Max's Proposal

“I’m asking you to marry me,” Max said slowly About the Author Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT Copyright

“I’m asking you to marry me,” Max said slowly

Sara froze. “What did you say? Are you drunk?” she gasped.

“Not in the least.”

“Why?”

“I’m in my mid-thirties, I’m tired of playing the field and I need a wife.” Which still left the question unanswered.

“But why me?”

“You’re honest. You’re loyal, you’re bright and beautiful, and I find you very desirable. I mistrust love matches. I’m not an emotional man, and from what I’ve seen of others, love usually turns into a bad joke.”

Sara was lost for words....

Jane Donnelly began eaming her living as a teenage reporter. When she married the editor of the newspaper, she freelanced for women’s magazines for a while, and wrote her first Harlequin® novel as a hard-up single parent. Now she lives in a roses-around-the-door cottage in England near Stratford-on-Avon, with her daughter, four dogs and assorted rescued animals. Besides writing she enjoys traveling, swimming, walking and the company of friends.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

SARA SOLWAY’S toes felt red-hot in the pretty pumps with the rhinestone heels. So much for that bargain. Marked down in the sales, she hadn’t been able to resist them. Now if she didn’t get out of them soon she would be needing scissors to cut them off because she could feel her feet puffing up. Music and voices filled the air from the Bonfire Night Ball in the great hall of the Moated House, but there was no one else in this corridor. Sara leaned against a door and balanced on one leg. But then the door swung inwards and sent her sprawling backwards into the room.

For a few seconds she lay winded on the carpet. Lights and noise spilled in from the corridor; behind her the shadowy room was quiet. She sat up, easing off her shoes, which felt wonderful. She was not going back straight away. She wouldn’t be missed for a while. She was on duty tonight, covering the ball for the local newspaper. Carrying her shoes, she padded between the shapes of furniture towards the long window at the far end of the room and the big wing-backed chair. She sank into the downy softness of the chair and pulled her feet up under her so that she could massage her insteps. When she went back she would get a strong black coffee to keep herself awake...

But then suddenly lights went on. She shifted slightly, flexing her shoulders, and stiffened when she recognised a man’s voice. She hadn’t caught the words. Realising who was speaking had brought her wide awake. Although he was the one with every right to walk into any room. It was his house. He was hosting tonight’s charity ball. If anyone strolled in, switching on lights, it would probably be Max Vella. But he was about the last man Sara wanted to find her snoozing in a hidden corner. Not that it was any of his business what she did. He didn’t own the Chronicle. Half the town maybe, but he was not her boss.

Then she heard him say, ‘Right, and now I’ll tell you what you’re going to do.’ Sara could be overhearing something top secret because he was not giving friendly advice he was issuing orders. Another man mumbled something and Vella said, ‘Just listen.’

Sara was a born reporter and that meant a born listener, and she huddled down in the chair, making herself as small as possible, bright-eyed with anticipation. She could see nothing. Her chair was turned away from the room, facing the window, and that was as well because it meant they couldn’t see her.

They were discussing some property that might be going at a knock-down rate, Sara gathered, and the other man was to grease palms and keep Vella’s name out of it. The other man didn’t sound too happy. He sounded small and anxious, while Max Vella was always big and aggressive enough to stop a tank.

She must remember every word. This could add up to a corruption expose. The local paper she worked for would be wary of taking on one of the town’s leading employers, but there were other papers and radio stations that would be interested.

They seemed to be walking away from her towards the door, because the voices were quieter until she heard Vella say, ‘If he won’t co-operate I want him out of the way permanently. Another accident. As soon as possible.’ Sara’s little glow of triumph went as abruptly as if icy water had been tipped over her. He couldn’t have meant what she thought he’d meant. Everybody knew he was as ruthless as they come, but out of the way permanently ...?

This sort of thing was part of the plot of novels and TV films. It did happen. But when you’d come along to cover a charity bash and overheard your host arranging a fatal accident it paralysed you. Another accident? How many had there been? She pressed fingertips to her temples, feeling a vein pulsing hotly beneath the thin skin. What was she going to do? Who should she tell? Who would believe her when she said she’d fallen asleep and woken to hear this? They would think she’d still been only half-awake, and with only Sara’s word who would make an enemy of Max Vella?

