Max's Proposal

‘You seem to be coping.’

‘Oh, I manage well enough,’ she said airily. ‘I can even get into my bargain shoes.’ She stretched a slim ankle, although her foot felt puffy, and the rhinestone heels glittered.

‘They look good,’ he said.

‘Could be diamonds.’

‘Very flash. The heels alone had to be worth the money.’ For a moment they sat, saying nothing, with an antique French clock ticking softly on a rosewood side table. Then he said, ‘Ten to ten; we’d better get moving.’

The bonfire was lit at ten, followed by the fireworks, and if Max Vella missed the highlight of the evening everybody would be looking for him. As it was most of the company must have heard by now that he and the girl from the Chronicle were carrying on behind a closed door.

Vella pulled back a bolt on the long window and it became a door leading out onto lawns. ‘We can walk round to the courtyard from here,’ he said.

Some of the gardens had lamps burning and coloured lights in the trees, but out here there was only moonlight. There was no one else walking, and this way they would avoid the crowds in the house. The grass was velvet-soft and her thin high heels were digging into the springy turf, so that was one reason for taking off her shoes and going barefoot.

On the fifth of November bonfires dotted the skyline with bright orange beacons, and zooming rockets and scattering stars from other parties lit up the skies. ‘Tonight’s the night for wishing on a star,’ she said.

‘There are enough of them about.’

‘But with so many how would you know which was the right one?’

‘That is the problem. Knowing the right one.’

‘Isn’t it always?’ She sounded wistful. As a child she had wished on shooting stars. Little things had worked sometimes, such as wishing for a fine day for a picnic or a ring with a pink pearl in it. But the big wish that mummy wouldn’t cry any more had never come true so that, even when she had been very young, Sara had stopped believing in magic.

Beyond a row of trees the lawns dipped into a grassy ditch that had once been a stretch of the moat. Coming round the house, they were reaching a gravel path, and as she leaned against a wall to put on her shoes again Max Vella swung her up off her feet into his arms as easily as if she were a child.

Surprise took her breath away. Her instinct was to shriek, but she found she was laughing. ‘This is very obliging,’ she said. ‘Do you do this for all your guests?’

‘Only those who can’t get their shoes on,’ he said.

They were both smiling now, sharing a joke that nobody else could understand. She was getting quite a buzz from that, and the clean, cold smell of his aftershave was intoxicating. She breathed it in, the tip of her nose against his cheek. His skin looked smooth but she could feel a slight prickle where a beard might grow.

She looped one hand round his neck. ‘“Please to remember the Fifth of November”,’ she said gaily, and knew she would never forget this one. In her wildest dreams, or nightmares, she had never envisaged herself being carried away by Max Vella. He wouldn’t stumble. She was relaxed, treating this as a joke, and that was the way it had to be.

Until she had collided, as it were, with Max Vella, tonight had been work. She had been in no mood for partying. But now she was having fun, and when they left the gravel path and he continued to carry her over smoother flagstones, right into the courtyard, she made no move to get down.

Among the crowds they were the star turn so far this evening, and Sara was getting a fit of giggles at all the surprised faces turned towards them. As guests stepped aside for their host and his burden, she kept one arm round his neck and dangled her shoes in the other hand. A woman who owned several exclusive fashion shops right out of Sara’s price range asked, ‘Hurt your foot, dear?’

Sara said brightly, ‘Shoe trouble.’

‘How very convenient.’ The woman gave a sly smirk.

Max said, ‘It was my pleasure.’

‘You might have put that differently,’ Sara whispered in his ear.

‘My very great pleasure,’ he said.

‘They still don’t think that meant what you meant.’

‘Do you care what others think? Would it bother you, getting talked about?’

A few of the guests would be watching the fireworks display from windows, but it was a dry evening and almost everyone had come outside, where a throng of onlookers was circling the high structure of kindling and fuel that would soon blaze into the bonfire. Everybody seemed to be chattering, and the main topic would be that not only had Max Vella had a very private session with what’s-her-name from the local paper but he hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her long enough to put her down and let her stand on her own feet.

The bonfire went up with a marvellous whoosh as Max gently put Sara down. Then they stood and watched the wonderful display of fireworks. Some of the time she held onto his arm, sometimes he put an arm around her, but they stayed linked together. The last rocket of all was the most spectacular, throwing out star after star which fell away until the final burst of white light, the biggest and the best, rose in the sky so high it seemed to be vanishing. Then it fell, like a great shooting star, to a chorus of delighted gasps.

