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Max sighed volubly, forcibly wiping the memory from his mind. Damn this introspection. Since when did he feel hollow and give his brother and his new wife a moment’s consideration?
He frowned and brooded over the view. He was a loner, and he’d been a loner since he’d taken responsibility for his actions as a young boy and realised that he had no one to turn to but himself.
And yet he had to concede, with some amount of irritation, that watching his peers fall by the wayside into domesticity was beginning to make him stand out by comparison. The prospect of going to dinner with Montgomery and his wife was becoming more and more unappealing, and Max was certain that the old man was determined to use it as an opportunity to demonstrate his unsuitability.
At that moment Max thought of Darcy’s suggestion that he take his ex-lover to dinner. For some reason he found himself thinking not so much of Noor but of Darcy’s huge blue eyes. And the way colour had flared in her cheeks when he’d told her what he thought of that suggestion.
He found himself comparing the two women and surmised with some level of grim humour that they couldn’t be more different.
Noor al-Fasari was without a doubt one of the most beautiful women in the world. And yet when Max tried to visualise her face now he found that it was amorphous—hard to recall.
And Darcy... Max frowned. He’d been about to assert that she wasn’t beautiful, but it surprised him to realise that, while she certainly didn’t share Noor’s show-stopping, almost outlandish looks, Darcy was more than just pretty or attractive.
And, in fairness, her job was not to promote what beauty she did possess. Suddenly Max found himself wondering what she would be like dressed more enticingly, and with subtle make-up to enhance those huge eyes and soft rosebud lips.
Much to his growing sense of horror, he found that her voluptuous figure came to mind as easily as if she was still walking out of his office, as she’d done only minutes before. He might have fooled himself that he’d been engrossed in the conversation with his friend, but in reality his eyes had been glued to the provocative way Darcy’s pencil skirt clung to her full hips, and how the shiny leather belt drew the eye to a waist so small he fancied he might span it with one hand.
His skin prickled. It was almost as if an awareness of her had been growing stealthily in his subconscious for the past few months. And as if to compound this unsettling revelation he found the blood in his body growing heated and flowing south, to a part of his anatomy that was behaving in a manner that was way out of his usual sense of control.
Almost in shock, Max sat down, afraid that Darcy might walk in and catch him in this moment of confusion and not a little irritation at his wayward responses.
It was the memory of his ex-lover that had precipitated this random lapse in control. It had to be. But when he tried to conjure up Noor’s face again, with a sense of desperation, all he could recall were the shrill shrieks she’d hurled his way—along with an expensive vase or two—after he’d told her their affair was over.
A brief knock came to his door and Darcy didn’t wait before opening it to step inside. ‘I’m heading home now, in case you want anything else?’
And just like that Max’s blood sizzled in earnest. A floodgate had been opened and now all he could see was her glossy dark brown hair, neatly tied back. Along with her provocative curves. Full breasts thrust against her silk shirt. The tiny waist. Womanly hips, firm thighs and shapely calves. Small ankles. And this was all in a package a couple of inches over five feet. When Max had never before found petite women particularly attractive.
She wasn’t even dressed to seduce. She was the epitome of classic style.
He couldn’t fault her—not for one thing. Yet all he could think about doing right now was walking over to her and hauling her up against his hot and aching body. And, for a man who wasn’t used to denying his urges when it came to women, he found himself floundering.
What the hell...? Was he going crazy?
Darcy frowned. ‘Is there something wrong, Max?’
‘Wrong?’ he barked, feeling slightly desperate. ‘Nothing is wrong.’
‘Oh,’ said Darcy. ‘Well, then, why are you scowling at me?’
Max thought of the upcoming dinner date with Montgomery and his wife and imagined sitting between them like a reluctant gooseberry. He made a split-second decision. ‘I was just thinking about the dinner with Montgomery...’
Darcy raised a brow. ‘Yes?’
Feeling grim, Max said, ‘You’re coming with me.’
She straightened up at the door. ‘Oh.’ She looked nonplussed for a moment, and then said, ‘Is that really appropriate?’
