Temporary Parents. SARA WOOD
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deals and where international flights were far more commonplace than number nine buses.
Perhaps aware that she hadn’t moved for a few moments, he began drumming his fingers on the high windowsill and tapping his foot Max hated being cooped up as much as he hated being kept waiting, she reflected, pushing hangers about aimlessly. He was the most restless and active man she’d ever known.
‘Will you step on it?’ he complained impatiently. ‘I’ve got a flight to catch—and you have one hell of a lot to organise.’
‘I have?’ That didn’t sound as if he was planning a confession about his relationship with Fay—and the consequences. Puzzled, Laura heaved the towel around her top half, grabbed her best suit from the wardrobe and slid the short, straight skirt up over her slender hips. Instantly she felt prim and efficient. ‘You’d better talk while I dress, then,’ she advised edgily.
His persistent drumming and tapping was driving her mad. She felt a dangerous shakiness creeping into her voice, and tried to calm down. Steeling herself, she flung down the gauntlet.
‘Tell me about you and Fay,’ she ordered.
‘Me and...?’
Jerking her head around, alerted by his astonishment, she found that he was facing her, meeting her startled gaze with a hard, uncomprehending stare. She recoiled, shaken. Partly, if she was honest, by the unexpected head-on impact of his stunning good looks.
‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?’ she demanded, refusing to let him intimidate her. He was the one in the wrong! Was he now going to deny the whole affair? ‘Losing courage to speak? Don’t make me despise you more than I already do, Max,’ she muttered.
His dark eyes narrowed but she realised he hadn’t heard a word. For the first time he was scrutinising her still puffy eyes fringed with wet black lashes, her tousled hair and unevenly pink and white skin, fresh from its brutal assault at the basin.
She stared back at the pure lines of his sculpted jaw and tried not to feel crushed by his assessment, and horribly unattractive.
‘What the devil’s been happening to you?’
The softly spoken concern wriggled briefly beneath her defences. Then she remembered. He didn’t really care a jot. This was how he got women sewing on his buttons.
‘Nothing. A busy morning,’ she replied crossly, struck by the ruthless perfection of his grooming and the messiness of hers. Already he’d lowered her self-esteem.
Desperate not to let it sink further, she straightened the slipping towel around her tiny body, turned back to the mirror and grabbed a brush. As she forced it through her tangled mop, she longed for her hair to miraculously turn into a smooth, sophisticated style for once.
She could see Max watching critically, his arms folded over his lean, taut torso and the plumb-line-straight navy tie accurately bisecting the advertisement-white shirt.
‘I can understand,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘that the guy downstairs mussed your hair up in that clinch...but who made you cry in the first place?’
Her lip quivered and she pulled it into a grimace. He’d laugh if she said a baby! So she said nothing, not even issuing a denial about the clinch. Her brushing became more frantic, but she only ended up with shiny, fly-away hair which flew away in a multitude of directions.
Her face looked small and defenceless, her short upper lip bowing to form an ‘oh’ of dismay. Two enormous, wet-fringed eyes stared back at her. She looked as if she’d been stabbed in the heart.
Max didn’t let up. ‘You and the beefy guy had a row...’ He paused in the middle of his surmising, a faint frown on his beautifully tanned forehead. ‘About me? Because I was coming here and you’d told him we’d been lovers?’ he guessed.
‘Don’t exaggerate your own importance!’ she said, shooting a scornful glance at his reflection.
But she quailed at his piercing, bone-melting assessment and longed to be in full war paint for protection. She picked up a tube of all-in-one foundation and powder and began to spread it with shaking, ice-cold fingers.
‘You were kissing and—’
‘No! That’s a lie!’
Disastrously forgetting her intention to stay composed, Laura whirled around indignantly, her eyes glowing fiercely in anger, hair flying about her briefly animated face in jet black tendrils. The wild gipsy look, he’d once said admiringly, before he’d crushed her soft, poppy-coloured mouth beneath his.
For a moment there was a flash of intense light in Max’s eyes. She felt it searing a path straight for her soul. But she was dead inside and it didn’t reach anywhere important. He didn’t even know he was projecting sexual desire, she thought peevishly. It was as natural to him as breathing.
‘Too vehement a response, Laura,’ he declared quietly. ‘I saw you quite clearly. And why shouldn’t you hug and kiss him? Unless...’ His mouth became a tight snarl. ‘Unless he’s married, of course?’
She couldn’t help widening her eyes at his deduction. ‘He owns the business,’ she said evasively, for something to say.
‘And he employs you,’ Max persisted, in a savage undertone, contempt rippling through his harsh features. ‘He gives you a flat—’
‘It’s a bedsit!’ she declared. ‘Of the non-swinging-cat variety! And I pay for it. And I get up at five to start the ovens—’
‘It’s very convenient,’ he agreed disparagingly.
She fell silent. He was going to think the worst of her, but she wasn’t going to keep protesting her innocence. What was the point? In half an hour or so Max would be out of her life again. She hoped.
His lashes dropped, and she realised he was watching the way the first curves of her pinkly shining breasts rose and fell above the failing towel. They went pinker still and her skin prickled as if he’d switched on an electric current in her body.
She turned her back on him and rummaged in a drawer for her shirt, drawing it on and securing the first two buttons before replying.
‘I don’t owe you any explanation of my behaviour,’ she said flatly.
‘No. You don’t So long as you don’t ask for any explanation of mine.’
They were getting closer to the confession. He felt ashamed of two-timing her. Good!
Triumphantly she finished doing up the last button—only to find it wasn’t the last button at all. She had one left over. Annoyed, she started again. Doggedly she worked her way down, her fingers fumbling because he’d moved to one side and was watching every move she made. Her breathing thickened—or the air did; she wasn’t sure.
‘Are you ready to listen now?’ Max asked.
‘Perfectly.’
She made sure she spoke in a clipped tone. From now on she’d be detached. He wasn’t used to women showing no interest in him and it pleased her that, despite looking and sounding devastatingly handsome and sexy, he’d roused no deep, lingering desires.
A little more confidently, she tucked the shirt in and arranged her small body primly in a threadbare wing chair. Legs neatly crossed at the ankles. Back erect. Distantly involved expression on her face.
‘Fire away,’ she said, with all the appearance of a woman about to hear something boring. But she felt she might snap at any moment.
Max began wandering about and fingering everything he came across. ‘I hope you realise I should be in Paris.’
Absently he stroked the gleaming top of the cluttered mahogany sewing table which had once belonged to her grandmother. He seemed absorbed by the feel of the highly polished wood, his whole face responding to the satiny sensuousness beneath his fingertips. It was a very hedonistic action and had Laura’s gaze glued to every