He had the clout of big money. But somebody’s life was in danger and when she got out of here she must look for who was with Vella. She would have to if he and the man were still together—although she probably wouldn’t recognise the other man’s voice as it had hardly been raised above a murmur.

She was breathing fast and shallowly, like a cornered animal. There had been silence since she’d heard the door close. They had surely been gone long enough for her to creep out and hurry back into the cover of the crowds, but she couldn’t move a muscle. She was punch-drunk, shocked rigid and she felt him before she saw him.

His shadow seemed to fall over her and then he was beside the chair, looming over her. ‘Well, hello,’ he said. ‘What have we here?’

Instinctively and frantically she tried to grin, stretching her lips in a grimace that might pass as a smile, gibbering, ‘Oh, hello; this is a wonderfully comfortable chair. It’s a dreadful thing to say but I fell asleep for a few minutes. Not that this isn’t a brilliant party, but my shoes were pinching so I kicked them off and closed my eyes.’ She looked at her wrist-watch, and he must see how her hand was shaking. ‘Am I in time for the fireworks?’

‘You haven’t missed the fireworks,’ he said. ‘You haven’t missed a thing.’

He knew what she had heard and she couldn’t get out of here. She couldn’t pass him; he was too big, too strong. She couldn’t scream either because her throat was closing up.

‘Not very observant, are you?’ he said.

‘Huh?’ What was he talking about?

‘Second frame along.’ He pointed to the window wall. ‘That, my little newshound, is a mirror.’

In a heavy gilt frame was a large lacquered painting of red goldfish among dark weeds. It looked Oriental, and you could easily imagine that the fish were swimming, the weeds swaying. Among several pictures, Sara hadn’t even glanced at it before, but the background was a mirror and she could see how it would reflect anyone sitting in the wing-backed chair.

‘When did you see me?’ The words jerked through her dry lips.

‘About a minute into the conversation I looked across and there was this sharp little face peering between the weeds.’ He sounded amused, and she choked.

‘You recognised me?’

‘I’ve got very good eyesight. Yes, I recognised the redhead from the Chronicle.’

He must have eyes like a hawk, but Sara’s hair was bright. Looking into the mirror background now, she saw her own worried face, her hair the colour of the lacquered goldfish, and the tall, dark figure of the man beside her. She couldn’t turn and face him but she couldn’t take her eyes off his reflection.

‘You’d no business being in here,’ he went on. ‘And what you heard doesn’t amount to a row of beans. I’m interested in some real estate, but if I make an offer in my name the price goes up. I’m using a middleman, and so what? But, going by your beady eyes and the way your nose was twitching, you thought you’d got yourself a nice little scoop.’

He had been making a fool of her, and he was laughing at her now. ‘Did you both see me?’ she asked.

‘He’s short-sighted. He didn’t see you and he wasn’t in the room towards the end, but I wondered how you’d react if you thought you’d hit the lottery. You couldn’t believe your ears at first, could you? I saw you shaking your head. Then you decided it was for real. You actually believed I was knocking off the competition.’

She said sharply, ‘Of course I didn’t.’

‘Of course you did. You were scared silly.’

She was relieved of course that he had been playacting, but it had made her feel ill, and she snapped, ‘Of course I was shocked; I was appalled.’

‘It’s appalling that you were stupid enough to credit it.’

She jumped out of the chair to round on him, resentment bubbling up in her. ‘Why shouldn’t I believe it? For all I know you could be ordering accidents like hot dinners, and it was a stupid thing to do. I nearly had a heart attack.’

‘Serves you right,’ he said. ‘Skulking in corners, snooping.’ He tutted at her as if she were a pushy child.

When she said coldly, ‘I am a journalist,’ he grinned.

‘Not much of a one if you’re gullible enough to believe somebody would brief a hit man without making damn sure no one else was listening.’

