“Let me,” Max had said, reaching for the bill.
“No, please! I can afford it,” she’d replied. “And it’s my pleasure to do so.”
But he’d insisted. “Humor me, Gabriella. I’m one of those dull, old-fashioned North Americans who thinks the man should pay.”
“Dull?” She’d turned her stunning sea-green eyes on him and he’d found himself drowning in their translucent depths. “I find you rather wonderful.”
For a moment, he’d thought he caught a glimpse of something fragile beneath her vivacity. A wistful innocence almost, that belied her frequent implicit reference to previous lovers. It was gone so quickly that he decided he must have imagined it, but the impression, brief though it was, found its way through his defenses and touched him in ways he hadn’t anticipated.
If she were anyone else and his sole reason for visiting Hungary had been a summer of fun in the sun, he’d have found her hard to resist. But there was no place in his plans for a serious involvement, and he hoped he had enough class not to engage in a sexual fling with his hosts’ daughter.
The way Gabriella had studied him suggested she knew full well the thoughts chasing through his mind, and was determined to change them. Her usual worldly mask firmly in place again, she asked in a voice husky with promise, “Do you like to dance, Max?”
“I can manage a two-step without crippling my partner,” he said, half bewitched by her brazen flirting and half annoyed to find himself responding to it despite what his conscience was telling him.
“Would you like to dance with me?”
“Here?” He’d glance at the hulking shadow of Mátyás Church, and the sunny square next to it, filled with camera-toting tourists. “I don’t think so, thanks!”
“Of course not here!” She’d laughed and he was once again reminded of music, of wind chimes swaying in a summer breeze. Good sense be damned, he’d found himself gazing at her heart-shaped face with its perfect strawberry-ripe, cupid’s-bow mouth and wondering how she would taste if he were to kiss her.
“My parents would like to throw a party for you,” she went on, drawing his gaze down by crossing her long, lovely legs so that the hem of her skirt, short enough to begin with, rode a couple of inches farther up her thigh. “They hold your family in such esteem, as I’m sure you know. Your grandfather is a legend in this city.”
“He took a few photographs.” Max had shrugged, as much to dispel the enchantment she was weaving as to dispute her claim. “No big deal. That was how he earned a living.”
“For the people of Budapest, he was a hero. He braved imprisonment to record our history when most men with his diplomatic immunity would have made their escape. As his grandson, you are our honored guest and it’s our privilege to treat you accordingly.”
“I’m here on business, Gabriella, not to make the social scene,” he reminded her. “It was never my intention to impose on your family for more than an hour or two, just long enough to pay my respects. That your parents insisted I stay in their home when I had a perfectly good hotel room reserved—”
“Charles Logan’s grandson stay in a hotel?” Her laughter had flowed over him again beguilingly. Her fingers grazed his forearm and lingered at his wrist, gently shackling him. “Out of the question! Neither my mother nor my father would allow such a thing. You’re to stay with us as long as, and whenever, you’re in Budapest”
A completely illogical prickle of foreboding had tracked the length of his spine and despite the bright hot sun, he’d felt a sudden chill. “I don’t anticipate many return visits. Once I’ve concluded the terms and conditions of the property I’m interested in buying and have the necessary permits approved, I’ll turn the entire restoration process over to my project manager and head back home.”
“All the more reason for us to entertain you royally while we have the chance then,” she’d said, leaning forward so that, without having to try too hard, he was able to glimpse the lightly tanned cleavage revealed by the low neck of her summer dress. She hadn’t been wearing a bra.
Responding to so shameless an invitation had been his first in a long line of mistakes that came to a head about a month later when the promised party took place. It seemed to him that half the population of Budapest showed up for the event and while he lost track of names almost immediately, everyone appeared to know not only of his grandfather but, surprisingly, of him, his purchase of the dilapidated old building across the river, and his plans to turn it into yet another of his chain of small, international luxury hotels.
“You see,” Gabriella had cooed in his ear, slipping her hand under his elbow and leaning close enough for the sunlit scent of her pale gold hair to cloud his senses, “it’s not just Charles Logan’s grandson they’ve come to meet. You’re a celebrity in your own right, Max.”
She looked exquisite in a sleeveless flame-pink dress made all the more dramatic by its simple, fitted lines. The eye of every man in the place was drawn to her, and his had been no exception. “I’m surprised people don’t resent a foreigner snapping up their real estate,” he’d said, tearing his gaze away and concentrating instead on the bubbles rising in his glass of champagne.
“You’re creating work for people, bringing tourism here in greater numbers, helping to rebuild our economy. What possible reason could anyone have to resent such a man?”
He’d been flattered, no doubt about it. What man wouldn’t have been, with a roomful of Budapest’s social elite smiling benignly at him and a stunningly beautiful woman hanging on his every word?
He should have been satisfied with that. Instead, he’d gone along with it when she’d monopolized him on the dance floor because hey, he was passing through town only, so what harm was there in letting her snuggle just a bit too close? Not until it was too late to change things had he seen that in being her passive conspirator, he’d contributed to the evening ending in a disaster that kept on going from bad to worse.
“Didn’t we, Max?”
Glad to escape memories guaranteed to unleash nothing but shame and resentment, he stared at the too thin woman facing him; the woman who, despite the fact that they lived hundreds of miles apart and hadn’t spent a night under the same roof in eighteen months, was still technically his wife. “Didn’t we what?”
“Like each other, at one time. Very much, in fact.”
“At one time, Gabriella, and they are the operative words,” he said, steeling himself against the look of naked hope on her face. “As far as I’m concerned, everything changed after that party you coerced your parents into hosting.”
“You’re never going to forgive me for what I did that night, are you? Nothing I can say or do will ever convince you that I never intended to trap you into marriage.”
“No. You stooped to the lowest kind of deceit when you let me believe you’d had previous lovers.”
“I never actually said that.”
“You implied it, more than once.”
“You were a sophisticated, worldly North American and I wanted to impress you—be like the kind of women I thought you admired, instead of a dowdy Hungarian virgin who hadn’t the first idea how to please a man.”
“My kind of woman wouldn’t have behaved like a tramp.”
“I was desperate, Max—desperately in love with you. And foolish enough to think that giving myself to you might make you love me back.” She bit her lip and fiddled with the thin gold chain on her wrist; the same gold chain she’d worn when she’d come sneaking through the darkened halls and let herself into his room while everyone else slept, himself included. “Your time in Budapest was coming to an end. You were making plans to return to Canada, and I couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing you again.”
“So