Dead to the Max (4 page)

Max let her mouth drop open dramatically. “You’re kidding.”

“That’s why Mr. Hackett was so disturbed by the call.” She shook her head. “But I can’t understand who called in the request for a temp. He had no clue.” Sunny straightened her shoulders indignantly. “But that gave him absolutely no reason to speak to me in such an insulting manner.”

“Of course not.”

“You don’t want that job, Max.”

“I’m a bit short on the bucks right now, Sunny.”

“And that man is a donkey’s behind.”

“You mean a horse’s ass.”

“A phallic symbol.”

“A dickhead.”

“I can find something better than this for you.”

“I’m tired of doing bank recs and ledger analysis.”

“No pun intended, dear, but this job will be murder on you.”

Sunny had no idea how right she was.

* * * * *

“How’d you know Wendy Gregory was a bookkeeper?” Cameron mused.

“It said she was in the article.”

“No, it didn’t.”

Max snorted. “It was there. I just skipped that part when I read it to you.”

At the end of the day, she sat on her back stoop, a four-by-four area constructed of plank decking at the bottom of the flight of stairs leading to her small room. She’d left her blazer upstairs as the evening worked its way into comfortable after the heat of an early September day. The little black cat whined in the tree above.

Max lived in a renovated Victorian, the upper floor having been converted into studios with bathroom, hot plate, closet, and bed. It housed mostly students attending nearby Santa Clara University. The deck, however, was hers alone, as were the stairs to her lodging. She paid a little more for the privacy, but it was worth the few meals she had to skip.

“I do believe you just told me a flat out lie, Max. You
knew
Wendy was an accountant just...because. Didn’t you, my love?”

Busted. “I’m
not
psychic. I’m just crazy.”

“Queen of Denial,” he said in a sing-song voice designed to piss her off.

She didn’t rise to the bait. “All right, if I’m possessed and I’m psychic, why don’t I just
know
who killed her? Why don’t I have
her
memories?”

“I don’t remember what happened to me. Maybe she’s no different. You need to work with her, not against her.”

Living with a lawyer, first when he was alive, then for the two years after his death, she’d learned to turn the tables on Cameron. “You’re the one with connections to the ‘other side’. Why don’t you interview Wendy and find out who killed her?”

“Now, Max, if she’s inside you, how can I—”

On a roll, she cut him off. “You could write a book about it.
Murder in Long-term.
We’ll say it’s ghost-written.”

“Very funny, darling.”

“You don’t sound like you think it’s funny.” But she thought it was, and the light-hearted switch tamped down the unease his words generated. She did crazy, not psychic. And certainly not
possessed
. She didn’t want to feel another woman’s messed up emotions. She had more than enough of her own.

“Feed the cat, Max.”

“You always change the subject when you don’t like what I’ve said.” Yeah, she wasn’t the only one who knew that trick. “Now, admit it was funny.”

“The cat’s hungry. Give it the rest of the tuna before the can rots in that tiny, broken-down refrigerator of yours.”

“If I feed it again, it’ll hang around like a buzzard.”

“I think it looks a little like Louis, don’t you?”

She closed her eyes for the briefest moment. “You won’t make me feel guilty.” But he had, despite her best intentions. “I couldn’t keep Louis once I moved in here. He’s got a good home.”

“With your best friend whom you haven’t called in two years?”

Right under her ribcage, an ache throbbed for her former friend Sutter Cahill. She went deeper into denial mode. “I hardly talked with Sutter after you and I got married.”

“I guess dinner twice a month didn’t count as ‘talking.’”

God, those dinners. All the laughter they’d shared. She’d been able to tell Sutter almost anything.

Yet she could never have told Sutter how it felt to watch Cameron die. Or about the men who killed him. Or the terrible things that came after. Instead, she’d dropped off Louis on Sutter’s doorstep and ignored her friend’s phone calls.

She would
never
talk about what happened that night. “You need to talk with someone, Max.”

“Please drop it. Sutter’s part of the past.”

Cameron sighed, a faintly fed-up sound. “Whatever you say, Max.” He’d bring it up again. He always did. “Doesn’t that cat’s pathetic cry break your heart?”

