"Mom." Missy tipped her head toward her grandmother, "Grandma's always thought he was a tool. What's he done?"

"Not done anything so much as, you know, protected his family home."

"We are his family."

"His family of origin."

"He was protecting his family of origin, and what, screwing us over?"

"He will always be there for you, Missy. Your college fund is absolutely yours for education." Gwen tried to laugh. "I'm the only one who ever spent a dime of it. Watch out for me!"

Missy dipped her chin to stare dead on as if she'd lowered a pair of half glasses and wanted to make a library patron confess an overdue book. Gwen wondered if she'd taught her that. It was very disconcerting. By the time Missy reached full adulthood, sometime after fifty near as Gwen could tell based on her own life, Missy would be quite a force. "Not us so much as, well, not screwing over you as much as..."

"He owns everything." Max's voice was so straight forward, so matter of fact and calm that Gwen wanted to kill him. Like that was it. No big deal. She was just out of a home and money and her life and her mind and ta-da, that's the punch line, kids, how about some snacks?

"He what?" Ellen started to rise and then winced at her foot or at the idea of Steve having it all, Gwen wasn't sure.

"He owns the house. His family corporation owns the house, not me. The money, everything, it's protected. It's his. And I will probably get alimony in a couple of years, so that'll be good." She shrugged. "I didn't pay enough attention, and this is what happens. Nothing to be done about it now. The yellow folder was very unfriendly but legal."

"Gwennie, you saw an attorney? Tell me you saw an attorney."

"I didn't because it's already done, Mom. Done a long time ago."

"It's not done." Missy got to her feet, and Gwen stood, wanting to stop her from taking even a step toward the door that upset.

"Hey," Max moved into the room, "how about I order up some pizzas? What does everyone think, huh? Pepperoni's a given..." He headed for the phone.

Missy pointed at him, narrowed her eyes. "Knock it off. Don't let her weasel out of this."

"Your mother is not a weasel." Ellen gave Missy the disapproving eye with a lifetime more skill. You could always count on your mother to defend you even against your own daughter. "She's just very weak-willed when it comes to men."

"The disease to please." Hayden joined the conversation.

He really did read the Oprah magazine.

Jason moved further away from him on the couch, but Hayden just shrugged. "My mother spent years in therapy, and some of it has naturally made its way into my awareness. Hasn't anyone studied the Trickle-down theory of economics?"

Bryan snorted. "Way to make yourself sound cool again. Right. You don't know woman therapy stuff, you know about econ. Oooh, way better."

"I didn't have the disease to please, but thank you for trying to help, Hayden. And for the magazine. Very thoughtful."

"Did and do, Gwennie. At least with the Tool."

Missy took a visible breath, and Gwen wanted to stop her from saying whatever she planned to say next. She looked to Max for help, wanting him to interrupt again with anything, but he just looked sad and shook his head, and Missy said it. "I took off to Washington chasing a guy, a dumb guy, but mostly wanting to be a singer. It didn't work out, but I get now a better way to get there. The point is that I did something because I knew what I really needed, for me, to be happy. I can't respect you if you won't fight for what you want."

Gwen rose, "Missy," but she was already to the door and out and Gwen found herself just standing beside her chair. She hadn't even gone after her own daughter.

She would have stayed in bed forever, but she didn't have a bed. She didn't even have a couch that was hers. She had a borrowed couch in the middle of Max's living room, and if she stayed in couch all day, people would notice. Her mother had already gotten coffee and headed back to her room to get ready for her day. She had the final check on her ankle, but Missy would take her. The girl, who as a senior couldn't remember to wear a coat, suddenly exploded in wisdom and grandmother caretaking. Gwen didn't want to be annoyed by that.

She pulled the comforter all the way over her head. She had to get to class. She needed to get up right away. Right away. But easing out was impossible. There was no ease. She felt nothing resembling ease that would allow her to slowly rise and begin her day centered and whole. The only thing to do was leap out of bed. Leap before you look. That was good advice for a life stage like hers.

