Not that he thought that would happen again; January had made it more than obvious the last ten minutes or so that she would never agree to meet him again, for dinner or anything else!
Cut your losses and move on, Max, he mentally advised himself determinedly. Goodness knew he had done it often enough in the past, never in the same place long enough to allow himself to become too attached to any woman. Or them to him. January Calendar was no different, he told himself firmly. Only the force of his attraction to her was different…
All the more reason to get as far away from here as he could, as quickly as he could!
Except Jude seemed to have other ideas on the subject, Max discovered later that afternoon when he returned to the hotel, after a frustrating hour spent at the Calendar farm with May and March Calendar, to put a call through to his boss and friend.
‘You can’t have put our case strongly enough,’ Jude drawled unsympathetically. ‘How difficult can it be to persuade three old maids that they would be better off living in a nice bungalow somewhere than working their fingers to the bone on a hill farm that simply doesn’t, and never will, pay for itself?’
‘Three old maids’, indeed! Max could easily predict the reaction of any of the three undoubtedly beautiful sisters to being called that! It had been interesting to meet the third sister, March, when he’d got to the farm, to see the physical similarity between all three sisters. Although March, he had quickly learnt, was the most tempestuous of the three, telling him in no uncertain terms exactly what he, and the Marshall Corporation, could do with their offer to buy the Calendar property. May had been a little politer, but her answer had still been the same as that of her siblings.
But for some reason Max didn’t actually want to correct Jude in his mistake concerning the age of the three sisters, didn’t want to give the other man the opportunity to perhaps put two and two together and come up with four, to question the reason for Max’s own reluctance to pursue this thing any further.
‘They were born there, Jude,’ he repeated March’s indignant remark of earlier. ‘The family has lived there for generations—’
‘Max, are you going soft on me?’ Jude cut in disbelievingly.
As well he might. He and Jude had been at school together, had lost touch for a while when attending different universities, but Jude had sought Max out several years later when his business empire had begun to expand, easily persuading Max to become his personal and company lawyer. It was a decision that Max had never regretted. Until today…
‘No, of course not,’ he dismissed harshly. ‘I just—’
‘You just…?’ Jude prompted speculatively.
‘Leave it with me for a few more days, okay?’ he answered impatiently, willing himself to relax as his hand tightly gripped the receiver—so much for his earlier decision to tell Jude to just cut and run over this proposed deal. So that he could cut and run himself! ‘How are you doing with the beautiful April?’ he prompted tautly.
‘Changing the subject, Max?’ Jude guessed shrewdly.
That was the problem with Jude: he was too astute. And the last thing Max wanted was for the other man to even begin to guess at the emotional tangle Max now found himself in.
Part of him wanted to just pass the problem of the Calendar farm over to someone else, and in the process get himself as far away from January as he possibly could—something that he now knew he needed to do. But the professional side of him, the part of him that had been loyal to Jude and the Marshall Corporation for the last fifteen years, decreed that he had to continue trying to talk the Calendar sisters into selling their birthright.
‘Not particularly,’ he came back easily. ‘I merely wondered if you had been any more successful with April than I was,’ he added dryly.
‘Not in the least,’ Jude came back cheerfully. ‘She insists on treating me as if I’m nothing more to her than a naughty little brother.’
‘Novel.’ Max grinned at the thought of the arrogantly successful Jude being cast in such an unflattering role.
The other man chuckled. ‘Actually, I’m quite enjoying it. She really is a fascinating woman,’ he added appreciatively.
Nowhere near as fascinating, to Max, as January had proved to be! But at least he had veered the other man off the subject of the Calendar sisters, which was, after all, what he had set out to do by introducing the subject of April Robine.
‘To get back to the Calendar farm,’ Jude continued determinedly—proof that, as usual, he hadn’t been veered off the subject at all! ‘We really need to get that settled and out of the way in the next few weeks, so that we can get on with drawing up the plans. Offer them more money if nothing else works,’ he added hardly.
Dogged. Single-minded. They were qualities in Jude that he had always admired in the past. But where this particular problem was concerned Max found those traits extremely irritating.
‘I’m well aware of the time-scale involved, Jude,’ he snapped. ‘But I don’t think, in this case, that the offer of more money is going to make the slightest bit of difference.’
In fact, Max was sure that it wouldn’t. The offer already made was far above the market value of the property, and despite the fact that the Calendar sisters obviously weren’t exactly wealthy, none of them had been in the least tempted to accept the offer. Money, it seemed, just wasn’t important to them.
‘I really don’t want to have to come over there myself, Max,’ Jude said softly.
Max didn’t want the other man to come here himself, either. For one thing, it implied failure on his part if Jude had to deal with this himself. For another, he simply didn’t want Jude coming here, meeting the three sisters, putting that two and two together, and realizing that Max’s real problem was January!
It seemed that, unless he wanted to admit the truth to Jude, that he had unwittingly become personally involved with January, one of the Calendar sisters, something he would rather not do, he really had no choice but to stay here and continue the negotiations on Jude’s behalf.
‘I asked you to leave it with me a few days longer,’ he reminded the other man harshly.
‘A few more days is all you have, Max,’ Jude conceded warningly before abruptly ending the call.
Max slowly replaced his own receiver before turning to stare frustratedly out of the window of his hotel room, the snow once again falling outside not helping the darkness of his mood. What a damned mess!
There was obviously no way Jude was going to back down from buying the Calendar farm. Which meant that Max couldn’t either.
But how to persuade the Calendar sisters into changing their minds was the problem. Having now met all of them, an insurmountable one, as far as he could see.
But nowhere near as insurmountable as the problem January had become to him personally.
Indulging in an affair with her for the time he was in the area had seemed like a pleasant way to spend his free time. The fact that she had turned out to be one of the reasons he was here at all completely changed that. Besides, having got to know January a little better, having met her sisters, he now knew that January was not the type of woman to have an affair. With anyone.
But least of all him.
Whereas he knew he still wanted her with a fierceness that took his breath away, that everything about her fascinated him: the way she moved, the way she talked, everything!
‘EXACTLY what do you think you’re playing at?’