Italian Invader

by Jessica Steele

  'Oh,' escaped her.

  'Would you see me starve?' he enquired.

  'You wait until you see supper!' she warned, and, laughing, 'You might think starving preferable!' With that she headed out into the kitchen, knowing that this man had the power to make a complete nonsense of her.

  They had their meal, such as it was, at the kitchen table. 'This is good!' Max complimented her on her ef­forts with the pasta, cheese and milk.

  'I doubt if there's another macaroni cheese quite like it around these parts,' she laughed, caught his gaze on her laughing mouth, and asked brightly, 'How's your foot?'

  'I'll survive,' he made light of it.

  'You really should rest it, you know,' she told him seriously.

  'You don't think sitting here like this is resting it?'

  'You should have it up, or on a level at any rate. It must be throbbing like the dickens.'

  'How do you know such things?' he wanted to know.

  'It must be instinctive,' she replied lightly, and be­cause just looking at him was making her emotions go haywire, she was sorely in need of getting herself under control. 'Do go and rest,' she urged, 'and I'll bring coffee into the sitting-room.'

  'I'll make it,' he offered.

  'That,' she said firmly, 'is not resting.'

  'Are all Englishwomen so bossy?' he asked goodnaturedly.

  'They don't get a look-in when it comes to the bossiness of Italian men,' she retorted cheekily.

  'I'll owe you for that,' he threatened, and got up and limped from the room.

  While the coffee was percolating Elyn cleared the table and washed up. But she felt only marginally less haywire when she carried a tray of coffee into the sitting-room. Max was seated on the floor, his back to the settee, his left leg bent as he looked from the fire and to her.

  'There you are, you see, resting,' he teased, pointing to his stretched-out right leg. 'Come and join me on the floor,' he invited.

  It was as nice a place as any, and in minutes Elyn was seated on the floor with her back against a solid chair. Soon she must make tracks back to her hotel, but for now this was the happiest time of her life, and she did not want to hurry away from it—not just yet.

  The fire was warm, and she toasted her toes in their white three-quarter-length socks. It was warm in the sitting-room now and she was glad she had some time ago removed the sweater she had on over her shirt. She would be glad of it when she went out—it must be freezing out there.

  'So, tell me about Maximilian Zappelli?' she took a leaf out of his book to enquire.

  And laughed delightedly when he grinned and said, 'There's too much to tell.'

  'I don't doubt it,' she smiled back, and loved him, and looked away lest he saw her love.

  But she wasn't sure how she felt when he suggested, 'So, give about, sweet, beautiful Elyn,' and, encourag­ingly, 'I refuse to believe that there's "nothing to tell".'

  'You're a devil for punishment,' she warned, but added, 'Basically, I was born and grew up in Bovington.'

  'And worked hard for Sam Pillinger,' he took up. 'But I knew that bit.'

  'There isn't any more,' she insisted.

  'What about your parents?'

  'My parents are divorced,' she said bluntly, an edge she could do nothing about entering her voice. She hoped he would leave it there, but of course he didn't.

  'You live with your mother,' he documented.

  'And my new family,' she allowed, there being nothing more to say on the subject as far as she was concerned.

  'Ever see your father?' he enquired casually.

  'Rarely,' Elyn replied, and found she was tacking on, 'Out of sight, out of mind has always been his motto.'

  'That upsets you?'

  She threw him an impatient look. 'Grief, no!' she scoffed—but her scoffing tone, her impatience, were ignored.

  'How old were you when your parents separated?' Max pressed quietly.

  For a moment or two she considered not answering, but he was waiting, saying nothing, but just waiting, so she shrugged offhandedly. 'I was twelve when he left us for good,' she saw no harm in telling him, but—and to her staggering amazement—discovered she was con­fiding, 'But in truth I'm not sure that last time whether he went of his own accord, or if my mother threw him out.'

  Feeling shaken that she had said so much, and sorely wanting to blame Max for dragging that out of her, she felt she might have hit him had he dared to make some mocking remark to the effect that her mother must be a weight-lifter to be able to throw her father out.

