Knowing that they were going to be in this together, made the whole thing so much more…What? He sifted through the words that offered themselves. Satisfying. Pleasing. Enjoyable…No, more than that. And as the right word dropped into his mind he grinned.

Fun.

It had stopped feeling like the weight of the world on his shoulders and had started to feel like an adventure.

And there was still the kiss to look forward to, he thought, smiling as he reached for the stack of paperwork.

He was deeply absorbed in the quotations for a redecoration of one of the Mayfair dining rooms when Martin, a waiter who’d been with them for years, arrived with a tray and began to lay the small dining table in the corner of his office. He glanced at his watch, saw that it was nearly nine.

‘I hadn’t realised it was so late.’

‘Miss Valentine rang through to the kitchen to see if you’d ordered anything. I offered to bring up a menu, but she just asked for the mushroom risotto.’

‘For both of us?’

‘I could ask Chef for something else if you’d prefer?’ Martin said, catching his initial irritation at not being consulted, but unable to feel the almost instant follow-up of something much nearer pleasure that she already felt sufficiently at ease, at home, to call down and order food.

Maybe, he thought, that was the way to do it. If he stopped pushing so hard, she’d relax, come back in from the cold without even noticing she was doing it.

‘The risotto will be fine, Martin. Did she choose a wine?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Ask Georges for a bottle of Krug, will you?’

‘Krug?’ the waiter repeated. It wasn’t something he’d want to make a mistake about.

‘A small celebration. Miss Valentine is going to be working with us for a few weeks.’

‘I’m delighted to hear it, sir.’

A few minutes later, having asked Martin to give him ten minutes before he brought up the food, he walked through to the other office, bearing two glasses of champagne.

‘Supper’s on its way up,’ he said. Absorbed in what she was doing, Louise raised a hand to indicate that she’d heard him and carried on working. He set down the glasses and joined her behind the desk interested to see what she was doing. ‘Is that Meridia?’ he asked, leaning over her shoulder to look at an aerial photograph of a small island, surmounted by an equally small castle.

‘I downloaded Google Earth so that I could take a close look at the capital, refresh my memory of the layout. And then I remembered this,’ she said, using the mouse to fly them in over the island, before moving lower, taking him on an aerial tour around the castle. ‘Do you see?’

‘Very pretty. So?’

‘It’s a fishing lodge that belongs to some distant cousin of Sebastian’s. Emma told me about it. He’s a bit of a black sheep, apparently; persona non grata in the country. It’s got a natural harbour, a small beach…’

‘So?’

She turned and looked up at him, clearly expecting a response. ‘So, it would make a perfect setting for a Bella Lucia restaurant,’ she said, her eyes sparkling with an infectious enthusiasm that sent a charge of recognition skipping through him. She was, he thought, as excited by all this as he was.

‘I can certainly see the attraction, but unless the man is looking for a tenant…’

‘Well, he can’t use it himself. I called Emma to run the idea past her and ask if there was any possibility of us looking at the place when we’re there on Monday. It’s all fixed.’

He frowned. ‘Oh, come on, it can’t be that easy…’ Then, ‘You’re serious?’

‘Of course. I don’t have time to mess about. Oh, and I’ve arranged for us to meet with the director of the State Tourism Office, too.’

‘You seem to have organised everything.’ He straightened, no longer smiling. ‘Are you sure you need me to come with you?’

‘I’m sorry, Max?’ she said, instantly catching the change in his mood.

She said it not as if she were truly sorry, or actually thought she might have overstepped some unseen line, but as if he were the one in the wrong.

‘The words “bull” and “china shop” leap to mind. There’s a fine difference between being keen,’ he said, ‘and rushing in without taking time to consider all the options.’

‘I’ve suggested a location that I’ve already seen, I’ve arranged a viewing-using my personal contact with a queen, no less,’ she pointed out, ‘and I’ve organised a meeting with a man who would be useful in setting up a joint venture with a local hotelier, since-and correct me if I’m wrong-I assume you don’t have any plans to move into the hotel business, too.’ She paused for half a beat, then said, ‘What have you done in the last couple of hours?’

‘Cleared a mountain of paperwork I should have been attending to this afternoon instead of hanging around the Portrait Gallery waiting for you,’ he said. ‘This company doesn’t run itself, you know.’

