Chapter Text
Max pulled up outside Miranda’s flat. She glanced at her watch. One-thirty AM. “It’s late,” she said. “You going to Carmen’s?”
He shook his head. “She’ll be in bed by now.”
Miranda nodded. She put her hand on the door handle, then turned to Max. “Are you going to be OK? It was tough today.”
“M’always OK, Miranda.”
“Hmm.” She drummed her finger for a moment. “Come up for a drink. I don’t think you should go back to an empty flat yet.”
Max looked at her. “You worried about me?”
“I just mean… perhaps we should talk about what happened. Help you process it.”
“I don’t need to process it, Miranda. I’m very sorry about Lopez, but I gave him every opportunity to put down his weapon. Followed your precious book, warned him that I’d shoot.” Max stared at Miranda. “If I hadn’t shot him, he’d have shot you. You know that, right?”
Miranda nodded. “I do know that. Still…”
After a moment, Max said, “Are you OK? It’s never much fun to have a gun aimed at you.”
“You know me, Max. Always fine.”
Max shook his head and turned the key in the ignition. “I’ll come up for that drink.”
He followed her into her apartment, filling her kettle while she pulled the curtains closed and flicked on a couple of lamps. “I’ve only got tea,” she said. “Or something stronger? But you’ll be driving later.”
“Tea’s fine,” he said, taking a seat on her sofa while she sorted out a pot and mugs. She put them on a tray on the coffee table, leaving it to brew.
“I should feel lucky,” she said. “If Lopez hadn’t hesitated, it would have been me in the back of that ambulance and not him.”
Max looked down for a moment. “I’m not sorry it’s that way around,” he said softly.
Miranda nodded and gave herself a shake. “I don’t think I’ve seen you drink tea,” she said. “Milk?”
Max shrugged. “What do you recommend?”
“Always with milk.” She poured the drinks and handed Max’s to him, then sat in her small armchair opposite him. She watched as he took a sip. “Good?”
Max swirled the drink around his mouth, as if it was a fine red wine. “High in tannin, slight aftertaste of bergamot. Eight out of ten.”
Smiling despite herself, Miranda said, “I’ll get some coffee for next time.” She was settling herself back in her chair when their phones buzzed at the same time. She got to hers first. “It’s from Ines,” she told him. “Lopez is out of surgery. They think he’s going to pull through.”
Max looked up from his phone screen, a relieved smile on his face. “Good.” His body relaxed a little against the sofa, his head dropping back for a moment before he caught her eye again. “I didn’t want to kill him. I just didn’t want him to kill you.”
“I know.” She took a sip of tea. “Thank you.”
He shrugged. “Companeros.”
“In the UK you’d be suspended for a few days while they review your use of the weapon.”
“They do that here too. Should be a formality.” He looked at her. “They’ll want a statement from you.”
“Won’t be a problem.”
“Danke.”
Miranda closed her eyes and an image of Lopez pointing his revolver at her temple filled her head. He’d begun to squeeze the trigger when Max had fired, a shot that had connected with Lopez’s shoulder and set her free. Her eyes snapped open.
“It’s all right,” said Max softly. “He can’t hurt you now.”
Some of the tension left Miranda’s neck. Not so long ago she’d have snapped back at Max that she was perfectly fine and he needn’t worry, but somewhere along the line he’d crawled under defences. She no longer felt such a pressing need to pretend everything was OK when it wasn’t. She liked knowing that Max had her back.
“What will you do for the next few days? If you’re suspended?”
Max shrugged. “Catch up on some chores. Spend some time with Carmen.”
“Good idea. Lopez has kept us busy for a while. You can’t have seen much of each other.”
“Carmen understands, I think, but she doesn’t really like it.”
“I don’t blame her. Going out with a cop isn’t easy.”
Max looked at her for a moment, his head tilted. “When you first got here,” he said carefully, “Ines told me you’d never had a relationship. Is that right?”
Miranda swallowed and looked at the table. “I don’t like the idea of you and Ines talking about me like that.”
Nodding, Max said, “I didn’t really know you then, and Ines hasn’t mentioned anything since. But it’s not me and Ines talking now, it’s me and you.”
