Lola Carlyle Reveals All

Chapter 16

Two days after Lola and Max broke into Sam’s house, they were questioned separately by the Baltimore police. She’d been back home for less than twenty-four hours when she’d had to place a call to her lawyer and make plans to meet him at the police station in Durham. Max and his attorney had answered the same questions in Alexandria, and since there was no evidence tying either of them to the crime, both had been cleared.

Her problems with Sam were finally over. Taken care of just as Max had predicted. He was her hero, but loving Max was both the best and worst thing that had ever happened to her. And each day that passed, she fell more in love with him. They spent every weekend together, and each hour she lost herself a little more in the pleasure of being with him. The pleasure of his hot mouth and strong hands. The solid wall of his chest against her breasts. Wrapped up in the warmth of Max, she felt safe and protected, as if nothing terrible could ever happen as long as they were together. Each time Max kissed her goodbye, his arms held her a bit tighter than the time before. Closer, as if he were trying to absorb as much of her as possible.

He hadn’t told her he loved her. Not yet. It had only been three weeks since she’d blurted out that she loved him, but she was fairly sure that he did love her. No man could look at a woman, and touch her the way Max did, and not be in love. Still, she longed to hear the actual words from his lips.

During the weekdays when they couldn’t be together, he telephoned her every night and during the day while she was at work. Sometimes just to ask if she was designing edible underwear.

“Are you hungry, Max?” she would ask.

“Yes,” he always answered. “I’m hungry for you.”

In a very short amount of time, she grew to live for and fear his calls. The sound of his voice brought a glow to her heart, even as she held her breath. With each call, she half expected that he’d phoned to tell her he was off to Bosnia, Afghanistan, or Iraq. Although, she supposed, he wouldn’t tell her where he was headed, just that he was going away.

How Max lived his life was out of her hands. Out of her control. She wouldn’t ask him to change for her. She could only hope and pray that he was in so much trouble from the Nassau fiasco that the government had taken away his decoder ring and had crossed his name out of their secret black book.

She knew he carried a pager at all times, and she hoped the government had lost his number. But deep down inside she knew it was only a matter of time before it beeped. There was no doubt in. her mind that it would happen.

It just happened sooner than she was ready, over breakfast the weekend she and Baby had driven up to see him. He’d toasted her a muffin and made coffee and they were supposed to spend the day steaming the horrible wallpaper from his kitchen. She’d brought him a photograph of her and Baby, and she’d put it in a silver frame with engraved and enameled dog biscuits. She’d brought her camera so she could take pictures of him, too. So he’d have a picture of them all together. Her, him, and Baby. Like a real family.

She never got the chance. His pager went off during his second cup of coffee as he was feeding Baby a hunk of bran muffin. Across the kitchen table, their gazes met and she knew. This was it.

Wearing nothing but a pair of white boxer briefs, he rose from the table and walked to the office at the back of the townhouse. The second Lola heard the door shut, her stomach turned and she felt sick. Her head pounded and her heart raced. Her chest felt as if it were caving in, and her gaze flitted here and there around the kitchen. On his coffeemaker, blender, and the magnet bottle opener stuck to his refrigerator. On the wallpaper that would not get replaced.

When Max emerged once more, he carried a duffel bag and his rucksack in his hands. A grim line twisted one corner of his lips, confirming her worst nightmare. Even before he opened his mouth, she knew what he was going to say.

“I have to go, and I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

She picked up Baby, then rose to stand before him. “When or if, you mean.”

“We’ll talk when I return.”

She shook her head. Since the beginning, she’d wondered what she would do when this moment came, and now she knew. “I can’t do this, Max. I love you, but I can’t live like this. I won’t be waiting for you when you get back.”

“Don’t do this, Lola. We can make this work.” He set the bags on the floor and moved toward her.