But the room had been in darkness and must have seemed empty, and she was not as sharp as usual. Last night almost without sleep had dulled her wits, and belatedly she tried for a little dignity. ‘I was asleep in here. I woke up when you came in so I didn’t have that much time to clear my head.’

The top of her head reached halfway up his chest. Tall and powerfully built, he towered over her, and she needed the extra inches her high heels would give her. One shoe was right there and she shoved her foot into it, looking round for its mate.

‘I hope I can walk in these,’ she babbled. ‘It’s a mistake to take your shoes off if your feet get hot. I did it in a cinema once.’ Sara tended to jabber when she was nervous but not usually as badly as this.

The second shoe was under the footstool and as she kicked it out she swayed slightly. He need not have supported her and when he put a hand under her elbow it did more harm than good, startling her off-balance almost into his arms. And that was when the door opened and a couple took a couple of steps into the room. They both stared, gasped and backed out fast, pulling the door to behind them. Still holding Sara, Max Vella burst out laughing.

‘The question is,’ he said, ‘whether they think I’m assaulting you or we’re both enjoying this.’

She must have looked dishevelled to the pair who had just walked in, but it was such a mad idea that she and Max Vella were up to anything. And even crazier that he would be forcing himself on her. Sara couldn’t hold back a giggle.

She knew Vella, of course. She had met him at local functions where he was always a focus of attention. As he was anywhere. He was well over average height with a hard man’s good looks and the potent charisma of someone who had fought his way through rough times to come out right at the top.

She had also been in his arms before. Once. At a Lord Mayor’s ball when someone had bet her she wouldn’t dare ask him to dance, and Sara had taken the three paces that divided them and asked before she had given herself time to think. Then she had been in the middle of the dance floor with Vella as her partner, and he had said, ‘No comment, to whatever you’re going to ask next.’

He never gave interviews. He had thought that had been what she was after, and she’d said, ‘Would I ask you to dance for an interview?’

‘You would,’ he’d said. That near to him, she had been able to see how the sensual mouth curved when he smiled. There had been butterflies in her stomach and she’d quipped back, ‘I’ve just been dared to ask you. I have a very small bet riding on this.’

‘Not too small, I hope.’ He had been amused but she had begun to feel stupid. He was a stunningly sexy man but he was too rich and too strong for Sara.

Usually she was a good dancer but she had been dancing awkwardly then, wanting the music to stop. When it had he’d let her go at once and she’d backed off fast.

Now she was in his arms again, and this time she noticed the little lines that radiated from the corners of his eyes. He had hooded eyes, but she could see they were gun-metal grey, glinting with laughter, and the strength of him was overpowering enough to weaken her bones.

She croaked, ‘Shouldn’t we follow that couple and explain?’

‘Explain what?’

That they were going off with completely the wrong idea. But Sara wouldn’t know how to begin to explain so that had been a silly suggestion. If they gossiped it couldn’t matter to her. Almost certainly Max Vella wouldn’t care less what gossips said about him. He was no longer holding her, and she sat down on the footstool to ease her foot into the second shoe.

Vella had taken a chair too. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and that brought her head up with a jerk.

‘What for?’

‘For livening up the evening.’ She supposed she had given him a couple of laughs, what with this and the hit man.

‘Don’t tell me you were getting bored?’ she said sweetly.

‘I was not the one who fell asleep. You must have been bored to death.’

She was not expected to doze off when she was sent out to cover one of the top social occasions of the year. ‘I was tired,’ she said defensively.

‘You look healthy enough.’ He gave her a slow head-to-toe scrutiny and she found herself crossing her arms over her breasts as if she were covering nakedness, although her dress was perfectly adequate.

Of course she looked healthy. She was healthy. She had a slim, strong body and a clear complexion that looked even healthier than usual because she was flushing slightly under his stare. ‘How come the sudden lack of stamina?’ he enquired.

She snapped, ‘Lack of sleep last night.’

As she said it she realised how that could sound, and when he drawled, ‘Congratulations, is he here tonight?’ the blood burned even hotter on her cheekbones.

‘I was kept awake last night by four-year-old twins.’

Vella’s eyebrows rose. ‘Yours?’

