“Hmmph.” She bounced, but managed to catch herself without toppling over on her high heels.
The guy was a giant. Over six and a half feet. Prominent cheekbones, his features a mass of angles and fissures that came straight out of a monster movie. Khaki pants encased his tree-trunk size thighs, a blue work shirt displayed his thick muscles, and his white-toothed smile stretched as wide as the Grand Canyon. It was oddly incongruous in that face, as were his eyes, the brightest blue, innocent, trusting, and na?ve, like a child’s, despite the fact that he appeared to be somewhere in his mid-thirties.
“Hi.” His voice, deep and loud, pounded against her eardrums. He stuck his hand out, grabbed hers, and pumped her arm, shaking her whole body. “My name’s Jules.”
“Mine’s Max.”
“Max? That’s a boy’s name.”
“It’s short for something else.” Not that she’d ever tell anyone what that was.
He shook her hand until the bones of her fingers felt as if they’d been crushed. Jules reminded her of slow Lenny in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Sweet without knowing his own strength. He leaned down to stare into her face, his breath scented with chocolate peanut butter cups.
“Jules? Where’s that box?” Pippa’s strident tone rang out.
Jules dropped Max’s hand immediately. A shadow crossed his ruddy features, his eyes widened.
Pippa Lamont stood by her desk, one high-heel clad foot tapping on the carpet, her arms folded beneath her breasts, and her gaze pointed.
“It’s in the trunk of your car, Pip-pa.” He said the name slowly, as if the syllables gave him trouble. Or as if the harsh sound of the woman’s voice made him stutter.
“Well, go get it and bring it in here.”
Despite his bulk, Jules moved quickly and gracefully down the hall.
“Max,” Pippa snapped with command.
“Yes, ma’am.” Max kept her lips straight, though Pippa’s condescending tone threatened to bring out a snarl.
“Jules has the mind of a child. He talks too much, then doesn’t get his work done. All the girls here know not to encourage him.”
Jules had sounded like he needed encouragement, or at least a friend. And with a boss like Pippa Louise Lamont ... Max brightened. Jules liked to talk. Jules needed a friend. “Of course I won’t bother him, Pippa.” She’d go to work encouraging him to talk the first chance she got.
“See that you don’t.” With one last arched-brow glare, Pippa stepped forward and shut the door in Max’s face.
Entering the salon proper, Max caught sight of Jules outside, his head stuck inside the open trunk of a sleek, mint green Mercedes. Damn, Pippa didn’t drive a large, dark car, and Jules almost certainly didn’t have a license. Max’s best bet was still Miles’s Lincoln.
Jules approached the shop with a two-foot square cardboard box. Max held open the front door for him. Turning to the side, the tip of his tongue sticking out between his teeth, he eased past her.
As he passed, he whispered, “I like Max. I’ll call you that. Bye now.” He vanished down the hallway and presumably into Pippa’s office.
*
Pippa had stayed long enough to unpack her box. She’d sent Jules out to her car at least three more times for various items, most of which she could have had him bring all at once. Obviously, Pippa was born to give orders, and Jules appeared to have been born to take them.
After they left, Max enjoyed the momentary peace and typed the addresses she’d written down into Mapquest.
When the troops returned, the salon reverted to its natural state of controlled chaos. Max didn’t have a moment to think beyond answering the phone, taking people’s money, and ignoring the Three Stooges.
Ah, she’d never been so glad to see six o’clock in her life. She crawled into the Miata and listened to the silence for three long minutes.
“Home, James?” Cameron whispered in her ear, the sensation of his voice inside her melting the last knot of tension. He used to say that as a prelude to hot, delicious sex.
“Making love, my sweet.” His words were like the trace of fingers along her inner thigh.
“That’s what I meant.” She closed her eyes, then rolled her shoulders. Oh God, she could feel him. Still. After two years. That was intimacy. She was capable of it, despite what he’d implied the other night.
A hand slipped between her legs. It wasn’t her own. It was ghostly. She could actually hear the rasp of her zipper. She didn’t stop Cameron. She should have. She was sitting out in the open, the top down on the car. But if she stayed very still, kept very quiet ...
“What do you want, my love? My fingers, my mouth, or my cock?”
She wanted everything. She knew she couldn’t have it.
“My fingers, I think, with my tongue in your ear.”