Miranda finished her tea and put her mug on the table, turning it so the handle lined up perfectly with the edge. “I have had one important relationship. But no one at the Met knew about it.”
“Why not? I know you’re a private person but…” Miranda watched as the penny dropped. “Oh, no. Married?”
“Bingo.” Miranda gave a wry smile and poured out another cup of tea. “A DCI. I was twenty-five, he was… well. Let’s just say older. A wife and kids, a detached house in the commuter belt. Five years I waited for him to leave. Such an idiot.” She rubbed a finger across her eyelid.
“Oh, Miranda.”
“For my thirtieth birthday, we were going to stay overnight in a little hotel outside London. Obviously not something we did often, and I was looking forward to it so much. Planned it so carefully, even got the restaurant to make sure they had his favourite dish on the menu. But he called me in the afternoon and said one of his kids was sick and he wasn’t going to be able to make it.”
“What happened?”
Miranda fiddled with her mug of tea for a moment. “I was so upset. I drove to his house, which was strictly against the rules, and waited outside until I saw him come out. I thought perhaps he was driving to a doctor or something, maybe going out to get some medicine for his son. I followed him, thinking perhaps I could speak to him somewhere, persuade him to come back with me after all.”
Miranda’s voice was quiet and Max’s gaze on her intent. “He wasn’t going to the doctor or the chemist,” she continued. “He was going to a wine bar a few towns away. And he wasn’t looking after his sick boy, he was meeting a woman who was definitely not his wife.”
“Jeez, Miranda.” She could sense his sympathy, and surprisingly it made her feel warm rather than defensive.
“Ironic, huh? I thought he was going to trade in his wife for me, but he was trading in me for a younger model still.”
“He sounds like a schmuck.”
“No arguments from me.” The clock on her wall ticked loudly as she gathered her thoughts. “In the years were together, he managed to separate me from most of my girlfriends. He was always worried that I’d let something slip and that his wife would find out, so he pretended that he wanted me all to himself. And of course I couldn’t confide in any of our colleagues. By the end, I didn’t really have anyone important in my life apart from him.”
Max leaned forward, his eyes soft on hers. “Must have been difficult.”
“It was.” Miranda took a gulp of tea. “The only upside is there was no one around to witness my humiliation.”
“You have nothing to feel humiliated about. A dishonest man led you on and you were generous enough to believe him. Not your fault.”
“That’s kind, Max, but…” Her shoulders dropped a little. “I should never have allowed it to happen. I knew he was married. I should have been stronger.”
“You’re the strongest woman I know.”
Miranda acknowledged this with a small smile. “With the benefit of a couple of years of hindsight, I can’t understand what I was thinking. He had children, for heaven’s sake. I would’ve been breaking up a family.” Max’s stare was gentle and gave her strength to carry on. “I’m not even sure I was the first person he had an affair with. I think he might have been unfaithful all the way through his marriage.”
“That was his choice, not yours. You thought you were in love.”
Miranda looked into her mug. “At the time, I did. Not now though. I think, and you’ll find this hard to believe, but I think I got carried away with the passion.”
Max spluttered. “Well, there doesn’t seem much danger of you repeating that mistake.”
She gave a wry nod. “I may be ever-so-slightly over-compensating. But you can hardly blame me.”
“I don’t blame you at all.”
There was a pause as Miranda collected her thoughts. “My parents have been married for nearly forty years,” she said. “I know they’ve had their ups and downs, and I know you never really know what’s going on in someone else’s marriage, but I don’t think either of them has ever been unfaithful. Isn’t that what you should aim for? If you can’t imagine staying faithful to your partner for the rest of your life, why would you ever agree to marry them?”
Max stared at her for a long moment. “You’re right,” he said quietly, and she nodded, staring down into her mug.
“So you see, now, why I think it gets complicated once feelings are involved.”
“I do.”
“It’s why…”
“Go on.”
“It takes two to start an affair, and if I’d said no to that DCI, I’d have saved myself an awful lot of heartache.” She glanced briefly at Max. “If I met someone now, someone I was attracted to, I would never act on it if he wasn’t single.”
She felt Max’s gaze on her and she lifted her own to meet it, only for his eyes to slide quickly away. “Sounds sensible,” he said after a beat. She nodded, and waved at the teapot.
“Another?”