She put out her free hand and stopped him. “No,” she said, even as her heart told her to throw her arms around his neck and hang on. To hang on and never let him go. “I don’t understand why you have to go,” she said, her voice surprisingly calm. “Only that you are going. I won’t ask you to stay, Max. I won’t ask you to stay for me. I would never ask that of you. Besides, I know you wouldn’t anyway. And that is something I don’t understand. Maybe because I love you. Maybe because you really don’t love me,” she said, facing the very real possibility that he didn’t love her. That she wanted it so bad, she’d read more into his soulful kisses than he felt. Than he would ever feel. “Maybe if I were a stronger person, I could watch you walk away, not knowing if you’ll get beaten or tortured or shot. If you’ll die in a Third World country, all alone. Without anyone to hold your hand.” Her voice caught and she shook her head. “I’m not that strong, and I won’t go through this time after time so that you can go off and feed whatever need you have that makes you risk your life for people you don’t know and a government who had you arrested for a crime you didn’t commit just so they could get rid of you.”

“Don’t leave like this, Lola.” He ran his fingers through the sides of his hair. The agony in his gaze cut clear to her soul. “We’ll talk when I get back. Please stay.”

“Say something to make me stay.”

He took a breath and let it out slowly. His hands fell to his sides. “I love you.”

No fair. Those were the three words she’d been waiting to hear. Now they shredded her heart and left her bleeding inside. She was almost sure he’d never said them to another woman before, but they weren’t enough. She felt sorry for him. Sorrier for herself. Sorry for the life they would not have together. “I deserve more. I deserve a man who loves me enough to want to grow old with me.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Yes, it is, Max.”

“No!” His hands at his sides clenched into fists. “You’re asking me to give up my life for you. You’re asking me to turn myself into someone other than who I am.”

“I’m not asking you to do anything. I am telling you I love you too much to watch you kill yourself.”

“I’m not going to die, Lola.”

“Yes, you will. Maybe not this time, but you will. And I won’t live my life wondering if today is the day.” She looked one last time into his beautiful blue eyes and forced herself to leave the room, leave Max standing in his kitchen, telling her he loved her, and begging her to stay. Walking away from him was the most difficult thing she’d ever done.

With her dog held to her chest, she walked upstairs into Max’s bedroom and grabbed her Louis Vuitton overnight bag. As her breaking heart urged her to stay, to stay because living with him under any circumstance was better than living without him, she quickly dressed. She half expected to hear the sound of Max’s footsteps coming up the stairs to tell her he’d changed his mind or to ask her again to stay with him. They never came.

Before she left, she glanced about his bedroom one last time. At the double bed with the plaid spread. On his dresser sat a single photograph of him and his father standing on a crumbling porch, an old rosary hanging off one side. Beside it, the picture she’d given him of her and Baby. It was sad and lonely, and she turned from the room and walked down the stairs. Max was in the parlor, looking out the front window onto the street.

With dry eyes, she gazed one last time at the back of his beloved head and the width of his strong shoulders. If he had turned and looked at her, she wasn’t so sure she would have had the strength to walk out the door. “Good-bye, Max,” she said.

But he didn’t look at her, and with her knees quaking and her hands shaking, she walked out of his townhouse. She placed her bag and Baby into the passenger seat of her BMW, then climbed in and fired it up. Without a backward glance, she drove away. She didn’t cry until she’d driven half a mile. She didn’t fall apart until Fredericksburg.

She had to pull her car off the highway into the parking lot of a Best Western. As tears streamed down her cheeks, she placed her arms on the steering wheel and let go. Big sobs racked her chest and pinched her heart.

Until that moment, she’d never known that love could feel so bad. She’d been in love before, but not like this. Not the kind that felt as if she’d been ripped apart.

Lola didn’t know how long she sat in her car before she realized that she couldn’t make the four-hour drive home. Her head pounded and her eyes were scratchy yet watery at the same time. She pulled her dark sunglasses out of her purse and headed into the lobby of the Best Western. She and Baby checked into a room, near the ice machine, and she turned on the television, hoping for a distraction. But nothing distracted her from the pain of losing Max. If she’d thought he’d still be at home, she might have called and told him she didn’t mean it. That she’d changed her mind, that she’d take him under any circumstances for however long it lasted. But she knew he wasn’t home, just as she knew that if she didn’t get out now, this scene would play out again and again and again.

