She was going to have to simply pretend it had never happened. There was no other alternative. She certainly wasn’t about to tell Max what she’d seen—God forbid.
She knocked, then swallowed a lump of acute discomfort as she heard footsteps moving toward the door. Just like yesterday, except this time she wasn’t imagining her old dancing buddy on the other side. No. Now she was imagining a naked, rampant man with a huge—
“Hey. I was wondering what was taking you so long,” Max said as the door swung open.
He was fully dressed. Thank heaven for small mercies.
“There was a queue,” she fibbed.
“I have to go to my sister’s. She’s had some problems with her latest babysitter. I’m going to go hold her hand for a while,” he said. “I might be a while.”
“Okay.”
For some reason, she was having a lot of trouble keeping her attention fixed on Max’s face. Her gaze kept wanting to slide down his chest to his crotch. Like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime.
“I’ve left a spare key for you on the kitchen table. Feel free to use the phone, the Internet, whatever. And don’t wait for me if it gets to dinnertime and I’m not back.”
“Sure. Don’t worry about me. Your sister sounded really worried.”
He sighed. “Yeah. She gets worked up sometimes. Her husband travels a lot and she struggles with the kids on her own. I couldn’t help out as much as I wanted to when Père was still alive, but now it’s better.”
He was worried, distracted. She bet he was a great brother, despite his own assessment. She knew how great he’d been with her. No doubt he moved mountains for his sister. Which was why it was wrong, twisted, just plain freaky that she kept getting flashbacks to the shower scene as she looked at him. One second Max was standing decently clothed in front of her, her old friend looking platonically handsome and solid and reliable in faded denim and a chunky-knit sweater, and the next he was naked, gorgeous, hard as a rock and about to lose it.
“You’d better get going,” she said.
Like, right now. Before my head explodes from all the illicit images bouncing around inside it.
She stepped aside to clear the way to the door.
“I’ve got my cell phone with me. Call if you need anything,” he said.
He gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder as he passed. She found herself staring at his butt as he walked away, mesmerized by the perfection of his rounded, hard ass. A dancer’s ass, even though he’d long since retired. Wonder Butt, indeed.
She registered what she was doing and made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat as she shut the door behind him.
One look. Ten seconds, maximum, and she felt as though nothing would ever be the same again. Which was crazy. She and Max had known each other for more than ten years. One moment of full exposure couldn’t shift their friendship so profoundly.
Could it?
“No,” she said out loud, just to hear the certainty in her own voice.
Barely twenty minutes had passed since she walked into the bathroom. Of course she was feeling antsy and uncomfortable still. The image of Max all hot and bothered was etched large in her memory. But it would fade. Soon, it would even be funny.
She frowned.
Okay, maybe not soon. But definitely what she had seen would be amusing one day, rather than disturbing and unsettling in ways that she simply wasn’t prepared to examine.
She spent the rest of the day chasing up contact numbers for her dancing colleagues and making phone calls. Jean-Pierre and Anna both offered to contact their specialist, Dr. Rambeau. Apparently he was young but innovative and growing in reputation. She couldn’t get through to Nadine and left a message, crossing her fingers that she wasn’t out of town performing.
By midafternoon, Max still wasn’t home. Maddy did some Pilates and worked her way through a series of stretches and strength-building exercises. Darkness came early, and at six she rummaged through the few groceries on Max’s shelves and wound up having more pâté spread on bread for dinner. She switched on the TV afterward, but her French wasn’t strong enough to make much sense of anything. By nine she was tucked in Max’s bed, one ear cocked for the front door as she waited for him to come home.
She was wearing his T-shirt again, and his aftershave clung to the sheets. She shifted restlessly, feeling tense and edgy. No matter how hard she tried to distract herself, she kept thinking about what she’d seen.
She punched her pillow then rolled onto her back and glared at the ceiling. Why was seeing Max in such a revealing way so confronting for her? Yes, she’d walked in on an intensely personal, private moment, and if Max had seen her, they both would have been embarrassed. But he hadn’t. So there was no reason for her to feel so…itchy and scratchy. No reason at all.
She swore and rolled onto her stomach, burying her face in the pillow.
The truth was, a long time ago she’d made a decision to ignore any attraction she felt for Max in order to keep him as a friend. He’d been startlingly attractive as a young man, and like a lot of the women in the Danceworks company, she’d taken one look at him and felt the tug of desire.
But at nineteen years old, Maddy had already learned the hard way that men and ballet didn’t mix. No matter how much any man admired her skill, no matter how great the sex was, jealousy and resentment always drove a wedge between her and her lovers.
She’d been burning from the latest breakup with the most recent of her boyfriends when Max joined Danceworks, and as much as she was attracted to him, she’d seen the writing on the wall without even squinting. A few months of hot sex, fun and laughs. Then the demands would start. The sulking. The fights. The cold silences. Finally, the angry betrayal with another woman. Or—worse—the angry ultimatum. She’d been there, done that, and a few conversations with Max were enough to make her not want to go to the same ugly, sad place with him. He’d been so funny and smart and generous. She’d felt instantly comfortable with him, and she’d made a conscious decision not to let sex become a thing between them. He’d become her first and best male friend.
And now she’d caught a glimpse of the virile, sexual man behind her dear friend and she was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to forget it.
Because the real, stark, unadorned truth was that seeing Max in such a blatantly sexual situation had been a huge turnon. The unrestrained need in him, the intensity of his expression, the hard strength of his body—even now she felt a rush of damp heat between her thighs.
For the first time in over ten years of friendship, she was looking and thinking of Max as a potential lover and not as her friend.
And that scared the hell out of her.
IT WAS LATE when Max eased the front door open. He paused on
