A Cut Above by Ginny Aiken Read Free Book Online Page A

back to my old defensive tactics.
    He blows out what sounds like a gust of frustration. “Okay. So I didn’t put it in a particularly diplomatic way. But I . . . I care about you. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
    “Are you questioning my ability to look out for myself?”
    “No. I just read the newspapers, and am aware of too many people taken hostage in Colombia. I don’t want you to be the next one.”
    “Gee, thanks, Max. Now you’re scaring the living daylights out of me. I’m going to spend my time in Colombia staring over my shoulder, seeing bogeymen in every shadow.”
    “No, you won’t, because you’re not going alone.”
    “I’m going. Alone.”
    “No, you’re not.”
    “I am.”
    “What part of partnership equals more than one do you not get, Andie?”
    “Me? What about you? Where’s the part where you trust your partner’s judgment? The part where you don’t undermine your partner? The part where you don’t go putting yourself on a high pedestal and tell your partner what to do?”
    His eyes narrow again. “Still as stubborn as ever.”
    Am I? Am I being unreasonable, Lord? Or am I setting reasonable boundaries? “No, Max. Just an independent career woman who doesn’t like caveman attitudes. I mean, I really thought, after the k—”
    I clamp my lips shut as I realize what I’m about to say. I’m still that emotional chicken. I’m not ready to put the memory of that kiss into words. Max still scares me, even if I’m no longer letting myself hold him at arms’ length with the sniping and fighting and sarcastic digs.
    “Tell you what,” I say. Reasonably, too. “Let’s let this go for the moment. We can sleep on it, and then, in the morning, we can talk it over rationally.”
    He runs a hand through his blond hair. “I don’t think there’s much to talk about, Andie. It doesn’t look like you want what I do.”
    Is that a hint of pain I see flash over his face? Could I have hurt his feelings? That’s not what I intended.
    Even though he scares me.
    But no matter how bad I feel, I can’t make myself say another word. After a few minutes, Max shakes his head.
    “Have a good night,” he says as he walks to the door. “I’ll see you at the studio in the morning.”
    I follow; watch him climb into the U-Haul then drive away. A sense of failure overtakes me.
    “What have I done?”

400
    I collapse into my not-so-comfy window seat in business class and allow myself the luxury of a sigh of relief. The past few days have been a challenge, with all the verbal dueling I’ve had to do. Yeah, it’s all about Max. He’s no pushover, and he pulled out all the stops. Over and over again, he regaled me with gory details of past Colombian guerilla crimes. I knew what he was trying to do. He wanted to scare me.
    Okay. So he succeeded. But I’m still going. Alone. See?
    And he didn’t scare just me. You got it. He filled Miss Mona’s and Aunt Weeby’s ears with the same sabotaging mumbo-jumbo.
    Max has a way with women, and Miss Mona is a quintessential female, a true southern belle, no less. Have I mentioned how much Miss Mona and Aunt Weeby love Max?
    Uh-huh. I had to take all three of them on.
    Especially when they kept reminding me of his knight-in-shining-armor moments. And there were Aunt Weeby’s and Miss Mona’s matchmaking tendencies to battle too. I mean, in their romance-addled brains, nothing is better than to have Max and his overprotective, hunky self at my side while I traverse the wilds of a romantic but dangerous land. Think Harrison Ford and Karen Allen, folks. Or maybe Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.
    In their eyes, Max the Magnificent ranks right up there with the best of movie heroes, romantic and . . . well, studly heroic, sweeping in to save me just at the right moment.
    Fine. So he did save my sorry hide a time or two. But he didn’t have to do it. I’m sure I could’ve got myself out of those binds all on my own. Pretty sure. Besides, he has