Page 66 of The Charming Checklist
“A bath?” She went up on one elbow, smiling widely. “Um, sure.”
Adam Cruz was a genius.
Five minutes later, Ava was soaking in a hot bath. Her hair was piled on top of her head in some kind of design he would never decipher. The humidity in the bathroom gave her lower lip a plump look. She looked edible. He took a wash towel and ran it down the small of her back. If he didn’t ravish her in the next five minutes, he clearly deserved the Medal of Honor.
“I honestly thought this bath idea was a sexual move,” Ava said.
“Right? I thought so, too. Then I realized...” He cleared his throat. Or, rather, Adam told him. “Well, it didn’t have to be.”
“But it still can be.” She leaned back, revealing her beautifully rosy-pink nipples. “Is Adam here?”
“No.”
And God bless Adam for that.
Max pulled off his shirt with one hand, using the other to take off his pants. The water sloshed and rolled when he pulled her small body between his longer legs. Actually, with his long legs, he barely fit in here. He’d tried to take a bath in here once, and quickly realized he’d somehow bought a house with a sunken tub for no good reason.
But the most beautiful of all reasons had appeared in the form of Ava Long.
“Oh gosh, this is what I needed,” she said, leaning her head against his shoulder.
“Hmm,” he said, wishing he could take credit for the idea. “Do you want to tell me what you’re worried about? Is it your parents? More bad news?”
“No,” she said softly. “Something else.”
And then she explained what she’d been through tonight, with a professor who’d asked her out once, and now seemed to have an ax to grind. The ROI example he’d discussed on a Princeton education was laughable. Max’s emotions segued from righteous anger at the jackass to wanting to take him apart with his bare hands.
But what shocked Max the most was the realization that the professor’s attitude had been his too once. He’d believed that only the privileged could afford an Ivy League education and this made every single one of them entitled and spoiled rotten. Drawn with one big, broad brush. He’d had to get his education through the United States government, so yeah, he’d been slightly bitter.
For him, it hadn’t been the Princeton class, but Yale. Once, at the Naval Officers Ball, a group of seniors from Yale had attended. When one of them, Donna, had attached herself to Max all night, he hadn’t complained. Later, he’d been coming out of the head when he heard one of her friends giggling about “Donna slumming it.”
That night, he felt certain that somehow the wordsworked in the picking fieldsmight just be tattooed on his brow. He’d then vowed that no woman would ever consider herself to be slumming while with him. Shortly after that, he’d been recruited to the Navy SEAL team and he hadn’t looked back. One accomplishment after the other to prove that he’d pulled himself out of the picking fields. To somehow erase that stamp from his forehead.
“I think you should report the idiot,” he said now, pulling Ava closer, lowering his lips to the curve of her shoulder. “He obviously tried to humiliate you. Unacceptable.”
“Should I? I don’t want to. That will just give oxygen to the whole thing. I want to forget it.”
“Sometimes you can’t. Ignoring something just so your life will be less complicated isn’t the answer.”
“You’re so logical.”
“Yeah, guess that’s one of my strengths.”
“And your weakness?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
She turned in his arms to face him, her skin luscious, her eyes shimmering. “Well, it certainly isn’t the way you kiss.”
He kissed her. And kissed her again. She gave him a look filled with hunger and lust. They wound up doing it in the bathtub.
Much later, she lay sleeping in his arms, her face buried in his neck, her sweet-smelling hair on his shoulder. He felt peaceful. Calm. Max had been in conflicts and rescues all over the world. He’d once been pulled unconscious out of enemy territory and lived to tell the tale, but somehow, he’d never felt this lucky in his life.
Chapter Nineteen
Ava’s father still hadn’t phoned, and he hadn’t shown up in Charming for his wife. If he let Mom go, if he allowed her to leave him without so much as a whimper of protest, Ava might never forgive him. A good marriage was worth fighting for. Theirfamilywas worth fighting for.
For now, she kept her mother’s spirits up. They’d gone shopping at Shoe Fly, for dual mani-pedis at Get Nailed, and spent hours happily lost in Once Upon a Book, the used bookstore in Charming. While Ava was at work, Mom took knitting lessons at Hot Threads, took Doodle for walks and was teaching herself how to cook. But she would have to return to Dallas by the end of the week. She claimed this time had simply been a preview of coming attractions for when she retired next year.
