‘You have a home now,’ she said.
‘A home to come home to. I travel a lot, Chloe.’
‘Do you ever get tired of it…the travelling?’ she asked curiously.
‘The flights can be tedious. Australia is a long way from anywhere else. But I like having the world as my playground. Not being limited.’
She sighed. ‘You make me realise how limited my world has been. I haven’t even been outside this country. My mother always had more work lined up for me, hardly ever a break.’
‘You can change that, too.’
Yes, she could. Freedom was a powerful thing if she learnt to use it wisely.
‘Have you ever been sailing, Chloe?’
‘No.’
‘Then come out on the catamaran with me,’ he invited, his dark eyes challenging her to take on a new experience. ‘We’ll only be gone an hour or two and Eric will mind Luther. He’s up on your terrace trimming the hedge.’
Max watched temptation war with caution. She wanted to accept, but undoubtedly her mother had fed her fears about being alone with the big, bad shark. The dog had made this little encounter safe, put her at ease, but without Luther…
She turned her gaze to the harbour. Her chin lifted slightly. Then with an air of self-determination, she looked back at him and said, ‘You’ll have to tell me what to do.’
‘You don’t have to do anything except sit or lie on the deck and enjoy skimming across the water,’ he assured her, smiling as he pushed himself onto his feet. ‘While you fix Luther up with Eric, I’ll take the catamaran out to the wharf, ready for you to board.’
There was eager delight on her face as she scrambled up from the grass. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’
‘No hurry. Get a hat, too, and put on some sun-block cream.’
‘Okay.’
Max felt a zing of triumphant satisfaction as he headed down to the boatshed. Stephanie Rollins was fast losing her influence on Chloe. Which was all to the good. He wanted her to feel free, to make choices for herself, and she’d just chosen to be with him, despite the witch’s warnings.
Once they were out in the harbour, Max realised winning had its downside. He had the exhilarating pleasure of watching Chloe’s uninhibited joy in the speedy ride across the water, her laughter when waves splashed over the hull, leaving them both dripping wet. She didn’t care about how she looked. She simply loved all the sensations of sailing. And it stoked Max’s desire for her to the point of severe physical discomfort.
Several times he had to turn away from her, focus fiercely on manipulating the sail, changing the cat’s direction, waiting until the tension in his groin eased. His baggy shorts gave him some cover but not enough after they’d got wet, and it certainly didn’t help that Chloe’s damp clothes clung to every luscious curve of her body.
He couldn’t remember ever being on fire for a woman to this extent. He wanted to lick the salt water from her beautiful face, taste her laughter, peel off her clothes, bury his face in her breasts, suck the nipples that were poking out at him so teasingly, bury himself so deeply inside her nothing else would matter-all- consuming sex, devouring all the reasons why they shouldn’t have it.
He knew she wasn’t immune to his sexual attraction. The occasional sharp intake of breath, the quick look away, the self-conscious curling up of her long, bare legs-all revealing little actions. The big question was-would she fight what she wanted with him, or welcome it?
Risky business.
Rushing into it might break her trust in him.
But it was damned difficult to hold himself back.
At least another week, he told himself. Keep building the chemistry between them, breaking down the mental barriers, issuing tempting invitations, which would seem simply companionable, no reason to refuse-no reasonable reason.
‘Had fun?’ he asked as he brought the catamaran in beside the wharf, grabbing the ladder to hold the craft steady for Chloe to get off.
She glowed at him. ‘It was brilliant, Max. Thank you so much.’
He grinned. ‘Hungry work, sailing. Like to join me for lunch by the pool after you’ve cleaned up?’
Again the hesitation.
He pushed, teasingly adding, ‘We can feed Luther tit-bits under the table.’
Including the dog sealed it.
She laughed. ‘He loves chicken.’
‘I’ll ask Elaine to make us chicken caesar salads.’
‘That would be great. You’ll have two eager guests.’
‘Glad to have the company.’
Chloe told herself it was stupid to deny herself the pleasure of his company. He was a brilliant, fascinating man. The powerful tug of his strong masculinity would affect any woman. It wasn’t special to her. She just had to learn to deflect it, concentrate on their conversation. This was a chance to learn more about him and his life and she wanted to know how he’d managed the journey he’d taken to here, what it took to become the man he was.
It was the right decision to go. The lunch was delicious. Max was totally relaxed, enjoying Luther’s appetite for chicken as well as his own. Chloe had tied a sarong over her swimming costume, and relieved of being over-conscious of her body in his presence, she relaxed, too. Max had already been in the pool for a swim when she’d arrived and had a towel tucked around his waist-a decent enough covering to allay the unsettling awareness of his body.
