Diana didn’t have the heart to mention that she’d trashed both the roses and the card. That could wait until next week. Relieved that things were still good between them, she offered up a quick hug and fled before he asked any further questions about her date.
Diana’s home sat at the bottom of a cul-de-sac, secluded from its neighbors by the spread of a generous yard thick with mature trees. Despite their size the gardens were well lit in the evening dark, as was the compact Mediterranean-style house at their heart. In fact the only non-neat thing Max had seen driving through the neighborhood was the untidily parked vehicle blocking the entrance to Diana’s drive.
He paused to frown at the unprepossessing white sedan. It didn’t look like the sort of vehicle a show pony like Jeffrey Lloyd would drive. And yet according to Eliza, he was “the date” for tonight, the one Diana had cited on the phone.
That telephone conversation had fired his confidence that her resistance was crumbling. He’d been certain she’d invented a convenient “date” as a last-gasp scrambling defense. But then he recalled the flowers she’d received—the ones she’d assumed were from him and which he’d assumed were from her boss.
What if he was wrong? What if she had a real date?
The prospect had cooled his confidence for a minute. He didn’t relish looking the fool so when he bumped into Eliza late in the afternoon he coerced her into revealing that Diana did have a long-standing dinner engagement with her boss. Every other Wednesday night.
Tonight’s “date” wasn’t special. It was just a regular get-together which happened to fall on Valentine’s Day and which happened to put a serious dent in Max’s plans. Lucky he was adaptable…although he had counted on finding Diana alone.
His gaze glanced off the car to the iron-gated courtyard that protected the front entrance to the house. It wasn’t yet six-thirty which seemed early for a dinner date. Maybe the car didn’t belong to her date….
As he started down the path he caught the faint strum of music from inside the house, yet a sense of something-not-right niggled at his gut. Halfway through opening the gate, he heard the splintered sound of a glass or plate shattering. A male voice raised in anger chilled him to the bone and he set sail for the portico at a flat-out run.
The front door lay open. Not that it mattered. Max would have plowed right through the thick oak barrier to get to whatever was going on inside.
“Diana?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. He found her before he finished yelling her name, backed into a corner of the kitchen by the intruder.
Max wrapped a hand around the guy’s puny arm and hauled him out of her face. He would have planted his other hand in the bastard’s face if she hadn’t stopped him.
“No. Max, don’t! Let him go.”
It wasn’t her appeal that stopped him as much as her calm, imperative tone. He didn’t release his grip on Jerkface but he did allow his gaze to slide to Diana’s face for the first time since bursting into the room. She didn’t look hurt or cowed. Although her face was pale and her eyes bright, he realized with a jolt that it wasn’t fear. It was fury.
She confirmed this by telling him through tight lips to, “Throw him out if you want, but take care how you handle him.”
“You know him?”
She nodded. “He’s one of David’s sons.”
Easing his grip a fraction, Max took a second look at the intruder’s face. Not an overwrought adolescent but older, at least midtwenties, with designer stubble and a belligerent expression that would have done any teenager proud. “You don’t want me to hurt him, then?”
“Personally, I’d love you to hurt him. But then he would file an assault charge against you and he isn’t worth the trouble.”
The stepson spat out a short instructive response that sorely tempted Max’s restraint. “You might want to watch your language,” he suggested. “After you apologize to the lady.”
“Lady? She’s no lady. She’s a cheating bit—”
Max could move quickly when he had to. His arm across the creep’s chest turned the rest of his insult into a choking wheeze. “What do you want me to do with him?” he asked Diana.
“If you could see him off my property, that would be a help.”
“Should he be on the road in his state?”
“He’s not wasted,” she said with a confidence that suggested she’d seen him when he was. “He’ll be okay when he cools down.”
Max returned to find Diana on her hands and knees sweeping up broken crockery from the tiled floor. But when he hunkered down beside her with a warning about the fine shards, she gave him a quelling look. “There is no need to point out the obvious.”
“Like, what were you doing opening the door to your potty-mouthed stepson? That kind of obvious?”
She pushed to her feet and rubbed her hands down the front of her sweatpants. For the first time he noticed her casual attire. Not dressed up for a date or even for company. But then she lifted a hand to push a loose strand of hair from her face and he saw that it was trembling.
Delayed shock. And he’d jumped on her for letting the creep inside. He should thump himself for being a jerk.
“I didn’t mean—”
“What did he say—”
They’d both spoken at once, and Max gestured for her to carry on. His apology could wait. He’d just add it to the growing list.
“Gregg—that’s his name, for what it’s worth—” She moistened her lips. “What did he say to you on the way out?”
“Nothing that bears repeating.”
“If it concerns me, I would like to know.”
Their gazes met and held, hers steady and unflinching despite that tremor in her hand. It struck him again how much she had changed, how strong she had grown, and how much he wanted to know this woman she’d become. This seemed like a place to start. “He suggested I was your latest lover, living the high life on his money. I gather by that he means his father’s?”