Baby whined and licked her face as if he, too, mourned the loss of Max. As if he, too, felt lost and empty inside. Lola lay on the bed and wrapped her arms around herself. The horrible emptiness ate a hole in her stomach and she reached for the telephone book, flipped to the yellow pages, and dialed.

“Delivery, please,” she sobbed into the receiver. “I’d like a medium meat lover’s pizza, an order of bread sticks, and a small order of chicken wings. Do you have diet Pepsi?”

Within thirty minutes, she sat at the small table by the closed curtains, gorging on fat, greasy comfort food. She’d eaten two pieces of pizza, three bread sticks, and half the wings when she pushed the food aside. It wasn’t helping. Just making her feel worse. An old and familiar voice urged her to purge all that fattening food, but she tuned it out. Baby jumped up on the table and snitched some pepperoni. Lola didn’t have the heart to scold him. She understood his pain.

There was nothing to make her feel better.

Nothing to take away the pain and emptiness she felt clear to the depths of her soul.

The C-130 banked port and descended to thirty thousand feet. The interior lights shut off, pitching the craft into darkness. The pilot cracked the hatch, and from inside his wet suit, flight coveralls, life vest, and fifty pounds of gear, Max felt the temperature plunge about a hundred degrees in less than five seconds. He took steady breaths through his oxygen mask and could sense his fog-proof combat goggles frosting over as the C-130’s ramp lowered.

Three other men stood within the aircraft with Max. All of them former SEALs, all of them tethered to the bulkhead with yellow safety harnesses. Max had worked with two of the men before, and they both were seasoned warriors. The third, Max had only heard about by reputation. His name was Pete “Boom-Boom” Jozwiak, and he was supposedly the best demolitions expert around. He was Max’s swim buddy on this trip, and Max hoped like hell the kid was as good as his reputation. Five miles below, on an island south of Soledad, a group of anti-American terrorists where holed up with two nuclear warheads they’d appropriated from the former Soviet Union. The U.S. government wanted those warheads out of terrorist hands, yet in order to keep relations with the world on an even keel, they could not do anything overt. They had to retain deniability, and they figured the wisest choice was to send in black operatives. For five days, Max and the other men had met with the powers that be and had come up with a tactical operations plan that would make the warheads disappear. At least that was the objective, and as always, failure was not an option.

The four men pushed the rubber combat raft toward the end of the ramp. A parachute, communications package, and the team’s assault gear were lashed to the assault raft, as were the engine and fuel that would take them to the island. Max checked the GPS on his chest to make sure it was working and waited for the green cargo bay lights to blink, indicating that they were over the area and it was time to go. He double-checked the Velcro closures on his assault vest and felt for the Heckler & Koch 9mm semiautomatic pistol strapped to his thigh.

The cargo lights blinked twice and the four men shoved the rubber craft and pushed it out of the C-130. Max unhitched the safety lines, moved to the end of the ramp, and rolled into the night sky. Within seconds, the cells of his parachute opened and he was hauled upward by his harness. Then everything evened out, and he flipped on his GPS, corrected his heading with the steering line, and sat back to enjoy the ride. Or at least he tried to. For the first time since he’d joined the Navy, he didn’t feel the thrill of anticipation. The rush of adrenaline that let him know he was alive. For the first time, he wasn’t exhilarated by jumping out of an aircraft or pushing his physical and mental capabilities past the limit of endurance. For the first time, the thought of Mission Impossible did not pump him up. For the first time, he just wanted to get the job done and get the hell home.

