“I promised you it would be there before Christmas, and it will be,” Max was telling whoever was on the other end of the line. “I’ll shoot you an email when I ship it out, okay?”
Josh didn’t try to pretend he wasn’t eavesdropping as Max ended his call. He really had no choice but to overhear, since they were the only two people in the kitchen. “Christmas present?”
“Yup.” Max snapped his phone back into its holster.
“Family?”
“Nope.”
“Something for work?” It was a natural segue into the conversation he wanted to have.
“When are you and Katie finally going to hook up?”
Josh’s head whipped around. That wasn’t the conversation he wanted to have. “What the hell are you talking about? Why would I hook up with Katie? She’s…Katie.”
Max shrugged. “Just seems as if you two would be good together.”
“We are good together. That’s why she’s my best friend. Hell, we practically grew up together, so that would be weird, man.”
Max shrugged again, then grabbed a soda off the counter. “Shame. You guys are a great couple.”
He brushed by and was out of the kitchen before Josh could think of a response. What was he supposed to say to that? Katie was like one of the guys and they’d known each other their whole lives. If they were going to be a great couple, it probably would have come up before.
Halfway back to the couch, he realized Max had managed to evade answering the question about whether his phone call was work related. And he’d done it by deliberately blowing Josh’s mind with the concept of hooking up with Katie. It was a slick move on Crawford’s part, Josh had to admit.
During a lull in the third-quarter action, Josh pulled out his phone to make sure he hadn’t missed any calls. Butch and Mike had disagreed on a referee’s iffy call and the volume level had been pretty intense for a few minutes. There was nothing, so he had to assume Rosie was still watching television. It was tempting to call and check on her, but she wouldn’t take kindly to that. Or to being woken up if she’d nodded off.
“Waiting for the 1-800-Loser hotline to call you back?” Katie asked, sticking her toe out from under Max’s blanket to poke at Josh.
“Yeah. I told them I was worried about you.” He shoved the phone back into his pocket. “Have you talked to your mom lately?”
She frowned. “A couple of days ago. Why? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, probably. Did anybody ever say how long her cough might linger after the pneumonia?”
“A little while, I guess, but it should be getting a lot better by now. Is it bad?”
He tilted his head and shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t know. She seems to be coughing a lot, but she says she’s fine.”
“She said she was fine last time, too, right up until she passed out. I think she was even saying it as she hit the floor.”
“If it gets any worse, or doesn’t get any better, you should talk her into a follow-up appointment.” He felt bad when he saw how the concern scrunched up her face. Rosie said she was fine, and he was certainly no doctor. “I’ll keep an eye on her. It’s probably just left over from having pneumonia.”
“You’ll call me if you think there’s anything wrong with her, right?”
“Of course. Unless I’m on the phone with the 1-800-Loser hotline. You getting help is really important.”
She laughed and shoved at his hip with her foot before pulling it back under the blanket.
The other guys cheered and Josh turned back to the game, but Max caught his eye. Crawford jerked his head toward Katie and then made some goofy motion with his eyebrows. Josh gave him a what-the-hell look and then focused on the television.
Dude was losing his mind. He’d run with Katie for as long as he could remember, through good times and bad. He wasn’t screwing up a lifelong friendship to get in her pants, even if she was into him. And she’d never given any sign she wanted him in her pants.
Yeah, Max Crawford was totally barking up the wrong tree.
Chapter Two
At work the next morning, Katie snipped at what little remained of Dozer Dozynski’s hair while pondering how best to get Max Crawford to tell her what the hell his job was. Assuming he wasn’t a serial killer, what did he do in the basement that kept him busy, earned him money and required a security system? CIA? Computer hacker?
“How did you manage to sneak away from the hardware store on a Monday morning?” she asked when she realized her silence might come off as awkward, since there was nobody else Dozer could talk to.
“Lauren and my wife came in to drive me crazy looking at a million paint samples, so I told them to watch the store and ran as fast as I could.”