” he finished for her in a soft voice.

“Or die.” Her voice caught on that dreaded, hateful word.

He squeezed her hand tighter. “I think it’s time I explain why I think I understand you so well.”

She shivered, and it wasn’t from the cool night air. He was about to bare his soul, and that scared her. She’d end up feeling more for him than she already did, if such a thing were possible. And if he delved into the similarities in their pasts, he would tell her how much he’d loved his wife, and how losing her had destroyed him.

Hearing that would bring her back to her younger self. That girl had been filled with love and adoration, and she would have done anything to have Max in her life. But he’d married someone else, ripping her hopes and dreams out from under her. And that second loss had taught her to build her walls and keep them high, to keep everyone, even the people she loved, at a distance. She’d moved clear across the country to avoid his wedding, because losing him to another woman had felt like another death to her.

She didn’t need to relive those feelings now.

Better to assure him she already understood. “I don’t need you to explain. I know you lost your wife, Max. I’m sure you

loved her very much, and that’s kept you from having any long-term relationships since. And you figure that you understand the emotional barriers I use to keep people out. How’s that for summing up why you think you can get into my head so easily?”

She folded her arms across her chest and deliberately slid farther away on the park bench, pain ripping through her at having to discuss all these things.

He shook his head and laughed, the sound wry and cynical. “You’re not even close, princess.”

That surprised her, and she couldn’t stop herself from wanting to know more. “Tell me then.”

He leaned one arm on the wooden slats behind him, staring at her with an expression she’d never seen before. Beneath the strong man she saw every day was one who’d also been hurt deeply.

“You know my parents took in foster kids, right?”

“I remember. We went to school together. But they didn’t hang out with the neighborhood kids, so I never got to know them at all.” She hadn’t expected him to go back so far into his past, and she was immediately drawn in.

His jaw clenched tightly, the subject obviously not an easy one for him. “They were a rotating bunch. My mother would bend over backwards trying to show them the love and affection they’d never had, but very few of them knew how to accept it. But my mom kept trying with them. Just not with me.”

He paused, the silence heavy and weighted.

Her heart hurt at the revelation. He’d always been her brother’s best friend, the guy who was always around. She’d never realized there was anything going on at home, or wrong with his relationship with his mother. But she was younger then, and wrapped up in her own feelings for the boy next door.

He drew a deep breath and went on. “The thing is, it wasn’t always like that. Before we moved next door to you, we were a close family, just the three of us. Dad owned a restaurant near the small apartment we lived in, and it took both of my parents to keep it running. I used to work there after school, busing dishes and helping the chef in the kitchen when he’d let me.”

Lucy smiled, wishing she could have seen a young Max learning the business and cooking.

“Dad was a good chef, and eventually someone approached him to partner and remodel. To make a long story short, the business took off, and we moved up in the world. Next door to you.” He smiled at that, but his expression quickly soured.

“What happened?” she asked, leaning closer, wanting to know more.

“My mother had put her career in social work on hold to help in my father’s restaurant, and as soon as he succeeded, she jumped back into her passion. She decided I’d already had all I needed in the way of emotional support, and the others needed her more.”

His pain was palpable, that of a young boy stripped of everything he’d ever known for a reason that was cold and made no sense to a child. Hell, it made no sense to Lucy now, and she was an adult.

“And your dad?” she asked. Because he kept referring to his mother’s shortcomings as a parent.

“My father was too wrapped up in the success of his business to notice or care what was going on at home.” Max shrugged, as if that fact were unimportant, but Lucy knew he felt much more deeply than he let on.

She ought to know. She was an expert at covering up her feelings. “They were both wrong. You deserved so much more from them.” Parents who loved and continued to love, to show their emotions and their feelings for their only child.