Max, having been shown, with profound apologies for an error that had been no one’s fault but his own, to another room, found a footman laying out a slightly old-fashioned dinner jacket and dress shirt. His initial response was to say thanks, but no, thanks, but it occurred to him that they would have found something for Louise, too, and she wouldn’t hurt their feelings by rejecting it.

He was the only one she didn’t care about hurting. Telling him one thing with her eyes, another with everything she did, said. If she ever found out the truth…

He went downstairs at seven-fifteen so that she wouldn’t be left on her own, took the whisky the butler poured for him, but, too restless to sit in the drawing room, he paced the hall, his head full of the new restaurant, which of a number of world-class chefs he might tempt to take charge of the kitchen, the start-up costs…

All it took to distract him was a whisper of silk and he turned, looked up.

Louise, her hair twisted up and held in place with some kind of exotic jewelled clip, her hand trailing lightly on the banister rail, draped in a slender silk gown whose soft folds displayed every curve of her body, clung to her long thighs as she moved, was slowly descending the stairs.

For a moment he was transfixed.

He’d seen her dressed for an occasion countless times before; looking like a queen for some other man. But this time she’d dressed for no one but him…

Regaining the use of his limbs, he crossed to meet her and instead of the usual sarcastic remark-gauged to provoke a response guaranteed to leave them both despising the other-he said the first thing that came into his mind.

‘You look absolutely stunning, Louise.’

‘Thank you,’ she said as she reached the bottom step. ‘I didn’t intend my entrance to be quite such a Hollywood performance, but the dress is a little long and the footwear…’ she hitched up her skirt an inch or two to display a matching high-heeled sandal ‘…is a little on the large side. The stairs required extreme care.’

‘I enjoyed every moment of it,’ he assured her, then as a clock began to chime the half-hour the butler appeared to announce that dinner was served.

Max extended his arm. ‘May I escort you in to dinner, Miss Valentine?’

She smiled, laid her arm along his. ‘Thank you, Mr Valentine.’

Dinner was served to them in a small dining room that they had missed on their exploration. Richly decorated on the most intimate scale.

It was a room plainly made for lovers, yet despite their surroundings, the wonderful food, fine wines, exquisite clothes, he felt himself retreat a little, become more distant, determined to keep the conversation firmly fixed on the safe subject of business. He laid out his ideas, she offered marketing, PR strategies.

Neither of them wanted coffee, and when they moved to the drawing room so that the staff could clear away Louise didn’t settle, refused a nightcap. His overwhelming reaction was relief. The entire day had been a strain and he needed to escape from this brittle concord before he did, or said, something to shatter it.

‘I’m ready for bed, Max.’

‘It’s been a long day. We’ll take it easy tomorrow, just potter around. Take a load of photographs. Come on, I’ll see you to your room.’

‘I’m not helpless,’ she said as he took her arm, shivering a little at the unexpected contact.

‘Not helpless, but at the mercy of those shoes. I’m not prepared to risk my most valuable asset taking a tumble and breaking her neck.’

She glanced at him, as if surprised, although why she would be when he’d made it plain that he’d do anything to get her to join him, but she said nothing until they reached her door.

Instead of opening it, ducking quickly inside, as he’d expected her to, she turned to face him, said, ‘You never did tell me what you wanted to talk to me about on Saturday, Max.’

‘To be honest I was rather hoping we could both forget Saturday.’

‘All of it?’

Not the moment when he’d seen her standing in her kitchen, hair tousled, flushed from bed. Her wrap hanging open, her lovely legs bare. Not the moment when she’d looked up at him as if he were the only man she’d ever wanted…

‘Maybe just the last bit, where I behaved like a moron.’

‘I don’t want to forget that part, Max,’ she said, her voice so soft that he had to bend his head to catch the words. ‘You wouldn’t have reacted that way if…’

She hesitated as if to say the words would be to expose them both so he said them for her.

‘If I hadn’t wanted to throttle Cal Jameson. If I hadn’t wanted you for myself.’

Now…

The voice in Louise’s head was so loud that she was certain Max must hear it too. But he didn’t move.

‘This room,’ she managed. ‘It wasn’t a mistake, was it?’

