Not that she ever had to wait long. Behind closed doors, Max’s coolly controlled façade soon dropped away to reveal a hot-blooded and often insatiable lover. His visits home might have become shorter and less frequent over the last few months—as Tara’s mother had observed—but whilst he was here in Sydney, he was all Tara’s. They spent most of Max’s visits in bed.
Her mother would see this as conclusive evidence that she was just a sex object to Max. A kept woman. In other words, a mistress.
But her mother was not there when Max took her in his arms. She didn’t see the look in his eyes; didn’t feel the tenderness in his touch; or the uncontrollable trembling which racked his body whenever he made love to her.
Max loved her. Tara was sure of it.
His not wanting to marry her at this time in his life was a matter of timing, not lack of love. Max had never said that marriage was never on his agenda.
And as she’d told her mother, she was in no hurry to get married, anyway. What she was in a hurry for was to get to gate B, collect Max and take him back to the Regency Royale Hotel, post-haste.
Fate must have been on her side, for no sooner had she ground to a breathless halt not far from gate B than Max emerged through the customs exit, striding purposefully down the ramp, carrying his laptop in one hand and wheeling a black carry-on suitcase in the other.
Tara supposed he didn’t look all that much different from dozens of other well-dressed businessmen there at the airport that day. Perhaps taller than most. More broad-shouldered. And more handsome.
But just the sight of him did things to her that she could never explain to her mother. She came alive as she was never alive when she wasn’t with him. Her brain bubbled with joy and the blood fizzed in her veins.
Tara conceded not every twenty-four-year-old girl’s heart would flutter madly at Max’s more conservative brand of handsome, or his very conservative mode of dressing. Tara rarely saw him in anything but a suit. Today’s was charcoal-grey. Single-breasted, combined with a crisp white shirt and a striped blue tie.
All very understated.
But Tara liked the air of stability and security which Max’s untrendy image projected. She liked the fact that he always looked a man of substance. And she very much liked his looks.
Yet till now, she’d never really analysed him feature by feature. It had been his overall appearance, and his overall aura which had initially taken her breath away. And which had kept her captivated ever since.
But as Max made his way through gate B, his eyes having not yet connected with hers, Tara found herself studying Max’s looks more objectively than usual.
Now, that was one classically handsome guy, she decided. Not a pretty boy, but not a rough diamond, either.
A masculine-looking man, Max had a large but well-balanced face, surrounded by a thick head of dark brown hair, always cut with short back and sides, and always combed from a side-parting. His ears were nicely flat against his well-shaped head. His intelligent blue eyes were deeply set, bisected by a long, straight nose and accentuated with thick, dark brown brows. His mouth, despite its full bottom lip, had not a hint of femininity about it and invariably held an uncompromising expression.
Max was not a man who smiled a lot. Mostly, his lips remained firmly shut, his penetrating blue eyes glittering with a hardness which Tara found sexy, but which she imagined could be forbidding, especially when he was annoyed, or angry. Tara suspected he could be a formidable boss, if crossed. She’d heard him a few times over the phone when he’d been laying down the law to various employees.
But with her, he was never really annoyed, or angry. He had been frustrated that time when she’d kissed him in public. And exasperated when she refused to let him buy her a car. But that was it.
Tara knew that when he finally caught sight of her standing there, waiting for him, he would smile.
And suddenly, it was there, that slow curve to his lips, that softer gleam in his eyes, and it was all she could do not to run to him and throw herself into his arms. Instead, she stayed right where she was, smiling her joy back at him whilst he walked slowly towards her.
‘For a few seconds, I thought you weren’t here,’ he said once they were standing face to face.
‘I almost wasn’t,’ she confessed. ‘I was running horribly late. You should have seen me a minute ago, trying to bolt across the car park in these shoes.’
He glanced down at the offending shoes, then slowly let his eyes run up her body. By the time his gaze reached her mouth, her lips had gone bone-dry.
‘Are you sure it was the shoes, or those wicked white trousers? How on earth did you get them on? You must have had them sewn on.’
‘They’re stretchy.’
His eyes glittered in that sexy way she adored. ‘Thank the lord for that. I had visions of spending half the night getting them off you. You know, you really shouldn’t wear gear like that to greet me when we’ve been apart for nearly a month. It does terrible things to me.’
‘I thought you liked me to dress sexily,’ she said, piqued that he hadn’t bothered to ask her why she was late. It occurred to her with a degree of shock that maybe he didn’t care.
‘That depends on how long I’ve been away. Thank goodness you’re wearing a bra.’
‘But I’m not.’
He stared at her chest, then up at her mouth. ‘I wish you hadn’t told me that,’ he muttered.
‘For pity’s sake, Max, is there no pleasing you today?’
‘You please me all the time,’ he returned thickly, and putting his laptop down, he actually reached out to stroke a tender hand down her cheek. If that didn’t stun her, his next action did.
He kissed her, his hand sliding down and around under her hair, cupping the back of her neck whilst his mouth branded hers with purpose and passion.
The kiss must have lasted a full minute, leaving Tara weak-kneed with desire and flushed with embarrassment. For people were definitely staring at them.
‘Max!’ she protested huskily when his hand then slid down her shirt over her right breast.
‘That’s what you get for meeting me in those screw-me shoes,’ he whispered.
When Tara gaped at him, Max laughed.
‘You little hypocrite. You deliberately dressed to tease me today, and then you pretend to be shocked when you get the reaction you wanted. Here. Give me my car keys and take this,’ he ordered and handed her the laptop. ‘I want one hand free to keep you in line, you bad girl.’
Tara’s cheeks continued to burn as she was ushered from the terminal with Max’s hand firmly clamped to her bejeaned backside. Her head was fairly whirling with mixed messages and emotions.
In all the times she had picked Max up at the airport, he had never made her feel like this. As if sex was the only thing on his mind, and on hers. And whilst she was flustered by this change in behaviour—could her mother have been right about Max just using her for sex?—she was also undeniably turned on.
Neither of them said a single word till they were standing by the Mercedes and Max had put his things into the boot.
‘Fifteen minutes,’ Max said as he slammed the boot shut and turned to her.
‘What?’
By then she was hot all over, not just her cheeks.
‘Fifteen minutes,’ Max repeated. ‘That’s how long till we’re alone. I suspect it’s going to be the longest fifteen minutes of my life.’ His eyes ran all over her again, finally