Max finally felt as if he had his recalcitrant body under some kind of control and stood up, putting his hands in his pockets. ‘Yes, it’s highly appropriate. You’ve been working on this deal with me and I’ll need you there to keep track of the conversation and make nice with Montgomery’s wife.’
Darcy was clearly reluctant. ‘Don’t you think that perhaps someone else might be more—?’
Max took one hand out of his pocket and held it up. ‘I don’t want any further discussion about this matter. You’re coming with me—that’s it.’
Darcy looked at him with those huge blue eyes and for a dizzying moment Max felt as if she could see all the way down into the depths of his being. And then the moment broke when she shrugged lightly and said, ‘Okay, fine. Anything else you need this evening?’
He had a sudden vivid image of ripping her shirt open, to see her lush breasts encased in silk and satin, and got out a strangled-sounding, ‘No, you can go.’
To his blessed relief, she did go. He ran both hands through his hair with frustration. Ordinarily Max would have taken this rogue reaction as a clear sign that he should go out and seek a new lover, but he knew that the last thing he needed right now in the run-up to the final negotiations with Montgomery was for him to be at the centre of headlines speculating about his colourful love-life.
So for now he was stuck in the throes of lusting after his very capable PA—an impossible situation that Max felt some god somewhere had engineered just for his own amusement.
CHAPTER TWO
A WEEK LATER Darcy was still mulling over the prospect of going to the Montgomery dinner the following evening with Max. She assured herself again that she was being ridiculous to feel so reluctant. Lots of PAs accompanied their bosses on social occasions that blurred into work.
So why was it that her pulse seemed to step up a gear when she thought about being out in public with Max, in a social environment?
Because she was an idiot. She scowled at herself and almost jumped out of her skin when Max yelled her name from inside his office. If anything, his curtness over the last week should have eased her concerns. He certainly wasn’t giving her the remotest indication that there was anything but business on his mind.
She got up and hurried into his office, schooling her face into a neutral expression. As always, though, as soon as she laid eyes on him her insides clenched in reaction.
He was pacing back and forth, angry energy sparking. She sighed inwardly. This protracted deal was starting to wear on her nerves too.
She sat down and waited patiently, and then Max rounded on her and glared at her so fiercely her eyes widened with reproach. ‘What did I do?’
He snapped his gaze away and bit out, ‘Nothing. It’s not you. It’s—’
‘Montgomery,’ Darcy said flatly.
He looked at her again and his silence told her succintly that that was exactly what it was.
‘I’ll need you to work late this evening. I want to make sure that when we meet him tomorrow I’m not giving him one single reason to doubt my ability.’
Darcy shrugged. ‘Sure thing.’
Max put his hands on his hips, a look of determination stamped on his gorgeous features. ‘Okay, clear the schedule of anything else today and let’s take out everything to do with this deal. I want to go through it all with a fine-tooth comb.’
Darcy got up and mentally braced herself for a gruelling day ahead.
* * *
Much later that evening Darcy sat back on her heels in Max’s office and arched her spine, with her hands on the small of her back. Her shoes had come off hours ago and they’d eaten take-out.
It had to be close to midnight when Max finally said wearily, ‘That’s it, isn’t it? We’ve been through every file, memo and e-mail. Checked into the man’s entire history and all his business endeavours.’
Darcy smiled wryly and reached up to tuck some escaping hair back into her chignon. ‘I think it’s safe to say that we could write an authorised biography on Cecil Montgomery now.’
The dark night outside made Max’s office feel like a cocoon. They were surrounded by the soft glow of numerous lights. He didn’t respond and she looked up at him where he stood behind his desk, shirt open at the throat and sleeves rolled up. In spite of that he barely looked rumpled—whereas she felt as if she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards and was in dire need of a long, relaxing bath.
He was looking at her with a strange expression, as if caught for a moment, and it made Darcy’s pulse skip. She felt self-conscious, aware of how she’d just been stretching like a cat. But then the moment passed and he moved and went over to the bar, his loose-limbed grace evident even after the day’s hard slog. Darcy envied him. As she stood up her bones and joints protested. She told herself she was being ridiculous to imagine that Max was looking at her any kind of which way.