“Yes. David left Gregg and his brother’s inheritance in a trust setup, so they wouldn’t go through it all in a couple of wild years. Gregg doesn’t believe he has enough money to fund his Beverly Hills lifestyle.”
“So he came here to hassle you for money?”
“That’s what he does best.” She sighed and slumped back against the island at her back. “Sometimes I think it would be easier if I just gave in and let him have what he wanted.”
“Yeah, but you don’t like giving in easily,” he said softly. “Do you?”
It took a moment, a moment when she blinked and refocused on his face. Then she smiled and her smile grew to laughter that sounded like a release of pressure and pent-up anxiety. Still smiling, she narrowed her eyes at him. “You never miss an opportunity, do you?”
Max hitched a shoulder. “You’ve got to admit I have my uses.”
“You do.” The smile lingered on her lips, but in her eyes he saw a new awareness along with genuine gratitude. “Thank you. You arrived just in time. I was starting to worry that he’d go through all my dishes.”
Although offered blithely, her quip reminded Max of the moment at the gate when he’d heard the brittle smash. He remembered the cold slice of fear and he couldn’t return her smile. “Has he ever hurt you?” he asked.
“Physically? No. He’s just obnoxious and insulting and prone to temper tantrums.”
“Sounds like he needs pulling into line.”
“Oh, I think it’s way too late for that.”
“No,” Max said with conviction. “You can’t let him get away with thinking he can intimidate you in your own home, whenever he needs some extra cash. One day he will go too far and I won’t be here to intercede.”
He watched her smile crumple at the edges but this time he didn’t berate himself for unnerving her. Curse it, she needed to be more conscious of her vulnerability. And although he’d given the little punk a warning about what he’d do if he ever found him within a hundred yards of Diana
again, it wasn’t enough. He wouldn’t be here the next time.
“I should have called the police,” he said tightly.
“On what grounds? Gregg didn’t exactly break in.”
“How, exactly, did he get in?”
From her expression he knew he wouldn’t like the answer. “He forced his way past me.”
“You opened the door to him?”
“I didn’t know it was him, for heaven’s sake. I was cooking and I didn’t look at the clock. I opened the door because I thought it was you!”
Max had been building to a slow simmer over her lack of security sense, frustrated by the knowledge that he wouldn’t be here the next time Gregg came calling. That he couldn’t keep her safe. It took an extra second for her words to register and by then she’d swung away from her position at the kitchen island. Seemingly to attend to something on the adjacent bench.
She’d been cooking? And expecting him? Puzzled, Max shook his head.
“Why are you here so early?” she asked. “I thought you said eight.”
“I thought you had a date. I wanted to catch you before he arrived.”
“I begged off. Why did you want to catch me?”
“To say goodbye.”
She looked up sharply, something indefinable in her eyes. “So, you are going home?”
“If everything goes to plan in Kentucky tomorrow, yes.”
“Oh.”
He watched her fuss with some vegetables. She had quite the collection there, half-prepared. All she seemed to be doing right now was rearranging them, but she appeared to have far too many for one. “Who are you cooking for?” he asked.
“For you,” she replied, not quite meeting his eyes. “I decided to surprise you. Instead of going out to dinner, I thought we could eat here. If that’s all right with you.”
She’d surprised him all right, but Diana didn’t derive the satisfaction she’d envisaged when she’d come up with the ploy. In her imagined scenario the meal was cooked and the table set and aglow with candles when she glided to the door to welcome him. In her imagination she’d looked cool and calm and capable. She was wearing sleek black silk, not gray yoga pants. Stray tendrils of hair weren’t stuck to her steamed face as she tried to balance the intricacies of preparing four dishes with the distraction of a large, charismatic man watching her every move.
Although on his best behavior, Max took up too much space, he passed comment on her cooking methods—she’d forgotten how skilled he was in the kitchen—and he kept refilling her wine glass.
“No more,” she said, snatching her glass from his reach. “I’ve had enough.”
“You don’t have to drive anywhere,” he pointed out.
No, but she did have to keep her wits about her. The incident with Gregg had shaken her up more than she’d let on, leaving her especially susceptible to Max’s charms. Not to mention his gallant white-knight-on-a-charger rescue.
She hadn’t made up her mind yet on how the night should end. But if she did take him to her bed, she wanted that decision cast in strength and confidence, not because of the vulnerabilities exposed by Gregg’s intrusion.
That’s why she’d settled on dinner at home, not only to surprise him with her skills but so she would control the evening’s progress. If he managed to sneak in any more pinot noir refills, she could kiss control goodbye!
“Success,” she said brightly, straightening from her zillionth oven inspection. “The potatoes are finally ready. We can eat!”
His early arrival had thrown her plans and her timing into turmoil. She’d not had time to change her clothes. She hadn’t even considered setting the dining-room table with good crockery and candles, not with Max watching. So they ate informally in her small breakfast nook which Max rendered even smaller by virtue of his presence. Not that he was a big big man, just everything about him had a larger-than-life impact on her, especially at such close quarters. The accidental brush of their knees when he rose to remove their dishes. The unconscious play of his thumb against the coffee cup cradled in one large hand. The dark hair revealed by folded-back shirt cuffs on his strongly muscled forearms.
