couldn’t help it.
She’d call Gemma first thing, catch her before she left for the office and brief her about everything that had to be done. She’d better call Patsy, too, in case there was anything she wanted to send to Jodie. Then she’d spend the day with her parents out at Richmond Hill before going straight on to the airport.
Max…
He’d asked her if she planned keeping their six-thirty date. Well, it was just business, so it didn’t matter if it was Gemma who delivered the completed marketing plan which was, even now, sitting on her desk waiting to be delivered.
At six-thirty, she’d be unfastening her seat belt. Settling in for the long flight east.
She replaced the receiver, then bent to pick up the pieces of broken answering machine that were spread all over the carpet.
Under one of the larger pieces, she found a tiny gold safety pin. She looked at it for a moment, sitting back on her heels, wondering how on earth it could have got there. Even if she’d dropped it, and she couldn’t imagine how since the only pins she had were kept in the carryall she used for work or travelling, her cleaner had been in yesterday morning and she wouldn’t have missed it.
She reached out a finger and touched it, remembering the moment when she’d given one exactly like it to Max. How he’d taken it. Put it in his ticket pocket, next to his heart.
It had been a special moment. A moment when anything might have happened. When it had happened.
No regrets.
She’d got what she’d wanted. If it hadn’t worked out quite the way she’d expected, if she hadn’t managed to get Max out of her system, she still had more than she’d ever dreamed possible. She’d dared to risk everything and, even if she didn’t have Max, she had somehow reclaimed her life. No more deep freeze…
She picked up the pin, placed it on the table beside the broken bits of answering machine, then frowned as she remembered the moment Max had pulled that damned ring out of the same pocket.
No. It couldn’t be. He’d been wearing a dinner jacket tonight.
For it to be the same pin, he’d have had to move it from suit to suit along with the rest of the contents of his pockets that he carried with him, always.
‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ she whispered. ‘It’s just habit…’
But even as she said the words a tear welled up, fell. Soaked into the carpet.
Max hadn’t slept. He’d spent the night thinking. About Louise. About himself. About the bleakness of a future in which she wasn’t there at the start and end of every day.
Shining a light into every corner of their relationship, exposing feelings that he’d always refused to acknowledge, finally understanding a pattern of behaviour that had ended in that scene last night.
Searching for some way to show her that, despite everything he’d done, he was serious. That she was more important to him than a hundred restaurants. That he loved her…
He woke, groggy, just before ten, still in the armchair, an idea, half formed, struggling to the surface. He showered, shaved. Resisted the urge to go straight to her office and tell her what he was going to do.
Six-thirty. That was their time.
It would give him time to put his plan into action so that she’d understand that it wasn’t some empty promise.
She had to understand.
It was his secretary, bringing in the mail, who looked doubtful. She listened to him telling the company lawyer to set the wheels in motion, insisting that it be done in time for his daily meeting with Louise, then, when he rang off, said, ‘Are you expecting Louise this evening?’
‘Has she called to say she can’t make it?’
‘No, but…’
‘But what?’
She went and fetched the early edition of the Courier, folded it back at the diary page.
In between a torn heart, one enclosing a photograph of Louise, one of himself, was the headline:
“NO DIAMONDS FOR THESE VALENTINES…
Expectations were high of an announcement that Max Valentine had popped the question to his latest squeeze, Louise Valentine, at the Bella Lucia Diamond Jubilee party last night. Max, who has been working with Louise on the expansion of the restaurant group, with new premises in Qu’Arim and Meridia already well in hand, was spotted recently in the Queen’s jewellers, Garrard’s, investing heavily in a girl’s best friend.
Max, however, wasn’t at the party and I have it on good authority that London’s favourite PR consultant has already booked her business class ticket and is at this very moment packing her bags, preparing to hotfoot it to Australia, eager to expand her own expire.
He didn’t stop to question the veracity of this statement. It rang too horribly true. Instead he raced to her apartment, grabbed the front door as someone was leaving and raced upstairs, hammered on the door to her apartment.
It was opened by Cal Jameson.
‘Max,’ he said. ‘Louise said to expect you.’
‘She’s here?’ Relief flooded through him. ‘I have to see her, tell her…’
‘She was leaving as I arrived,’ Cal said. ‘Gave me a key, told me to make myself at home. I’m staying for a week this time-’
‘Where is she?’ he demanded, cutting him short. He wasn’t interested in Cal Jameson’s plans. Only in finding Louise.
‘I couldn’t say exactly. Somewhere between here and Melbourne. That’s in Australia,’ the younger man added helpfully.
‘She’s gone? Already?’ Max clawed back his hair. ‘She can’t have. What about work? Her parents?’
‘Damm it, Max. You’ve got it bad. You need a drink-’
‘I don’t want a drink. I just want-’
‘Louise. I know, mate. I know. You’d better come in.’
Louise gripped the arms of the seat, hating the moment of takeoff. Hating the moment when the huge jet banked over London. Letting out a sigh of relief as the ping of the seat-belt warning light went off.
A stewardess offered her a drink, but she shook her head. No alcohol, minimum food, lots of water. And sleep. She needed sleep. At least the unexpected upgrade from club to first class gave her all the stretch room she needed.
She even had an empty seat beside her.
No one to disturb her while she laid out her plans for expansion into Australia, she congratulated herself. No one to disturb her, ever again.
It couldn’t be more perfect, she told herself as she bent to retrieve her laptop at her feet.
Then someone took the seat beside her.
She glanced sideways at her new companion, nodding distantly, not making eye contact-the last thing she wanted was a chatty travelling companion-then did the fastest double take in history.
‘Max!’ His name was expelled on what felt like the last breath in her body. Then, ‘What are you doing here?’
‘It’s six-thirty,’ he said. ‘We always meet at this time of day.’
‘But Gemma was going to-’
‘Stand in for you? While I’m sure she’s a perfectly capable young woman, that wasn’t the deal we made. And as I’m sure you’ll recall, Louise, I paid in advance.’
She gasped. ‘I can’t believe you just said that.’
‘Of course you can. You can believe anything of me. The fact that you’d get on an aircraft and run away to the other side of the world to avoid me proves it.’ He opened his briefcase, took out a thick envelope. ‘Not that I don’t appreciate it,’ he said. ‘It has given me an opportunity to demonstrate just how serious I am when I tell you that I’ll never stand you up again.’
‘I’m not running away!’ she said, fiercely. ‘This has nothing to do with you, Max. This is about me. I’ve spent my whole life wanting something just out of reach. It’s time to grow up, move on, live the life I’ve got, not the one I dreamed…’
