She recognised the grey-and-white-striped polo shirt. She recognised the slim, grey Bermuda shorts that accentuated the muscular length of his legs. She recognised the loafers. He’d worn them on the last day they’d spent together, when his bags had been packed and he’d been ready to go.
Most of all…oh…how she recognised the depth of those navy eyes, the curve of his sensual mouth, the proud symmetry of his beautiful face.
‘Max!’ Something must have happened with the hotel. She’d limited her time there to working furiously on the acreage, having sections cleared for the plants on order so that everything would be ready and waiting when the time came. She hadn’t been near the hotel at all, although she knew that it was coming along in leaps and bounds now that Izzy’s original designs had been approved.
Had he been unable to locate Nat? She assumed he needed to know something about her end of things.
All of this raced through her head in seconds, overriding the simple question: couldn’t he just have emailed her if he had something to ask?
In her head, she frantically joined the dots… Max, here, work. She should smile. She shouldn’t let him see that the memories were just so intense that she was on the edge of breaking up. She hadn’t cried since they’d parted company. It was as if all her tears had collected in a pool somewhere deep inside her and had refused to come out.
She cracked a smile. He still had his hand on her arm, but now he released her, raking his fingers through his hair, edgy and awkward.
‘What a surprise!’ she chirped. ‘What brings you back across the ocean?’ Before he could see the glimmer of dampness in her eyes, she spun round and began heading to her bike. If he wanted to ask about the landscaping, then he could jolly well do so while they walked.
The silence that greeted her question forced Mia into speech, but her voice was simmering with hostility, even though she was trying so hard to keep a grip on her emotions.
‘Has Nat contacted you about my designs for the outside space? You could have emailed me if you had any questions.’ They were at her bike now and she circled round it so that they were standing on either side, staring at one another, while she pointedly clutched the handlebars. Let him be in no doubt that she was tired and on her way home, and if he had something to say then he’d better just come right out and say it.
‘I haven’t come here to ask you about the landscaping.’
‘Then what are you doing here?’ The smile dropped from her face.
‘I came to…talk to you…’
‘What about?’
‘About us.’
Mia laughed shortly. ‘Really? What about us? It’s an awfully long way to come to have a conversation about nothing.’
‘Is that what you think we are?’
‘Yes.’ She tilted her chin at a defiant angle. Her eyes stung. ‘We said goodbye, Max. What else is there to say?’ She began unlocking her bicycle.
‘I’ve had two weeks to think…to miss you…to realise that saying goodbye was the wrong thing for me to do.’
Mia’s head shot up and she glared at him with sudden fury. All those little hints and warnings he had dished out rushed at her and she saw red. Talk? He wanted to talk about them? Because he’d had a couple of weeks to think, and to miss her, and to realise that saying goodbye had been the wrong thing for him to do…?
Could he be any more arrogant? To assume that he could remind her that he wasn’t in it for the long haul because holidays always came to an end, but then, having decided that he might want a bit more of a holiday, maybe a mini-break, assume he was entitled to hop back on a plane, chat her up and…what? She’d fall into his arms and take whatever was on offer?
All the pain and heartbreak she had felt when things had ended between them now surfaced with crippling speed.
‘Tough.’ She gritted her teeth.
She began cycling off and he began jogging alongside her. She wasn’t looking at him, but she was aware of heads turning in their direction. A blistering argument in full throttle was always a captivating sight for curious bystanders.
Annoyingly, he wouldn’t give a damn, while she could only wonder if anyone looking at them might know her.
‘Go away,’ she puffed, gathering pace, while he did likewise.
‘Not until we talk.’
He’d dictated the pace and the direction of their intense, short-lived relationship. She’d been so determined not to let that happen, but happen it had, because she’d fallen madly in love with him until bit by bit she’d become the puppet manoeuvred by his all-empowering hand. The only blessing was that she hadn’t been idiot enough to show him how she felt. She was sure that, if she had, he wouldn’t be running alongside her now telling her that he wanted to pick up where they’d left off.
She’d had plenty of time to make sense of this guy. He was a sensualist who enjoyed a casual acceptance that whatever woman he wanted would dance to his tune. She was sure that, when it came to the relationships he had had in the past, he would always have been the one to end them because he would have become bored. Circumstances had dictated that he make a decision about them. He couldn’t have remained in Hawaii for ever, so he had walked away. But she thought now, pedalling furiously, he hadn’t quite had time to become bored, so he had returned to continue what they had until he did become bored. At which point, she would see the dust kicked up by his rapidly departing feet.
Thanks, she thought, but no thanks.
‘Okay!’ She braked so suddenly that he was still running but he swivelled round, slowed his pace and stood looking at her. He didn’t even have the decency to be out of breath. ‘Talk! No, let me say what you’re about to say! All this stuff about your two-week thinking period? I know where you’re going, Max.’
‘Please let’s not have this conversation here, Mia,’ was all he said, but there was something about the tone of his voice, the way he was looking at her…
She hesitated, annoyed with herself. There was a café several paces along which looked reasonably quiet, probably because it looked reasonably pricey. She gave a curt nod towards it and headed there.
