He wasn’t the most socially adept knife in the block, but even Max couldn’t miss the way her mouth tightened and the warm humor left her eyes. With his gaze fixed on the faucet, he wondered where he’d gone wrong.
Maybe she’d been in a bad relationship. Or perhaps she couldn’t have children, which meant what he’d just said would be highly insensitive. If he’d hurt her feelings, no matter how inadvertently, he would feel horrible.
He wracked his brain, trying to come up with something to say. Should he ask her what was wrong or try to change the subject? Somehow he didn’t think Hey, how ’bout those Red Sox was the appropriate thing to say at the moment.
“That’s not going to happen,” she said in a tight voice.
“Oh. I...” He looked at her and then back at the faucet. “I... Hey, how ’bout those Red Sox?”
*
The look on Max’s face made Tori wince and she put her hand on his arm. “You didn’t say anything wrong. It’s just something I’m oversensitive about.”
He was wearing a blue button-down shirt with the cuffs rolled to below his elbows, and his forearm was warm and tense under her hand. “I must have said something wrong. You were happy and now you’re not.”
“What you said was a perfectly normal, and rather flattering, thing to say to a woman. I just have issues and those are on me, not on you.”
He finally stopped staring at the faucet and faced her. When Max made eye contact, it was intense, and Tori thought some lucky woman was going to drown in those green eyes someday.
“If I say something stupid or something that hurts your feelings, I want you to tell me.”
She squeezed his arm and the muscles twitched in response. “I will. Especially if it’s about something that might come up in conversation during a date.”
“Would you like some decaf? We can go sit in the living room and talk.”
“Decaf?” Tori didn’t even have the stuff in her apartment. What was the point of coffee with no caffeine?
“It’s after 5:00 p.m.”
Couldn’t argue with that. “Sounds great.”
He brewed them each a mug of decaf and gestured toward the sugar bowl before going to the fridge for milk. Since she drank hers black, she picked up one of the mugs and took a sip. He didn’t cheap out on coffee, which was one more thing to like about him.
She carried her decaf into the living room and shoved the coffee table closer to the sectional so she’d be able to reach it from the corner. When he walked in and saw what she’d done, he smiled.
“I knew you’d be in the corner seat. It’s Katie’s favorite spot, too.” He sat on the far end, slightly sideways so he could see her, while still being able to set his mug on the table.
“So tell me more about your list of desirable qualities in a wife. I need more to go on than intelligent and friendly, since not many people go searching for cranky, dumb people to spend time with.”
“I guess at the top would be openness to a relationship with the hope of marriage and children.”
It wasn’t a dig, but she hoped he hadn’t said it because he was still dwelling on what happened in the kitchen. She’d seen how upset he was by the possibility he’d offended her somehow. “I moved here because my parents divorced and there was so much anger and pettiness and, no matter how hard I tried to stay neutral, they kept dragging me into it. I have no interest in that being my future, so I’ll live my life the way I am now. Nobody’s responsible for my happiness and I’m sure as hell not responsible for anybody else’s.”
He looked at her as if trying to read her as well as she seemed to be able to read him, and she escaped his scrutiny by leaning forward to take a sip of her coffee. “I’ve heard the effect divorce has on adult children is often underestimated, but your reaction seems extreme. Swearing off marriage and motherhood entirely?”
She wasn’t sure she could find the words to explain how afraid she was that the same thing that had happened to her parents—whatever it was—would happen to her. The stable foundation of her life had been blown apart and she’d become a weapon wielded by and against the two people she loved more than anybody else in the world.
“It wasn’t the divorce,” she said. “It was the hatred. Watching my mom and dad turn on each other and try to hurt each other after almost twenty-five years of marriage turned my life upside down. If I can’t trust my parents not to tear each other—and me—apart, then...Like I said, I have issues.”
“With that much hostility, it must have been rough growing up under the same roof as them.”
She rubbed the pad of her index finger over a rough edge on her thumbnail, wishing she had an emery board with her. “There wasn’t any hostility. Maybe that’s why I’m having such a hard time with it. Even though I’m pretty good at reading people, I didn’t see it coming.”
“They didn’t fight?”