He came back and handed her a tumbler of dark golden liquid. Her first thought was that it was like his eyes, and then he said with a wry smile, ‘Scottish whisky—I feel it’s appropriate.’ He was referring to Montgomery’s nationality.
Darcy smiled too and clinked her glass off Max’s. ‘Sláinte.’
Their eyes held as they took a sip of their drinks and it was like liquid fire going down her throat. Aware that they were most likely alone in the vast building, and feeling self-consciousness again, Darcy broke the contact and moved away to sit on the edge of a couch near Max’s desk.
She watched as he came and stood at the window near her, saw the scar on the his face snaking down from his temple to his jaw.
She found herself asking impulsively, ‘The scar—how did you get it?’
Max tensed, and there was an almost imperceptible tightening of his fingers around his glass. His mouth thinned and he didn’t look at her. ‘Amazing how a scar fascinates so many people—especially women.’
Immediately Darcy tensed, feeling acutely exposed. She said stiffly, ‘Sorry, it’s none of my business.’
He looked at her. ‘No, it’s not.’
Max took in Darcy’s wide eyes and a memory rushed back at him with such force that it almost felled him: a much younger Darcy, but with the same pale heart-shaped face. Concerned. Pushing between him and the boys who had been punching the breath out of him with brute force.
He’d been gasping like a grounded fish, eyes streaming, familiar humiliation and impotent anger burning in his belly, and she’d stood there like a tiny fierce virago. When they’d left and he’d got his breath back she’d turned to him, worried.
Without even thinking about what he was doing, still dizzy, Max had straightened and reached out to touch her jaw. He’d said, almost to himself, ‘“Though she be but little, she is fierce.”’
She’d blushed and whirled around and left. He’d still been reeling from the attack—reeling from whatever impulse had led him to quote Shakespeare.
Darcy was reaching across to put her glass on the table now, standing up, clearly intending to leave. And why wouldn’t she after he’d just shut her down?
An impulse rose up within Max and he heard himself say gruffly, ‘It happened on the streets. Here in Rome, when I was homeless.’
Darcy stopped. She lifted her hand from the glass and looked at him warily. ‘Homeless?’
Max leaned his shoulder against the solid glass window, careful to keep his face expressionless. Curiously, he didn’t feel any sense of regret for letting that slip out. He nodded. ‘I was homeless for a couple of years after I was kicked out of Boissy.’
Darcy said, ‘I remember the blood on the snow.’
Max felt slightly sick. He still remembered the vivid stain of blood on the snow, and woke sometimes at night sweating. He’d vowed ever since then not to allow anyone to make him lose control again. He would beat them at their own game, in their own rareified world.
‘A boy went to hospital unconscious because of me.’
She shook her head faintly. ‘Why did they torment you so much?’
Max’s mouth twisted. ‘Because one of their fathers was my mother’s current lover and he was paying my fees. They didn’t take kindly to that.’
Darcy had one very vague memory of an incredibly beautiful and glamorous woman arriving at the school one year with Max, in a chauffeur-driven car.
She found herself resting against the edge of the desk, not leaving as she’d intended to moments ago. ‘Why were you homeless?’
Max’s face was harsh in the low light. ‘My mother failed to inform me that she’d decided to move to the States with a new lover and left no forwarding details. Let’s just say she wasn’t exactly at the nurturing end on the scale of motherhood.’
Darcy frowned. ‘You must have had other family... Your father?’
Max’s face was so expressionless that Darcy had to repress a shiver.
‘I have a brother, but my father died some years ago. I couldn’t go to them, in any case. My father had made it clear I was my mother’s responsibillty when they divorced and he wanted nothing to do with me. They lived in Brazil.’
Darcy tried not to look too shocked. ‘But you must have been just—’
‘Seventeen,’ Max offered grimly.
‘And the scar...?’ It seemed to stand out even more lividly now, and Darcy had to curb the urge to reach out and touch it.
