Almost Forever (8 page)

His eyebrows arched, and suddenly the languid, cosmopolitan gentleman was gone, and in his place was a man with cool, almost ruthless eyes. “Do you really think I'd care about being polite if I didn't want to attend? I can be a bloody bastard on occasion.”

Claire felt mesmerized, staring into his turquoise eyes and suddenly seeing someone else, but abruptly the ruthlessness was gone, and in its place was the familiar calm control, making her feel as if her mind and eyes were playing tricks on her.

“Why don't you want to go?” he probed.

“I don't belong to that social set any longer.”

“Are you afraid you'll see your ex-husband again?”

“I'm certainly not interested in socializing with him and his wife!”

“You don't have to socialize with them,” Max persisted, and Claire felt the steely purpose in him. “If they're there, simply ignore them. Divorce is too rampant nowadays for it to be practical to split friends and acquaintances into warring factions.”

“I'm not at war with Jeff,” Claire denied. “That isn't the issue at all.”

“Then what
is
the issue? I'd like to take you to the dinner party and dance with you afterward. I think we'd have fun, don't you?”

“I'm monopolizing your time—”

“No, dear,” he interrupted gently. “I'm monopolizing yours. I like being with you. You don't have emotional fits all
over my jacket. I freely admit to being selfish, but I'm comfortable with you, and I like being comfortable.”

Claire gave in, knowing that for her own emotional safety she should stay as far away from him as possible, but she simply couldn't. She wanted to be with him, see him, talk to him, even if only as a friend, and the need was too strong to be controlled.

After lunch he walked her across the street. While they had been eating, the sky had rapidly filled with dark clouds, promising a spring shower. Max glanced up at the sky. “I'll have to run to beat the rain,” he said. “What time are we having dinner tonight?”

Claire turned to stare at him in disbelief. “Dinner
tonight?
” Three nights in a row?

“Unless you have other plans. I'll be the chef. After all, it'll be the first meal in my new apartment. You don't have other plans, do you?”

“No, no other plans.”

“Good. Strictly casual tonight, too, so you can relax. I'll collect you at six-thirty.”

“I'll drive,” she said hastily. “That way you won't have to leave in the middle of cooking.”

He gave her a cool, deliberate look. “I said I'll collect you. You're not driving home alone at night. My mother would disinherit me if I allowed such a thing.”

Claire hesitated. She was beginning to learn how determined Max was to have things his way. He was unyielding once he'd made up his mind. Behind the pose of sophisticated indolence was pure steel, cold and unbreakable. She had glimpsed it a few times, so briefly that she had never been quite certain of what she'd seen, but she was too intuitive not to sense the strength of the man behind the image.

Max tilted her chin up with his finger, bringing his charm into play as his eyes twinkled at her. “Six-thirty?”

She glanced at her wristwatch. She was already late and didn't have time to argue over such an unimportant detail. “All right. I'll be ready.”

He was an expert at getting his way, she realized some ten minutes later. If charm didn't work, he used that cold authority that appeared without warning, and vice versa, but usually the charm would be enough. How often had anyone refused him, especially a woman? Probably not in this decade, Claire thought ruefully. Even as wary as
she
was of handsome charmers, she hadn't been immune to him.

She rushed home after work, alive with anticipation. Quickly she showered and shampooed and was just beginning to blow-dry her hair when the telephone rang.

“All right, spill your guts,” Martine drawled when Claire answered the phone. “I want to hear all about that gorgeous man.”

When Claire thought about it, she realized that it was nothing less than a minor miracle that Martine had curbed her curiosity for as long as she did, instead of calling Claire at work.

Claire paused, and a tiny frown pulled at her brow. What did she know about Max? That he had three sisters and a brother, was from England, and dealt in real estate. Her family already knew that much, from the adroit answers he'd given them the day before. She knew that he had expensive tastes, dressed elegantly and had impeccable manners. Other than that his life was a blank. She remembered asking him questions, but oddly enough, she couldn't remember his answers. She didn't even know how old he was.

