How could you live with him?

Because this was the reality of a relationship with Max.

‘I came to the theatre to meet you.’ He reached for her hand. ‘Waited until everyone had gone.’

‘Am I supposed to apologise for not being there?’

He shook his head. ‘I’d tried calling you. When you didn’t answer, I assumed you’d decided to stay at the theatre. But then, when I came to the flat, you didn’t answer your bell, either. And you’d put the deadlock up on the door.’

‘You call before you stand someone up. Not to apologise afterwards.’ Then, relenting, because she couldn’t help herself, ‘All you had to do was ring me. Two minutes…’

‘I was up to my elbows in freezing water.’ He took her other hand. ‘If I promise that in future I’ll let all the restaurants flood to the ceiling while I call you to tell you I’ll be late, will you forgive me?’

‘You couldn’t make that promise. Not with your hand on your heart, Max,’ she said as with a sinking heart she realised the truth. That her father had been partly right about him.

Max wasn’t like his father-he wouldn’t cheat on her with another woman. Bella Lucia was her only rival for his love. It was always there for him…

‘And if you did, I wouldn’t believe you.’

He had the grace not to argue. Instead he said, ‘Will you give me another chance?’

‘Last night was important, Max. It was special. A new start.’

Max felt her hands slipping from his grasp. Saw real pain dull her lovely eyes. Knowing that he’d done that to her wrenched at him, tore at something buried so deep that he could not admit it, even to himself. And remembering how he’d challenged her about keeping their relationship a secret, he felt shame.

The secrecy had suited him just fine.

Louise wasn’t just any woman. If the family knew about them, he’d have to stand up, say the words. Mean them. The way she had, yesterday. He’d listened to her defend him, praise him, tell the world how she felt about him and, like the fool, he’d stood there like a dummy, unable to respond.

Then afterwards, she’d walked with him, told him about James, torn out her heart and placed it, bleeding in his hands. And even though he knew, he understood, he hadn’t been able to respond. All he’d done was grudgingly accept her invitation and then let her down.

He’d used Bella Lucia to wreck every relationship he’d ever had before it became too demanding. To drive women who cared for him away. It was an inbuilt flaw, a consequence of his childhood, he knew. A self-fulfilling expectation of abandonment.

This time it was different. No matter what he had to do, from now on Louise would always come first.

He gripped her fingers, refused to let her break contact. ‘Give me another chance, Louise.’

‘How many do you need?’ She sounded brittle, edgy.

‘Just one. Truly. Give me one more chance and I’ll never let you down again.’

She didn’t answer. She didn’t believe him.

For a moment he felt like a drowning man. Sinking. Without hope. And then he understood. Like her, he had to strip his feelings bare…

‘I want you in my life, Louise.’ Not enough. ‘I need you.’ There was a flicker of something. Like a light coming on…More than that. Like a fire…‘And when I asked you if you would be at the Valentine party, what I really wanted to say was, will you be my date?’

‘Your date?’

‘My first and only Valentine.’ Then, as she smiled. ‘Say yes, and I promise you that there will be no tears before bedtime.’

‘Tears…?’

‘Say the word, Louise, and I promise that on the night I’ll be bearing the essential diamond. I love you, Louise.’

Louise’s breath caught in her throat. He was really saying he loved her? Was asking her to marry him? For a split second she felt like Cinderella must have done when she tried on the glass slipper.

Then reality crashed in.

‘Max…’ she warned.

‘That’s the wrong word.’

‘No…’

‘Now you’re just playing hard to get.’ From supplicant to the Max she knew in one easy bound.

She shook her head. ‘It’s too soon. We need time to get to know one another.’

‘We’ve known one another all our lives, Louise. It’s the sex we’re catching up on.’

Was it? Really? Could he change, just like that? Unlikely…‘It’s madness,’ she said.

‘Oh, well, thanks.’

‘You see?’ Another minute and they’d be hurling insults…‘You ask me to marry you…’ She paused. ‘At least I assume that’s what you’re doing, although a more ham-fisted, ungracious effort would be impossible to imagine, and already I want to throw something at you.’

And without warning he was smiling. ‘Well, that’s promising. I’ve missed our spats.’

‘Unbelievable!’

‘I swear it’s true. I’ve especially missed them since making up became so much fun.’

‘Stop it!’

‘You want me to woo you, is that it? Do a PR job on myself. Sell you on the idea?’

‘If you had the slightest clue about how to do that,’ she informed him, ‘you wouldn’t need me.’