And while she was powerfully aware of him, of their aloneness, of the appreciation in his gaze as he watched her work and talk and eat, this was not the studied seduction she’d expected from Max. There’d been no mention of the gifts. After a phone call to cancel the restaurant booking, there’d been no further mention of what he had planned for the night.
Instead he’d kept a relaxed conversation rolling through dinner. They’d talked a lot about his weeks in America, the plans he and Zack had in place for their showplace stud on New Zealand’s South Island, about the stallion they coveted and the syndicate of owners whose members were divided on whether to do business.
“We put a shuttle deal on the table which might suit them better than an outright sale,” he said.
Diana frowned. “A shuttle deal?”
“Spring is the breeding season, when mares are bred and the boys are kept very busy earning their keep.”
“And what do the boys do for the rest of the year?” she asked.
“Cool their heels waiting for next spring to roll around.”
“What a waste.”
“That’s where the shuttle idea comes in, moving them between the northern and southern hemispheres.”
“Ahh,” she murmured, catching on. “So a stallion can get in two springs a year. Say, one in Kentucky and one in New Zealand.”
“If he’s lucky. Yeah.”
Something in his expression and his voice—a lingering depth to that yeah—reminded Diana they were discussing sex. The business of reproductive sex, sure, but the next silent seconds seemed to stretch with a new tension. With the business of getting lucky. She felt the tingly warmth of it in her toes, felt the slow climb through her legs and the languid heaviness low in her body. And she couldn’t meet his eyes. She wasn’t ready for this moment.
She wasn’t ready for decisions.
To cover her discomfiture, she packed their dessert plates and unused utensils. “So, that’s why you’re going to Kentucky tomorrow? To arrange for this shuttle deal?”
“We have some management issues to iron out, but that’s the plan. I’m meeting with several of the key syndicate members.”
“And once you’ve thrashed out the details, then you’re going home?”
He didn’t answer right away. She had to look up, to meet his eyes. And what she saw there—the strong burn of desire and determination—caught her breath. She knew in that instant that she’d been fooling herself about his intentions here tonight. While she cooked and all through dinner he’d been biding his time, waiting for this moment.
Hands flat on the table, she started to stand, to escape. He stopped her with a hand over hers. “Come with me. To Lexington.”
“I have to work.”
“Don’t you ever take time off?”
She’d answered automatically, forgetting the extra day off Jeffrey had granted her just a few hours earlier. To have fun. To indulge herself. In her heart she felt the hard beat of enticement. She could do this. She could have a day, a night, perhaps a whole weekend of Max. Not here in her home, where the memories would linger. Nowhere near the curious eyes of her boss and her best friend.
No one would even need to know….
His hand moved on hers, a shift in pressure and then the stroke of his thumb across the span of her wrist. A hint of a frown pulled at the bridge of his nose. “You’re not wearing the bracelet.”
“I…no.” She shook her head. “I’m not keeping it.”
His thumb stilled. “You don’t like it?”
“Of course I like it.” She laughed softly, wryly, as she shook her head. “You knew I’d love it the same as I loved the first one you bought me in Sydney. That’s why you chose it.”
“But you won’t accept it?”
“Wouldn’t that be accepting its purpose?”
“Which is?�
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She sighed. “Can we stop playing this game? Please? It was fun at first, I admit, and you have a gift for finding the right gift.”
“But?”
“You can’t buy my favors or my forgiveness or anything else.” Her eyes met his across the table, forestalling his protest with their serious expression. “My husband believed he could buy his way into or out of any tight spot with the right gift or check. It’s taken some of the gloss off the process.”
“Your husband sounds as charming as his son.”
“You know the saying, like father, like—”
“Why did you marry him?”
This time she didn’t mind the question or its abrupt edge that cut across the rest of her blithe comment. It wasn’t the time for cynical comments. It was the time for honest talk, to clear up some misconceptions, to move beyond the past so they could concentrate on the now.
She met his eyes across the table, across the remains of their meal, and gave the most honest answer she could find. It was also the truth.
“Because I had to.”
Seven
Because I had to.
The phrase conjured up one instant, obvious reason and it reverberated through Max’s mind in a gathering storm of shock and disbelief. “You were pregnant?”
“No.” Then her eyes widened, as if the full impact of his meaning had suddenly taken hold. “No. I would never have married David if I’d been pregnant with your child! I can’t believe you would think that…that you’d think I would keep a secret like that from you.”
“You said you had to get married,” he justified. “What else was I supposed to think?”
“There are other reasons.”
“Such as?”
“Duty. Obligation. Business.” He could see her tension, could feel its restlessness in the hand beneath his. She pulled it away and jumped to her feet. “Go ahead into the living room. I’ll make more coffee.”
Max followed her into the kitchen. “We don’t need more coffee. Tell me what happened.”
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