He rolled his head back and looked up at the stars. Normally, this was the part of the mission he enjoyed the most. The calm before the storm. Not this time. He was too angry to be calm, and he’d been angry since the day he’d told Lola he loved her, and she’d walked out the front door. No, anger was too mild a word. What he felt churned in his gut like acid and filled him with impotent rage. He’d always known that any involvement with her was going to cause him pain. He’d fought against loving her, but in the end, it had been like fighting not to breathe. After a time, it just proved impossible.

I won’t ask you to stay, Max. I won’t ask you to stay for me, she’d said. I know you wouldn’t anyway.

In the end she’d done exactly what he’d always known she’d do. She’d wanted him to give up his government work for her. For a life in the suburbs. He’d been right about her, but being right brought him no comfort.

I won’t go through this time after time so that you can go off and feed whatever need you have that makes you risk your life for people you don’t know and a government who had you arrested for a crime you didn’t commit just so they could get rid of you.

At the moment, his need to risk his life for an ungrateful government paled in comparison to his desire to hightail it to North Carolina and rip her heart out, just as she’d ripped out his. Jesus, she was evil. She’d waited until there wasn’t a thought in his head that didn’t revolve around her, then she’d walked out. She’d waited for him to fall in love with her before she’d plunged the knife deep in his chest. Then she’d waited for him to tell her he loved her to twist it for good measure. Evil and vicious.

Max checked his altimeter and tore off his oxygen mask. He sucked in a breath of fresh air, but it did nothing to clear his troubled mind.

I deserve more. I deserve a man who loves me enough to want to grow old with me.

He’d always thought she deserved more. Always thought she could do a hell of a lot better than him. Again he’d been right, but again it brought him no comfort. The thought of her with another man embedded the knife so deep, he didn’t think he’d ever get it out again. Evil, vicious, and vindictive. If she’d wanted to get back at him for the Dora Mae fiasco, or anything since, she’d done a good job. Brilliant. The first time in his life he tells a woman he loves her, and she tells him it’s not enough. Well, that would teach him to lead with any part of his body but his head.

Twenty-five feet above the surface of the water, he cut away his parachute. He wore enough hardware to drag him to the bottom, and he felt for the pull-tab that would inflate his CQC vest. Then he crossed his arms over his chest and prepared to plunge into the ocean.

For thirty-six years, he’d lived without Lola Carlyle. He would live without her for thirty-six more.

Lola stuck her pencil behind her ear, then massaged the back of her neck. Seated around the conference room table to her right were four members of sales and marketing, along with her lead designer, Gina. To her left sat her creative director, and together they were endeavoring to brainstorm a new name for the seamless line of Lola Wear, Inc.

Barely There was their thirteenth idea of the afternoon. And the thirteenth idea that failed to blow Lola’s socks off.

“The new line is as comfortable as a second skin,” she said. “Soft and smooth and very sexy. We want the advertisement to reflect that. We need something short and snappy. Something that says I’m comfortable but sexy.”

The faces around her looked as tired as she felt. They’d been at it for over three hours and no one was coming up with anything that closely resembled anything brilliant.

“What if we use something with your name in it, Lola? Something fun and sexy,” Gina said, and everyone threw out their ideas, no matter how off-the-wall.

“Sheer Lola.”

“Translucent Lola.”

“Sheer Lola, or Sheerly Lola, isn’t bad,” she said, “but I think we can come up with something better. One word, like… oh…”

“We could simply call the line Lolita,” someone threw out.

“Yes.”

“I kind of like that.”

“No!” Lola said with more force than intended. Everyone looked at her and she took the pencil from behind her ear. “Sorry, I don’t like Lolita.” Max had called her Lolita. Just the sound of the name stabbed at her still-bleeding heart. It had been more than a week now since she’d walked out of Max’s townhouse, and her heart had not even begun to recover. And it wouldn’t, either, if she had to hear the name Lolita, see it in a catalog, or read it on a label.

The door to the conference room opened and Lola’s assistant, Wanda, approached her.

