AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It was bizarre, I’d give him that. “I share the title with my sisters. It was given to us, strangely, when we were teenagers. The three of us showed up together somewhere, and someone gave us the name. It stuck. Spread. Social media. Came with being part of a young, rich group of teenage elites. There was a moment in time when being all those things were made really popular online by badly behaving socialites getting photographed everywhere. We were swept up in it, and at some point, my father decided it could be good for business. To helppromote his business by using us. So he hired a PR firm, and we were pushed even further down the Redhead hole.” I took another long sip of my water to cool down. “We handled it various ways. It hit Layla the hardest because she let the title take her instead of taking it. Bridget doesn’t care. She ignores the hype and lives her life. And…”
“You used it.” He filled in the blank when I didn’t know exactly what to say. “To do what you wanted.”
“Essentially.”
The waitress dropped off his drink and took our order. We made small talk until our food arrived, and then I took a bite, letting the flavors rush me through. If I’d been alone, I’d have closed my eyes and I might have even moaned, but my manners kept me from expressing my joy aloud in company. Instead, I just smiled and quietly chewed. Yep…that was fantastic.
“It’s really good.” Max took bigger bites than I did, cutting bigger pieces. I watched as he chewed and swallowed. Okay, I was really getting preoccupied. I looked back down and cut another bite, making sure to eat my salad too. It had a sweet dressing I loved.
“So where are you from?” I really knew nothing about him except that he had a friend who was sick and I’d ruined his life. Oh yes, he also suffered from insomnia and didn’t like chocolate.
I knew a few small things.
“A little coastal town in Maine. On the southern coast. Almost no one lives there in the winter, but the number of residents more than doubles every summer when it becomes a theater haven, a real place for art and performance. Every September, it’s empty again, save for a few people from places like here who drive up to see the leaves change. By Christmas, totally empty.”
I’d lived a lot of places but nowhere that resembled what he described. We’d always lived in big cities, no matter the country. “Does everyone know everyone else?”
“They do. My mother was one of those artsy people who used to go up for the summer, but she fell in love with a local man and stayed. They say that her first two winters, she almost left him because the winter is hard, but my mother is pretty tough and she grew to love it. Had eight kids, so I guess she’d have to be tough.”
I stared at him. “Eight?”
“Eight.” His grin told me he was used to that kind of reaction. “Dad taught history and then eventually became the high school principal. Six boys and two girls. I’m number three of eight. Boy, girl, boy,” he held up his hand to indicate himself. “Boy, boy, girl, boy, boy.”
“That’s amazing.” I guessed we were considered a big family because there were four of us, but we’d never been what anyone would consider functional, so I didn’t think of us that way. “Where is everyone now?”
He smiled, finishing his food then setting down his fork. “Everyone is still there except for me. They all left and came back. There’s a strong history of military service in my father’s family. My Dad served. All of us guys did, and one of my sisters. The younger one, Trina, she didn’t, but that’s not surprising. She’s really the most like my mom out of all of us. She tried to make it here on Broadway, like my mom did, but ended up going back home two years ago. Married her high school sweetheart. Teaching theater in the summers now.”
I was totally fascinated. “That is…amazing. All of you together. Really sticking it out. But you’re here?”
“Someday, I’ll go back. I have things to do first. I served the longest. They were all in and out when their obligations were over, but I liked it. I kept going back.” He looked away. “Until Iwas done. And then I wanted to do this. I never cooked a thing until I joined. But I loved it. Was good at it. Went to culinary school when I came out and then this life.” He waved his hand. “My father calls it fancy food. He doesn’t know how I picked up a love of fancy food.” Max’s smile was warm, loving. “That’s basically me in a nutshell.”
All the big details and none of the small stuff, but it was a start. “There is almost nothing about you online, other than some photos that get a lot of attention. Very little is publicly known about you.”
“Well, that’s on purpose. It turned out that was a good thing because few people have connected me, Max Broadley, with Maxim B, which is what they were calling me with the first restaurant. It helped I’d kept mostly to myself. I don’t want to be a celebrity. I just want people to like my food.” I’d stopped eating to listen to him and then quickly caught up. As I was finishing, he asked the question I avoided at all costs. “How long can you do what you’re doing?”
I smirked. “Eating? Hopefully forever. It’s a great joy of life.”
“No, I mean trading off your celebrity to fill parties with the right people?”
I sighed. It was a valid question. I had no discernible skills outside of knowing the right people. “I ask myself that a lot. What’s next? I don’t want to end up sad and pathetic.”Fuck me.Why had I said that to him? “So I’ll have to figure things out. I just don’t know what is next yet.”
I was running out of time to figure it out. “My father is a fugitive. It bought me enough notoriety that people continue to be fascinated when they should probably have let me go.”
“Oh, I doubt that. Your sister got kidnapped. That had to add time too.”
Anger pulsed through my veins. “I would never trade off what happened to Layla. That was the worst day of my life, andtrust me, I’ve had bad ones. I am many awful things, which you have seen for yourself better than anyone, but I love my sisters. They matter more than anything. I’ll never trade off their pain.”
Something crossed his gaze, and I wished I could read him, because I really never had any idea what Max was thinking. It was so unusual for me.
“Fair enough.” He leaned back. “Hard to make you out, and I’ve been trying. You never fit the labels you should fit, Hope.”
Well, that was something at least. The waitress offered us dessert, which I would have declined, but he smiled a small, sexy, private smile. “Split something with me?”
I found myself nodding before I could overthink it. “Sure, I love dessert.”
We ended up with crème brûlée, a real favorite of mine, and a non-chocolate selection.
“So where is Layla now?” The waitress refilled my water glass before she delivered the food. This one was chatty. Most of the time, waitstaff left me alone after making sure they’d correctly identified me.
