Max had asked me what I wanted to drink, I’d requested a glass of wine from the bottle he opened last night (the Chardonnay this time) and he’d poured it for me.

Now he was standing h*ps against the sink, drinking beer and watching me. I opened the packet of hot dogs and he burst out laughing.

My eyes went to him. “What?”

His head dipped to the counter. “This duchess food?”

“What?” I repeated and he walked up to me, putting his beer on the counter and picking up the tube of biscuits.

“Mac and cheese and pigs in a blanket with white f**kin’ wine,” he stated through his smile. “Is this duchess food?”

“No, it’s Nina’s Home in America Food. They don’t have macaroni and cheese in a box and biscuits in a tube in England and when I’m home I eat the food I like that I don’t get in England.” He kept smiling at me as he pulled the wrapper off the tube then rapped it on the edge of the counter so it gave a soft “poof” as it exploded open. “Max!” I cried. “You stole the fun part!”

His hand snaked out, caught me behind my neck, yanked me to him so he could kiss the top of my head then he let me go muttering, “Sorry, honey,” and twisted the tube open.

I pulled out some hot dogs thinking that my telling him I was moving to Colorado wasn’t exactly a special moment between us. I was also thinking that I had the Max I knew back after the Max I didn’t know and who kind of scared me was around for the afternoon and I didn’t want to go back to the other Max. I was also thinking I really wanted to know what was in Curtis Dodd’s letters and I was thinking it was Curtis Dodd’s letters that brought out the other Max.

But I really wanted to know what was in those letters.

“What was in Curtis’s letters?” I blurted then tensed.

Max took a hot dog from me and started to wrap a biscuit around it.

“Bitsy’s letter, a bunch of shit about Shauna, more shit about how he loved Bitsy and only Bitsy even though he was nailin’ Shauna and the fact that he’d received death threats,” Max answered, not sounding angry, not looking broody, just being Max.

“And yours?” I prompted, wrapping a biscuit around a hot dog.

“A bunch of shit about how I needed to take care of Bitsy and take care of the business for Bitsy and how Bitsy had death threats too and, seein’ as I was readin’ his damned letter, how I needed to take care of that and what he was doin’ about it with the PI and how I couldn’t tell Bitsy her life was under threat.” He put the biscuit-coated hot dog on the tray and reached for another one. “Oh, and more shit about how he loved only Bitsy when he was f**kin’ Shauna.”

I tried to keep the tone light. “That’s a lot, was your letter ten pages long?”

Max’s eyes came to me. “Curt had a natural talent with bein’ able to be a serious f**kin’ pain in the ass in twenty words or less, so no.”

I smiled at him, put my hot dog down on the tray and started another one, asking, “So, he knew someone wanted to kill him.”

“Apparently, yeah.”

“Why didn’t he go to the police?”

“Question for the ages, babe, why did Curt do most of the shit he did?”

I had no answer for that.

“Does Bitsy know she’s under threat?” I went on.

“Mick and I talked, we thought she should know, we told her.”

“Oh dear,” I muttered, thinking that probably wasn’t very fun at all.

“Yeah, she didn’t know whether to be freaked or pissed.”

I looked from my hot dog to Max. “Which did she settle on?”

Max grinned at me and answered, “Pissed.”

I stopped wrapping hot dogs with gooey biscuit dough and leaned into Max. “Is she really going to be safe?”

Max stopped putting blankets on the pigs and held my eyes. “Yeah, she’d be here or we’d be there if I didn’t trust Mick. He’s got a man watchin’ her house. Burt, who drives her everywhere she needs to go when she isn’t with family or friends, has been told. Her folks and sister have been told. I talked to him and her brother-in-law is spendin’ the night tonight. They got a huge security system in that house, never use it, but Bitsy’s promised to keep it active when she’s in or out of the house.”

I was beginning to realize why the moody Max was in attendance that afternoon as I turned back to the hot dogs. “That makes me feel a little better.”

“I’ll feel better when they catch this f**k,” Max muttered.

“Me too,” I agreed and then I caught sight of his hot dogs and informed him, “Max, you don’t put two biscuits on the hot dog, only one.”

“One don’t cover it, Duchess,” Max informed me and I looked at him.

“Yes, well, this is true, but I don’t have two hundred pounds of pure muscle to fuel. I have a behind that likes biscuits and asks them to stay awhile in the form of fat. Ergo, only one biscuit.”

He grinned at me and proclaimed, “You got a great ass, babe.”

“I’ve got a fat ass, Max.”

Without warning, both his hands were on my ass and the front of my body was plastered to the front of his. Surprised at my new position and the swiftness I was in it, I put my hands on his chest and tilted my head back.

He wasn’t grinning anymore when he repeated, “You’ve got a great ass, Nina.”

“Max –”

“You aren’t fat.”

“Max –”

“Your whole body is f**kin’ beautiful.”

My heart skipped a beat and my stomach melted as did my body and it did this into him and I said again, “Max –”

“Not a big fan of my woman running herself down, not even doin’ it as a joke. You got an unbelievably pretty face, fantastic f**kin’ eyes and a spectacular body.”

“Max, I –”

His hands squeezed my bottom and he interrupted me. “And I hear you say different again, Duchess, I’m not gonna like it.”

I studied him and realized he was perfectly serious, about all of it, and I had no idea whatsoever how to respond to that.

“Yeah?” he prompted when I seemed unable to form words because I was too busy being moved by all he’d said and the fact that he meant it.