Perhaps it was guilt that had stopped her from collapsing into a coma the moment her head hit the pillow. Instead she had barely dared to breathe as she lay awake, trying to keep as still and quiet as possible, listening to the sound of Max’s footsteps as he pottered around the cottage. The hiss of the shower and the gentle tapping of his bare feet on the kitchen tiles. The sound of his footsteps just down the hall. Only feet away from where she was lying.
If she wanted to, she could slip out of this tight single bed and skip the three steps to the double bed she had spied earlier through the half open door.
Max would not turn her away. She had no doubt that he needed the comfort and warmth of her touch as much as she needed him.
Daisy closed her eyes and recalled in every sensual detail what it had felt like when he kissed her on the patio. Warmth and controlled strength all wrapped up in a gentle smile and a sweet, sweet mouth.
She propped herself up on one elbow and punched the pillow several times. Then felt guilty about taking out her very personal frustration on an innocent bag of feathers.
She had got herself into this mess—and she had better get herself out of it. Fast.
A door latch fell. Max was out of the bathroom, walking down the hallway, and then he stopped outside her door, probably listening for her snoring or a polite invitation for him to join her in the single bed.
And, oh, that was more tempting than she could admit.
Loneliness did that to people.
Especially when there was a chance that Max Treveleyn might just have the right kind of glue to bring back together the tiny fragments of her broken heart and make it whole again.
If she let him.
But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Because that would mean having to watch him walk away. He could not be here for his own daughter. What chance did she have? Every time he took off back to St Lucia it would be like losing him all over again.
Daisy stared at the bedroom door over the edge of the quilt, willing it to open and terrified that it would at the same time.
But it didn’t, and his footsteps moved away, back to his own room.
Right decision. For both of them.
Now all she had to do was work with Max for three more days and then she could reclaim her nice, orderly and calm life and focus on the shop. This was what she wanted. Wasn’t it?
A huge yawn stretched her face wide. Perhaps she could just catch a few hours’ rest before starting back to London?
Max had busied himself with tidying the kitchen and clearing away the last remnants of their quick meal while Daisy was in the shower, but every nerve and sinew of his body had been totally attuned to the tiny sounds coming from the corridor.
It had almost been a relief when he’d finally heard the extractor fan close and the tap-tap of her feet on the floor as she padded the few steps to Freya’s bedroom.
It had been torture to work side by side with her on that final miraculous blend of cocoa but he had done it. He’d had to. This was their future. But even their frantic drive to finish the chocolate hadn’t been able to overcome the tension in the room, where every physical contact had seemed magnified a thousand times.
At least they had kept their hands and minds fully occupied. But now? Now he had time to work through the turmoil of the events of the day, starting with trying to clear a path through the jungle of a garden and ending up kissing a girl he had only met a few days earlier who had kissed him right back. And meant it.
He had relived those few minutes when he’d held her in his arms so many times over the past hour, and the more he thought about it the more it seemed like a dream, driven by the exhilaration of what they had achieved and the heady atmosphere of dusk on the patio.
Max scrubbed at his hair with a rough hand-towel and sat down on the edge of the bed, his elbows high on his knees. What he wanted to do was stand outside Freya’s room again and listen for Daisy to check that she was asleep. But he dared not move because every step he took would be heard in the still and silent old cottage, where every piece of wood creaked and expanded like a living thing.
What had he been thinking?
Or maybe that was the problem—he had not been thinking at all. He had simply given in to those selfish impulses that only led to heartbreak and bitter disappointment.
Max rubbed his hands hard over his face, then gave his hair a final tousling before tossing the towel into the laundry basket.
Daisy was a lovely girl and he liked her. He liked her a lot. In fact he liked her more than he should. And a whole lot more than he had any business to.
Max padded across the sanded wooden floor to the ancient small bedroom window and unlatched the window as quietly as he could.
It was early morning, a couple of hours before dawn, and dew was settling on the roses which grew in tangled profusion on the wooden trellis which ran the full height of the outside wall.
The air was almost as refreshing as the shower water, and he was grateful for the chance to cool his head and selected parts of his body, mostly below the waist, before they compounded the trouble and took him to places he could not walk away from.
Max shook his head.
He was physically exhausted, emotionally drained, and somehow, without meaning to, he had just added a whole new layer of trouble and stress to an already stressed situation.
He had just made the first batch of Treveleyn Estate chocolate. And it was better than he could have hoped for. Daisy had helped to make that possible—and he was grateful. She could have walked out on him several times and he would not have blamed her after Dolores had embarrassed herself—but Daisy had given him a second chance.
Second chances did not come along very often in his life.
Trouble was, you had to know the true cost of that chance before you dived into it headfirst. And that was what was going to keep him awake tonight.
Snuggling back down under the quilt, Daisy closed her eyes for a moment and let the tiredness overwhelm her. After what seemed like minutes, she half opened her eyes and watched sunlight creep around the edge of the curtains, sending shadows across the room. Dawn had come early. She lifted up her left arm and peered at her watch.
