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“No problem, not sure how I get to be your Mr. Scrooge for the night but dinner seemed a good start,” he said.
Was he flirting with her? She’d let her impatience with Roxanne make her drop her guard. “Um, yeah, sorry I said that. I shouldn’t have. I mean we want to business with you—”
“I know. I was teasing. All of the seating is out on the patio. Reg and I have reserved the table closest to the waterfall by the back of the pool. I have to circulate but I’ll see you both there shortly.”
He turned to leave and Angelica watched him. She wished…well that she’d met him before. Because he was her kind of guy. He was good with a quick retort, sexy and looked like he knew what to do with a woman when they were alone together. But the truth was, right now, he’d be wasted on her. She just wasn’t—
“So you were flirting with Max?”
“No. I mean sort of but you know how Roxanne Powell is. It was either flirt with him or blast her and I can’t do that, can I?”
“You made the right choice. I like him,” she said.
She glanced over at her cousin. “He’s not really your type.”
“Duh. I like him for you. He’s totally your type.”
“He used to be,” she said.
“Oh that’s right—now your type is what?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know me anymore,” she admitted. “Which is why I shouldn’t be flirting with him. I can’t start anything until I sort myself out.”
“Sounds like you’re trying to convince someone. Is it me or yourself?” Cosima asked.
She ignored the question and turned the conversation instead to their project. “Do you think we should bring up volunteering we’ve done in the past?”
“I don’t know. I figured we’d see where the conversation led. I didn’t realize he knew Nico so well,” Cosima said.
“Me either but then Nico knows everyone. He’s such a social animal,” she said.
“We should have used his name,” Cosima said.
“Maybe. I don’t want to keep leaning on him,” she admitted. Nico had been working really hard on rebranding her social media image after the video and had helped her a lot. But the truth was she wanted to stand on her own. Nico was one of her older brothers and they already thought she was a spoiled princess. She needed to prove to them, Whiskey River and herself that she was more than that.
She knew she had it in her, but her confidence was at a low ebb and she just needed to figure out how to be bold without being too much. She never wanted to be labeled a bully again but being a pushover wasn’t her style either.
*
“I like thoseRossi girls,” Reg said. “They aren’t at all what I was expecting to find here. They have some good ideas.”
Max liked them too, especially Angelica, but the truth was he couldn’t be certain that she was genuine in wanting to help out or if she was just doing some much-needed damage control on her reputation. That cynical voice inside his head was his default. He always went to the worst in someone and as much as he tried to get around it since his brother’s death, he still circled back.
If you’d believed in me maybe I wouldn’t have OD’d.
He shook his head knowing that he wasn’t really hearing Cal’s voice, just some echo of his own guilt. He paid a very expensive therapist to remind him of that. But it didn’t change the fact that a part of Max believed what had just passed through his head.
“You okay?”
“Yes,” Max said. “I’ve asked my assistant to grab us some food so all you have to do is make your way to our table when you’re ready.”
“I thought it was odd that you didn’t want to do a sit-down dinner,” Reg said. “You hate buffets.”
“Everyone hates them. Most people tolerate them,” he said. He moved through the crowd toward the table that had been reserved for him. Once everyone was seated, he’d arranged for the country-rock musician Jax Williams to do a concert with his son J.T. who had been recording with his father lately. He knew that J.T. had married a local girl from over in Last Stand and was also friends with Nico Rossi.
Nico was starting to be the one uniting factor in this night, Max thought wryly. Angelica and Cosima were already seated at the table when he arrived and there was a cloche over two plates for himself and Reg. The women were seated across from each other and he took a spot between them.
“Ladies, how’s the evening going?” he asked as he sat down. A waiter came over to remove his cloche and brought him a glass of wine.