She swung her feet to the floor, threw the comforter back on the couch and fired into the bathroom. The steam hit her as soon as the door swung, but her momentum was too great to stop.

Max stood on the bathmat, naked and not surprised. Both things surprised her. As well as his very fit body, she'd seen the man eat. And the speed of his erection, that surprised her. His face, when she finally looked up, seemed so calm and at obvious odds with his body.

The only defense was a good offense. She motioned toward the towel bar. "Grab a towel."

He pulled one off the bar and held it in his hand.

"Put it on."

He looped it around the back of his neck and smiled like he was in some freakin' ad for men's shower gel. The porn version.

She turned her eyes to the ceiling. "Well, honestly."

"Are you going to be?"

"Be naked? No."

"Be honest?"

She tried to keep her mind distracted by noticing a hairline crack in the paint, but his strong reaction to her was kind of amazing. She really had that kind of power over him? He was always so calm, so in control and, her eyes dipped again, so not in control. She put her hand about chest level to visually block her eyes from the sexual offer, like a black box used to cut out the inappropriate parts of a photo.

Max grinned. "I just had my shower, but I'd be more than willing to help you with yours."

"Let me know when you're done."

"Let me know when you're ready."

She'd burned her tongue on a cup of coffee, stubbed her toe, ripped a nail on the door to the arts building, and tripped coming into the kitchen. If Max had been an ad for suggestive male bath products, she felt like an ad for a bad hair day.

Deb gave her the lack of a look that indicated an overt ignoring. It wasn't the I'm busy and distracted and missed you coming in, but the deliberate no eye contact, study her notes move.

In the drama of the weekend with Steve and Missy and Max and reverting to comfort under the table, she'd completely forgotten that her friend Deb was burning mad at her for something she didn't know anything about. Deb would never believe she was innocent of inside information about Nicola if she knew she was shacked up with Nicola's man.

She sat next to Ty, who smiled so nicely she wished it were all that simple. It wouldn't be complicated finding him naked in a bathroom. No history, no marriage, no Nicola, nothing between them but some shared culinary interest and a dinner. How easy would that be?

"Okay. We've got the week blocked off for review, but since we spent so much time making lamb," Deb made eye contact with her, "we're going to have to catch up a little this week. And when I say a little I'm being sarcastic. It's our last full week before Thanksgiving vacation, and we have to cover the eight chapters we didn't get to but should have."

Ty looked at his textbook like it was a jack in the box and jack wouldn't be coming out of it.

Deb tapped on the cover. "You don't even want to know what we have to get to in the two weeks after Thanksgiving, 'cause that's all that's left of the semester." She walked over to rifle through a stack of handouts that probably were designed to supplement the book or cause brain seizures.

Ty leaned closer, and she felt his warm whisper against her cheek. "When this is over, I'm taking you out for dinner."

"Oh." She sat back, smiled at him. That was the best offered she'd had since, well, an hour before when Max had offered to help her in the shower. She would dislodge that naked, wet meeting as soon as she could.

"Hey," Ty gave her that big, killer, melt-you-into-an-American-woman-puddle smile. "Can you meet me here tomorrow morning before class?"

"Sure. Yeah, sure I can."

Deb started her lecture, and Gwen opened the textbook. Eight chapters in a week. She looked sideways at Ty, who grimaced back at her. And she'd thought only finals week was supposed to be bad.

She'd been in a book all afternoon. The light slanted in the library windows and drew longer and longer shadows on the floor. It probably wouldn't help to change venues, but it couldn't hurt to at least try another chair, another window, another angle of evening sun going down.

Gathering her bag, she headed home, correcting herself on the walk to Max's that it wasn't her home at all.

She'd gotten there in time to see Missy driving off with grandma and tried not to feel hurt that they'd not called her about dinner. And they were going to dinner. At five o'clock her mother's inner dinner bell would be in full chime. It had been six when Gwen had been a kid, but the older Ellen got, the earlier the bell rang. Gwen understood how the Florida early bird specials were dinners that overlapped the lunch hour. Well, she didn't want to be invited to dinner at all. She didn't need relatives. She didn't need anybody. She would just go eat worms.