Then sat bolt upright in bed, which made her so dizzy that she had to lie down again.
Ten a.m.! This was not dawn—it was the middle of the day. She had not slept this late for months. Even if she worked half the night her internal body clock usually clicked in around seven. Winter and summer.
This country life was having a strange effect on her.
For one thing she had broken every rule in the book and agreed to take a risk on a man and a chocolate that were worlds away from her normal life. She should have left yesterday, when Dolores had given her opinion about that first batch of chocolate. But she had stayed, and in the end Max and Dolores had worked their magic and together they had produced chocolate which she could only hope was as remarkable this morning as it had been when they’d unloaded it from the mixer during the night.
And secondly—well, secondly she did not usually go around kissing divorced men she had just met. That was a first. And the fact that she had enjoyed it enormously did not change the fact that she might just have made a huge mistake. Far from it. If anything it made it worse.
Daisy sighed out loud, flung the cover off and swung her legs over the edge of the bed.
She twiddled her toes for a moment, then shook her head and smiled.
When it came to Max Treveleyn her no-touching policy was not working one little bit.
Her smile faded and she stepped over to the window, drawing back the curtain and looking out over the garden. It looked so different early in the morning. The fine weather had broken during the night and there was a fine drizzle of rain in the air. It should have been dull and grey, to reflect the broken clouds in the sky, but instead the sheen of water on the green bushes and flowers made the colours gleam and shine bright and clean.
In this light it was a complete
ly different place. As though the rain had washed away the past and the garden had started the new day with a clean slate.
If only it was so simple for people …
She should not have kissed Max.
There was never going to be any sort of relationship for them going forward. How could there be? He would be going back to St Lucia after his daughter’s birthday party and that would be the end of their work together. Even if they won the contest she would be based in Cornwall while he shipped cocoa from his estate thousands of miles away.
He had never mentioned having a girlfriend back on the island, and it was not a conversation she was going to start any time soon, but somehow she knew that he was not the kind of man who would have a girl in every port.
So where did that leave her?
Simple. It left her with three more days of working side by side with Max—including two nights in a lovely romantic hotel in Cornwall.
But they had kissed. And they had both meant it.
The cold chill of having been to this place before sent a shiver across her shoulders even in the warm bedroom.
Pascal Barone had promised her the world. A brilliant future and a wonderful life together. But in the end he had let her down just when she’d needed him most.
Max was not Pascal—far from it. But she had trusted her heart and her instincts to keep her safe before, and they had betrayed her by being too open and too welcoming. She had needed love in her life after her father had died, and she needed it now. Deny it as best she could, that moment last night when Max had pressed his lips to hers … her poor parched heart had soaked in every precious second of that glorious intimacy and physical sensation like a desert in the rain.
It frightened her just how much she needed someone like Max in her life.
She wanted to be intimate with someone she could call her friend as well as her lover. And here was Max. Offering her … what? A few days of fun before he took off? Leaving them both with broken hearts and regrets?
She had never had a one-night stand in her life, and this was not the best time to start.
No. It would be better if she left now. Said goodbye and thanks for the choc, and see you in Cornwall. Put the whole thing behind them and get back to being professional colleagues who were attending a conference together.
She could do that.
Yeah, right. And the garden was suddenly full of a squadron of purple piglets in pink tutus, singing as they flew across the sky.
Daisy pushed herself away from the window. Time to get dressed and talk to Max.
She strolled into the kitchen and her senses were instantly struck with the most amazing perfume coming from a vase of flowers on the wooden table.
A crystal water jug had been filled to overflowing with white roses, jasmine, lavender and honeysuckle—in fact all of the stunning fragrant flowers that she had enjoyed in the secret garden at dusk.
There was no formal arrangement—but these flowers did not need one. They were glorious. A still life made real by the man who had planted and grown these blossoms and loved them because they reminded him of happier times.
Well, she knew about that. And it linked her to him even more than she could say. Without having to say the words she knew that from now on, whenever she smelt those floral scents, it would take her back to this cottage and this garden and the man who had kissed her at dusk in the secret garden he had created.
It was no good. She could not resist reaching out with one hand and lifting one of the musk roses to her nose by its stem. Instantly she dropped it, and sucked on her finger where it had pricked her.
‘Good morning,’ came a familiar voice from the door to the garden, and Daisy looked up just as Max strolled in, his hands full of supermarket carrier bags.
Her poor treacherous heart jumped onto a trapeze and performed some very impressive gymnastics just at the sight of him.
Max stood in the doorway, framed by the thick wooden beams above his head and the bright sunlit garden behind him, so that his face was in shadow, and in that single dizzy moment Daisy felt as though her life was spinning on a pinhead.
