‘Really? I like that. Tell me more.’
As she pushed him for details, forcing him to reach beyond the basics, Max actually began to relax, feel that this was, after all, going to be possible.
‘I meant it when I said I’d take you there. I’d like you to see it for yourself.’
‘And after Qu’Arim, what then?’ she asked, not picking up on his invitation, but not refusing it, either. ‘How far and how fast are you planning to take this?’
‘How big is the world? The Americas, Asia, Europe.’
‘Europe? Have you considered Meridia?’
‘Obviously it’s on the list.’
‘I suggest you put it at the top. Bella Lucia catered for the coronation, and now that your sister is Queen I’d have a bidding war from the gossip mags to cover the opening of a new restaurant there.’
‘We don’t display our clientele for the media, Lou. We give them privacy.’
‘Okay, I could use that as an angle. Pictures of the interior preopening offering a glimpse of something most people will never see. Mystery, privacy, the unattainable. A glimpse of lace is always more intriguing than total nudity.’
Max found himself staring at the cashmere sweater Louise was wearing. It was some complicated wrap-around thing that crossed over her breasts, offering no more than a suggestion of cleavage, a promise of hidden delights. She didn’t have to explain the allure of the unattainable to him. He’d lived with it for as long as he could remember.
CHAPTER TWO
‘THAT rather depends on who’s wearing the lace,’ Max said abruptly. ‘And what she looks like when she’s shed it.’
Louise raised an eyebrow. What was eating him?
‘You’ve spent more time in Meridia than I have,’ he went on, before she could ask. ‘What are the options for us there?’
She shrugged, let it go. ‘What are the limits of your imagination? Somewhere really sumptuous high up in the old part of the capital, near the castle. Or maybe something completely different. A place where families could sit outside and eat in the summer. Maybe somewhere with a dock, since everybody seems to have a boat.’
Seeing it in her mind’s eye, she was suddenly seized with enthusiasm, her thoughts running faster than she could say them.
‘A lakeside pavilion, perhaps. Something…’
‘Something what?’ Max prompted.
‘Um…Something simple, uncluttered, informal,’ she said, suddenly realising that she was using her hands to describe her thoughts. She’d always done that. Her mother used to say it was her Italian ancestry coming out. Nonsense, of course. There was no Italian connection; John Valentine had been born before his father had ever met Lucia. But then her entire history had been founded on lies…
‘How soon can you wind up your business and join us, Louise?’ he asked, cutting into the black thoughts that threatened to engulf her.
Bringing her back to earth.
‘Excuse me?’ Her tone was deceptively mild. Her assistant would have winced. But for a few minutes there she’d let herself imagine a different future, forget reality, but Max never let her down. Already he was assuming he’d won, but then he was a man programmed never to lose.
‘Why on earth would I give up a business I’ve built from scratch to come and work for you?’
Max smiled. ‘It’s a bit late to start pretending you’re not interested, Lou.’
‘I…’In her enthusiasm she’d leaned into the table and suddenly realised just how close they were. Close enough for her to drown in dangerously deep blue eyes that had been mesmerising her for as long as she could remember. Close enough to catch the warm, male scent of his skin. To feel the tug of something she’d been resisting since she was old enough to understand that it was wrong.
She sat back, putting enough distance between them to feel, if not safe, then in control. ‘My interest is purely professional, Max.’
There had been a time she would have died of happiness to have Max wanting her, needing her, but there was no way she’d give up her independence and crawl back under the shelter of the Valentine umbrella. Not now. She didn’t need them. Didn’t need him.
‘Apart from anything else, I’m considering branching out myself,’ she said, ‘opening an office in Melbourne, using that as my base in Australia.’
He looked as if she’d hit him with a club.
She might have enjoyed that more if she hadn’t been swept away, just for a moment, thinking what might have been. If anyone but Max were involved.
‘You have a life, a family here,’ he protested.
‘You think so? Now Dad’s skeletons have climbed out of the closet I find myself excess to requirements.’
Max looked as if he was going to deny it, but they’d both seen just how far John Valentine would go for sons he’d only just discovered existed. Even when one of them had nearly ruined the company, he’d still been sheltered, cared for. Loved.
‘Have you told your parents? That you’re considering moving to Australia?’
Louise swallowed. ‘Not yet.’
‘You’re hurting, I understand that, but don’t cut yourself off from your family, Louise.’
Family, family…He was always going on about the precious family; as a boy he’d spent more time with hers than with his own…
‘I take it the toy boy is part of the plan,’ he said, an edge to his voice that could have cut glass.
Relieved to be out of the quicksand of family relationships, she managed an arch, ‘Are you, by any chance, referring to Cal Jameson?’
‘If he’s the one who was all over you at the Christmas party, then yes, that’s who I mean.’
‘He wasn’t all over me,’ she declared.
So much for her vow to keep her cool. With Max, that was only ever going to be a temporary measure.
‘Oh, please. You arrived at the Christmas party dressed like some centrefold Santa—’
‘I always come as Santa!’
With the long-running friction between her father and Uncle Robert—Max’s father—the family Christmas party was a minefield of tension at the best of times and she’d taken to turning up in a Santa suit bearing a sack filled with clever little presents matched to each member of the family. Her contribution to peace on earth in the Valentine family; bath oil on troubled waters.
This year, though, there had been two new family members; the sons that John Valentine hadn’t known existed until a few months ago. Her only reason for pouring oil would have been to set fire to it so she’d abandoned the traditional ‘ho, ho, ho’ Santa outfit in favour of a red suede miniskirt with matching boots, a white angora crop top and a mistletoe navel ring—one that lit up and flashed in the dark.
Her cheeks heated at the memory. With the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight it was obvious that inviting Cal to kiss her under the mistletoe—purely to wind up a scowling Max—had been a mistake.
She should have anticipated that he’d ask, ‘How far under…’
‘I have family in Australia,’ she said, quickly, before Max made the kind of remark guaranteed to provoke her beyond reason. ‘A married sister.’
‘You barely know her,’ he pointed out, infuriatingly reasonable.
‘And already I like her