The little mewl sounded weaker than it had in the middle of the night. She rose and dusted off the seat of her black pants. She had four pairs in her limited wardrobe. “I’m only doing this because you’re making me.”

Cameron snorted softly. “Since when have I ever been able to make you do anything?”

“That time in the Dodge Ram truck.” She climbed the stairs to her studio.

“That was a dream I gave you, Max.”

She shrugged and smiled with the memory. Just as he spoke to her in her mind, Cameron could make love to her in her dreams. She could feel his touch on her simply by closing her eyes. “It felt real.”

“Yeah, and you loved it. Especially with the black and red flannel shirt I was wearing.”

“Hated it.” Loved it, just like he said. One of the best damn orgasms she’d ever had. Seeing a black Dodge Ram with red-lettered emblems on the street never failed to remind her.

But a dream wasn’t reality. In the worst of times, she ached for a real touch. Ached so badly that she did things she wasn’t proud of. Things she and Cameron didn’t talk about. Sometimes, dreams just weren’t enough.

She retrieved the can from the dorm-size fridge. The tuna was a little crisp and aged around the edges. Sort of like her life.

“Come here and get your din-din, you little buzzard,” she called, setting the tin on the window sill.

The black cat, with a sudden burst of energy, leaped the three feet from limb to ledge, devoured the tuna in four bites, then rubbed the length of its emaciated body against the sleeve of Max’s white turtleneck.

It did look a little like Louis. Louis, whom she’d abandoned, along with everything else, the day Cameron died.

She stroked the cat’s rumpled fur.

Night had fallen. She always felt most alone at night, the time when married couples were settling in for the evening, maybe sharing a glass of wine, snuggling on the couch, breath mingling, pulses quickening, the heady scent of arousal perfuming the air...

She prowled her small room, feeling itchy and on edge. Was it Wendy Gregory’s need trembling inside her? That intensely erotic sense of anticipation that had buzzed inside Wendy on the night she was killed?

Opening the closet door, Max stared inside. She’d thrown out all her skirts. All but one. Now she reached out to finger the material. Short, sexy, seductive. A skirt to turn a man’s head.

As much as she loved and needed Cameron, she longed for a man’s touch. She longed to feel a man’s hand on her skin, calluses, a work-roughened finger. Real hands, real fingers. Sometimes she thought she’d go mad she needed it so badly.

She felt Cameron in the air around her, the gentle glide of atmosphere against skin. “One day you’ll find a man worthy of you, Max, I swear it.”

A
worthy
man wasn’t what she wanted. A
worthy
man would want some sort of relationship, and any man she let into her life for more than a night would preclude Cameron. She couldn’t stand letting him go.

“You will. When the right man comes along.”

Her heart ached. He was preparing her for that day. “So you want to palm me off on someone else?”

“I want you to start living again. You can’t do that with me.”

“I can, Cameron. I have. For two years.”

“You buried yourself right along with me, baby.” She felt his essence wrap around her, his voice entreating. “It can’t go on forever.”

Instead of comforting, his words chilled her. She couldn’t go on without him.
Please don’t ever leave me
.

“You will go on. You’re strong enough. You’re just too scared right now.”

Strong yet scared. The words seemed poles apart. Cameron had a far greater estimation of her strength than she did, but he had her fear pegged exactly. “Please,” she whispered, “stop it.”

She closed her eyes and actually felt his body against her, his breath wafting the hair at her temples. “All right, baby. For now.”

He’d agreed, but the ache wouldn’t go away. “Touch me tonight, Cameron. Like you did in the Dodge Ram.”

She could still feel the lingering impressions. She loved the dreams he gave her, yet in the morning, she knew that’s all they were. Just dreams. She knew deep inside, in the pit where her deepest fears resided, that he was right; they couldn’t go on this way forever. But for this moment, she didn’t want to think about that. She needed him now. Badly.

“Take off your clothes. Lie on the bed.” She felt his voice almost like a physical touch.

As if her hands weren’t a part of her own body, her fingers tugged the hem of her turtleneck from her waistband. As she pulled it up, her blunt nails brushed across her abdomen and her breasts in the thin bra, abraded her nipples. They sprang to life. With their beading came a gentle rush of moisture between her legs.

