Almost Forever (18 page)

Max hadn't considered that he would have more trouble convincing Claire to move than Rome had had in shaking up an entire office, but he should have known. He had made enough mistakes in dealing with her, mistakes that had come back to haunt him, that he should have been expecting it. If he could just get her to Dallas, he would have plenty of time to convince her that he wasn't a complete bastard after all. If it took time to rebuild her trust in him, he was willing to take that time. He had hurt her, and the knowledge was eating away at him. It had been true when Claire accused him of compartmentalizing his life. He hadn't allowed for the possibility that Claire would think he had used her solely for the purpose of getting that information. Now he couldn't get her to listen to him, and he had the cold feeling inside that even if she did, she wouldn't believe him. He had destroyed her trust in him, and only now was he realizing how rare and precious that trust was.

 

Claire did her usual Saturday morning chores, finding comfort in the routine while she tried to get her thoughts in order and make a logical decision. She scrubbed and waxed the kitchen floor, cleaned the bathroom from top to bottom, did her laundry, and even washed the windows, trying to burn up the anger that consumed her. With a shock she realized that she was not just angry, she was furious. She was usually
calm—she couldn't even remember the last time she had been truly angry, so angry that she wanted to throw something and scream at the top of her lungs. Damn him, how
dare
he! After using her as callously as he had, now he actually expected her to uproot herself and change her entire life, agree to move to another city and in doing so throw herself into continuous contact with him. He had said she wouldn't be working for him, but she would be in the same building, in the same city, and he had made it plain that he didn't consider things over between them. How had he said it? “When I make love to you again, you'll be awake.”
Again.
That was the key word.

His gall made her almost incoherent with anger, and she muttered to herself as she cleaned. It was odd, but she couldn't remember being angry when Jeff had left her for Helene. She had been tired and grief-worn over the baby, and bitterly accepting that Jeff should want someone else, but she hadn't been angry. Only Max had touched her deeply enough to find the core of passion inside her. He brought out all the emotions and feelings she had spent a lifetime controlling and protecting: love, fierce desire, even anger.

She still loved him; she didn't even try to fool herself on that score. She loved him, she burned for him, she wanted him, and the flip side of the coin was her deep anger. It was nature's decree that for every action there should be a balancing reaction, and that was also true of emotions. If she hadn't loved him so deeply, she would have been able to shrug away his betrayal and accept it as a lesson in trusting the wrong person. But because she loved him, she wanted to shake him until his teeth rattled. She wanted to scream at his arrogant assumption that she was his for the taking, and she wanted to show him just how wrong that assumption was.

She could tell him to keep his job, turn her back on him, and walk away—that would show him that he couldn't use her
and expect her to fall back into his bed whenever he beckoned. That would show him that she was perfectly capable of living without him…or would it? Wouldn't it instead be admitting that he had hurt her so badly that she
couldn't
face seeing him every day? She had to admit that joining the unemployment line when she had the offer of a good job was a drastic, illogical move. He would know how much he had hurt her, and her pride demanded that she put up a good front. It was somehow essential to her self-esteem that she prevent him from knowing that his betrayal had hurt her so deeply that the wound was still bleeding.

But what other choice did she have? If she went to Dallas, she would be playing right into his hands, dancing to his tune like a marionette on a string.

Claire straightened from her dusting, her mouth set firmly and her eyes deeply thoughtful. What she had to do was not allow Max to be a factor in her decision at all. This was her job, her financial future, and she shouldn't allow anger to cloud her judgment. Even if she went to Dallas, she wouldn't
have
to dance to Max's tune; when it came down to it, she was a woman, not a marionette. The choice, and the decision, were hers.

Looking at it like that, from a logical point of view, she knew that she would take the job. Perhaps that would be the best way of putting up a good front. If she went on about her life as normal, it would seem as if Max hadn't made such a disastrous impact on her heart, and only she would know the truth.

