by Liz Fielding
‘Then you did what was most important to you. You have nothing to reproach yourself for,’ she said.
‘Of course I reproach myself. I let you down but it was long past curtain-up before I’d got everything under control. Then I had to go home and get changed.’
On the point of telling him to close the door on the way out, she hesitated. ‘Changed?’
His smile was wry. ‘I had a clean shirt in the restaurant, but I needed shoes, socks, trousers…’
Without warning she had a mental picture of him, wading into the situation, not caring about his dinner jacket, dress shirt. About her, waiting for him at the theatre. All he would see was the people who worked for him, whom he knew, cared about, struggling to cope, to carry on as if nothing had happened. How could you not love a man like that?
How could you live with him?
Because this was the reality of a relationship with Max.
‘I came to the theatre to meet you.’ He reached for her hand. ‘Waited until everyone had gone.’
‘Am I supposed to apologise for not being there?’
He shook his head. ‘I’d tried calling you. When you didn’t answer, I assumed you’d decided to stay at the theatre. But then, when I came to the flat, you didn’t answer your bell, either. And you’d put the deadlock up on the door.’
‘You call before you stand someone up. Not to apologise afterwards.’ Then, relenting, because she couldn’t help herself, ‘All you had to do was ring me. Two minutes…’
‘I was up to my elbows in freezing water.’ He took her other hand. ‘If I promise that in future I’ll let all the restaurants flood to the ceiling while I call you to tell you I’ll be late, will you forgive me?’
‘You couldn’t make that promise. Not with your hand on your heart, Max,’ she said as with a sinking heart she realised the truth. That her father had been partly right about him.
Max wasn’t like his father-he wouldn’t cheat on her with another woman. Bella Lucia was her only rival for his love. It was always there for him…
‘And if you did, I wouldn’t believe you.’
He had the grace not to argue. Instead he said, ‘Will you give me another chance?’
‘Last night was important, Max. It was special. A new start.’
Max felt her hands slipping from his grasp. Saw real pain dull her lovely eyes. Knowing that he’d done that to her wrenched at him, tore at something buried so deep that he could not admit it, even to himself. And remembering how he’d challenged her about keeping their relationship a secret, he felt shame.
The secrecy had suited him just fine.
Louise wasn’t just any woman. If the family knew about them, he’d have to stand up, say the words. Mean them. The way she had, yesterday. He’d listened to her defend him, praise him, tell the world how she felt about him and, like the fool, he’d stood there like a dummy, unable to respond.
Then afterwards, she’d walked with him, told him about James, torn out her heart and placed it, bleeding in his hands. And even though he knew, he understood, he hadn’t been able to respond. All he’d done was grudgingly accept her invitation and then let her down.
He’d used Bella Lucia to wreck every relationship he’d ever had before it became too demanding. To drive women who cared for him away. It was an inbuilt flaw, a consequence of his childhood, he knew. A self-fulfilling expectation of abandonment.
This time it was different. No matter what he had to do, from now on Louise would always come first.
He gripped her fingers, refused to let her break contact. ‘Give me another chance, Louise.’
‘How many do you need?’ She sounded brittle, edgy.
‘Just one. Truly. Give me one more chance and I’ll never let you down again.’
She didn’t answer. She didn’t believe him.
For a moment he felt like a drowning man. Sinking. Without hope. And then he understood. Like her, he had to strip his feelings bare…
‘I want you in my life, Louise.’ Not enough. ‘I need you.’ There was a flicker of something. Like a light coming on…More than that. Like a fire…‘And when I asked you if you would be at the Valentine party, what I really wanted to say was, will you be my date?’
‘Your date?’
‘My first and only Valentine.’ Then, as she smiled. ‘Say yes, and I promise you that there will be no tears before bedtime.’
‘Tears…?’
‘Say the word, Louise, and I promise that on the night I’ll be bearing the essential diamond. I love you, Louise.’