He didn’t know much about her, except that she was the redhead from the Chronicle. Over the years they had had a few skirmishes. Once her paper had had to print an apology to him when Sara had misread her notes reporting a quote of his. But he had never shown any interest in her personally. She could be married or a single parent for all he knew. ‘They’re my sister’s,’ she said. ‘They were staying at my place last night and they ate half a pound of chocolate truffles between them.’

‘You sound about as useful a babysitter as you are a reporter.’

She prided herself on being accurate and conscientious in her work—that slip-up had been years ago—and she snapped, ‘How the hell would you know what I’m like as a babysitter? I didn’t give them the chocolates. They found them after they’d been put to bed.’ Sleeping pills had kept her sister Beth deep asleep in the little bed in Sara’s tiny spare room, and she had come into the kitchen this morning white-faced and heavy-eyed, as Sara had boiled a kettle for early-morning tea.

Sara had explained that the twins had passed a sickly night but were sleeping now, and Beth had said, ‘Wouldn’t you know it? I’m sorry, Sar, but we’ll have to go back. I know what you’re going to say and you’re right, of course, but I can’t help loving him.’

It was no more than Sara had expected. ‘Can’t help loving that man’ seemed to be the curse of the Solway women. Not Sara, but both her sister and her mother.

Head down now, Sara fumbled with her shoe, her hair veiling her face so Max Vella couldn’t see the shadow that crossed her face. She had had plenty of practice at hiding her personal problems, and when he said, ‘You didn’t finish the story of taking your shoes off in the cinema,’ she looked up and forced a smile.

‘I got them on again. It wasn’t easy but I hobbled out and snapped at the man I was with and he never asked me for another date.’

‘And you never asked him?’

She pulled a face, ‘If he couldn’t handle a little thing like that I couldn’t see much of a future for us.’

‘And you’re not a girl who does a lot of snapping?’

‘I do not. I have a very sweet nature.’

‘Now why don’t I find that tallies with what I know of you?’

‘I wouldn’t know why.’ She put on a look of injured innocence. ‘Unless, maybe, you bring out the worst in me.’

Whether he was roaring with laughter or chuckling, as he was now, his laughter sounded genuine. Tonight she liked his laughter. And she quite liked the way his crisp dark hair curled back from his forehead and round his ears. In a superbly tailored evening suit, white silk shirt and black tie, he was the lord of this manor house. But she’d heard he had started off locally on a market stall and had gone on from there with the devil’s own luck.

She blurted, ‘You started on the markets, didn’t you?’ She should be trying for an interview.

‘That was another life,’ he said.

‘I’d love to hear about it.’

‘I’m sure you would.’

She was never going to get a chance like this again—a tête-à-tête with Max Vella, him thanking her for brightening his evening. She took a deep breath and pleaded, ‘It wouldn’t hurt you, would it, to talk to me? It would be a scoop for me and I’m sure you don’t have anything to hide.’

She was sure that he had, and that he would never incriminate himself to a reporter. But her editor would be glad of any entertaining copy of the local tycoon with the Midas touch who never gave interviews. Starting with whether he was from gypsy stock. That was one of the rumours, and it could be a talking point.

‘You’re an opportunist,’ said Vella.

She had overheard him making a business arrangement just now and he thought she was using that as a gentle persuader. But he still seemed amused, and she said, ‘Takes one to know one,’ astonishing herself at her own cheek.

‘I’ll consider it.’ He was going to give her something to publish. She had an entrée here, and a lousy day was becoming surprisingly special. He sat down in one of the other chairs. ‘Now tell me about yourself,’ he said. He leaned back, arms folded, hooded eyes fixed on her, and she would have liked to get up off the footstool and sit in a chair herself. She was not too happy down here, crouching at his feet. It was flattering in a way, him being prepared to listen to her talking about herself, but he was probably the toughest man she had ever come across and she was going to have to watch what she told him.

‘Have you worked anywhere else but the Chronicle?’ he asked her.

‘I was taken on as a trainee journalist there and when I qualified I joined the staff.’