It was mellow inside. Some of the tables were full, and the area around the bar was busy, but they were still able to grab an empty table to the side where they sat in silence until orders for drinks were given.
Tempted to go for a bracing Maui lager, instead she had a soft drink.
The silence was making her even more edgy. She didn’t want to look at him, because she didn’t want to be reminded of just how much he had come to mean to her, but it was an effort to sit in stony silence with her eyes averted.
‘You were going to tell me that you were a mind reader,’ he finally said, quietly. ‘I’m willing to bet that you aren’t.’
‘You came over here because you’re not quite through with what we had,’ Mia scorned. He had knocked back drink number one, a whisky, in record time, which was alarming. He also couldn’t quite meet her eyes. ‘Am I heading in the right direction?’
‘It’s no good trying to pre-empt what you think I’m going to say,’ he told her, but in such a low, driven voice that she had to lean forward to catch what he was saying. He ordered another whisky and she couldn’t help herself when she said anxiously, ‘Why are you drinking so quickly?’
‘Dutch courage,’ he said with a wry smile.
‘Dutch courage? Why would you need Dutch courage? When have you ever been scared of anything? If this is some kind of tactic to get under my skin, it’s not going to work!’
‘I need Dutch courage because I’ve never had this kind of conversation before. I’ve never…felt this need before.’
‘I think you’re confusing need with lust.’
‘I don’t think the two are connected at all, and that’s why I’m finding this difficult. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. Never thought I could. Just
hear me out and, if after you want to walk away, you have my word that I won’t follow you. Thing is, Mia, you came at me like a bolt from the blue. One minute I had a plan for my life, and the next minute you’d managed to blow a hole right in the middle of it and I didn’t know what the hell had happened.’
Mia shifted uneasily. Something was blooming inside her and she couldn’t shove it down where it belonged.
She wanted to hear more. She didn’t want to hear more. So she waited in silence.
‘I just know that what started off as something simple became more and more complicated with each passing second. You got under my skin and you stayed there. I should have known my life was changing when I realised I didn’t want you to leave my bed. I wanted you to fall asleep next to me and wanted you to be the first person I saw in the morning when I woke up.’
‘Really?’ But there was doubt in her voice.
‘Really.’ He smiled tentatively, and that was so novel for a man as self-assured as he was that she softened and began to open up, began to let those shoots of hope grow. When he absently took her hand and fiddled with her fingers, she didn’t pull back.
‘For as long as I can remember,’ he confided huskily, ‘I’ve been distrustful of relationships. My parents, as far as I was concerned, sacrificed everything in the name of love. Work…responsibilities… Me. When they were killed in that plane crash, it seemed just another example of their reckless adventuring which always took precedence over everything else. They should never have gone up. The weather was terrible, but there they were, like a couple of love-struck teenagers, acting with the folly of youth instead of a couple of middle-aged parents with three kids to think about.’
He sighed and pressed his thumbs to his eyes, then he looked at her. ‘I vowed to always, always be in control of my life. There was no way I would let anyone get me to a place where I forgot what my priorities were. Security. Stability. Relationships were enjoyable breaks in between the more important things in life, and that worked until I met you.’
‘And then what happened?’ Mia asked breathlessly.
‘Then I met you and I fell in love.’
‘You…you what?’
‘I fell in love with you, my darling. I had all the symptoms but I failed to recognise the illness. Bad metaphor.’ He grinned. ‘I was so used to the humdrum monotony of having my feet planted on the ground that I failed to appreciate the joy of being able to fly, which is how you make me feel.’
‘Me too,’ Mia admitted. She felt tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. ‘It was so hard not being able to tell you, knowing that you would run a mile if you had any inkling that I was falling madly in love with you. When we were island-hopping, there was always this tightness inside me because I knew it was going to end and when it did…’ She shivered and closed her eyes briefly.
‘You didn’t say anything.’
‘How could I? I was proud. Proud enough to think that I had to walk away with my dignity intact.’
‘I didn’t realise how much that would hurt.’
‘Why…? Why didn’t you say something sooner?’ Mia couldn’t help but ask and he shot her a rueful smile.
‘You talked about pride,’ he said drily. ‘You don’t have a monopoly on that particular emotion. It was more than that, though.’
His voice was thoughtful now. ‘I just kept telling myself that I would adjust back to the life I’d always known, kept telling myself that I should be pleased that you’d accepted the inevitable with such…indifference. I shut down all the pain and bewilderment and hurt because, for the first time, I wanted a woman to stop me from walking away and you didn’t. I told myself that it was only a matter of time until things returned to normal. On all counts, I was wrong. It just took me a while to figure that out. I’ve been a fool, my darling, but I came here to set the record straight.’
‘I love you,’ she said simply.
‘I want to do everything right,’ he told her solemnly. ‘No half-measures. No being scared about what might lie in front of me. There’s no room when you love someone for playing games or trying to hang on to control. It’s about letting go. I love you, need you and want you to be the one I let go to. For ever. So, my darling Mia, will you marry me and be patient with me while I learn how to be less driven?’
