Courage in the Kiss (16 page)

Hadley looked up at Maxx as soon as he walked into her room. Her cheeks flushed, as though in embarrassment, but he didn’t see why. She had nothing to be ashamed of. What his father had said was unforgivable, especially knowing how much it would hurt her and saying it anyway, from spite.

Hadley was probably willing to forgive him for the things he’d said, yet he was willing to ignore the truth of his illness. With a comforting smile, he crossed to his bed, where she sat up against the pillows, and perched by her legs.

“Baby, are you alright?” he asked, trying to soothe her as he took her hand.

“I’m sorry. I just…why does he have to be so difficult all the time?” she asked, falling forward to lean her forehead against his, as though all the energy had been knocked out of her.

Maxx’s hand moved to her neck and he kissed her, not sure how else to calm her down and make her feel better. “Because he’s just like you. Don’t even try to deny that you like to make things difficult for people, because you know you do,” he teased.

When Hadley flushed, a rush of warmth and affection ran through him. It was impossible to believe how hard it was to contain himself around her. But she was so beautiful and fantastic in every way, that he found it hard to keep his hands to himself.

“I promised to take care of it, and I will,” Maxx reminded her, wondering if he was right to keep going or not. He figured he’d only find out once he’d spoken up. “Are you willing to let me talk to him? To settle this whole adoption fiasco, before it goes too far? Before I have to leave?” he asked, desperate to do something.

Seeing how his dad was acting, he knew that Hadley was going to go through a special kind of hell, once he left to reassure the board members. Emerson’s health would have to be talked down and the rumours marked as exaggerations, if their share prices were to remain stable. But that meant leaving Hadley alone with his father, suffering his judgements and having nowhere – and no one – to escape to. Micah wouldn’t be up to the task, simply because he was too young to face their father without blanching in fear.

Running her finger along the back of his neck, Hadley looked up at him through dark eyelashes and appeared somewhere between astoundingly vulnerable and intoxicatingly sexy.

Hadley may have been prone to extreme mood swings, but he loved it. It definitely kept him on his toes. But, most of all, he loved how she’d go from a bad mood to flirtatious in a split second.

“Fine,” she said, glancing away and letting out a defeated sigh. “But don’t be too hard on him,” she asked.

Struggling not to roll his eyes at her kindness and naïvety, Maxx cupped her face in both hands and said, “I’ll treat him exactly how he’s treating you.”
With contempt
, he added, silently.

“I don’t understand why I feel so hormonal lately,” she confessed, out of the blue. “I keep crying and having mood swings. I don’t feel like myself, just now,” she continued, while shaking her head at herself.

Maxx was about to joke that she could be pregnant, when the very thought stopped him short. It
was
possible, however much the idea terrified him, and he could see why his father had jumped to that conclusion. But then his mind went back to
before
they’d slept together and how she’d been like this since he came home.

He let out a haggard breath and forced a smile.

“Baby, you’ve been running yourself ragged for years. But lately, with this business party to prepare for and worrying about me coming home,” Maxx tried to explain, reminding her of the stress she’d been under, this past month. “It’s understandable that a lack of sleep and all this stress, not to mention what I’m asking of you, has finally caught up with you.”

Hadley looked away, as though being human was somehow a failing. And she probably thought it was. But he wouldn’t want her any other way. It was human Hadley who’d had a hand squeezed around his heart for going on five years. He’d thought that feeling would fade once he wasn’t a stupid teenager anymore, but it only seemed to be getting stronger.

Soon he wouldn’t be able to fight it.

Her grip was tightening and, if he wasn’t careful, he’d bear the marks until his dying day.

Unsettled by the thought, Maxx let go of her soft skin and stared at her, wondering how to cover the awkward silence, without letting on to his thoughts.

Hadley tentatively reached across the white duvet and placed her hand over his, where it had settled nervously on the cover.

He didn’t know what else to do with himself, so when her fingertips lightly stroked the back of his hand, he was shocked to find his fingers twitching to return the caress.

This was getting out of hand, so quickly, but when he looked up and met her dark brown eyes, the excuse he’d planned to say, as a means of escape, fluttered away. He couldn’t remember what he’d been about to say, but found himself leaning in until their lips met.

He was kissed back slowly, with a tenderness that equally frightened and excited him. The next thing he knew, he had Hadley on her back, his thigh wedged between hers, and her fingers were undoing his shirt. Rather expertly, at that.

The shaking hands and fumbling, nervous fingers of the girl she’d once been were gone, replaced by a sensual woman who wasn’t afraid to take what she wanted.

A thrill of pleasure ran through Maxx’s spine, as he realised that he’d done this to her. He’d taken the innocent, naïve, and sometimes feisty girl that Hadley used to be and somehow turned her into a provocative seductress.