She hefted the bag over her shoulder, grunted, and reached the door. She didn't have time to even eat worms. She still had three chapters to cover before bed. "Damn lamb."

She knocked on the front door then opened it with the key she'd reluctantly taken from Max. All the females in her family had keys, so it wasn't like it meant anything. If she had any sisters or maiden aunts, Max probably would have had to pony up keys for them as well. The man was cursed.

"Hello." She called out and hoped he wasn't home. The silence reassured her, and she set her bag beside a dining room chair and sat down. She pulled the book out and cracked it open. If she put it off, she might fall on the couch and never get up. Ever. But water wouldn't hurt. Water and caffeine. She shook her head. That would be coffee, wouldn't it? Or tea. Cola probably fell into that category. She rose from the table and heard the back door open.

She stayed where she was, felt herself bracing, for what, she didn't know.

He came into the dining room and stopped, just looked at her. But wasn't she doing the same back? Just eyes and a couple of yards of distance, no sound, no movement.

She heard the swoosh of her own heartbeat against her ear drums, felt the slightest sway of motion in her body and watched him take a step closer.

And then their bodies crashed together, his arms a vise around her waist, her hands grabbing at his shoulders. Their mouths were open and warm and there was a wild mix of lips and tongues and the begging sounds of desire and domination from both of them.

She pulled his shirt open, didn't notice the buttons popping, just felt her palms fan out against the hard plane of his chest, the warmth of his skin, the pebble of each nipple.

His hands shot around from her back to cup her breasts, and clothing was so unnecessary she couldn't imagine why she ever put it on.

She reached for her sweater and yanked it half way over her head, the both of them working together like a pair of EMT's to get her shirt off. He flung her bra on the table, dragged her pants to her ankles before he tackled her down to the floor, bracing his hand against the back of her head before she hit, not that she noticed or would have felt anything but her heartbeat and him.

He was crawling out of his own pants, caught by his shoes just as hers were, and they reached for each other's feet, but it only managed to slow them down in the tangle of arms.

With only eye signals, they broke and yanked off their own shoes, meeting in a bruising kiss she already felt her lips swelling from. But naked together, it was electric and amazing and then his mouth was on her breast, and she was flat on her back. She arched up with the delicious shock of her nipple taken into his warm, wet mouth.

She begged in a language she didn't know she spoke but he seemed to understand, and he moved down her body, his breath warm, his tongue licking a path of torture that had to end in bliss or she knew she'd scream.

He reached up with one hand and held onto hers while he played her to the edge of release.

She had to get her hands on him. One hand gripping hers and the tip of his tongue weren't nearly enough contact for her. She rose up and tried to get him on his back, but he popped up instead, gave her a one minute sign and took off.

She sat naked on the floor. What in the hell had just-- He skidded out of the bedroom with a condom in his hand and a smile on his face and nearly threw himself on the floor, ripping open the condom, putting it on, and pulling her close.

She kissed him long and hard and her thigh slid across his body until she sat astride him and it took nothing to reach behind her and guide him in. Slickly and so slowly she lifted herself, lowered onto him, did it again and again until she couldn't pace herself anymore and in the wild kisses and feel of his chest brushing against her nipples and Max inside her, she came, and as always, he followed.

Chapter Nineteen.

A drive-thru experience can't compare to home-cooked.

They lay side by side on the dining room floor looking up at the table they'd slid under at some point in the frenzy. She seemed destined to find safety underneath things, like she was rocked by some internal earthquake and needed to seek shelter before it killed her.

And she'd had a hell of an internal earthquake. She thought she might actually break apart in the aftershocks of their... she was going to call it, encounter, and then never think or speak of it again. There, done.