Her slacks went the way of her turtleneck, thrown across the room. Then her panties. She crawled beneath the covers of her twin-size bed and pulled them to her chin. Outside the window, the little buzzard mewled amongst the branches.

Max closed her eyes. As long as she kept them closed, as long as she concentrated, she could feel Cameron, actually experience his touch. She stretched, intensifying the need humming in her center. Drawing one leg up, she let it fall to the side, opening herself to Cameron, opening her mind to his.

She felt the brush of his tongue against one nipple, a slight pinch on the other.

“Oh, baby, you taste so good.”

She arched her back, moaned, and held his head against her breast while he sucked. The sensation shot all the way down to her clitoris. Then he was there, right where she needed him, entering her with two fingers.

“God, I love it when you get so wet for me.” He rubbed the pad of his thumb against the sensitive button.

Her hips moved into the touch. She bit her lip and rotated to increase the pressure.

“That’s it, sweetheart. I want you to come.”

“Not yet,” she murmured, then thrashed her head on the pillow. “I want you inside me.”

“First, I want to taste you.”

The brush of flesh on flesh started with the tips of her breasts then continued down the length of her arms, moved to graze her belly, then finally the thatch of hair between her legs. His tongue, moist and warm, glided over her, parting her, seeking the burgeoning clitoris. He sucked, drew back for a quick swipe, delved for deep penetration, then returned to lave her with her own wetness. Parting her legs, she reached to hold him close against her. She ran her fingertips around the shell of his ears, glided over the thinning hair at the back of his head, then raised herself to knead his shoulders.

Smooth skin met her touch. The slight tang of a recently smoked cigarette tickled her nose, underlined with a musk that was uniquely Cameron.

Orgasm tingled just on the horizon.

“Now, Cameron. Please, now. I want to come with you inside me.”

He grabbed her hips with hard, bruising fingers and entered her with a deep thrust. The bed creaked and rocked beneath them as he pumped. She buried her nose against the rough hair of his chest, felt it scrape her cheeks as she turned to the side to snag a breath.

“God. Oh my God.” Tension built inside her, leaked from her mouth in a low moan. She wrapped her arms around him and held on tight as his body pelted her, the ridge of his pelvic bone rasping against her clitoris. His groan filled her ears, as did his words.

“God, I love you, Max. I’ll always love you. No matter what.”

Letting go of him, she reached above her head and clung to the wooden slats of the headboard. Clutching with a near frantic grip, she arched, grinding against him to increase the pressure on her clit.

“Please, please, please.”

Then orgasm rolled over her, starting at the point their bodies joined and rushing out to the tips of her fingers, her toes, and the crown of her head.

She screamed. Someone pounded on the ceiling beneath her. She didn’t care. She let herself come until she was nothing more than a boneless puddle in the center of the bed.

She lay there until she could breathe again, until she smelled the faintly acrid scent of his freshly lit cigarette.

“Was that good for you, baby?” he whispered into the complete darkness behind her closed lids.

“Yes.”

It was. But she was afraid to open her eyes. Once she did, his touch would be gone. God, what she wouldn’t give to hold him in her arms with her eyes wide open.

She felt the nuzzle of his nose against her ear.

“As good as the Dodge Ram?”

“Better,” she lied. She had to, because to tell him the truth, that she still felt hollow inside, wasn’t acceptable.

Not that he couldn’t read her mind and see through the lie.

Worse than that, she had to pee. Could she make it to the bathroom with her eyes closed? She lay in the bed as long as she could, drinking in the deep sigh of his breath against her throat, his weight on top of her.
Don’t open your eyes. Don’t let him go.

Then she had to move. She pushed the covers aside.

“I love you, baby.” They both knew what would happen when she opened her eyes. Cameron would fade back into a phosphorescent glow.

She slipped from the bed and let her eyelids rise slowly. Would the day come when she couldn’t feel him even with her eyes closed? She shoved the paralyzing thought aside.

Street light filtered through the tree branches, bathing the room in its soft glow. She tried not to look back, but she seemed to have no control over the movement of her head.