Temporary Parents

Cold! She was consumed by hell fire in embarrassment!

It seemed safer to stay where she was than to straighten and offer him a full-frontal view. Her hand curled into a claw, snatching the towel away and flinging it over her near nudity.

Max’s well-remembered, elegant fingers straightened out the folds with a lingering precision which made her want to scream. He was recreating those days when he hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her and had devoted himself to cherishing her. Or so he’d pretended. Max was a master at giving women what they wanted. He found it the quickest route to their beds, so she’d been told.

His distressed parents had explained his tactics. He fitted his behaviour to whichever woman he wanted. For her, he’d been protective, thoughtful, dedicated. He had, apparently, found it perfectly possible to be in the same room as Fay and not be dazzled because he’d found, so he’d said, Laura’s button nose and higgledy-piggledy mouth absolutely adorable.

Liar.

Laura was struggling for words and sounded almost incoherent when a few managed to crawl out. ‘What the hell—?’

‘I did knock,’ came Max’s classy drawl, smooth with phoney innocence.

‘But didn’t wait!’ she accused, beside herself with anger at the invasion of her privacy.

‘I never do,’ he agreed cheerfully.

No. Not for anyone or anything. What Max wanted, he wanted now—or he walked away and found the next most pleasing substitute.

‘Well, you can this time. Go back and sit down and wait—or keep walking out of my flat door and don’t come back!’ she cried, rubbing her face hard in temper with a riskily released corner of the towel.

‘You’ve got five minutes,’ he drawled. ‘I’m in a hurry.’

‘Go and feed the parrot,’ she suggested maliciously, knowing Fred would bite off Max’s finger if he tried.

‘No, thanks.’ There was a lazy amusement in his voice. ‘It looks diseased.’

Laura pummelled her wet breasts with the towel as if she were kneading bread, furious on her pet’s behalf. Somewhere in the background she was aware of the sound of Max’s retreating steps.

‘By the way,’ he called back as an afterthought. ‘There’s a ladder exploring your left thigh.’

Laura clapped a hand to the back of her leg. He was right. Red-faced and breathing hard, she clutched the towel securely around her and turned in a violent movement to find that he’d vanished.

She loathed him. He made her want to lash out, to slap that arrogant, smoothie face. To knock him off-balance with a step-by-step explanation of what he’d done to her, with all the gory details.

It beggared belief that he was here to make a shameful admission—and yet was strolling around casually, quite unperturbed by the fact that he ought to be ashamed of his actions.

One day, Max Pendennis...one day! she promised vehemently. Then she felt exasperated with herself. In the back of her mind, she’d wanted to appear cool and collected, the epitome of a woman who couldn’t care less what he did. Yet already he’d got her stamping mad. Her eyes sparked angrily and she tried to haul down her temper from the stratosphere.

All she had to do was listen to him with a superior smile hovering on her face, make sure that he wasn’t going to ruin Fay’s marriage by telling Daniel what had happened, and then show him the door.

She decided not to tell him about her pregnancy. She had no intention of playing the sad victim. Her preference was to appear remote, dignified and unassailable...

And yet, she thought, her sense of humour briefly reasserting itself, she’d opened up the proceedings with a classic girlie-magazine pose, presenting her flimsily clad backside, suspenders and stocking-tops to him!

‘Three minutes, and counting.’

Laura sent a hot-poker glare at the only bit of him she could see, a pair of long, male legs in soft silver-grey suiting crossed at the ankles, and two glassily polished black shoes.

He was sitting in her favourite easy chair, facing the bed and wardrobe, like someone waiting for the next show to begin.

She stalked into the room just as he was reaching down from the chair to pick up the discarded grey jersey dress. Without a word she took it from him, suddenly conscious of the homely untidiness around her.

There were piles of half-read paperbacks near his feet and a stack of various friends’ letters stuffed into the chair beside him. Evidence of her studying lay scattered on every available surface—papers, files, pens, notepads. Max hated mess.

Avoiding contact with his eyes, she stepped over his outstretched legs, toed the daily paper under the small table to join the parrot’s tinkly bell and headed for the wardrobe.

All too late, she realised that she’d been clutching the towel around her so tightly that her figure must have been perfectly outlined for him. She eased her neurotic grip, giving him a few more folds to deal with.

Max inhaled audibly behind her as if exasperated.

‘If you want me to hurry up,’ she said haughtily over her shoulder, ‘then face the other way. I’m not dressing while you look on.’

‘It would save time if you stayed as you are.’ The words slid over her like smooth icing from a spoon. ‘It makes no difference to me what you’re wearing—’

‘Well, it does to me!’ she snapped, and regretted losing control. Again. Giving herself a mental kick for her stupidity, she waited haughtily for him to make a move.

The sigh of irritation was repeated, and then there was a scraping sound as the chair was pushed back. When she checked in the mirror, she saw that he was gazing out of the window and standing a disease-free distance from Fred, who was pacing up and down his perch and measuring his chances of a crafty nip.

Satisfied, she opened the wardrobe door, Max’s reflected image filling her head.

Tall. Hair still a gleaming raven-black like hers. But the thick waves had been tamed and cut to ruthless perfection, as if his barber had painstakingly worked with a ruler, measuring the requisite distance from that razoredged white collar.

Max had wider shoulders than she remembered, poured into a sharply tailored suit which had clearly been built on his hard, sinewy body, inch by perfect inch. His spare frame was not heavy with grossly inflexible muscle, but powerfully shaped nevertheless, like that of an athlete in his prime.

He looked breathtakingly handsome. But then he’d always been that—mooned over by her schoolfriends on the rare occasions he’d come home from his prep and then public schools. Son of the wealthy General William Pendennis. Bright future in the City. Every girl’s dream—hers included.

Except...he wasn’t her Max any more, and hadn’t been for a long time. He belonged in a different sphere. A world of privilege and class, peopled by well-bred, elite movers-and-shakers. A world at large which embraced big business, financial 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.