Louise’s breath caught in her throat. He was really saying he loved her? Was asking her to marry him? For a split second she felt like Cinderella must have done when she tried on the glass slipper.
Then reality crashed in.
‘Max…’ she warned.
‘That’s the wrong word.’
‘No…’
‘Now you’re just playing hard to get.’ From supplicant to the Max she knew in one easy bound.
She shook her head. ‘It’s too soon. We need time to get to know one another.’
‘We’ve known one another all our lives, Louise. It’s the sex we’re catching up on.’
Was it? Really? Could he change, just like that? Unlikely…‘It’s madness,’ she said.
‘Oh, well, thanks.’
‘You see?’ Another minute and they’d be hurling insults…‘You ask me to marry you…’ She paused. ‘At least I assume that’s what you’re doing, although a more ham-fisted, ungracious effort would be impossible to imagine, and already I want to throw something at you.’
And without warning he was smiling. ‘Well, that’s promising. I’ve missed our spats.’
‘Unbelievable!’
‘I swear it’s true. I’ve especially missed them since making up became so much fun.’
‘Stop it!’
‘You want me to woo you, is that it? Do a PR job on myself. Sell you on the idea?’
‘If you had the slightest clue about how to do that,’ she informed him, ‘you wouldn’t need me.’
‘Not for your marketing skills, no.’ He was grinning…How dared he be grinning? ‘Since we’re being brutally honest here, you should know that I’d be happy to keep you around just for your highly imaginative taste in underwear.’
It wasn’t a blush searing her cheeks. It was the combination of the winter sunshine striking in through the window and the central heating turned up too high…
‘You’re not doing a good job of selling me on the idea of marriage, Max.’
‘You’re not making it easy.’
Louise didn’t want to be ‘sold’. Or to make it easy for him. He was right, they were having fun, but he was still Max Valentine. The same man who’d left her high and dry more times than a girl with any kind of a life should be able to recall.
Hearing the last bell calling the audience to their seats, being the only person left in the theatre foyer was still painfully fresh.
He’d promised it was the last time, but could he change? When it came to a choice between Bella Lucia and her, would he ever put her first?
‘There’s no such thing as an easy sell,’ she told him. ‘You need to do your market research.’
‘Is that right? For that I need your co-operation. Dinner at my place? Nine o’clock.’
She should say no…
And yet…And yet…When he’d held onto her hands, she’d seen something in his face, something more than the light banter. And when he’d said he loved her, she’d known he was telling the truth.
‘Nine o’clock? You’re sure you can manage that?’
He crossed his heart. ‘You can depend on it.’
Max’s apartment was in an ultra modern development overlooking the marina in Chelsea. He had acres of blond-wood open-plan floor-space, a space-age kitchen and simple, minimalist furniture that enveloped her as she sank onto the soft leather sofa.
‘Hungry?’ he asked.
‘Not desperately.
My mother came up to town and took me out to lunch.’
‘Then we’ll leave it for a while. Everything okay? With your mother?’
‘Hugs, tears. She wanted to know about us.’
‘What did you tell her?’
She grinned. ‘As little as I could get away with. She’s like Dad. Suspects it will all end in tears.’
‘And you?’ He handed her a glass of white wine. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think they’re probably right,’ she said, taking a sip. Then, ‘But I’m here to be sold.’
‘Right. Well, round one involves a questionnaire.’
‘Oh?’
‘The kind of thing that you do,’ he said. ‘Branding?’
She nodded. ‘You need to know what I feel about you so that you can build on your pluses. And round two?’
‘That rather depends on how round one goes.’
‘Right,’ she said, setting her drink on the table, kicking off her boots, tucking a cushion at her back and stretching out on the sofa. ‘I’m sitting comfortably. You can begin.’
He lifted her legs, sat down beside her and dropped them across his lap. ‘Okay,’ he said, absently stroking her feet. ‘First question. What three words would you use to describe me?’