Luther curled up on one of the lounges and went to sleep while they lingered at the table, finishing off the bottle of wine Edgar had brought with their lunch. Chloe screwed up her courage to do some probing into Max’s background, telling herself it was okay if he rebuffed her. He had a right to his privacy. She could apologise and backtrack into neutral subjects.
‘Max, I know your mother died of a drug overdose when you were sixteen. You must have been through worse things than me in your growing up years,’ she started off, her eyes earnestly appealing for his forbearance when she saw the shutting down of all expression on his face. ‘I just want to know how you moved past it.’
He turned his gaze away from her, eyelids lowered to half-mast. For several tense moments, Chloe sensed him brooding over whether to answer her or not, his mind travelling back to the past, sifting through it, weighing up whether he was prepared to reveal anything. When he finally spoke, it was in a very dry, dismissive tone.
‘When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. You move on because there’s no alternative.’ He looked back at her, his eyes very dark and intense. ‘You have the harder road to travel, Chloe. You know there’s someone you can retreat to if you find it too difficult. That may weaken your resolve to move on.’
‘I’ll never go back to my mother,’ she said vehemently, knowing she had been weak not to make the break before this. The feeling of being hopelessly trapped in a relentless cycle of demands was gone now, thanks to Max.
He smiled. ‘I hope not. Today I’ve seen a vitality in you that was missing when you were yourself, not playing a role for the camera.’
He made her feel more alive than she’d ever been. This wasn’t make-believe, escaping from reality. It was how she actually felt here and now. ‘Did you daydream as a kid, Max?’-escaping his realities?
‘No. I watched television. I absorbed television. I didn’t have a normal bed-time and it blocked out my mother’s crazy stuff. I’d sit there working out why one show had more popular appeal than another. Was it the storyline? Was it the actors? Was it the camera work? What would I do to make it better?’ His eyes twinkled in mocking amusement at having turned a bad time into something good. ‘Probably the best preparation for what I do now-judging what viewers will like and what they won’t, getting the right cast and the right crew to give a show optimum appeal.’
‘But you didn’t start off in television,’ Chloe remarked, puzzled that he hadn’t headed straight for it, given his intense interest.
He shook his head. ‘I didn’t want to be an odd-job boy at a television studio, which was all I could have been in that industry at sixteen.’
‘You might have been cast in a show if you’d tried out for one.’ He certainly had the male x-factor that was very marketable in television.
‘I didn’t want to be an actor. I wanted to run the show, Chloe, be in control.’
Master of his own fate, she thought. Had the drive for control been born in him or was it a reaction to the out-of-control life his mother had led? Her own life had been so overwhelmingly controlled, any overt rebellion crushed by abusive tirades, she’d lost the spirit to even try for any control. Until Max had stepped in. She fiercely resolved to be mistress of her own fate after she left here.
‘Getting a job at a publishing house was a stepping stone to the big picture,’ he went on. ‘It was the same field-selling stories, appealing to what people wanted whether it was fiction or non-fiction. I made it to marketing manager by the time I was eighteen. Which opened doors for me to get where I wanted to be.’
Chloe didn’t know his exact age-somewhere in his late thirties. It was an amazing accomplishment to have risen from nothing to a billionaire television baron. ‘It must give you a tremendous sense of satisfaction, having achieved the wealth and power to choose what shows you want to produce,’ she remarked admiringly.
‘Mmm…’Ruthless purpose flashed into his eyes. ‘My way.’
‘Like getting me for the lead role in this show,’ she murmured, remembering what he’d told her. ‘You didn’t care how much my mother haggled over the contract.’
His mouth quirked and the expression in his eyes simmered into something else-something that made her heart skip and sent tingles along every nerve. ‘I wanted you,’ he said.
On the surface it was a professional comment but it didn’t feel like one. She quickly lowered her gaze and covered her inner confusion by picking up her almost empty glass of wine and slowly finishing it off. Was she hearing what she wanted to hear, seeing what she wanted to see? Max was in a relationship with another woman-a stunningly beautiful woman who was probably as self-assured as he was. Why would a man like him find a lame duck like herself desirable?
Apart from which, she shouldn’t be excited by the idea that the attraction she felt with him was returned. It made her situation here perilously close to her mother’s nasty reading of it. Although Max had made no move on her. Not even the suggestion of a move. They were just talking. Which was what she should be doing instead of thinking.