Once the decision was made it was as if a weight had lifted. The difficult part would be telling her family, and Claire chose to tell Martine first. That afternoon she drove out to Martine's house in the suburbs, a ritzy location that accurately reflected Martine's and Steve's dual success. Martine's house wasn't cool and picture-perfect, though. It reflected Martine's warmth and outgoing personality, as well as her joy in her
children. A tricycle was parked next to the first step, and a red ball lay under a manicured shrub, but most of the cheerful tangle of toys was in the fenced backyard that surrounded the pool. Because it was a warm, sunny Saturday, Claire directed her steps toward the back. As she rounded the corner of the house, the tapping of her heels on the flagstones warned Martine of someone's presence, and she lazily opened her eyes. Just as Claire had expected, her sister was stretched out on a deck chair, lazing in the sun in a diminutive white bikini that had to make Steve choke whenever he saw it. Even wearing no makeup and with her golden blond hair pulled back in a haphazard ponytail with an ordinary rubber band, Martine was gorgeous and sexy.

“Pull up a chair,” she invited lazily. “I would hug you, but I'm slimy with suntan oil.”

“Where are the children?” Claire asked, sinking onto a deck chair and propping her feet up. The sun did feel good, all hot and clean, and she turned her face up to it like a flower.

“Skating party. It's Brad's best friend's birthday. It's an
all-day
skating party,” Martine said gleefully. “And Steve is playing golf with a client. This may be the only day I have alone again until both children are in college, so I'm making the most of it.”

“Shall I go?” Claire asked teasingly.

“Don't you dare. With our schedules, we don't see enough of each other as it is.”

Claire looked down, thinking of the decision she'd made that morning. She was only now beginning to realize how close-knit her family was, without living in each other's pockets. Moving away from them was going to be a wrench. “What if you saw even less of me? What if I moved to Dallas?”

Martine shot upright in the deck chair, her blue eyes wide and shocked. “What? Why would you move to Dallas? What about your job?”

“I've been offered a job in Dallas. I won't have my job here much longer, anyway.”

“Why not? I thought you and Sam got along like a house on fire.”

“We do, but Sam—the company has been taken over by Spencer-Nyle, a conglomerate based in Dallas.”

“I've been reading about the possibility in the papers, but I had hoped it wouldn't happen. So it's final, then? When did it happen, and what does that have to do with you, anyway? They certainly aren't going to get rid of Sam. He's the brains behind Bronson Alloys. Aren't you going to stay on as his secretary?”

“The final agreement was signed yesterday.” Claire looked down at her hands, surprised to see that her fingers were laced tightly together. She made a conscious effort to relax. “Sam is going completely into research, so he won't need a secretary any longer.”

“That's bad. I know how much you like him. But it's also good that you've already had a job offer. What company is it?”

“Spencer-Nyle.”

Martine's eyes widened. “The corporate headquarters! I'm impressed, and you must have impressed someone else, too!”

“Not really.” Claire took a deep breath. This wasn't getting any easier, so she decided to just get it said. “Max Benedict's real name is Maxwell Conroy, and he's a vice president with Spencer-Nyle.”

For a full five seconds Martine merely stared at Claire with a stunned expression. Then hot color flooded her cheeks and she surged to her feet, her fists clenched. She seldom swore, but it was due to choice, not lack of vocabulary. She used every bit of that vocabulary now, pacing up and down and damning Max with every invective she could think of, and inventing new combinations when she ran out of the ones she already knew. She didn't need to hear all the details to know that Claire had
been hurt. Martine knew Claire well, and she was fiercely protective of her sister, as she was of everyone she loved.

When Martine showed signs of running down, Claire interrupted quietly. “It gets more complicated. I gave him confidential information that he needed for Spencer-Nyle to engineer the takeover. That was why he was down here, and that was why he was showing so much interest in me. I blurted it all out like an idiot.”