  But Max did not say anything of the kind, and his tone was quiet still, understanding even, when after holding her gaze steadily, speculatively for some long seconds, to her surprise he asked, 'And how did that affect you, Elyn—your parents splitting up?'

  Abruptly she looked away from him and into the fire. She made a movement as though to rise, as if to be away. But even while she was trying to remember where she had put her jacket, suddenly he had swiftly slewed round and as if he had read her actions to leave, placed a res­training hand on her arm.

  She looked down arrogantly at the hand on her arm as if to show she felt contaminated by his touch. But it had no effect, for his hand stayed firm on her, while he insisted on being answered.

  'Does it hurt so much?' he asked.

  'Not at all,' she assured him coldly—though again she found her tongue running away from her. 'Divorce was the best thing that could have happened to them.'

  'But it scarred you.'

  It was a statement, not a question, and at that moment Elyn hated him for his perception. 'If you must know, his unfaithfulness to my mother made me loathe that sort of man!' she snapped. 'I saw her hurt by his womanising,' she went on angrily. 'My father made her un­happy on too many occasions…'

  'And that made you unhappy too?'

  Elyn threw him a withering look. She didn't want this conversation. 'Some!' she muttered. But then, to her absolute horror, words were coming to her, were queuing up, pouring from her—and she didn't seem able to do a thing to stop them! Short, angry words fell from her lips as she snapped, 'There were rows—my stars, there were rows! Crockery flying! Violent words, ac­tions! He was always off with some woman, always in debt—and so were we! There was never any money…' Her voice started to go wobbly, began to trail off. She wanted to stop, but somehow, having got started, she didn't seem able to! 'I grew up h-hating debt, and vowing that I would n-never owe any—any…' Her voice frac­tured, and all at once Max took her gently in his arms.

  'Let it all out, cara,' he breathed soothingly. 'You've held it in for far too long.'

  A shuddery kind of sob went through her, and Elyn felt swamped by a hail of differing emotions as she mur­mured shakily, 'I don't think there's any more to let out.'

  'There were perhaps years of pent-up emotion in you waiting to be released,' Max suggested, and all she could do was smile a quavery smile.

  'So when did you graduate from psychology college?' she asked, no longer angry with him—only in love.

  'Brave little one,' he murmured, his answering smile warm and making her feel so good that when he bent his head as though to salute her bravery, she turned her face to his, and invited his kiss.

  'Oh, Max,' she whispered shakenly, and he smiled down into her upturned face, then gently kissed her again.

  Only this time her arms went up and around him, and it was so good to hold him close and, as she felt his arms tighten about her, to be held close by him.

  The next time he kissed her there was a subtle change in his kiss. His mouth was gentle still, but firmer, gently seeking. Oh, Max, Max! she wanted to cry, but he had her lips held captive, so she just held him more fiercely to her.

  Then all at once there was passion in his firm kisses, and Elyn wanted more. She felt his hands at her back roving over her thin shirt, and then her shirt was se­parated from the waistband of her trousers.

  'Beautiful Elyn,' he murmured against her mouth, and as a groan of wa
nting left her, she felt his warm won­derful hands on the bare skin of her waist.

  'Max!' she moaned his name aloud, her hands car­essing upwards to his thick dark hair, only to fall, and grip hard on to his shoulders when his hands beneath her shirt caressed upwards until at last her breasts were held captive.

  She wanted to cry his name again, but couldn't. She was afraid when tenderly he undid the clasp of her bra, his hands now capturing the naked skin of the swelling globes, but she was afraid, not of him, but that her tongue might betray her, and end it all. She had said 'no' before from the shock of his touch. She pressed herself to him, in a mindless arousal of wanting. If she said a word at all, she wanted that word to be 'yes.'

  His lips were still pressed to hers as he undid her shirt and slipped it off her. Her bra disappeared with it, and though she felt a moment's shyness, she bravely over­came it. When Max divested himself of his shirt and sweater and she felt the warm and wonderful touch of his hair-roughened skin against the satin-smoothness of her own body, Elyn luxuriated in the touch.