“There’s a gentleman here to see you,” she whispered in Lola’s ear. “He says he’s not leaving until you speak with him.”

Lola figured the gentleman in question could be one of two men. Her ex-fiancé, Sam, whose numerous phone calls she’d been avoiding, or the graphic designer she was to meet shortly.

“Did he give you his name?”

“Sam.”

Her first thought was that he’d found out she’d been involved in the disappearance of those nude photographs. But if that were the case, the police would be here, not Sam. Her second thought was that he’d unearthed something new to use against her, and she figured she had two options: get the confrontation over or have security throw him out. She took a moment to review her choices and decided it was best to hear what he was up to, just in case he had more nasty surprises or something to use to blackmail her. She’d learned long ago not to put anything past Sam. “Show him to my office,” she said as she stood and excused herself from the meeting.

He can’t hurt me anymore, she told herself, but apprehension twisted a knot in her stomach as she moved through the hall to her office. Just outside her door, she looked down at her white crocheted dress and pasted on the pleasant smile she’d perfected over the years. No way would Sam see her sweat. When she entered the room, he was waiting inside for her.

“Sam,” she said, leaving the door open just in case. “What brings you to North Carolina?”

He didn’t answer for several prolonged moments. He simply stared at her, his clothes a bit more rumpled than she remembered. Perhaps now that he was no longer making money off of her, he could no longer afford to send his shirts out to be starched. Maybe he’d had to put that crease in his own gabardine trousers. He’d let his blond hair grow past his collar, sort of shaggy and strategically unkempt. At one time she’d thought him handsome and exciting. She’d thought she’d loved him, but what she’d felt for him wasn’t even close to what she felt for Max. What she would always feel for Max.

When Sam spoke, he hardly bothered to conceal the anger in his voice. “You broke into my house,” he said.

“The police don’t seem to think so.” She walked past him and stood behind her desk. To the one place she always felt powerful and in control. When she’d first decided to start her business, he’d been one of the people who’d told her she was making a mistake. Now, surrounded by her success, she felt herself relax a bit. She could take whatever he threw at her. “I’m sure you know I’ve been cleared of suspicion.”

“That doesn’t mean you didn’t hire someone to break into my house, destroy my property, and steal from me.”

She folded her arms beneath her breasts, waiting to learn if he had a bomb to drop on her again. “Now, that would be sneaky and underhanded. Sort of like you digging up those photographs and creating that website. But I didn’t break into your house,” she said, which she figured was a half-truth. Max had done the actual breaking, she’d just happily followed him. “I have an alibi.”

“Yes, I heard. You were with your new boyfriend.”

Had Max ever been her boyfriend? No, he’d been much more than that. In a short period of time, he’d become her life.

She waited for Sam to say something else. For him to pull the rug out from beneath her. For him to get to the point of his visit, and when he didn’t, she asked, “Is that it?” The silence stretched on and she realized by the look on his face that he had nothing else. No more photographs. Nothing to use to hurt her.

He tried anyway and said the one thing that used to freak her out and send her over the top. “Your boyfriend must like his women fat.”

Lola’s smile turned genuine and she started to laugh. Sam had always wanted her thin and sick and insecure. Needy. She was no longer the person who cared what he thought, and without those naked photographs of her, he didn’t even have the power to make her angry. She shook her head. “He loves my body just the way it is.” She told him the truth. Her trouble with Max had never been about weight or appearance. With just a look, he’d always made her feel desired and beautiful. It had nothing to do with her being weak and needing a man to take care of her. It had everything to do with his need to get himself killed.

When Sam didn’t speak, she lifted a brow. “Did you drive all this way just to accuse me of breaking into your house and to call me names?”

“I just wanted you to know that you haven’t fooled me. I know you were involved.”

“Now you’ve told me.” She pressed a button on her telephone. “Wanda, call security, please. Our uninvited guest needs to be shown the door.”

“You’re kicking me out?”

“Oh, yeah.” She released the button. “And if you come here again, I’ll file harassment charges against you.”