‘Not for your marketing skills, no.’ He was grinning…How dared he be grinning? ‘Since we’re being brutally honest here, you should know that I’d be happy to keep you around just for your highly imaginative taste in underwear.’

It wasn’t a blush searing her cheeks. It was the combination of the winter sunshine striking in through the window and the central heating turned up too high…

‘You’re not doing a good job of selling me on the idea of marriage, Max.’

‘You’re not making it easy.’

Louise didn’t want to be ‘sold’. Or to make it easy for him. He was right, they were having fun, but he was still Max Valentine. The same man who’d left her high and dry more times than a girl with any kind of a life should be able to recall.

Hearing the last bell calling the audience to their seats, being the only person left in the theatre foyer was still painfully fresh.

He’d promised it was the last time, but could he change? When it came to a choice between Bella Lucia and her, would he ever put her first?

‘There’s no such thing as an easy sell,’ she told him. ‘You need to do your market research.’

‘Is that right? For that I need your co-operation. Dinner at my place? Nine o’clock.’

She should say no…

And yet…And yet…When he’d held onto her hands, she’d seen something in his face, something more than the light banter. And when he’d said he loved her, she’d known he was telling the truth.

‘Nine o’clock? You’re sure you can manage that?’

He crossed his heart. ‘You can depend on it.’

Max’s apartment was in an ultra modern development overlooking the marina in Chelsea. He had acres of blond-wood open-plan floor-space, a space-age kitchen and simple, minimalist furniture that enveloped her as she sank onto the soft leather sofa.

‘Hungry?’ he asked.

‘Not desperately. My mother came up to town and took me out to lunch.’

‘Then we’ll leave it for a while. Everything okay? With your mother?’

‘Hugs, tears. She wanted to know about us.’

‘What did you tell her?’

She grinned. ‘As little as I could get away with. She’s like Dad. Suspects it will all end in tears.’

‘And you?’ He handed her a glass of white wine. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think they’re probably right,’ she said, taking a sip. Then, ‘But I’m here to be sold.’

‘Right. Well, round one involves a questionnaire.’

‘Oh?’

‘The kind of thing that you do,’ he said. ‘Branding?’

She nodded. ‘You need to know what I feel about you so that you can build on your pluses. And round two?’

‘That rather depends on how round one goes.’

‘Right,’ she said, setting her drink on the table, kicking off her boots, tucking a cushion at her back and stretching out on the sofa. ‘I’m sitting comfortably. You can begin.’

He lifted her legs, sat down beside her and dropped them across his lap. ‘Okay,’ he said, absently stroking her feet. ‘First question. What three words would you use to describe me?’

‘Arrogant,’ she said. ‘Workaholic. Hot.’

‘Arrogant?’

‘You don’t get to comment on the answers. You collate them, study them, act on the information they give you.’

‘Arrogant?’ he repeated.

‘You don’t object to “workaholic” or “hot”?’

‘Workaholic is the bad one?’

‘I’m not here to do the work for you, Max. You have to study all the results. Ask yourself what’s important. What you have to change to get the outcome you want.’

‘I see.’

‘Two out of three isn’t bad,’ she said.

‘Only if they’re the right two.’

‘True.’ He was, it seemed, learning. ‘Shall we move on? I said I wasn’t desperately hungry but I will want to eat tonight.’

‘If I was a country which one would I be?’

‘Switzerland.’

He frowned. ‘Why’s that?’

‘I refer you to the answer I gave earlier.’ Then, ‘You’re like a Swiss clock; you never stop.’

‘I could wind down a little.’ She refused to be drawn into a discussion of every answer. That wasn’t how it worked. ‘A landscape?’ he continued.

‘Birmingham, Stoke…something industrial.’

‘No need to hammer the point. I get the picture. I work too hard.’

‘We both work hard, Max. The difference is that you put work first.’

‘People rely on me.’

‘Delegate.’

‘I’m trying, Lou.’

‘What would you do if someone phoned from Mayfair, right now, and said the restaurant was on fire?’

‘Tell them to call the fire brigade?’

‘Liar.’ Then, because maybe she was learning something from this, too, ‘I’d expect you to go, Max. I’d want to be with you.’

For a moment he seemed lost for words. As if the idea of dealing with a crisis together hadn’t occurred to him.

‘If I was a time of day?’ he said, moving on.

‘Six-thirty.’

He smiled at that and she knew he’d got it. Understood that the time she associated with him was that moment when she walked into his office at the end of the day and he stopped whatever he was doing, they had a drink and just talked. Even when he’d been working on the Valentine party, and she’d left him to get on with it, because she knew how important it was. It worked both ways.