She could stay and hope that this fire inside her would light the beacon for a long-standing loving relationship—but that fire would be fuelled by her dreams of her own chocolate shop. Because one thing was for sure. Max had no intention of leaving his cocoa plantation. Not even for his own child.
Or she could go and start all over again. And one day she might be in a position to buy his cocoa as a customer. Safe and secure and working for herself, on a path she had chosen. And probably never see him again.
She had promised herself that she would never make the compromise her father had made—and yet here it was. Staring her in the face.
But either way she could not—would not—let him know how she felt. Simply standing in his kitchen watching him shuffle from foot to foot, pretending that nothing had happened, was awkward enough.
Time to get back in control. And to get as far away from Max as possible.
‘And good morning to you too.’ She gulped. ‘I see that you have been up early, scavenging for supplies, while I caught up with my sleep. Here. Let me help.’
Max dropped the bags onto the table, his attention totally focused on the contents. ‘Seeing as dinner last evening consisted of ham and cheese sandwiches and fizzy drinks, I thought that the least I could do was to provide a decent breakfast. I’m not used to having a professional chef in the house, so a trip to the local supermarket was in order.’
He dived into the bags and brought out each item for her inspection as though it was buried treasure. ‘We have everything we need for a cooked breakfast, plus mushrooms and extra ham. Fresh bread, butter, lots of jam and marmalade, and a packet of croissants.’
Max sucked in a breath through his teeth as he inspected the croissants, but all the time he had not once looked at her.
‘I have never actually been to Paris myself, so I have nothing to compare them against, but …’
‘Max.’ Daisy reached out and pressed her right hand on top of his to still his frantic motion.
For the first time that morning Max lifted his chin, so that she could see his face in sunlight instead of shadow.
Although his mouth was turned into a gentle half-smile there was a deep crease between his eyebrows, and as she looked closer the deep shadows under his eyes told her that he had probably had less sleep than she had. Those stunning hypnotic blue eyes scanned her face over and over again, as though he was looking for a sign of how she was feeling about him.
They looked at each other in silence for what seemed like minutes.
Then both of them started talking at the same time.
‘Ladies first,’ Max said, breaking the crackling electric current that was in the air between them.
‘Okay,’ Daisy replied. ‘The food looks fine, but please stop. It’s okay. Just sit down and talk to me.’ She released his hand and started undoing the plastic wrap on the croissants before asking, ‘Did you get much sleep this morning?’
Max looked at her, then pulled out a chair and started to pull his croissant apart. ‘A few hours. Daisy …? About last night. I owe you an apology. I shouldn’t have kissed you and I’m sorry that it has put us into an awkward situation.’
Daisy took a deep breath and looked into his face. His last few words had come gushing out in one long rush, and she knew how hard they must have been to say. ‘You don’t owe me an apology,’ she replied simply.
Max shook his head and continued shredding his croissant. ‘I think I do. We had both worked hard, it was a lovely evening, and I got caught up in the moment.’ He lifted both hands from the table. ‘It certainly wasn’t planned, but I don’t want you to go away today with the wrong idea. I am so sorry, Daisy, but long-distance relationships don’t work and affairs are painful. So that only leaves one question.’
Max looked up at her, and this time his face was pale and serious, and each and every one of his frown l
ines was frozen into sharp relief.
‘I’ll understand it if you want to hit me over the head with the bacon, but can you forgive my over-active libido and tolerate me enough to work with me as a colleague over the next few days? Because that’s all I can offer you. Tell me, Daisy? Is that enough?’
Daisy stared at Max for long enough to see beads of perspiration on his forehead.
It was probably only minutes, but in the silence of the kitchen all she had to listen to was the background soundtrack of birdsong and the thumping of her heart.
Because Max had just told her in his own way that he felt just as much for her as she was feeling for him. And he was trying to create some distance between them to protect them both from the pain of a doomed love affair.
He clearly had no idea that she could see it in his face. And that if anything his words only served to bind them more closely together instead of driving them apart. He was doing this for her as much as himself.
Daisy pushed up from the table and found plates and cutlery, aware that Max was still watching her every move.
Time to put him out of his misery. If he could make the sacrifice and be noble then so could she—by telling him the truth. But not necessarily all of the truth.
‘The short answer to your question is yes. It is enough.’
She sat back down and reached for butter and jam.
‘But there is also a longer answer. Do you remember that Marco mentioned that I had worked for Barone in Paris? Yes? Well, you should know that I met my first love in Paris. He was a chocolatier, and between us we planned to take the chocolate world by storm. We were the best in the business and nothing was going to stop us going right to the top.’
Daisy nibbled on a fragment of her croissant and rubbed the pastry flakes from her fingers as Max listened in silence, his face still intense but more with interest than concern.
‘The relationship ended badly, and it has taken me three years of hard work to rebuild my life and my confidence in my abilities to the point where I can even think of going out on my own.’
She put down her knife and leant across the table towards him.
When Chocolate Is Not Enough... Page 10