‘That’s it? No urge to move on?’ He must always have been hungry for success. He wouldn’t understand how anyone could stay in the same smallish job for years, and she had been with the Chronicle for over four years.

He made her feel a real stick-in-the-mud, and she said loftily, ‘Of course, I’ve got ambitions. I’m not planning on staying put till I draw my pension.’

The door opened again, the sound of voices drifting in, and Max stood up. ‘Can I help you?’ he said curtly.

‘Just looking around,’ trilled a woman. ‘It is all right, isn’t it?’

‘Not in here.’

Sara peeked round the side of the chair and heard the large lady in blue velvet say, ‘Pardon the intrusion,’ eyes popping at Sara as she turned to leave.

‘That was the mayoress,’ said Sara, as if he didn’t know.

‘That,’ he said, ‘is a nosy old bat who didn’t believe what she was told and came to see for herself.’

The town’s mayoress was a great one for gossip, and hearing that Max Vella was wrestling in here with the local reporter would be a juicy item.

‘This is crazy,’ said Sara.

‘You didn’t help much. You could have stood up instead of peering up from floor level.’ He was grinning again. She had leaned sideways from the footstool to look round the chair so that it might have seemed she was lying on the floor. ‘Is some man with a claim on you likely to be barging in next to get you out of my clutches?’ he asked.

‘There’s nobody here with a claim on me.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Which meant of course he was glad there wouldn’t be another silly scene, rather than pleased there was no man at the centre of Sara’s life right now. The idea of anybody she knew standing up to Max Vella was extremely unlikely, but perhaps she ought to be getting out of here. She badly wanted to interview him but she was not so keen about him cross-questioning her. She had her shoes on. They were still tight and she took one off again and tried flexing it.

‘Why come to a dance in shoes that don’t fit?’ he enquired.

‘They felt fine earlier. They felt all right when I bought them; I got them in a sale last week and they seemed such a bargain.’

‘You get what you pay for,’ he said.

‘That’s rich, coming from you. You were setting up a bargain just now, weren’t you, that sounded like a very dodgy deal?’

He shrugged that off. ‘Life’s a dodgy deal. It’s a tough world.’

She couldn’t argue there, and she looked ruefully at her ‘bargain’. ‘Mostly,’ she said, ‘you get what you can afford, or have you forgotten how that was?’

‘I don’t forget much.’

For a moment she almost felt as if they could swap hard-luck stories, which was ridiculous when his luck was brilliant and he had everything, including a house that Sara had always loved. Vella had lived locally in the penthouse of a riverside block of apartments he owned, before he had moved into the Moated House. When he’d bought this place he had spent a fortune on renovations, but he was not a man Sara could imagine permanently settling anywhere, and she asked him, ‘Shall you stay here?’

‘Probably. I’ve been here now for—’ He paused to work out dates.

She said promptly, ‘Five years and nearly five months.’

‘That’s about right.’

‘That’s dead right. I remember you moving in. Mid-June and blazing hot.’ She could recall it vividly and there was a far-away look in her eyes. ‘We lived at Eddlestone then. I had a horse and I used to ride over the hills and I saw the vans below. I often came this way just to look down at the house.’

‘You did?’ That seemed to surprise him.

She said, ‘Well it’s a fantastic place, isn’t it, with its history and all? Some days when it’s raining or there’s dew on the grass you can imagine the moat’s still there. The buildings can’t have changed much, the towers and the bridge. You are so lucky to be living here.’

‘I was fourteen when I walked over the hills and saw it for the first time,’ he said. ‘And I promised myself that one day I’d have it.’

‘Did you believe you would?’

‘I always keep promises I make to myself.’ He smiled, but even if he used to be dirt poor he must always have felt that nothing was beyond him.

‘How about promises you make to others?’ she teased.

‘Now, that depends.’

They were both smiling now, and she asked him, ‘What were you doing when you were fourteen?’

‘Getting an education in a tough world. What were you doing when you weren’t riding your horse?’

Riding her horse had been part of the pampered life of her teens. ‘Getting an education that wasn’t going to be much use in a tough world,’ she said.