He put his mug on the table. “Better not. Getting late.”
“Yep.” They stood and he picked up his jacket.
“Thank you for the tea.”
“Any time.” He moved towards the front door, put his hand on the handle before dropping it and turning back to her. She found herself standing slightly awkwardly in front of him.
“He wasn’t good enough for you, Miranda.”
“You can’t know that. You never met him.”
Max looked down at her, his eyes flaring in the dimness of the room. “I just know.” There was a pause and Miranda felt herself tense, but he just gave a quick squeeze to her upper arm and opened the door. “Sleep well,” he said, and she smiled and watched him back to his car before closing the door.
--
In the end, Max’s suspension lasted just over three weeks, during which time he was forbidden from contacting anyone in the department. She gave her statement and helped other teams with their cases while she awaited his return. It wasn’t boring, exactly, but she was pleased when his review was complete. He returned to the office on a Friday morning, greeting her with a grin. “Miss me?”
“Not even slightly.” He raised his eyebrows. “OK, maybe slightly. But that’s all you’re getting.”
He held up his hands. “From you, that will do.”
They slipped easily back into their old partnership, working on a possible fraud at the bar of one of the island’s more expensive hotels. At the end of the day, Max said a few of the team were meeting for a drink to welcome him back and asked her to join them. She nodded and he drove them to his place to park the car before setting out on foot to Joan’s.
“So,” she said, “did you enjoy your time off? Did you and Carmen get to spend some quality time together?”
Max’s mouth pulled into a wry smile. “Yeah, it was good. Helpful.”
“Helpful?” Miranda’s brows drew together but she caught a glimpse of Max’s closed features and bit back the questions on her lips. Instead she updated him on a couple of bits of office gossip until they reached Joan’s.
As they arrived Max was greeted by a round of cheers, most of the team already a beer or two in and delighted to have Max back. He was quickly absorbed into the centre of the group, leaving Miranda to go to the bar and get drinks for the pair of them. Carmen didn’t seem to be on duty so there was no need to make conversation, which suited Miranda just fine.
She picked up their drinks and took them across to the table, putting them down in front of Max before looking around for a chair. Max turned to Ramon, who was sitting next to him, and jerked his head. Ramon stood up immediately and wondered over to the other side of the table, picking up a spare chair as he went and squeezing it in between a couple of their colleagues.
Miranda slid gratefully into Ramon’s old seat and leaned in towards Max. “Does everyone always do what you tell them to do?”
Max shrugged. “Mostly.”
“Must be good to have such power.”
“It’s not power, really. It’s just, people usually like me.”
Miranda pondered that as Max’s attention shifted back to the noisy group on his other side. People did usually like Max. His personality was so open and charming, people were draw to him like cats to shafts of sun, happy to bask in his attention. She found herself wondering what it would be like to have that attention focused solely on her, but that thought was in danger of leading her to places she didn’t want to go so she picked up her drink and tried to follow the rapid Spanish around her.
In the end it turned out to be a fun evening. She tried to convince herself it was the wine, but really she knew it was the company. She was pleased to have Max back. As the evening came to a close he offered to walk her home. She always felt comfortable alongside him, something about his height and the force of his presence making her feel safe. As they approached her flat, Max said, “What are your plans for the weekend? Got a hot date to help you forget your DCI?”
Miranda sent him a narrow glance. “Don’t joke about it. And don’t make me regret telling you.” Max held up his hands and she sighed. “Nothing major. I thought I might go to the art market tomorrow morning. Find something for the wall of my bedroom.”
“See? You want to make it into a hoooome.”
Miranda rolled her eyes. “I’ve never pretended it’s not my home. But yes, it would be nice to add a personal touch.” They had reached her front door and she looked up at him. “What about you? Are you and Carmen going to do anything special?”
Max looked briefly down at his feet before his eyes shifted back to Miranda. “Nothing special, no.”
“Oh well,” she said, “maybe something will turn up.” He nodded and she reached out to touch his elbow. “Night Max.” She opened her front door and went through it, turning back and seeing Max still on the pavement, watching her. She rested her head against the door frame and smiled. “It’s good to have you back.”
He touched his fingers to his temple in a gentle salute and began his walk home. Miranda closed the door once he was out of sight.