  His long sensitive fingers circled the hardened tips of her breasts, and a groan of wanting escaped her. But shyness smote her again when a few minutes later his gentle fingers ceased doing mind-bending things to the hard pink peaks he had created and he pulled back to look at her. With the soft light of the table lamp behind him, his glance rested on her beautiful breasts, the glow and shadow of the firelight enhancing their beauty.

  'Oh, cara, my dear!' he breathed, and while Elyn hoped he would think the warm colour in her cheeks came solely from the fire and not from the shyness of a man seeing her uncovered form for the first time, he leaned forward and kissed first one breast and then the other.

  'Max!' She clutched at him and just had to cry his name. She wanted him, wanted him! His kisses, the moist inside of his mouth as his lips and tongue caressed and moulded one breast while enticing fingers gently moulded the other, were sending her into a frenzy of wanting.

  She clutched him again, and pressed closer still to him, loving the freedom she had to touch his skin. She adored him, and adored what he was doing to her when ten­derly, the warm rug beneath them, he moved her to lie down.

  Somehow they were both divested of all but the minimum of clothing, and his body was so close it was like a second skin against hers when, their bare legs mingling, he came to he over her.

  'Oh, Max!' she cried. And when the fire in her body for him became too much to contain, 'Oh, please, please,' she urged, 'take me!'

  'My dear!' he cried exultantly, and kissed her, his hands at the band of her briefs.

  Soon she knew she would be without a stitch of clothing. It was what she wanted and, in a mindless un­thinking world of her need for him, her love, she just had to tell him, 'I want you. I've never wanted a man before. But now—now I know that consuming need, know what that need feels like—oh, Max, please,' she begged feverishly, 'I've never…' The strangled sound that left him, the hoarse cry of something in his own language when, as though suddenly scalded, his hand left her briefs, caused her to break off, startled.

  She was more utterly dumbfounded than startled, though, when his next action was to roll hurriedly away from her, to put some space between them and to sit up and present her with his wide-shouldered, broad, won­derful naked back!

  'Max… What… ?' she asked helplessly, desperately trying to find some sense in what was happening now. Max had been about to claim her, to make her his, to take her to new passions, to ease this aching undeniable need he had created in her, so what was he doing, sitting over there? 'Oh!' she exclaimed as a small part of her brain started to function. 'Oh, Max, I'm sorry—your foot! Did I…'

  'Forget it!' he snarled, and if he'd thrown a bucket of cold water over her, his tone couldn't have had a better effect. Clearly, he had gone off wanting to make love to her.

  'Forget it?' she exclaimed before she could help it. But pride, even then ever a fierce ally, was there to help her out. My stars, she would not beg! Though she was still confused as she stammered proudly, 'Con-consider it done!' and in that moment of overwhelming rejection she hoped his foot was hurting him like hell. Agitatedly she spotted her boots by the fireplace, but there was no way she was going near him again. Nor—when only a minute before she had given him every freedom with her naked body—was he going to catch so much as a glimpse of a bare arm. 'If you'll pass my b-boots back, please,' she requested chokily, 'I'll get to my hotel.'

  She was already fastening up her bra and reaching for her shirt when he informed her harshly, 'You're going nowhere, the state you're in!' and while Elyn began to hate him because he was so familiar with women that he knew the state she was in, knew the havoc he had created on her senses, he decreed, 'You can have the bedroom, I'll sleep out here.'

  Like hell, she thought, but then realised two things. One that, since Max had gone completely off the idea of making love to her, she would not have an unwelcome visitor during the night, the other—as she looked at the wooden arms of the settee—that anyone who slept on that was in for the most appalling night!

  He deserved worse, but that would do for a start. 'Thanks, I will!' she accepted snappily and, snatching up the rest of her clothes as she went, she stormed out of the sitting-room into the one and only bedroom. But she knew, the moment she had closed the door on him, that Max wasn't the one who was in for a most appal­ling night!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The night seemed endless, and Elyn was never more glad to see dawn tiptoe across the sky. Her head ached from a combination of lack of sleep and the torture of thought after thought that had gone through her head, over and over, during those wakeful hours.

