Penny McCusker - Mad About Max

Sara followed that statement with another spoonful of ice cream. “I’m thinking of writing a diet book.”

“I don’t think your diet will catch on,” Janey said.

“It’s not the most pleasant way to lose weight.”

Janey shook her head. “It’s just that most women can’t stick to a diet for six days. You’ve been embarrassing yourself over Max for what, six years now?”

Sara dropped her spoon into the carton and sat back in her chair. Having the last half decade of her life boiled down to that one basic truth made her feel like throwing up.

“I’m sorry, Sara. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. But it’s only a matter of time before someone’s seriously injured or you’re completely bankrupt or both.”

“Yeah, a short time,” Sara agreed. “I almost wish I could stop loving Max. The only problem is how do I do it?”

Dear Reader,

I’ve always believed that humor is an essential part of love and marriage. After eighteen years, three kids and numerous pets, there’ve been times when my choice was to either laugh or scream. You know what I’m talking about, right? The kids give each other haircuts or the new puppy chews a hole in the living-room carpet and everyone else finds it hilarious, so you just have to laugh along with them.

Sara Lewis is having a lot of those moments lately, except she doesn’t need dogs or kids to be accident-prone. All she needs is Max Devlin. One look at him and she can’t remember she has feet, let alone what to do with them. Before she knows it, she’s involved in some sort of accident, and Max is laughing along with the whole town. Worse yet, everyone in the small, eccentric community of Erskine, Montana, knows she’s in love with him—everyone but Max!

When she confesses the truth, Max discovers just what she’s been going through—because suddenly he’s having accidents of his own. Can he overcome the messy divorce in his past and open his heart again before Sara leaves town for good—not only for his and Sara’s sake, but for the good of his eight-year-old son?

I hope you love Sara, Max and Joey, and their story, as much as I enjoyed bringing it to life. And look for the story of Sara’s best friend, Janey Walters, coming in September 2005.

Penny McCusker

Mad About Max

Penny McCusker

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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For Mom and Dad; it started fifty-five years ago. Nine kids, seventeen grandkids and eight great-grandkids later it’s still going strong. That’s love. And maybe a little insanity.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

“Please tell me that wasn’t superglue.”

Sara Lewis tore her gaze away from the gorgeous—and worried—blue eyes of Max Devlin, looking up to where her hands were flattened against the wall over his head. Even when she saw the damning evidence squished between her right palm and her third-grade class’s mangled Open House banner, she refused to admit it, even to herself.

If she admitted she was holding a drained tube of superglue in her hand, she might begin to wonder if there’d been any stray drops. And where they might have landed. That sort of speculation would only lead her to conclusions she’d be better off not drawing, conclusions like there was no way a stray drop could have landed on the floor. Not with her body plastered to Max’s. No, that kind of speculation would lead her right smack-dab into trouble.

As if she could have gotten into any more trouble.

She’d been standing on a chair, putting up the banner her third-grade class had created to welcome their parents to Erskine Elementary’s Open House. But her hands had jerked when she heard Max’s voice out in the hallway, and she’d torn it clear in half. She’d grabbed the tube of glue off her desk to save the irreplaceable strip of laboriously scrawled greetings and brilliant artwork, and jumped back on her chair, only to find Max already there. He’d grabbed one end of the banner, then dived for the other as it fluttered away. Now he was spread-eagled against the wall, clutching both ends of the banner, trapped by Sara and her chair.

She’d pulled the ragged ends of the banner together, but just as she’d started to glue them, Max had turned around and nearly knocked her over. “Hold still,” she’d said sharply, not quite allowing herself to notice that he was facing her now, that perfect male body against hers, that heart-stopping face only inches away. Instead, she’d asked him to hold the banner in place while she applied the glue. The rest was history. Or in her case infamy.

“Uh, Sara…” Max was trying to slide out from between her and the wall, but she met his eyes again and shook her head.

“Just a little longer, Max. I want to make sure the glue is dry.”

What she really needed was a moment to figure out how badly she’d humiliated herself this time. Experimentally, she stuck her backside out. Sure enough, the front of her red pleather skirt tented dead center, stuck fast to the lowermost pearl button on Max’s shirt—the button that was just above his belt buckle, which was right above his—

Sara slammed her hips back against his belly, an automatic reaction intended to halt the dangerous direction of her thoughts and hide the proof of her latest misadventure. It was like throwing fuel on the fire her imagination had started.

Max’s breath whooshed out, hot and moist against the inner slopes of her breasts. She didn’t waste time wondering how she could feel his breath right through her heavy angora sweater. It made perfect sense, considering that his face was buried between her breasts, his mouth right at the bottom of her breastbone.

Too bad the sweater wasn’t a V-neck, Sara caught herself thinking, a low, cleavage-baring V-neck. Her front-clasp bra would have posed no problem to a talented man like Max Devlin, and his mouth was there anyway. Blood rushed into her face, then drained away to throb deep and low, just about where his belt buckle was digging into her—

“Sara!”

She snapped back to reality, noting the exasperation in his voice, even muffled as it was by the regrettably turtle-necked sweater. Reluctantly, she arched away from him. The man had to breathe, after all.

“There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this,” she said in a perfectly reasonable tone of voice. In fact, that tone amazed her, considering that she was pressed against a man she’d been secretly in love with for the better part of six years.

“There always is, Sara,” Max said, exasperation giving way to amusement. “There was a perfectly reasonable explanation for how Mrs. Tilford’s cat wound up on top of the church bell tower.”

Sara grimaced.

“There was a perfectly reasonable explanation for why Jenny Hastings went into the Crimp ’N Cut a blonde and came out a redhead. Barn-red.”