‘Arrogant,’ she said. ‘Workaholic. Hot.’
‘Arrogant?’
‘You don’t get to comment on the answers. You collate them, study them, act on the information they give you.’
‘Arrogant?’ he repeated.
‘You don’t object to “workaholic” or “hot”?’
‘Workaholic is the bad one?’
‘I’m not here to do the work for you, Max. You have to study all the results. Ask yourself what’s important. What you have to change to get the outcome you want.’
‘I see.’
‘Two out of three isn’t bad,’ she said.
‘Only if they’re the right two.’
‘True.’ He was, it seemed, learning. ‘Shall we move on? I said I wasn’t desperately hungry but I will want to eat tonight.’
‘If I was a country which one would I be?’
‘Switzerland.’
He frowned. ‘Why’s that?’
‘I refer you to the answer I gave earlier.’ Then, ‘You’re like a Swiss clock; you never stop.’
‘I could wind down a little.’ She refused to be drawn into a discussion of every answer. That wasn’t how it worked. ‘A landscape?’ he continued.
‘Birmingham, Stoke…something industrial.’
‘No need to hammer the point. I get the picture. I work too hard.’
‘We both work hard, Max. The difference is that you put work first.’
‘People rely on me.’
‘Delegate.’
‘I’m trying, Lou.’
‘What would you do if someone phoned from Mayfair, right now, and said the restaurant was on fire?’
‘Tell them to call the fire brigade?’
‘Liar.’ Then, because maybe she was learning something from this, too, ‘I’d expect you to go, Max. I’d want to be with you.’
For a moment he seemed lost for words. As if the idea of dealing with a crisis together hadn’t occurred to him.
‘If I was a time of day?’ he said, moving on.
‘Six-thirty.’
He smiled at that and she knew he’d got it. Understood that the time she associated with him was that moment when she walked into his office at the end of the day and he stopped whatever he was doing, they had a drink and just talked. Even when he’d been working on the Valentine party, and she’d left him to get on with it, because she knew how important it was. It worked both ways.
‘Remember that one, Max,’ she said. ‘That one’s important.’
‘A smell?’
Uh-oh, she’d been doing so well until then. In control. Now, without warning, she was plunged into the scent of warm skin, sharp, clean sweat, newly washed hair.
‘Shampoo,’ she said, quickly.
‘And if I was a shampoo, which would it be?’
‘Mine.’ Her turn to smile. Well, she’d written the questionnaire, she’d known which question was coming next.
‘And finally, a car?’
‘Anything expensive, fast and reliable.’
‘Reliable?’
Never lets you down, she thought. No wonder he’d picked up on that one. What on earth had she been thinking?
‘Scratch “reliable”,’ she said. ‘Make that durable.’ Then, because he gave her a sharp look that suggested he hadn’t missed the subtle difference, ‘It goes with the Swiss clock.’
CHAPTER TEN
‘MAX…’
Max had stopped stroking her feet and Louise realised that her words had hit home. Maybe there was hope for him and, curling herself up onto her knees, she reached out to him and, playfully ruffling her fingers through his hair, she said, ‘Why don’t we move on to part two?’
‘Part two?’ He looked at her. ‘Is there any point? You’ve made it very clear that you think I’m just a work-obsessed-’
She put her fingers over his mouth. ‘I told you, Max, the skill is in interpretation. You have to look at all the results. It’s just as dangerous to concentrate on the words that sting, as it is to grab for the words that confirm what you want to hear. Only then can you act to change things.’
He regarded her with the suspicion of a smile. ‘You think?’
‘I think,’ she assured him. ‘Trust me, Max. I’m the expert and it’s not over until it’s over.’
He shook his head. ‘Maybe another time…’
‘No.’ She didn’t want him to think he’d failed. She wanted him to understand what she wanted, needed. That she needed him…
‘Part two,’ she said, firmly.