Max looked down at his drink, swirling it in his glass. ‘I saw a man being robbed and chased after the guy.’ He looked up again. ‘I didn’t realise he was a junkie with a knife until he turned around and lunged at me, cutting my face. I managed to take the briefcase from him. I won’t lie—there was a moment when I almost ran with it myself... But I didn’t.’
Max shrugged, as if chasing junkies and staying on the right side of his conscience was nothing.
‘The owner was so grateful when I returned it that he insisted on taking me to the hospital. He talked to me, figured out a little of my story. It turned out that he was CEO of a private equity finance firm, and as a gesture of goodwill for returning his property he offered me a position as an intern. I knew this was a chance and I vowed not to mess it up...’
Darcy said, a little wryly, ‘I think it’s safe to say you didn’t waste the opportunity. He must have been a special man to do that.’
‘He was,’ Max said with uncharacteristic softness. ‘One of the few people I trusted completely. He died a couple of years ago.’
There was only the faintest low hum of traffic coming from the streets far below. Isolated siren calls that faded into the distance. Everything around them was dark and golden. Darcy felt as if she were suspended in a dream. She’d never in a million years thought she might have a conversation like this with Max, who was unreadable on the best of days and never spoke of his personal life.
‘You don’t trust easily, then?’
Max grimaced slightly. ‘I learnt early to take care of myself. Trust someone and you make yourself weak.’
‘That’s so cynical,’ Darcy said, but it came out flat, not with the mocking edge she’d aimed for.
Max straightened up from the window and was suddenly much closer to Darcy. She could smell him—a light tangy musk, with undertones of something much more earthy and masculine.
He looked at her assessingly. ‘What about you, Darcy? Are you telling me you’re not cynical after your parents’ divorce?’
She immediately avoided that incisive gaze and looked out at the glittering cityscape beyond Max. A part of her had broken when her world had been upended and she’d been split between her parents. But as a rule it wasn’t something she liked to dwell on. She was reluctant to explore the fact that it had a lot to do with her subsequent avoidance of relationships.
She finally looked back to Max, forcing her voice to sound light. ‘I prefer to say realistic. Not cynical.’
The corner of Max’s mouth twitched. Had he moved even closer? He felt very close to Darcy.
He drawled now, ‘Let’s agree to call it realistic cynicism, then. So—no dreams of a picturesque house and a white picket fence with two point two kids to repair the damage your parents did to you?’
Darcy sucked in a breath at Max’s unwitting perspicacity. Damn him for once again effortlessly honing in on her weak spot: her desire to have a base. A home of her own. Not the cynical picture he painted, but her own oasis in a life that she knew well could be upended without any warning, leaving her reeling with no sense of a safe centre.
Her career had become her centre, but Darcy knew she needed something more tangibly rooted.
She tried to sound as if he hadn’t hit a raw nerve. ‘Do I really strike you as someone who is yearning for the domestic idyll?’
He shook his head and took a step closer, reaching past Darcy to put his glass on the table behind her. She knew this should feel a little weird—after all they’d never been so physically close before, beyond their handshake when she’d taken the job. But after the intensity of their day spent cocooned in this office, with the darkness outside now, and after Max had revealed the origin of his scar, a dangerous sense of familiarity suppressed Darcy’s normal impulse to observe the proper boundaries.
She told herself it was their shared experience in Boissy that made things a little different than the usual normal boss/PA relationship. But really the truth was that she didn’t want to move as Max’s arm lightly brushed against hers when he straightened again. The sip of whisky she’d taken seemed to be spreading throughout her body, oozing warmth and a sense of delicious lethargy.
Max looked at her. He was so close now that she could see how his eyelashes were dark gold, lighter at the tips.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you are looking for the domestic idyll. You strike me as someone who is very focused on her career. A bit of a loner, perhaps?’
That stung. Darcy had friends, but she’d been working away so much that she only saw them if she went back to the UK. He was right, though, and that was why it stung. The revelation that she might be avoiding platonic as well as romantic relationships was not welcome.
She cursed herself. She was allowing fatigue, a sip of whisky and some unexpected revelations from Max to seriously impair her judgement. There was no intimacy here. They were both exhausted.