  Initially she had been too emotionally overwrought to think very clearly at all. But gradually her emotions had become a shade more even, and she was then afflicted by an unanswerable why, why, why?

  Why had Max stopped making love to her? Why? So abruptly? So…how could he? She had been lost to everything, so how could he stop!

  Somehow she felt she could discount the possibility that his injured foot had had anything to do with it. There had been not an atom of pain in his tone when, in answer to her comment about his foot, he'd hurled that snarled 'Forget it!' at her.

  So, with passion soaring, leading the way, taking charge of her—and him, she had thought—if Max had been anywhere near as unconscious of anything save their two selves, the way she had been, then there was no way he would have so suddenly rolled away from her the way that he had.

  Which, she realised on the third time round of that question, answered that part of it. Quite clearly Max had not been anywhere near as unconscious as she had been.

  But what had put him off? Had she been too gauche? Too eager? Her face flamed at the thought. She hadn't put up so much as a minimum amount of resistance, had she? Was that it? Had she been to easy a conquest?

  Oh, heavens, she cringed in shame, men like Max liked a challenge. He wouldn't be where he was today in business if he did not care for the cut and thrust of chal­lenge in his business life. But, on the personal side of it—she, with her 'please, please take me,' had repre­sented no challenge whatsoever! Her face flamed afresh as she recalled how she had begged him to take her. Oh, lord, how would she ever be able to face him again?

  Desperately she tried to find release from her morti­fication by remembering that he still wasn't convinced that she was not some design thief. But in her heart of hearts she felt it had nothing to do with that. Max hadn't been thinking business when she'd been warm and willing in his arms. He had wanted her, she knew that, she wasn't so naive that she had misunderstood that! At one point, he had been as eager as she—until she had begged him to take her.

  Elyn's face started to grow scarlet again, and, knowing that all she wanted to do was to get out of there, she went and listened at the bedroom door. She could hear not a sound and realised that, against all odds, there was a fair chance he was sound asleep on that hard-armed settee.

  She w
as aware that she couldn't return to her hotel in the state she was in, and since the bathroom was only next door, she decided to slip out—no need to so much as glance at the settee—and nip into the bathroom to freshen up.

  Part one of her plan worked, and she stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, but could see no sign of her inner torment. Stripping off her clothes, she rinsed her briefs through, dried them in a towel and put them on the radiator to finish off drying while she had a bath.

  She was towelling herself dry, though, when, as she was going over again what had led up to Max taking her in his arms in the first place, it suddenly struck her that the reason she had not wanted him to ask questions about her parents—her father in particular—was that she had been feeling happy and did not want to be reminded of her father. Because, in doing so, as well as dragging up old hurts, she would be reminded that, like her father, Max too was a philanderer.

  Elyn was dressed, save for her boots which were still in the sitting-room, and was combing her long blonde hair when suddenly her comb stilled. For, while she was recalling the passion of Max's lovemaking, suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, she found she was wondering, was Max such a philanderer after all? Having ruled out the notion that his injured foot had anything to do with it, would a philanderer who was within an ace of achieving his goal—to score another bed victory—call a halt when that victory was his for the taking? It was true he was often seen dating the most glamorous of women, but wasn't he free and unattached? And, loath though she was to defend him, he was a most eligible bachelor, and as such, since he worked so hard, was it a sin not to stay home nights?

  Suddenly Elyn knew that, unlike her father, who would probably bed where he could, Max had more finesse than that, and suddenly she realised that Max was very choosy. She had no need to look further than last night to see that if it did not seem right to him, then right there, at the eleventh hour, so to speak, Max had sufficient control to call a halt.

  All of which left her feeling in no way less bruised when, with nothing to return to the bedroom for, she left the bathroom—and looked towards the settee! With relief she saw that Max was not there, was not even in the sitting-room. Good, she thought, her turbulent insides becoming marginally more calm, and she went over to collect her snow-boots and sat down to put them on.