Lovers at Heart (The Bradens, Book One: Love in Bloom Series)

Chapter Twenty-Six, Lovers at Heart

Chapter Twenty-Six

THEY SAT ON the couch in front of the fire, Max’s legs across Treat’s lap. He massaged her feet, pressing his thumbs deeply into the arch of her foot.

“You can’t even begin to understand how good that feels.” Max closed her eyes, enjoying his touch.

“Oh, I think I can.”

She opened one eye. “Yeah?”

“It’s touch, and touch is good,” he said in a husky voice.

Why does your voice turn my entire body on? She pulled her feet from his lap and sat up, tucking them beneath her body.

“Let me do you,” she said.

“Why, Max, what kind of man do you think I am?”

She playfully smacked his chest. “Not like that. Let me rub you and make you feel good.”

He wiggled his eyebrows. “You naughty girl, you.” He went to a closet that Max hadn’t noticed earlier and withdrew a comforter, then spread it out on the floor in front of the fireplace. When he pulled his shirt over his head with one hand, all of her breath rushed from her lungs at the perfectly sculpted physique on the man she loved with every ounce of her soul.

He stepped out of his pants and lay down in his boxer briefs.

“This might be more dangerous than I had anticipated.” She was only half teasing. Did he really expect her to touch him without wanting to devour him?

He opened his hand and handed her a small bottle of oil.

“You just happen to keep this in the secret closet with the blanket? How much do you pay everyone to say that you don’t bring women up here?” Something told Max that she’d been had.

He turned over and pulled her down beside him. “I don’t lie, Max. I’ve never had anyone but Savannah here with me, and I slept on the couch, which is why the blanket is down here. The oil was something she left here.”

Kneeling beside him, she wished she could ignore the jealousy that was creeping into her body. “I’m supposed to buy the old only-my-sister routine?”

In the next second, Treat was on his feet and heading for the kitchen, where he retrieved his phone. He pushed a button and a few seconds later said, “Vanny, talk to Max.”

Max jumped up. “Oh my God. No way.” What is he doing? Mortified didn’t begin to describe the embarrassment she felt.

He held the phone out toward her with a wide grin. “Go ahead. I’ll never have anything to hide from you, and I want you to know it and believe it.” He pushed his hand with the phone in it toward her again.

She took it. “H-hello?” Her voice was thin and tethered with embarrassment.

“Max! Hey, girl! You found him! Did he call you?”

Max was surprised by Savannah’s enthusiasm. “No, I came to Wellfleet. He’d said it was his favorite place, so I took a chance, and he was here.”

“That’s fate for you!” Savannah laughed. “The last time I was there, he had to sleep on the couch. Hey, ask him if he ever found my apricot stuff.”

“Apricot stuff?”

“Yeah, he’ll know what it is. Apricot Kernel Oil.” This cannot really be happening. Max drew her eyebrows together and lowered the phone. “Savannah wants to know if you found her Apricot Kernel Oil that she left here?”