“He's just a friend,” she finally answered, because she didn't know what else to say.

“And the
Mona Lisa
is just a painting.”

“In essence, yes. There's nothing between us except friendship.” He'd never even kissed her, except for those sexless
pecks on the cheek and forehead, and it wasn't that he didn't know how to go about it. He simply wasn't interested.

“Ummm, if you say so,” Martine said, her skepticism evident. “Are you seeing him again?”

Claire sighed. “Yes, I'm seeing him again.”

“Aha!”

“Don't ‘aha' me. We're
friends
, without the capital
F
that Hollywood uses so meaningfully. You saw him, so I'm sure you won't have any trouble imagining how he's chased. He's tired of it, that's all, and he feels comfortable with me because I don't chase him. I'm not after a hot romance.”

On the other end of the line, Martine raised her expressive eyebrows. She readily believed that Claire wasn't after a hot romance, but she didn't for one minute believe that Max Benedict was seeing her sister merely because he was “comfortable” with her. Oh, he was probably used to being chased, all right, and every hunting instinct man possessed would have been aroused when Claire looked right through him as if he were sexless. Martine knew quite a lot about men, and one look had told her that Max was pure male, more predatory than most, smarter than most and possessed of a sexuality that burned so vividly she wondered how Claire, who was so unusually sensitive to other people, could fail to see it. But perhaps Claire was too innocent to recognize that energy for what it was. Even though she'd been married to Jeff Halsey, there had always been a certain distance to her, a dreaminess that separated her from other people.

“If you're certain…”

“I'm certain, believe me.”

She finally got off the phone with Martine and glanced anxiously at the clock. It was almost six. She hurriedly finished drying her hair, but she didn't have time to do anything with it except leave it loose. He'd said to dress casually, so she
pulled on beige linen pants and topped them with a loose blue sweater with a deep neckline and a shawl collar. Was that too casual? Max was always so well dressed, and he had the English sense of formality. Another look at the clock told her that she didn't have time to dither over her clothes; she still had to do her makeup.

Just as she pulled a brush through her hair one last time, the doorbell rang. It was six-thirty exactly. She picked up her bag and hurried to open the door.

“Ah, you're ready, as usual,” he said, and fingered the collar of her sweater. “You'll need a jacket. The rain has turned chilly.”

Tiny raindrops glittered on his tweed jacket and in his golden hair as he leaned against the doorframe, waiting for Claire to get a jacket. When she rejoined him, he draped his arm over her shoulders in a friendly fashion.

“I hope you're hungry. I've outdone myself, if I do say so.” His smile invited her to share his good humor, and when he hugged her into his tall body as they walked, she was content to lean against him. To be that close to him was a painful pleasure that she knew she should resist, but for the moment she simply couldn't pull away. She felt the heat of his body, the strength of the arm that lay so casually over her shoulders, and smelled the warm, clean scent of his skin. Her eyes closed briefly on the longing that welled inside her but she pushed it away. It would do no good to pretend, even for a moment, that the way she felt could ever come to anything—all it would bring her was pain. She was destined to be Max's
buddy
, and that was all the arm around her shoulders signified.

“I hope you like seafood,” he said as they entered his apartment. The gilt-edged mirror over the Queen Anne table reflected their movements as he took her jacket from her and shrugged out of his then hung both in the small coat closet in
the foyer. Attracted by the mirror, Claire watched him in its reflection, noticing the grace of his movements in even that small chore.

“This is Houston. The Gulf is at our back door. It would be unpatriotic or something not to like seafood.”

“Shrimp in particular?”

“I love shrimp in particular.” She licked her lips.

“Would that include shrimp creole?”

“It would. Are we having shrimp creole?”

“We are. I got the recipe in New Orleans, so it's authentic.”

“It's hard for me to imagine you puttering around in a kitchen,” she said, following him into the narrow, extremely modern kitchen, where everything was built-in and at his fingertips. A delicious spicy aroma filled the air.