“I'll tear his face off,” Martine raged, beginning to pace up and down again like a caged tigress. Then she stopped, and a peculiar expression came over her face. “But you're going to Dallas with him?”

“I'm going to Dallas for the job,” Claire said firmly. “It's the only logical thing I can do. I'd have to be an even bigger idiot than I already am if I deliberately chose unemployment over a good job. Pride won't keep the bills paid.”

“Yes, it is the logical thing to do,” Martine echoed, and sat down. She still had that peculiar expression on her face, as if she were trying to think something through and it didn't quite tally up. Then a slow smile began to crinkle the corners of her eyes. “He's transferred you so you'll be with him, that's it, isn't it? The man is in love with you!”

“Not likely,” Claire said, her throat going tight. “Lies and betrayal aren't very good indicators of love. I love him, but you already knew that, didn't you? I shouldn't love him, not now, but I can't turn it on and off like a faucet. Just don't ask me to believe that he ever saw anything in me except the means to an end.”

“But when I think about it, he always watched you… Oh, I can't describe it,” Martine mused. “As if he were so hungry for you, as if he wanted to absorb you. It gave me the shivers, watching him watch you. The
good
shivers, if you know what I mean.”

Claire shook her head. “That isn't likely, either. You've seen him,” she said, feeling her body tense up again. “He's beautiful. It stops my breath to look at him! Why should he be interested in me, except for the information he needed?”

“Why shouldn't he? In my book he'd be a fool if he didn't love you.”

“Then a lot of men have been fools,” Claire pointed out wearily.

“Fiddlesticks. You haven't
let
them love you. You never let anyone get close enough to really know you, but Max is more intelligent than most men. Why
wouldn't
he love you?” Martine asked passionately.

It was hard for Claire to say, almost impossible. Her throat tightened. “Because I'm not beautiful, like you. That seems to be what men want.”

“Of course you aren't beautiful like me! You're beautiful like
yourself!
” Martine came over to Claire and sat down on the deck chair with her, her lovely face unusually serious. “I'm flamboyant, but that isn't your style at all. Do you know what Steve once said to me? He said that he wished I were more like you, that I would think before I leaped. I punched him, of course, and asked what else he likes about you. He said that he likes your big dark eyes—he called them ‘bedroom eyes'—and I was about ready to do more than punch him! Blue-eyed blondes like me are a dime a dozen, but how many brown-eyed blondes are there? I used to die with envy, because you only had to turn those dark eyes on a man and he was ready to melt at your feet, but you never seemed to know that, and eventually he gave up.” Suddenly Martine caught her breath, her eyes widening. “Max didn't give up, did he?”

Claire was staring at her sister, unable to believe that beautiful Martine had ever found anything about her to be jealous of. Distracted, she said, “Max doesn't know those two words
are ever used together.” Then she realized what she had just admitted, and she flushed. She wasn't used to talking so frankly to anyone, even her sister, but she was learning some things about herself that she'd never suspected before. Was it true that she held people away from her, that she didn't let them get close enough to care? She hadn't looked at it from that angle before; she had thought that she was keeping a distance between herself and other people so
she
wouldn't care, without considering the person who was being held at arm's length.

“Max won't leave me alone. He insists that it isn't over. He was called back to Dallas,” she explained steadily. “By the time he returned to Houston, I had already found out his real name and what he was doing here. He called, but I refused to go out with him again. So now I've been transferred to Dallas.”

“To his own territory. Smart move,” Martine commented.

“Yes. I know all that. I know how he reacts to challenges, and that's all I am to him. How many women do you suppose have ever refused him?”

Martine thought, then admitted ruefully, “You probably stand alone.”

“Yes. But I have to have a job, so I'm going.” Even as she said the words, Claire wondered if there had ever been anything else she could have done. “What would you do in my place?”

“I'd go,” Martine admitted, and laughed. “We must be more alike than you think. I know I'd never let him think that he'd made me run!”