She felt Max still breathing heavily next to her. He wasn't dead either, but from the ragged breaths, he'd come close as well. Well, not close so much as actually coming. She felt herself blush, cursed it, and wondered how to extract herself from a situation she had no business being in. He'd come from France with the head of her program, for crying in a bucket.

That had been one of her grandma's saying, and her mom still used it. Gwen didn't even know what it meant, but it ran through her head, for crying in a bucket, for crying in a bucket. It made just as much sense as her getting naked with a man who'd left her twenty years before. Plus she was a train wreck and homeless and broke and not even divorced yet and her mother and daughter would be returning right after a couple of chicken fried steaks for crying in a bucket.

She needed to get up and get dressed and get back to studying. Sure. It didn't really mean anything. It had been inevitable in a purely physical, carnal sort of way. She sat up and started to gather the clothes within reach. They'd had a couple of months of foreplay and now, voila', consummated and already in the rear view mirror.

She ought to just thank him, like he'd given her a really good back rub, only in the front, and then shake hands and part. She rose, kept her back to him, even though that wasn't an angle she wanted to reveal either. They'd part as friends, roommates for a couple of weeks, and then just nothing.

Grabbing her bra off the table, she headed for the bathroom. She'd Google him every decade or so until one of them died, and she'd think, because he would go first, of course, oh, Max Holter. Gosh I haven't thought of him in years.

She closed the bathroom door behind her and wished, against all logic, for a time when she wouldn't think of him for years.

Max studied the underside of his dining room table. He'd never had one before, not that he'd picked out the one he lay under. It had come with the house he'd bought, partly furnished with what the owner hadn't wanted. He didn't even know why he'd bought the place, maybe to prove something to himself, that he must be ready for stability if he owned something and stopped the chain of rentals, hotel rooms, crashing with work acquaintances around the world, Nicola's family in Paris before she'd been kicked out.

But seeing the maple stain that had only been brushed around the edge of the table, leaving the underside still light, he had to admit it was possible that his change had only been around the edges. It just looked like the whole thing until you studied it.

He could be hurt that Gwen had just gotten up and left him there, like he'd performed some public service and she'd already moved on. Even a back rub usually got some response. Hmmm, that was nice, thank you. He'd heard her moaning, panting... hell, he'd heard her beg. He knew nice wasn't at all what she'd been saying when she'd arched herself into his mouth and convulsed around his finger. Shit. He'd better focus on the table, or he'd need her again. Need her. That was the real problem wasn't it? He'd come to need her again. He hadn't liked that at eighteen, and right or wrong he didn't like it any more at forty.

He needed to see her every day lately, even if she was annoyed and only gave him the look of disapproval she'd mastered as a mother. He needed to watch her concentrate on everything she did, that focus that at once impressed and drew him. He needed to enjoy her sparring with Ellen in that way mothers and daughters who really got along did. And even more, see her struggle with Missy, both of them with so much love for each other, it seized his heart to witness it.

Sometimes he could see in Gwen's expression what it had been like for her to hold a baby and then face that same child at eighteen with more history than any two people can have, genetic and caretaking and the mysteries of the mother/daughter bond. It might go back further than any introduction of sperm, of fatherhood, that spirit that attached children and mothers. And in a small way, witnessing it made him feel part of it, made him think everything would be okay.

He was an idiot, and he wasn't sure he'd ever feel ready to get up off the floor. His back already reminded him that he was past the rutting anywhere you can stage of life, not that he had ever, even in his greatest fantasies, imagined what had just occurred. He'd be running that tape in his head until he died. Not even old age or a significant head injury could dislodge that moment.

Someday he might forget his name or how to eat, but he wasn't ever going to forget the early evening when he and Gwen landed on his dining room floor. He wasn't ever, he was afraid, going to be able to forget Gwen.

When she emerged from the bathroom, she could see light around Max's bedroom door where he'd left it open in invitation, but what she really needed was to center herself in the kitchen. She darted for it, grabbed a couple of eggs, and started to heat a pan when she heard the shower start.