“I usually don't but when I develop a taste for a certain dish, I learn how to prepare it. How else could I have shrimp creole when I'm in England for a visit? It's a certain thing my mother's cook has never prepared it. Then again, I had to learn how to do Yorkshire pudding for the same reason—different continent. The table is already set, will you help me carry all this through?”

It was difficult for her to believe that he had moved into the apartment only that morning. He seemed so at home there, and the apartment itself bore no signs of unpacking. Everything was in place, as if it had all been waiting for him, and he'd simply strolled in. The table was perfectly set, and when they were seated, Max uncorked a bottle of white wine and poured it into their glasses. The wine was crisp and clean, just what she wanted with the spicy shrimp creole and wild rice. They were relaxed together, and Claire both ate and drank more than she usually did. The wine filled her with warmth, but pleasantly so, and after dinner they both continued to sip the wine while they cleaned up the dinner dishes.

Max didn't insist that she leave the dishes for him, and that amused her—he wasn't
that
domesticated. He saw no reason why she shouldn't help him. It was difficult for two people to maneuver in the narrow kitchen, and they were continuously bumping into each other, but even that was pleasant. The brush of his body against hers gave her such secret pleasure that a couple of times she deliberately didn't move out of his way. Such behavior was uncharacteristic of her, because it bordered on flirtatiousness, and Claire had never been a flirt. She wasn't good at it, like Martine. Martine could smile and bat her eyelashes and make teasing little innuendos, but Claire wasn't at ease with sexual games, even when they weren't meant to be taken seriously.

The wine had relaxed her even more than she had realized. As soon as they sat down in the living room, she felt her muscles begin to turn into butter, and she sighed drowsily. She took another sip of the golden wine, and Max took the glass from her hand to set it on the coffee table.

“I think you've had your limit. You're going to go to sleep on me.”

“No, but I
am
tired,” she admitted, leaning her head back. “It was a busy day, even for a Monday.”

“Anything unusual?” He sat down beside her, his eyes shielded by lowered lashes.

“You might say that. Sam—that's Mr. Bronson, my employer—heard a rumor that we may be the target of a takeover attempt.”

“Oh?” His attention was focused on her, his body tense despite his relaxed pose. “How did he hear that?”

“Sam has remarkable sources and remarkable instincts. What bothers him the most is the possibility that a foreign company may be behind it.”

His face was expressionless as he reached behind her and
began kneading the muscles of her neck and shoulders, his fingers making her give a quiet
mmmm
of pleasure. “Why is that particularly disturbing?”

“Because Sam is in the process of developing an alloy that could have far-reaching possibilities, especially in space,” she murmured, then heard her own words echoing in her ears, and her eyes popped open. “I can't believe I told you that,” she said in horror.

“Shh, don't worry. It won't go any further,” he soothed, resuming the massaging motion. “If the production of the alloy is that important to national security, why isn't it classified? That would protect him from a takeover by a foreign company.”

“Sam is a maverick. He doesn't like rules and regulations or the strict supervision he knows would come with government intervention and protection. He wants to perfect the alloy first, do all of his research and experimentation at his own speed, under his own rules. He'll go to the government, of course, if the rumor turns out to be true. He won't let the alloy go to another country.”

Spencer-Nyle had been buying stock in Bronson Alloys, but very quietly, in small amounts. Anson wasn't quite ready to make his move, but if Bronson had also heard the rumor that foreign interests were backing a covert takeover, that gave the speculation a certain credence and Spencer-Nyle might have to step in sooner than Anson had planned. The danger was that now Bronson would be on the alert for any movement of his stock, and Claire had confirmed that Bronson worked best on his own. He wouldn't welcome a takeover by Spencer-Nyle any more than he would by a foreign interest. The company, though publicly held, was his baby, and Sam Bronson was known as a tough, gritty fighter. Max made a mental note to call Anson after taking Claire home.