The first time Max had brought her here, she’d thought it was so romantic. Subsequent visits had been just as romantic. Tonight, however, the encounter with the brunette had turned Tara’s mind away from romance. Unless one could consider jealousy an element of romance. Max could say what he liked but the way that woman had looked at him—just for a moment—had been with the eyes of a woman who’d been more than a passing acquaintance, or an employee.
As the minutes dragged on—Max was spending an inordinate amount of time studying the drinks menu—her agitation increased. By the time the waiter departed and the opportunity presented itself to ask him about the infernal woman, Tara feared she was going to put her questions all wrong. She dithered over what to actually say.
‘There’s no need to be jealous,’ Max pronounced abruptly. ‘Alicia was Stevie’s girlfriend, not mine.’
‘I wasn’t jealous,’ Tara lied with a lift of her chin. ‘Just bewildered by your rudeness. So what did this Alicia do to Stevie to make you hate her so much?’
‘The moment my brother was diagnosed with testicular cancer, Alicia dumped him like a shot. Said she couldn’t cope.’
Tara was stunned to see Max’s hands tremble as he raked them through his hair.
‘My God, she couldn’t cope,’ he growled. ‘How did she think Stevie was going to cope when the girl he loved—and who he thought loved him—didn’t stand by him through his illness? I blame her entirely for his treatment being unsuccessful. When she left him, he lost the will to live.’
‘But I thought…’
‘Yes, yes, I blame my father, too. But Alicia even more so. At least Dad never pretended a devotion to Stevie. When he didn’t come home to be by his dying son’s bedside, it wasn’t such a shock. Not to Stevie, anyway. He told me just days before he died that Dad didn’t love him the way he loved me.’ Max’s deeply set blue eyes looked haunted. ‘God, Tara, do you know how I felt when he said that? Stevie, who was such a good boy, who’d never hurt anyone in his life. How could any father not love him more than me? I wasn’t a patch on my little brother.’
Tara frowned. Max had told her ages ago about the circumstances surrounding his younger brother’s tragic death. Yet he’d never mentioned Stevie’s girlfriend’s part in it.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about Alicia, Max? You told me what your father did.’
‘I don’t like to talk about Stevie. I told you as much as I had to, to explain why I didn’t invite you home to visit my parents, especially last Christmas. Alicia was irrelevant to that explanation,’ he finished brusquely. ‘Aah, here’s the champagne.’
Tara wasn’t totally satisfied with Max’s explanation but stayed silent whilst the waiter opened the bottle, poured them both a glass then finally departed after Max told him to return in ten minutes for their meal order.
‘It’s not like you to order champagne,’ she said as she took a sip. Max usually ordered red wine.
‘I thought we would share a bottle. To celebrate the anniversary of our meeting. It was a year ago today that I walked into Whitmore’s. Of course, it was a Friday not a Saturday, but the date’s spot-on.’
‘Oh, Max, how sweet of you to remember!’
‘I’m a sweet guy.’
Tara smiled. ‘You can be. Obviously. But I wouldn’t say sweetness is one of your best-known attributes.’
‘No?’ He smiled across the table, reminding her for the second time that night how very handsome he was. ‘So what is my best-known attribute?’
She couldn’t help it. She blushed.
Max laughed. ‘I will take that as a compliment. Although you’ve hardly been able to compare, since I’m your one and only lover. At least, I presume I am. Though maybe not for long, after today.’
‘What on earth do you mean by that?’
‘Maybe you’ll want to fly to other places. Experience other men.’
Tara stared at him. ‘You don’t know me very well if you think that. What happened earlier, Max, is because I love you deeply and trust you totally. I could never be like that with some other man. I would just die of embarrassment and shame.’
His eyes softened on her. ‘You really mean that, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do!’
He shook his head. ‘You’re one in a million, Tara. There truly aren’t many women like you out there for men like me. True love is a luxury not often enjoyed by the rich and famous. Our attractiveness lies in our bank balances, not our selves.’
‘I don’t believe that. You’re far too cynical, Max.’
‘I’ve met far too many Alicias not to be cynical. Do you know that within six months of telling Stevie she loved him but couldn’t cope, she’d married another heir to a fortune? Then, when she’d divorced that sucker twelve months later, she even had the temerity to make a line for me one night when our paths crossed.’
‘And?’
‘And what?’
‘Don’t take me for a total fool, Max. Something happened between you two. I felt it.’
He sighed. ‘You feel too much sometimes. OK, so I was in a vengeful mood that night. When Alicia started coming on to me, I played along with it. When I suggested leaving the party we were attending she jumped at the chance, even though she’d come with someone else. I took her to a club, where we drank and danced.’
Danced! Tara’s stomach crunched down hard at the mere thought of another woman in her Max’s arms. She knew it was before they’d met, but still…
‘I waited for her to make her excuses about Stevie,’ Max continued as he twisted his champagne glass round and round. ‘I knew she would. But what she said really floored me. She told me that she’d only dated Stevie to be near me. She told me that she’d never really loved my brother. It was me she’d loved all along. She claimed she only married that other man because she thought she had no chance with me. I told her what I thought of her and her so-called love and walked out.’
Tara never said a word, because she suspected that what the woman had said might be true. She’d seen a photograph of Stevie and whilst he had been a nice-looking boy, his face had lacked Max’s strength and charisma.
‘Love is just a weapon to such women,’ Max added testily. ‘My own mother pretends she still loves my father, despite his having been a neglectful husband, as well as a neglectful father. Why? Because it would probably cost too much money to divorce him. I overheard her tell a lady friend once that she knew about Dad’s womanising ways, but turned a blind eye. Even now that he’s in a wheelchair, a wretched wreck of a man, she stays with him, catering to his every need. They’re as bad as each other, bound together by their greed and their lack of moral fibre. That’s why I have as little as possible to do with them these days. Both of them make me sick.’
Tara was stunned by his outburst, and the depth of his bitterness. Bitterness was never good for anyone’s soul. Neither was revenge. It was very self-destructive.
‘But you could be wrong, Max,’ she ventured quietly. ‘Your mother might very well love your father. There might be things you don’t know. We rarely know what goes on inside a marriage. I found that out last weekend. I always thought my sister was unhappy in her marriage. She fell pregnant, you see, during her last year at school. Dale wasn’t much older, and still doing his plumbing apprenticeship. They got married, with Jen thinking she could finish her schooling. But she was too sick during her pregnancy to study. Then, when her first baby was barely six months old, she fell pregnant again. She’s always complaining about her