Vane curled his finger toward Jaxson, who sent me a shifty smile before he skirted the desk and followed Vane into his office. The door shut and the lock clicked. Max bit his lip and glanced after them, his hand drifting down to toy with his belt buckle. I didn’t think he was aware he was fiddling with his fly, but the idea that he might be thinking about what Vane and Jaxson were doing and getting excited himself had my gut running warm.
“Come sit down, boy.” He bit his lip and flushed a delicious pink as he walked behind the desk to join me. I held onto his chair when he went to wheel it back to his usual spot and grasped his hand as he sat to keep him beside me. Neither of us talked, but the excitement of doing something we shouldn’t in the office, even though it was only teasing each other’s fingers, kept me from finishing any more work. At exactly five o’clock on the dot, I powered down my computer and then locked the drawers on my desk, while Max gathered his things.
Vane and Jaxson didn’t emerge, though I hadn’t actually thought they would.
Max and I bundled up and then walked shoulder to shoulder down the steps and out through the lobby of city hall. A girl who wrestled with a teetering pile of papers in her arms gave him a scathing look as we passed her, and he frowned.
“Can you… can you hold on?” He gently tugged on my coat sleeve.
“Certainly, but not long. You have an appointment.”
He flushed and took off after the girl, who was trying to figure out how to call the elevator without setting down her armful. Max was a gentleman and pushed the button for her. She was pretty enough, with long brown hair and a girl-next-door body wrapped up in a black suit. He said something to her that had her mouth dropping open for a second, and then she smiled and nodded at him. Several minutes later he came back to me with his face wreathed in a smile, and I could barely contain myself as we walked out into the bitter cold and growing gloom together. A few snowflakes already danced down from the low gray clouds overhead, and bitter wind sliced across the street and slammed into us, flinging around my messenger bag where it hung from my shoulder.
“What was that about?” I asked, unable to hold in my question any longer. We made directly for my Land Rover in the parking lot beside the building.
“I was apologizing. I’ve been rude to almost everyone, and I told her I was sorry about that and I was under a lot of pressure from my family, and I was feeling better now. I asked if I could talk to her if I saw her around.” He grinned as he spoke loud enough to be heard over the gusts of wind.
“What did she say?” I asked, curious in spite of a brief spike of jealousy. I unlocked the SUV and opened my door. He did the same on his side and hopped in. I climbed inside and had my seat belt buckled before he answered.
He let out a small chuckle. “She said she thought I was nice during orientation and then I became an asshole. She um….” He glanced at me, and I was shocked when he swiped at a tear on his cheek. “She said that she understood pressure because she was from Vert Island. She said that she would be happy to come to our office if we need help. Apparently a few people had asked Lang not to send them to your office because of me. And she also said she’d talk to them, too. She was really, really nice.”
“All that from one little apology?”
He swallowed hard and fumbled his hand toward me, and I grasped his palm and squeezed. “Daddy, you were right.”
“But you had the courage to do what you knew you should. That’s all you, Max. I had nothing to do with it. I’m so proud of my boy.”
He shivered, and I let his hand go to start the engine and get the warm air blasting. I flipped on the headlights and didn’t let the Rover warm up long before I drove out of the lot and began to navigate toward the south side of New Gothenburg, where it was more suburbs and less city. I was on a slippery single-lane side street near Lakeview Counseling when Max cleared his throat and said, “Daddy, I don’t know about this.”
“I do,” I murmured, and held my breath as we hit some ice and I overshot the parking lot entrance of the office we were headed toward. He gulped loud enough to notice, and I laughed as I reversed and turned into the lot.
“Daddy, I know you think this is best,” he said tentatively, almost a question, really. I wasn’t sure what type of reassurance he was looking for, but he’d called me Daddy and not JP, so that gave me confidence to push harder than I might have otherwise. I found us a spot and pulled into it, gathered my thoughts, and shut off the engine.
“I made the appointment. It’s safe to say I feel it’s necessary.” I didn’t glance at him but put a note of finality in my tone that had him whining in the back of his throat.
“But, Daddy. Wouldn’t you rather take me home and—”
“Oh, I plan to have fun with my boy when we get home.” I glanced at him and smirked. “But only if you’re a good boy and do this without giving me trouble. You need to go.”
“What if it doesn’t help?” he asked, the closest to surly I’d heard since the last time he’d earned himself a real spanking.
“Then you will have met a new person and you won’t be any worse off at all.”
Max crossed his arms and sat back in his seat, and I nearly caved as I studied that succulent bottom lip he jutted out. I wanted to eat it up.
We got out together. Max stuffed his hands into his pockets and stalked away from me, but his right foot slid out from under him and he gasped and flailed. When I picked my way to his side, where he stood with his arms out, breathing too fast, I clasped the hand closest to me. He surprised me when he linked his fingers with mine, and I tugged him across the ice for a soft kiss to the lips.
He smiled up at me, but one glance toward the psychologists’ office, complete with glowing, cheerful lights they still hadn’t removed after the holidays, and a little scowl worked its way over his face again. He needed a distraction and quick.
“Vane thinks Ross Midberry is going off the rails.” I was surprised I wanted to talk about this, especially now, but he’d been in that office half the day… and I trusted Max to assess the situation.
He nodded. “Ross wasn’t in today. Jaxson, Mark, and I sent out a few emails we probably shouldn’t have, and Mark is doing all of the leg work to help set up a civilian review board for the police that Ross promised to get in place after that incident with the cop and the girls.”
Huffing, I glanced up at the sky and thought while snowflakes dappled my cheeks with coldness. “That was a great idea, but that’s Ross—good ideas and no follow through, except for what we make happen.”
“It was Mark’s idea, actually.”
That didn’t shock me as much as it once would have. I shook my head. “Wonderful.”