As she watched Sam leave, she felt truly free of him once and for all. If it were only that easy to get over her feelings for Max, she thought as she made her way back to the conference room. But she doubted she would ever fully recover from Max.

She’d just sat down when Wanda interrupted once again.

“There is another gentleman to see you. This one wouldn’t give his name,” Wanda continued, “but he said to tell you that if you don’t meet him pronto, he’ll commandeer your dog until you do.”

If it was possible, it felt as if her poor broken heart stopped and sped up all at the same time.

“Should I call security?”

As if security could stop Max Zamora.

“No.” She stood and closed the portfolio on the table. “Let’s all take a fifteen-minute break,” she suggested. Then, as she and Wanda walked toward the door once more, she looked at her assistant and said, “Show Mr. Zamora to my office.”

“I’m afraid he’s already in your office.”

“Of course he is,” she muttered as she moved down the hall. Once again she paused before the closed door and took a deep breath. Dealing with Max would be a great deal more difficult than dealing with Sam. She placed a hand on her rolling stomach and moved inside. And there he stood. His back to her, as tall and imposing as ever.

He wore a blue broadcloth shirt tucked into a pair of khakis, and the blades of the ceiling fan didn’t so much as stir one black hair. At the sound of the door, he turned and his eyes met hers across the room. “Hello, Lola,” he said. No bruises marred his handsome face, and she let out a relieved breath as his warm gaze slid down her body, then back up again. “What is that you’re wearing? A doily?”

As always, the sound of his voice warmed her from the inside out. He was alive, but he looked tired. And so good she had to fight the urge not to run across the room and throw herself in his big arms. She leaned her back against the closed door and held on to the brass knob. “What are you doing here, Max?”

“Looking for you.”

She didn’t want to talk to him, especially alone. She didn’t trust him, but more, she didn’t trust herself. She looked down at the toes of her sling-back sandals because she couldn’t look into his eyes, afraid she’d beg him to love her any way he could. To take whatever he was willing to give, no matter that it tore her up inside. “You shouldn’t have come.”

“I love you.”

She closed her eyes and tried to shut his words out of her heart. “It doesn’t matter.”.

“What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?” Since she wouldn’t come to him, he came to her. “I have been through too goddamn much this past week for you to tell me it doesn’t matter. I almost died, and for the first time, I actually gave a shit!” He grasped her shoulders and she looked up at him. The warmth of his palm seeped through the crocheted cotton of her dress and spread hot little tingles down her arms to her elbow. “I gave a shit because I love you.” She tried to pull away, but his grasp tightened, and he forced her to look into his face. At the anguish in his eyes and the furrow creasing his forehead. “When you walked out on me, I was so pissed off I could hardly see through the fog. I had a powerful anger burning toward you, but I thought I’d resigned myself to letting you go.” He shook his head. “But I couldn’t. No matter how hard I tried, no matter that when it was time to parachute out of a C-130,I couldn’t concentrate on the mission ahead of me. Instead, all I could think about was you and how your leaving felt like a knife in my heart. Then I plunged into the ocean and my CQC vest wouldn’t inflate. I fought like hell to get to the surface, but all the gear I was wearing weighed about fifty pounds and I was going nowhere but down instead of up.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked, trying and failing to keep the tears from her eyes.

“Because I want you to know. As I was being pulled down, I fought more than I’ve ever fought to live. I mean, I fought and kicked hard. I fought to get back to you. The vest finally inflated after about five seconds, but those five seconds felt like five lifetimes, and it scared the hell out me. I didn’t want to go, Lola. I didn’t want to leave you. I want more from life than to end up as fish bait or cannon fodder. I want you.” He brushed the moisture from beneath her eyes and she felt her resolve softening. “Remember when your parents told everyone at your family reunion that I’d saved you aboard the Dora Mae? Well, that’s not true. You saved me, Lola. You saved me more than you’ll ever know.”