‘Nobody asked you,’ she reminded him. ‘I didn’t need you. You were the one who insisted, wanted to show how much you care about me-’

‘I do, Louise. We all do.’

‘Please! What you want is for me to play happy families, come and work for you, and now you think you’ve got all that, it’s as you were. Well, if this is going to be the kind of “working together”…’ and she did that really irritating quotes thing again, presumably with the precise intention of irritating him ‘…where I’m supposed to stand on the sidelines making suggestions while you make all the decisions, sorry, but I’m not interested.’

‘This is going to be a working relationship, Lou,’ he said, holding onto his own temper by the skin of his teeth, ‘where we discuss things, then we decide what to do, then we take action.’

‘If I’d waited for you to order supper, we’d have starved,’ she said, already beyond reason, but then her reaction to criticism had always been to overreact. The simplest thing had sent her overboard. A suggestion that her skirt was too short. A reprimand for flirting with the customers…

She was incapable of backing down, admitting a mistake.

‘Dammit, Louise,’ he said, ‘you haven’t changed one bit-’

‘Dammit, Max, neither have you!’ She was on her feet, in his face. ‘You’re still the same arrogant, overbearing, despotic, pigheaded idiot you always were!’

CHAPTER FIVE

LOUISE was outraged. He’d said this was what he’d wanted her for, but when she used her initiative, got on with the job, he couldn’t handle it.

‘Forget it, Max,’ she said, reaching for her bag. ‘This is never-’

‘Don’t!’ He grabbed her by the shoulders before she could pick it up, spinning her around to face him. ‘Don’t say another word!’

‘Never,’ she repeated, blazing her defiance at him. ‘Going-’

‘Lou!’ he warned.

‘To-’

His mouth descended on hers with the impact of fire on ice, stopping her words, stopping her breath, stopping her heart.

For an instant the world was an explosion of hissing, sizzling reaction on the surface while inside she remained frozen with shock. Then his arms were around her, pulling her close and she was clinging to him as her lips, her bones, her brain were overwhelmed by the heat and began, very slowly, to melt.

This was it.

This was the moment she’d yearned for, struggled against all her adult life. To know this, feel this.

To taste Max on her lips, feel the silk of his tongue stopping her angry words, showing her that she wasn’t alone. That he was suffering too…

Her arms wound themselves around his neck, her fingers made free with hair that she’d longed to touch, knowing in some dark corner of her mind that she’d wantonly engineered this, forced this moment.

She’d wanted this ever since that moment at the Valentine’s Day party when, sixteen years old and full of herself, she’d grabbed his hand, insisting on teaching him the steps of the newest dance. And then, as the music had changed to something slower, she’d seen something shift in the way he was looking at her, seen his eyes darken and felt something new, something dangerous stir, respond, deep inside her, wanting a lot more.

She’d known, as he pulled away, that everything had changed between them. That a touch was no longer innocent. That even to look was an invitation that damned them both.

Young, angry, stupid, she’d pushed him and pushed him to take what she could see he wanted, what she wanted, even while she’d known it was forbidden, could never happen, until that final eruption when he’d sacked her, humiliated her, driven her so far away that there had been no way back.

She understood now that he’d been protecting himself, protecting both of them, in the only way he knew how.

But the day her father had told her she was adopted, all that had changed.

We don’t have a problem…

He’d said it, but even then he’d held back, as if unable to overcome years of keeping the dark, unspoken need under tight control. Now, though, with his body hard against hers there could be no more pretence, no ignoring the truth between them. That she felt alive, wicked but alive as she never had before; knew that this was what she wanted, this was the token she’d demanded in return for coming back. Not just a kiss but his total surrender so that she could finally be free of the crippling desire for Max Valentine that had ruined every relationship she’d ever had.

Even as she clung to him he pulled back a little to look at her, his eyes dark, intense, yet giving nothing away, the habit of concealment too strong…

‘You were saying?’ he murmured, cool, self-possessed.

‘I was?’ Her body might be in flames, but she would match his cool…‘I don’t recall,’ she said, reclaiming her arms, understanding that, for now at least, the kiss was over.

Her composure would follow in its own good time.