Max shook his head and, emboldened by a tiny sigh that escaped her, said, ‘It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision. I realised we’d need more time and when I spoke to Sebastian, I asked if we could stay here. He gave me the number so that I could make my own arrangements with the staff; the butler misunderstood and I didn’t correct his mistake. I thought, hoped that this might be somewhere private, neutral ground where we could continue our discussion about exactly where you wanted me to kiss you.’ He looked up, met her gaze head-on. ‘A place where we could conclude all contractual obligations to your complete satisfaction.’

She came close to smiling. ‘In an icy, rustic stone lodge?’

‘You wouldn’t have felt the cold,’ he assured her.

‘No?’

She shivered, despite the heating, but still he didn’t touch her, even though her body was doing everything but scream at him to go for it, even though she could feel that his hand, still supporting her elbow, was not quite steady…

He was giving her total control. Her call…

She opened the bedroom door and led him inside, turning to face him as the door closed behind them ‘Show me,’ she said, her voice scarcely strong enough to reach him and, lifting her hand, she touched a fingertip to her cheek. ‘Kiss me here.’

His eyes seemed to take on a new intensity and for a moment she was afraid that she’d unleashed a passion that he wouldn’t be able to hold in check but when, after a pause that seemed to last a lifetime, his lips touched her cheek she felt no more than a whisper of warmth. Enough to send a flash of heat through her and for a moment she swayed towards him, dangerously close to flinging herself on him. If he made one move…

But he didn’t. He was leaving her to set the pace, take it where she dared.

If she had the courage.

Responding to his unspoken challenge, she moved her hand, touched her chin.

‘Here,’ she said, on a breath.

His eyes, darker than pitch, warned her that she was playing a dangerous game. Did he think she didn’t know that?

This was their time. Now. It would be brief, glorious but brief, like a New Year’s Eve rocket, and afterwards, when it had burnt out, she would be free of him.

They would both be free…

‘Here,’ she said, raising the stakes, touching her lower lip, anticipating the same exhilarating, no-holds-barred kiss with which he’d stopped her walking away. Would use this time to carry them both over the threshold of restraint and beyond thought.

But he did no more than touch her lower lip, tasting it with his tongue. It was all she could do to remain on her feet; her only compensation was knowing how hard this must be for him. To hold back, wait. It would have been difficult to say which of them was trembling more, but he was forcing her to make all the moves, insisting that she be the one to tip it over the edge from a teasing game into a dark and passionate reality.

‘Now, Max,’ she said. Unfastening her dress, she let it fall in a shimmering puddle of silk at her feet, leaving her naked but for the scrap of silk and lace at her hips, lace-topped hold-ups, high-heeled sandals.

His response was to pull loose his tie, remove his jacket and toss it aside, finally turning the key in the lock without ever taking his eyes off her.

She’d thought she’d die with the sheer force of desire his first kiss brought bubbling to the surface, but now every cell in her body seemed to sigh, melt as his mouth kissed a slow seductive trail over her breasts and down across the soft curve of her stomach.

In that moment she felt like a conqueror, a queen receiving tribute from a vanquished king whom she’d made her slave.

But then he hooked his thumbs under the ties of her silk panties removing the last barrier between them, using his mouth until ‘now’ became not a command, not permission to touch, but a whimpering entreaty, a plea for his hands, his body, for all he had to give, and she knew that she’d made a mistake.

As he finally took pity on her, responded to her ‘Max…please…’ lifting her acquiesent body in his arms, carrying her to the great four-poster, she discovered that, far from being the one in control, she was the conquered.

Louise woke in a series of gentle waves. First there was a boneless, almost out-of-body consciousness in which she was dimly aware that it was morning, but felt no pressure to do anything about it. Then came a gradual awareness of a soft pillow beneath her cheek, limbs heavy with the delicious languor of utter contentment.

She nestled down into the pillow, unwilling to relinquish her dreams.

Something warm tickled her shoulder.

She twitched away, burrowed deeper.

It happened again and this time she reached to pull up the sheet, tuck it in, but instead of the sheet her hand encountered warm skin over hard bone.

Her face still buried in the pillow, she flattened her hand over a nose that wasn’t quite straight, a mouth blowing soft, warm breath against her palm.