‘I think I can handle that.’ She laughed and touched the side of his face. Such a dear face.
From cloud nine, the whole world looked like the most wonderful place to be.
‘I warn you, you’re in for quite a riotous ride with my family,’ she said.
‘Four sisters… I’m guessing I’m not going to get much of a word in edgeways, especially if they’re as wonderfully opinionated as you.’
‘Just as opinionated and very noisy. But they’re going to be so happy to welcome you into the family, and I guarantee my two brothers-in-law will be whooping at the thought of having another guy in their corner for back-up.’
‘I can’t wait,’ he told her, drawing her towards him and kissing her, well aware of the indulgent, amused looks they were attracting.
‘Nor, my wonderful husband-to-be, can I…’
Coming next month
PRIDE & THE ITALIAN’S PROPOSAL
Kate Hewitt
‘I judge on what I see,’ Fausto allowed as he captured her queen easily. She looked unfazed by the move, as if she’d expected it, although to Fausto’s eye it had seemed a most inexpert choice. ‘Doesn’t everyone do the same?’
‘Some people are more accepting than others.’
‘Is that a criticism?’
‘You seem cynical,’ Liza allowed.
‘I consider myself a realist,’ Fausto returned, and she laughed, a crystal-clear sound that seemed to reverberate through him like the ringing of a bell.
‘Isn’t that what every cynic says?’
‘And what are you? An optimist?’ He imbued the word with the necessary scepticism.
‘I’m a realist. I’ve learned to be.’ For a second she looked bleak, and Fausto realised he was curious.
‘And where did you learn that lesson?’
She gave him a pert look, although he still saw a shadow of that unsettling bleakness in her eyes. ‘From people such as yourself.’ She moved her knight—really, what was she thinking there? ‘Your move.’
Fausto’s gaze quickly swept the board and he moved a pawn. ‘I don’t think you know me well enough to have learned such a lesson,’ he remarked.
‘I’ve learned it before, and in any case I’m a quick study.’ She looked up at him with glinting eyes, a coy smile flirting about her mouth. A mouth Fausto had a sudden, serious urge to kiss. The notion took him so forcefully and unexpectedly that he leaned forward a little over the game, and Liza’s eyes widened in response, her breath hitching audibly as surprise flashed across her features.
For a second, no more, the very air between them felt tautened, vibrating with sexual tension and expectation. It would be so very easy to close the space between their mouths. So very easy to taste her sweetness, drink deep from that lovely, luscious well.
Of course he was going to do no such thing. He could never consider a serious relationship with Liza Benton; she was not at all the sort of person he was expected to marry and, in any case, he’d been burned once before, when he’d been led by something so consuming and changeable as desire.
As for a cheap affair…the idea had its tempting merits, but he knew he had neither the time nor inclination to act on it. An affair would be complicated and distracting, a reminder he needed far too much in this moment.
Fausto leaned back, thankfully breaking the tension, and Liza’s smile turned cat-like, surprising him. She looked so knowing, as if she’d been party to every thought in his head, which thankfully she hadn’t been, and was smugly informing him of that fact.
‘Checkmate,’ she said softly and, jolted, Fausto stared at her blankly before glanci
ng down at the board.
‘That’s impossible,’ he declared as his gaze moved over the pieces and, with another jolt, he realised it wasn’t. She’d put him in checkmate and he hadn’t even realised his king had been under threat. He’d indifferently moved a pawn while she’d neatly spun her web. Disbelief warred with a scorching shame as well as a reluctant admiration. All the while he’d assumed she’d been playing an amateurish, inexperienced game, she’d been neatly and slyly laying a trap.
‘You snookered me.’
Her eyes widened with laughing innocence. ‘I did no such thing. You just assumed I wasn’t a worthy opponent.’ She cocked her head, her gaze turning flirtatious—unless he was imagining that? Feeling it? ‘But, of course, you judge on what you see.’
The tension twanged back again, even more electric than before. Slowly, deliberately, Fausto knocked over his king to declare his defeat. The sound of the marble clattering against the board was loud in the stillness of the room, the only other sound their suddenly laboured breathing.
He had to kiss her. He would. Fausto leaned forward, his gaze turning sleepy and hooded as he fastened it on her lush mouth. Liza’s eyes flared again and she drew an unsteady breath, as loud as a shout in the still, silent room. Then, slowly, deliberately, she leaned forward too, her dress pulling against her body so he could see quite perfectly the outline of her breasts.
There were only a few scant inches between their mouths, hardly any space at all. Fausto could already imagine the feel of her lips against his, the honeyed slide of them, her sweet, breathy surrender as she gave herself up to their kiss. Her eyes fluttered closed. He leaned forward another inch, and then another. Only centimetres between them now…
‘Here you are!’
The door to the study flung open hard enough to bang against the wall, and Fausto and Liza sprang apart. Chaz gave them a beaming smile, his arm around a rather woebegone-looking Jenna. Fausto forced a courteous smile back, as both disappointment and a very necessary relief coursed through him.
Forbidden Hawaiian Nights Page 15