She licked her lips and bit down on her lower lip, now that he was watching her, too caught up in the pleasure of looking at her to bother doing anything else.

Her fingers were quick to undo his shirt, while her gaze held his, unafraid and unwavering, for perhaps the first time. His mouth captured hers in a hungry kiss, in gratitude for her fearlessness.

She could have turned him away so many times, but she never did. She could hate him, curse him, or refuse to let him anywhere near her, but she would never do those things.

Hadley loved him, and, in her mind, that made him infallible. He didn’t deserve it, but he was pretty sure that was the point. He was a bad boy and she wanted to fix him. She wanted to turn him into the family man with a wild side.

And, damn it, she was succeeding.

“God, Hadley, why do you do this to me?” Maxx asked breathlessly, pulling back from their kiss to stare at her, his heart pounding erratically. But she didn’t answer; her eyes were floating over him as though she was trying to focus on every inch of him at once.

“We have a house full of people, and yet all I want right now is to make you forget about every last one of them,” he confessed, surprised that his voice shook a little. He couldn’t tell if it was need or terror at what she made him feel.

“I already have,” she whispered, in a breath, re-initiating the luscious and sensational kiss he’d interrupted. “Maxx…” she gasped, as he broke away, letting his gaze take in what little was exposed of her.

Her shirt lay open, with an extra two buttons revealing her ample cleavage, though he was pretty sure neither of them had undone them and they’d been fastened before. Her skirt was dishevelled and hitched up on the left side, from when he threw her onto the bed.

She looked so deliciously disarrayed.

Maxx threw aside all caution and care for the outside world, to focus on this moment. What Hadley made him feel was too immense to put aside for anyone else. It would always come first, just as he’d spent half of his teenage years with his cock and hand glued together, thinking about how she looked in a mini skirt.

The very thought made him ache, but she wasn’t that schoolgirl anymore, wandering around the house, doing chores in a mock school uniform. She wasn’t the innocent girl who wore a school uniform to make herself feel more normal, or the girl who made her tutor give her more homework, if she thought he was letting her off easy.

This Hadley was smart, quick off the mark, and opinionated. There was more fire in this girl beneath him than her teenage self could ever hope to possess. And some distant part of Maxx’s brain crowed in victory, knowing that it was his distance and her love for him, despite everything he’d ever said and done to alienate her, that made her this way.

Emerson’s inquisitive voice called for Maxx from the hallway, before he had a chance to act on those images.

Maxx met Hadley’s gaze and lifted a finger to his lips. “Not a word,” he whispered, gently pushing up her shirt to expose her stomach. As soon as bare skin was in view, he kissed it and got in some well needed practice of how to keep her quiet while there were others in the house.

Biting her lip to keep herself silent, she arched her body, dipping her hips toward the bed while thrusting her breasts forward.

The move made his balls tighten and his cock rise against the zip of his trousers. But there wasn’t time to act, as there was a knock at the door.

“Shit!” Maxx swore, sounding as frustrated by the lack of private as she was.

Hadley tried to compose herself, but wanted Maxx so much and wanted them to be alone that she couldn’t do anything other than kiss him lingeringly. The knocking continued as Maxx pulled back from their kiss and fixed her shirt, sending Hadley a seductive smile as he got up and leaned against the door, folding his arms.

“Maxx! Maxx, are you in there?” Emerson shouted. “Maxx.” He knocked a few times, before Maxx made a face of frustration and answered him.

“What is it?” he asked, a tinge of anger in his voice.

“I…I just wondered if I could talk to you for a minute,” his father answered.

Hadley tried to fix her clothes and sat up, in case Emerson walked in. She didn’t remember locking the door, and wasn’t sure whether Maxx had, either. She certainly didn’t want to be half dressed if he walked in.

“Can it wait? Hadley and I are discussing something,” Maxx answered hesitantly.

“Oh…of course. Finish your discussion and I’ll be in the library when you’re ready,” Emerson answered happily; far too happily for her nerves to take.

“Thanks, Dad. We won’t be long,” Maxx replied with a sigh. He looked over at Hadley, who was sitting smiling to herself, only just a little embarrassed by the situation. It wasn’t nearly close to how embarrassed she
should
feel, but she could face those demons another day.

“Why do you make promises I don’t want to keep?” she asked, crossing over to him.

“I couldn’t exactly tell him what we were up to, could I?” Maxx teased, getting a little of that light back in his eyes as he kissed her quickly. “But seriously, no matter how much we want it, there’s no time for us to spend alone. Especially not with these images running through my head,” he complained, taking her hand in his.