She straightened up, not liking the way that put her even closer to Max. She looked anywhere but at him. ‘It’s late. I should get going if you want me to be awake enough to pay attention at dinner tomorrow evening.’
‘Yes,’ Max said. ‘That’s probably wise.’
Her feet seemed to be welded to the floor, but Darcy forced herself to move and turned to walk away—bumping straight into the corner of the desk, jarring her hip bone. She gave a pained gasp.
Max’s hand came to her arm. ‘Are you okay?’
Darcy could feel the imprint of Max’s fingers, strong and firm, and just like that she was breathless. He turned her towards him and she couldn’t evade his gaze.
‘I... Thanks. It was nothing.’ Any pain was fast being eclipsed by the look in Max’s eyes. Darcy’s insides swooped and flipped. The air between them was suddenly charged in a way that made her think of running in the opposite direction. Curiously, though, she didn’t want to obey this impulse.
And then something resolute crossed his face and he pulled her towards him.
Darcy was vaguely aware that Max’s grip on her arm wasn’t so tight that she couldn’t pull free. But a sense of shock mixed with intense excitement gripped her.
‘What are you doing?’ she half whispered.
His gaze moved from her mouth up to her eyes and time stood still. Max’s other hand moved around to the back of her neck, tugging her inexorably towards him. His voice was low and seductive. ‘I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what this would be like.’
‘What what would be like?’
‘This...’
Before Darcy’s brain could catch up with the speed at which things were moving Max’s mouth came down and covered hers, fitting to her softer contours like a jigsaw piece slotting into place.
He was hard and firm, masterful as he moved his mouth against hers, enticing her to open up to him—which she found herself doing unhesitatingly. The kiss instantly became something else...something much deeper and darker.
Max was bold, his tongue exploring the depths of her mouth, stroking sensuously, making her lower body clench in helpless reaction. His body was whipcord-hard against hers, calling to her innermost feminine instincts that relished such evidence of his masculinity.
The edge of the desk was digging into Darcy’s buttocks, but she barely noticed as Max urged her back so that she was sitting on it, moving his body between her legs so she had to widen them.
It was as if he’d simply inserted himself like a sharp blade under her skin and she’d been rendered powerless to think coherently or do anything except respond to the feverish call of her blood to taste this man, drink him in. It was intoxicating, heady, and completely out of character for her to behave like this.
Max’s hands were moving now, sliding down the back of her silk shirt, resting on her waist over the belt of her trousers. And then he moved even closer between her legs and Darcy felt the thrust of his erection against her belly.
It was that very stark evidence of just how far over the edge they were tipping that blasted some cold air through the heat haze clouding her brain.
Darcy pulled back to find two slumberous pools of tawny gold staring at her. Their breathing was laboured and she was aware of thinking with sudden clarity: Max Fonseca Roselli can’t possibly want me. I’m not remotely his type. He’s playing with me.
She jerked back out of his arms and off the desk so abruptly that she surprised him into letting her go. Her heart was racing as if she’d just run half a marathon.
Some space and air between them brought Darcy back to full shaming reality. One minute they’d been knee-deep in the minutiae of Montgomery’s life and business strategies, and the next she’d been sipping fine whisky and Max had been telling her stuff she’d never expected to hear.
And then she’d been climbing him like a monkey.
She’d never behaved so unprofessionally in her life. She lambasted herself, and ignored the screeching of every nerve-end that begged her to throw herself back into his arms.
Max looked every inch the disreputable playboy at that moment, with frustration stamped onto hard features as he observed his prey standing at several feet’s distance. His cheeks were slashed with colour, his hair messy. Oh, God. She’d had her hands in his hair, clutching him to her like some kind of sex-starved groupie.
When she felt she could speak she said accusingly, ‘That should not have happened.’
Her hair was coming down from its chignon and she lifted her hands to do a repair job. The fact that Max’s gaze dropped to her breasts made her feel even more humiliated. If they hadn’t stopped when they had— She shut her mind down from contemplating where exactly she might be right now.
Allowing him to make love to her on his desk? Like some bad porn movie cliché: Darcy Does Her Boss.