Read Leave it to Max (Lori's Classic Love Stories Volume 1) for Free Online

woman’s peace was a police officer’s nightmare.
The law enforcement community had discovered the only way to shut
up Rosie was to lock up Rosie.
    At least Livy had gained a friend out of her
mother’s proclivity for arrest. Detective Gabriel Klein—Gabe to his
friends, Klein to his co-workers—was someone in between to Livy.
New in Savannah, yet native to Georgia, he had been of help to her
with a few long-term, criminal cases.
    His usual fare as a detective was serious
infractions, and not Rosie’s type of nonsense, which was usually
left to the officers on patrol. But because he and Livy were
friendly, Klein looked out for Rosie whenever she turned up in
jail. He’d also started to look out for Livy and Max, even though
she hadn’t asked him to. From what she’d heard around Savannah,
Klein liked to look after people. It was what he did best.
    Max thundered down the steps. How one child
could sound like ten on the steps Livy had never figured out, but
Max managed.
    He sat at the table, and she placed a plate
of waffles in front of him. “Thanks, Mom.”
    “Thank Rosie.”
    “Thanks, Rosie,” he called.
    “She’s not here.”
    “That’s okay. She said she can hear me even
if she’s not around.”
    “You know sometimes Gramma says things that
aren’t exactly so.”
    “Don’t call her Gramma.”
    “There you go. She is a gramma. Not
calling her one doesn’t make it not so.”
    He shrugged. “I don’t mind callin’ her Rosie.
I love her.”
    Max and Rosie had taken one look at each
other and fallen instantly in love. No matter how much her mother
annoyed Livy, she could never split up her and Max. Never.
    Livy left Max shoveling his breakfast as if
protecting it from ravenous wolves. The boy ate like a truck
driver, yet resembled an escapee from Andersonville Prison.
    She ran upstairs and into the bathroom, where
she hung up his towel, then shut every drawer and door that Max had
opened.
    Rosie understood this odd habit and it never
irritated her to have to constantly shut every cover on
every crevice after Max had been through a room. When Livy asked
her mother what Max could possibly think lived beneath the bathroom
sink, Rosie had said, “Maybe Max doesn’t even know, but better safe
than sorry.”
    What were you supposed to say to logic like
that?
    Sometimes Livy felt as much an outsider
living with her mother and son as she’d felt when she’d first been
left in Savannah. Back then she hadn’t known how to behave, how to
make friends, whom to trust. Then there’d been one magic summer
with one magic man...and she’d learned that in truth she could
trust no one but herself.
    Now the man who had taught her the hardest
lesson of her life was back.
    Livy cut off those treacherous thoughts and
got dressed. For court she always wore a skirt, heels and a jacket.
Today she added a bright-red camisole to give the illusion of
power.
    She stuck out her tongue at the mirror. She
looked scared to death, and she loathed suits. Unfortunately, all
the big lawyer boys wore them.
    Livy returned to the kitchen just as Max
tripped over the rag rug and dumped his dishes into the sink with a
crash. “You okay?”
    The intensity of the glare she received for
being such a mom was tempered somewhat by his milk mustache.
Livy resisted the urge to wipe it off. With the white foam on his
lip, Max looked like her baby again. Then he asked a typical Max
question that reminded her he was no longer any kind of baby.
    “Mr. Stark said if you believe in something
it’s true. Is that right?”
    ‘‘What do you think?”
    His chin went up; his eyes turned defiant “I
thought that maybe it couldn’t hurt to try. Maybe if I believe in
something it would be true. Like magic.”
    ‘‘Magic isn’t any more real than Santa, Max.
I wish it were.”
    His chin drooped toward his chest. Guilt,
guilt, guilt. The word beat in time to the pulse of pain in
Livy’s head.
    Once, Livy had believed in magic, but
believing hadn’t