“Thank you, I will—and about Michael Cort…”
“There is nothing more to say about Michael.”
“Except that I’m not in the same league with him vis-à-vis you, correct?” He waited for her to answer. When she didn’t, he mildly remarked, “Ouch.”
God. Did he have to be so calm and reasonable on top of all the hotness and being so easy to talk to and having the same interests as she did? He was a quadruple threat. At least. “Can we just not talk about Michael?”
“All right. Tell me why you find this thing between us…how did you put it? ‘Overwhelming’ and ‘consuming’ and ‘too much.’”
“Isn’t that self-evident?”
“Tell me anyway.”
Against her better judgment, she went ahead and tried. “Well, I just…I don’t have time to be consumed with, er, passion, now. There are only so many hours in a day and I…” Dear Lord. Not enough time to be consumed with passion? Had she really said that?
“Tell me the rest,” he prompted evenly.
She groaned. “It’s only that, well, my dad’s a wonderful teacher, the head of the English department at Beaufort State College in Beaufort, Texas, which is west of Fort Worth…” He was frowning, no doubt wondering what any of that had to do with the subject at hand—and why wouldn’t he wonder? For a person who hoped someday to write for a living, she was doing a terrible job of keeping to the point and making herself understood.
“You told me months ago that your father’s a teacher,” he reminded her patiently.
“My father is successful. He’s head of his department. My mother’s a pediatrician. And my big brother, Carlos, owns five restaurants. Carlos got married last year to a gorgeous, brilliant woman who runs her own dancing school. In my family, we figure out what we want to do and we get out there and do it. Okay, we don’t rule principalities or anything. But we contribute to our community. We find work we love and we excel at it.”
“You have no problem then. You have work you love and you’re very good at it.”
“Yes, I’m good with children, and I love taking care of Trev and Ellie.”
“You’re an excellent nanny, I know. But that isn’t the work you love, really, is it?”
She folded her hands in her lap and stared down at them—and wandered off topic some more. “My dad wanted me to follow in his footsteps and be a teacher. From the first, I knew I wanted to write. He said I could do both. Of course, he was right. But I didn’t want to do it his way, didn’t want to teach. We argued a lot. And the truth is I wasn’t dedicated to my writing, not at first. I had some…difficulties. And I took my sweet time getting through college.”
“Difficulties?”
Why had she even hinted at any of that? “Just difficulties, that’s all.”
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
She shook her head tightly and went on with her story. “My parents would have paid for my education, even though they weren’t happy with my choices. But I was proud. I wanted to make it on my own.”
“You were proud?” he teased.
She felt her cheeks grow warm. “Okay, yeah. I am proud. I met Syd and we were like sisters from the first. I went to work for her, became her live-in housekeeper before she had Trev, to help put myself through school. And then once I got my degree, I stayed on with her, working for her, but with plenty of time to write. I worked hard at the writing, but it never took off for me. I lacked focus. Until I came here, until I knew the stories I wanted to write. And now I do know, Max. Now I’ve got the focus and the drive that I need, plus the stories I want to tell.”
Max was sitting forward in the chair, his gray-blue gaze intense. “Have I somehow given you the idea that I think you should stop writing and spend every spare moment in bed with me?”
“Uh, no. No, of course you haven’t. It’s just that I have goals and I need to meet them. I need, you know, to make something of myself. I really do, Max.”
He went on leaning forward in the chair, watching her. And she had that feeling she sometimes got around him, the feeling that used to make her all warm and fuzzy inside, because he knew her, he understood her. Too bad that lately, since New Year’s, that feeling made her worry that he knew too much about her, and that he would use what he knew to push her to do things his way. He said, “You want your parents to be proud of you—and you don’t feel that they are right now.”
Her mouth went dry. She licked her lips. “I didn’t say that.”
He went further. “You’re embarrassed that it bothers you, what your parents think. Because you’re twenty-nine years old and you believe you should be beyond trying to live up to their ideals. But you’re not beyond it, Lani. You’re afraid that it will somehow get out that we’ve been lovers and that your mother and father will read about it in the tabloids, tacky stories of the nanny shagging the prince. You’re afraid they’ll judge you in all the ways you’re judging yourself. You’re afraid they’ll think less of you, and you already feel they look down on you as it is.”
“No. Really, they’re good people. They don’t look down on me, and I love them very much.”
“Plus, you’re clinging to a completely unfounded idea that I’ll grow tired of you and have you banished from Montedoro in shame.”
She groaned. “Okay, it really sounds silly when you put it that way.”
“Good. Because it is silly. I’ve given you my word that it’s never going to happen. And I never break my word.” He was frowning again, holding her gaze as though he could look right through her eyes into her mind. “There’s more, isn’t there? Something deeper, something you haven’t told me yet. Something to do with those ‘difficulties’ you had that you wouldn’t explain to me.”
Uh-uh. No. Not going there. Never going there. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does.”
It was long in the past. She’d survived and moved on, and she didn’t want to get into it with him now—or ever. She lifted her chin to a defiant angle and kept her mouth firmly shut.
Without warning, he stood. She gasped and stared up at him, a breathless weakness stealing through her at the sheer masculine beauty of him. And then he held down his hand to her. “Take it,” he said with such command and composure that it never occurred to her to do anything else.
She put her fingers in his. A dart of hungry fire flew up her arm, across her chest and downward, straight into the secret core of her. She should tell him to let go. But she didn’t. She only rose on shaky feet to stand with him and then stared up at him dazedly as hot, sweet memories of New Year’s Eve flashed through her brain.
He said gruffly, “There’s nothing wrong with wanting your mother and father to be proud of you. It gets dangerous only when you let your need for their approval run your life.”
She managed to muster a little attitude. “Do you have any idea how patronizing you sound?”
He only smiled. “Hit a nerve, did I? Also, you should know that very few authors can write a decent book before the age of thirty. Good writing requires life experience.”
“Do you think you’re reassuring me? Because you’re not.”
“I’m praising you. You’ve written five books and you’re not thirty yet. One is okay, two are quite good and the most recent two are amazing.”
“Five and a half books.” She was currently stuck in the middle of number six. “And how do you know how good they all are? You’ve only read the last two.” He’d actually offered to read them. And she’d