Hadley nodded her reluctant agreement, knowing exactly what he meant. This was the end of their blissful privacy; the end of the lingering, spontaneous moments of heat and passion. This could be the end of everything, if Emerson got his way.

The phone started ringing, just as she opened her mouth to speak.

They shared a knowing smile and both headed toward the door. While Maxx continued on downstairs, Hadley picked up the upstairs receiver and put it to her ear. “Hello?” she answered, trying to regain her composure.

“Who is this? Where’s Emerson? Are the rumours true?” a male voice quizzed her on the other end.

With a sigh, she switched to her professional tone. “If you can just hold on a second, I’ll get Maxx for you. He can answer all of your questions,” she promised. With the agitated man’s agreement, she held her hand over the receiver and gently put the phone down on the table.

Hadley only had to go to the top of the stairs before she found Maxx. He was talking to Rowan and Micah, who had buckets in their hands. “Maxx, there’s a frantic man on the phone for you. I think it’s started,” she hinted, trying to give him some warning.

He nodded and waved a distracted thanks, before heading for the downstairs phone.

With him now occupied, Hadley ventured downstairs to apologise to Micah and Rowan for yet another outburst, clean up the mess she’d made, and, somewhere in between, she hoped to talk some sense into Emerson.

All in a day’s work,
she thought to herself.

Maxx hung up the hallway phone with a smile, thinking of Hadley and what had almost happened upstairs. He didn’t know whether to be relieved for his father’s interruption, or furious. These could be the last few hours he had alone with her before he had to leave and settle the waters.

That was exactly what he would have to do now, since the phone call had been one of their top clients, who had been with them for nearly twenty years, wondering if Emerson’s retirement and illness would mean the end of the business.

Maxx had warned him to be more careful about how he revealed the news of his retirement, but his father never listened to him. Not that it was anything new.

When he noticed his father pacing the floor in the living room, beside the bay window, he seriously wanted to beg him to be nice and try not to do anything to hurt Hadley any more than he already had. He couldn’t bear to see him being so awful and spiteful to someone who had never done a thing to deserve it.

“You said you wanted to talk to me?” he called out, as he advanced further into the room and buried his hands in his pockets. He stood just inside the door, hoping not to have to stay too long.

“Yes, I…I was wondering if…maybe, I’d done something to upset Hadley,” Emerson stuttered, sounding not at all like himself. Or as furious as he’d been during the drive home.

“You mean, apart from undermining everything she says and bringing up her parents when she was already distraught, because you’d told her she was selfish and self involved?” Maxx replied, really not sure what he thought he was doing. “Or maybe how you started smoking an hour after getting out of hospital? Accusing her of being pregnant, just because she doesn’t want to be adopted as an adult? Or, the way you degraded her friendship with Conway?” he continued.

“Oh…well…I have made rather a nuisance of myself, haven’t I?” Emerson sighed, rubbing his forehead in contemplation. “I don’t suppose now would be a good time to apologise?” he suggested.

“Maybe…I’m not sure,” he answered, clueless about this stuff. “Dad, you really upset her with those things you said. Now, she’s more than likely willing to forgive you for that, but I’m just not sure sorry will cut it. Not with me,” Maxx replied, not realising how personal it sounded, as though his father had insulted him and not Hadley. As if they were one entity.

Frustrated with himself, as well as his father, he shook his head and wondered just what the hell Hadley had done to him. He
was
angry. He couldn’t stand seeing Hadley hurting the way she was, knowing that she’d put on a brave face for everyone, just to keep up appearances.

Didn’t anyone understand that she only felt comfortable breaking down her barriers to him? Didn’t they realise that, although they saw the false happy smiles she showed them, Maxx had to see the pain and tears that she let him see out of love? Didn’t they realise how much she was hurting or how it hurt him so much more to know that they would even dare to treat her that way?

“Maybe I should wait until after dinner and that would give her time to calm down a bit,” Emerson suggested. “Yes…yes, that sounds fine. Thank you, Maxx,” he said, making his way to the door.

“What?” Maxx frowned and stared at his father’s back as he retreated from the room like a coward.

What had just happened? The entire conversation had confused him. Did he or did he not just hear his own father pass off Hadley’s pain and anger as a simple bad mood? Did he rightly hear him say that he’d
wait
until
after
dinner to apologise for the way he’d been acting, just because he thought
Hadley
needed to calm down?

The man was unbelievable. He couldn’t take any more.

Maxx left the room, behind his father, and tried to maintain his calm exterior as he headed for the games room. He’d join Micah and Rowan, tell them about his comic collection that he’d be passing down to his brother, and hope to hell that his father saw sense, soon. Preferably before his temper boiled over and he said something he’d regret.