‘I don’t…’
‘But I do.’ And since she knew what came next, she prompted, ‘Which three words would you use to describe your feelings of anticipation about using the Max Valentine product?’ she prompted.
‘I’m a product?’
‘For the purposes of market research. Work with me on this.’
He shrugged, took a breath and, looking straight ahead, as if dreading her answers, he obediently repeated, ‘What three words would you use to describe your feelings of anticipation about using the Max Valentine product?’
‘Urgency,’ she offered. ‘Excitement. Impatience…’
He glanced at her, the beginning of a smile tugging at his lips. ‘Impatience?’
Suiting the deed to the word, Louise locked her arms around his neck and swung herself over to sit astride his lap.
‘Which three words,’ she said as she began to unbutton his shirt, ‘would you use to describe your feelings during the use of this product?’
‘Which three words…’ he began. She leaned into him, stopping the words with her mouth, and when she’d got his full attention and he was kissing her back she moved on to trail her lips over his throat, across his chest. Then, as she began to unfasten his belt…
‘Desire. Passion. Heat…’
It was much later when, her eyes closed, her voice dreamy, soft with fulfilment, she said, ‘Which three words would you use to describe how you feel after using this product…?’
‘Shattered,’ Max said, before she could answer her own question. ‘Sated.’ He kissed her. ‘Complete.’
‘Good answers,’ she murmured.
‘You give good questions,’ Max said, touching her face, stroking back her hair. ‘I loved your version of part two.’ Then, ‘Can we try mine now?’
She opened her eyes. ‘You had a different version?’
‘My part two consisted of me going down on one knee and asking you to marry me. When I failed part one-’
‘This isn’t an exam,’ she said, quickly, cutting him off. She was still sure that it was too soon. He hadn’t failed, but she was certain that he needed time to think about this. Or maybe she was the one fooling herself. Maybe she was the one who needed
time…‘There are no right or wrong answers.’
‘I know. It’s all in the interpretation, but it’s pretty clear that you think I’m work obsessed. That I put the restaurant before everything else.’
‘I don’t care about everything else. My problem is that you put the restaurant before me. You always have.’
On the point of denying it, he nodded. ‘You’re right. I should have called you last night.’
‘No. You should have been there. Last night was important to me. Important for us. I think that scared you.’
‘No!’ Then, ‘Maybe, just a bit, but there was a crisis. I didn’t spend time considering options, I just did what needed to be done. You know how it gets.’
She knew. And, despite everything, she did understand. But she wasn’t letting him off the hook on this one. He needed to understand her point of view.
‘That was the manager’s job. You shouldn’t have even been there, Max. Your role is to look at the bigger picture now. You have to trust your staff to deal with the day to day problems.’ She shook her head. ‘Failing that, you take time to make a call. Look, I know how it is. I’ve waited tables at functions when staff haven’t turned in for a PR do but my mother taught me to use a phone when I was very small. To call home when I was going to be late. To call someone when you can’t make a date.’
‘I’m from a broken home,’ he said.
‘That’s it, Max.’ They’d got to the heart of the problem. Finally. ‘You want the whole-heart relationship, but you’re afraid of the commitment. Afraid of being hurt.’
‘You’re right.’ He closed his eyes. ‘You think I never put you before work, but let me tell you that I’ve spent all day thinking about us. Thinking about me. How I am. I won’t ever do that to you again. I promise.’
‘Promises and pie crusts,’ she said. ‘Made to be broken.’
‘Not this time. You have my word.’ Then, ‘You do believe me?’
‘I believe that you mean it now. Tomorrow…The day after…’
‘No. You have to believe. It’s more than that. I can’t lose you.’ He reached for her, wrapped his arms around her. ‘Not now I’ve found you. I want us to be together always. I want you to be my wife, Louise.’
A lump rose to her throat, so that she couldn’t speak. It was like all the Christmases, birthdays, Valentine’s Days, rolled into one. Every dream coming true.