“Okay,” she whispered, loving him and wanting him so much, no matter the pain. “I’ll try.”

“Try what?”

“Try to live your life,” she said, and leaned her head back against the door. This was what she’d been afraid of. Of looking into his face and wanting him no matter what. Of knowing that the pain of watching him live his life was better than the pain of living without him.

Max slid his hands to the sides of her face and stared into her brown eyes. He’d driven like hell to get to her, and before that, battled terrorists like a man possessed. Because he was possessed. A man possessed with the possibilities of a new life. A better life. “No, Lola. You deserve more than that,” he said. “I handed over my pager this morning. I don’t work for the government anymore.”

She simply looked at him. “What?”

“I’ve decided I want to live long enough to take care of you for the rest of your life. Bring you soup when you’re sick. Comb your gray hair when you get old and can’t do it yourself.”

Typical of Lola, she said, “I can take care of myself.”

“I know, but I want to take care of you. I want to make you happy and see your smiling face across my pillow every morning. I love you, and I think we can have a great life together.”

Her gaze searched his as if she were looking for more. Something he hadn’t yet said. “But Max, if we fight or you grow tired of me, you’ll regret giving up something you’ve loved doing for a long time. You’ll miss getting shot at.”

“No one misses getting shot at, honey.” He took her hand and kissed the backs of her fingers. “I’ve found something more exciting than blowing things up, something sweeter than an adrenaline rush. Something that is truly worth fighting for.”

“What?”

“A beautiful woman who makes me laugh and feel more alive than I’ve ever felt in my life.” He swallowed past the lump in his throat and the burning in his chest. “I’ve waited my whole life for you, even though I didn’t know I was even waiting. You and I are different sides of the same coin, and you make me feel complete.”

“Max,” she cried, and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’ve missed you so much. I love you, even though I’ve tried very hard not to. You burst into my life, all macho and scary and beat to a bloody stump. You tied me up, kidnapped me, and I fell in love with you anyway.”

He pulled her tight against him, his heart pounding hard in his chest. He didn’t know what he’d ever done to deserve Lola Carlyle. Nothing good, he was sure. The backs of his eyes stung, and he buried his nose in her sweet-smelling hair. “Honey,” he said, “I didn’t kidnap you. You were commandeered. Just like I’m going to commandeer you for the rest of your life.”

She nodded her head and sobbed.

“Don’t cry.” He pulled back and looked into her face. “I love you, and I want to make you happy. I want to make babies with you.”

Her watery eyes widened. “You want children?”

“Yeah, with you.” He placed both their palms on her flat belly. “Three, and I was thinking we should have all girls, too, seeing how you have an excessive fondness for pastels.” With his free hand, he plucked at the shoulder of her dress. “And doilies, but I think we should get married first.”

She bit the bottom of her lip and smiled. “That’s probably wise. I wouldn’t want people saying I used the oldest trick in the book to trap you into marrying me.”

He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her soft and slow, tasting her lips as he’d thought of doing since shortly after she’d stormed out of his townhouse. He’d missed her and wanted to drink her up in one gulp. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Mmm.” Her eyes were slightly out of focus and she nodded. “Max, let’s go home and tell Baby our good news. He’ll be so happy.”

“Good God, I forgot about your dog. I guess he’ll have to live with us.”

“Max, you know you love Baby.”

He thought about the little wuss. The dog definitely needed a male role model. “Maybe he’s not so bad.”

She smiled and opened the door behind her. “Take me home.”

As he walked out into the North Carolina sunshine, Lola’s hand in his, a smile curved one corner of his lips.

Not so long ago, he’d stood on the burned-out bridge of the Dora Mae, thinking himself cursed with a beautiful underwear model and her sissy little dog. He’d always believed Lola Carlyle would be the death of him.

“We never did get around to watching Pride and Prejudice,” she said, a teasing glint in her beautiful eyes.

Yeah, she would most definitely be the death of him, but what a way to go.