Taking Chances: Tangled Up Part 37

"I'm wrong that you've realized that Sweet Cream Dream isn't what you want every single night?" he asked. He tucked his hands in his pockets. He wanted to reach for her, but if he did, he wasn't letting go. And they needed to work some things out before he held on to her forever.

"I've realized that I've always been that way." She similarly tucked her hands into the back pockets of her shorts. "And that you've loved me anyway. All along."

Max had a hard time swallowing for a moment. "Yes, I have," he finally admitted.

"So, this-" She gestured to include the coffee table where the bowls of ice cream, hot fudge, whipped cream, nuts, and cherries sat. "This is who I am."

"I know," he said, his heart thundering. "You just can't do it entirely without the hot fudge," he added. He knew she would know it wasn't ice cream. But hot fudge wasn't really hot fudge, either.

"Sometimes plain is going to be just fine," she said. "But yeah, sometimes I want hot fudge."

"Okay."

She dropped her arms, evidently surprised he wasn't arguing with her. "So-"

"I'm going back to Oklahoma."

Bree stopped, her mouth open.

He nodded at the question he saw in her eyes. "I want everything you can give, Bree," he said, his voice suddenly gravelly. "And I've realized that you have been giving me that. Everything you're able. More than to any other guy. And that matters to me. I get it. If it's once a month for a few days at a time for the rest of my life, that's better than not at all. And it's better than being here every day and watching you try to change to be what I want. You deserve to have this your way, too. I want you just the way you are. And the best way for us to be together is how we always have been together. That's been working for more than a decade."

Bree was staring at him. "Are you serious?"

He nodded.

"You would go back to Oklahoma. Give up the business and your family and friends and hometown to keep things status quo between us?"

Max spread his arms. He hated it, but yeah, he would keep the status quo. Because the status quo meant he wouldn't have to give her up-or have her give him up. "I'll be your Sweet Cream Dream when you want that. And when you're in the mood for Cappuccino Crusade or whatever the h.e.l.l, I'll . . ."

She took a step forward, frowning as he trailed off. "You'll what?"

Max ran a hand over his face. "Probably get rip-roaring drunk."

He focused on her again and she frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"When you're ready to have pizza in front of a Netflix marathon of Chuck or you need a New Year's Eve date or you want to play charades with our friends, I'll be there."

"I'm guessing you're talking about regular charades, not dirty?"

"Yeah. Regular charades."

"And who will I be playing dirty charades with?" she asked, studying his face.

That was something he didn't want to think about. "I guess whoever is your . . . Peppermint Pa.s.sion."

Her face hardened slightly. "So whoever is my flavor of the week?"

He gave her a nod. "Guess so."

"That's what you think is happening? That I pulled out the hot fudge because I'm tired of Sweet Cream Dream?"

"Isn't it?"

Her eyes narrowed. "What if it is? Your pretty little wife and the mother of your fourteen children and your three dogs and four cats isn't going to like you hanging with me for Chuck and New Year's Eve."

Max's stomach tightened. There was no way in h.e.l.l he was going to have a wife or a mother of his children if it wasn't the woman standing in front of him right now. The reality of that sank in fast. "Guess my bachelorhood is pretty confirmed, isn't it?"

Suddenly her mouth dropped open, and she pulled her hands from her pockets. "You would give up all of that? No white picket fence or babies or dogs?"

"Of course I would." f.u.c.k, how did she not know this?

But he hadn't really known it-or at least, hadn't admitted it to himself-until he'd stepped into that room and realized that he wanted Bree, in any way, in any amount he could have her.

She stared at him. "Are you kidding me right now?"

He frowned. "What?"

"You can't give all of that up, Max!" she exclaimed.

"Look," he said firmly, "I'm in love with you. I'm not going to marry someone else just so I can have kids and dogs. h.e.l.l, I can get a dog anyway. But I want you, and if it's once a month like it's always been, then it's once a month."

"That's not fair. You deserve to be happy and have everything you want," she argued. "You're amazing. You make so many lives better; you deserve to have the life you want, too."

He took the three steps that separated them and put his hand against her face. "You," he said simply. "You are what I want."

"But-"

"You're a force of nature, Bree McDermott. I've always known that. And I should have realized this sooner-storms that stir things up as much as you do, maybe they're only meant to be chased, not caught." He brushed his thumb over her jaw. "And G.o.d knows I do love the chase."

She sucked in a quick breath, and her eyes filled. "Max-"

Suddenly a piercing beeping split the air.

Max tensed. It was the weather alert on his phone from the service he and most other storm chasers subscribed to. "Dammit," he breathed out, dropping his hand from Bree's face.

He held her gaze as he pulled out his phone, but then he looked down. He frowned.

"What is it?"

"Thunderstorm headed this way. It's gained strength since the earlier watch was released," he told her. "It was supposed to just be rain, but it's got more power now. High winds. Possible hail. Lightning."

Bree knew what that alert meant for him, so he pocketed the phone and stepped back. "I need to go."

"I'm coming."

"You don't-" But he broke off at the look she gave him. She was coming with him.

"And this conversation isn't over," she added as she turned toward her kitchen. She grabbed a pair of jeans from the basket on the table, quickly shed her shorts, and pulled on the longer pants.

Pending storm or not, nothing could have kept Max's body from tightening at the sight of Bree in her skimpy blue panties.

"By the way, the monthly visits and the weeklong trips," he said as she came back toward him. "Those are definitely going to include s.e.x now, though."

She didn't smile. And she didn't agree. "This isn't over."

But as Max followed her to his truck, he had the definite heavy feeling that something was over. And he was pretty sure it was his happily ever after.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

"The winds are picking up. Possible hail. Lightning," he said to Jake, his first phone call from the road. Max was practically shouting over the rushing of the wind through his truck window. "We're under a tornado watch, too."

"Watch your a.s.ses!" Bree heard Jake shout into the phone.

"Always," Max told him, then disconnected and dialed again. "Storm's coming," he told whomever answered. "We're in a watch, too."

She a.s.sumed it was Dillon. Max was one of the first to be notified of a storm because of his storm-chasing network, and he would then pa.s.s on the information to those who needed to know. No one worried until Max told them to. And half the time he was the first one to get on the network and initiate the alerts. He typically had his eye on the radar early on.

Of course, today he'd been distracted by telling her he'd rather have Oklahoma than whipped cream and hot fudge.

Bree had thought he would get that the hot fudge was all the stuff that had happened since he'd been home this time-the sweet, hot goodness on top of what they already had.

Clearly she needed to work on her romantic gestures. She'd been c.o.c.ky after the lightning photograph had gone over so well.

Bree focused on the angry gray sky rather than on her own churning emotions. The clouds were dark, rain imminent, but she could tell they were headed into a thunderstorm, not a tornado. The clouds were churning but not twisting, and, even more, the feel to the air was different.

She might have chuckled at that or shared it with Max, but she was angry. Or maybe it was hurt. Or both. She'd never been truly angry with Max before. Frustrated, exasperated, maybe slightly irritated. But not angry. And never hurt. Max would never do anything to hurt her.

But now that she was in love with him, he was going back to Oklahoma.

Yeah, that hurt.

"Think we're good out here," he said.

It took her a second to realize he was talking to her and not into the phone. "Yeah?"

"There's gonna be a lot of rain-"

A loud clap of lighting cut him off, and as if on cue, the skies opened up. Water poured from the clouds, quickly soaking the gravel road they were on.

"As I was saying," he continued drily, putting both hands on the wheel, "it's going to rain like h.e.l.l. But I'm not worried about a twister."

"Yeah, I don't feel it either," she said, wondering how he could be scared off by whipped cream. Who didn't want to incorporate whipped cream into s.e.x? Wasn't that kind of a staple? She'd never used it with anyone before, but with Max-oh yeah, she could totally see it being amazing.

"You don't?"

She looked over, realizing he was watching her. She shook her head. "The formations don't look ominous and-"

"You said you felt it," he interrupted. His eyes were back on the road, but she could tell his full attention was on her.

Bree wet her lips. "Fine. Yes. This time it feels different than the tornado did. It's more"-she paused, trying to think of the right word-"electric in the air. Last time it was heavy and . . ." She trailed off again, knowing what she'd been about to say sounded silly.

"What? It was heavy and what?" he asked.

"I could feel the twisting," she said. "Like the air was twisting around me. This time doesn't feel like that."

She looked over after three or four seconds of no response. He met her eyes and nodded. "Yeah. That. That's not here this time."

"You know what I mean, then?" she asked.

"Yeah." He looked back to the road, his jaw clenched, gripping the wheel.

She frowned. "What?"

"Nothing."

They turned off the gravel and onto the highway that would take them past Montgomery Farms and back to town.

"Max? What?"

He cleared his throat and shifted on the seat. "It's nothing."

She turned on her seat and gave him a frown. "And, yes, in case you're thinking back to that time when the air was twisting and we were huddled up in a ditch, I do want you right now, just as much. No, more. I want you even more now because these past two weeks have been amazing and have showed me what we could have, and it's everything!"

Max squeezed the steering wheel and muttered, "Dammit, Bree."

"Dammit, Bree?" she asked. "Really? You're the one making this difficult! Who gets scared off by whipped cream?"

He scowled at the road. "That is not what happened."

"It is," she insisted. "You thought I was trying to spice things up because I was already tired of the same old thing. And you know what? For about five seconds, I let myself wonder the same thing. You know me best, after all. Why wouldn't I believe that's what was going on? But then I remembered that you don't know everything about me."

"Stop it." He gave her a stern look. "You're getting all wound up because-"

"Stop telling me what I'm feeling and why I'm feeling it!" she shouted.

He pressed down harder on the gas and clenched the wheel.

"You know the eight-year-old me and the twelve-year-old me and the seventeen-year-old me. Better than anyone. Probably even me. You know the adventurous me. But when we were eighteen. you left, Max. And it doesn't matter why," she added when he started to reply. "You left, you stopped living here and seeing me every day, and that means that you don't know the twenty-nine-year-old me like you did the eight-year-old me. You don't know the everyday me. You've seen me jumping out of airplanes and diving off boats, but you haven't seen me during a normal workday, or having my regular girls' night out, or my regular meal at the diner, or my regular brunch with my parents on Sundays when they're in town. You haven't seen that I run the same route every time I go running or that my playlist on my iPhone is the same when I go to the shooting range. See, Max, there is a lot of regular stuff in my life. You just don't know it because you left. And up until now, I've been letting you tell me who I am, based on the little bit you see, but not anymore. I know me, better than anyone."

All at once, Max cranked the wheel and pulled into a narrow dirt drive that led to the back of a farmhouse. Gigi's farmhouse. They were on the west corner of Montgomery Farms. Gigi's house was about fifty yards away, and the many buildings that occupied the south end of the farm where the entrance was were just beyond that. To the north was the orchard, and stretching out for acres to the east were the pumpkin, strawberry, and watermelon patches.

The farm was getting soaked, and for a brief moment, Bree was thankful the crew had gotten the shingling done on the barn roof that morning.