Sara turned to Max. ‘That has to be the star for wishing on.’

‘So are you wishing?’

‘Are you?’

‘I don’t do much wishing.’

‘You don’t have much left to wish for.’

‘When I see something I want,’ he said softly, ‘I promise myself.’ Like the Moated House...

With fingertips he brushed her hair back from her forehead out of her eyes and she felt the shock of it like a body blow, because the gesture seemed as intimate as if his hand had been on her breast and he had kissed her full on the lips.

He was looking down at her. One heavy eyebrow was broken by a thin white scar that gave it a devilish quirk in the flickering glow of the fire. His eyes were so dark they were unreadable, and her mouth went dry because suddenly she had no doubt at all of his meaning. Max Vella wanted her...

CHAPTER TWO

MAX VELLA was not the first and he would not be the last man to want Sara—she had always attracted admirers. A few hours ago she could never have imagined Max Vella fancying her. Tonight it was possible. Surprising but possible, and she said with mock gravity, ‘What if your promise wasn’t on offer?’

‘That might make things more difficult.’ He was certainly coming on to her, but this was said with a smile, not to be taken seriously, and Sara was bubbling with laughter, all her problems forgotten for a few hours.

When the party-goers were surging out of the courtyard, back into the house and the buffet and the band, Max still held her hand through his arm. She was wearing her shoes again now, and if he asked her to dance she would dance, but in the great hall, at the foot of the wide oak-panelled staircase, he asked, ‘Do you want the guided tour?’

She had never seen more than the grounds and the ground floor, when she had come here covering charity functions. She had heard the house was fabulous and of course she was curious. If he was offering to show her around himself that was an incredible bonus. ‘I would like that very much,’ she said, and knew that most of the company watched speechless as she and Max Vella went up the staircase together.

Up here there were lights everywhere, and the sounds of the Bonfire Night Ball reached them. Household staff occasionally flitted around but most of these rooms and corridors were empty. The Moated House had fallen on hard times when Vella had bought it but now it looked as it must have done in its glory days. Sara was entranced, and awestruck at the mighty effort and expense that must have gone into restoring the house.

The decor and furniture were perfect. Every piece seemed right for its setting, and Max Vella told her how he had acquired some of them. From private collections and salesrooms, Sotheby’s, Christie’s, auctions all over the country and abroad. In getting what he wanted the master of the Moated House seemed to have set himself no bounds.

When she gasped with delight at a charming pair of porcelain figures of Harlequin and Columbine he took Columbine out of the black lacquered cabinet and put it into Sara’s hands. ‘She’s lovely,’ she said.

‘Chelsea red anchor period.’ Whatever that was. If she had not been a collector’s piece she would not have been here, but Sara wondered if he had ever looked into the exquisite little face and thought how pretty she was.

‘She’s lovely,’ Sara said again. ‘It’s magic, this house. I don’t know how you could ever think of leaving it.’

‘Did I say I was?’

‘You said you were probably staying.’

The scarred eyebrow lifted. ‘Always the newshound. You do remember what you hear.’ He was teasing her, and she looked up from the little figurine with a slanting smile.

‘If it’s interesting enough, I remember.’

Flirting and fooling with Max Vella was a heady experience. When Sara got away from here she might find it hard to believe that this had been going on, although there would be plenty around to remind her. By tomorrow she would be the talk of the town for a few days. Well it was worth it. She was having a really good time—seeing the house, being flatteringly targeted by a mesmerising man and she’d almost been promised an interview. Let them talk. She had weathered worse gossip before now. ‘I should be going. I’m in the office in the morning. It has been a memorable evening.’

‘For me too.’ He sounded like a courteous host. ‘Are you driving back?’

Her little car was parked with others near a side door, which meant she didn’t have to push her way through the throng and she could get away almost unnoticed. Max Vella went with her, and she wished he had not. With him standing over her, she could hardly keep her hand steady enough to get her car keys into the door lock, and then in the ignition. She did manage to say, ‘You won’t forget about the interview?’

‘Could I?’

Of course he could. He could do anything he damn well pleased. Her gaiety ebbed away, replaced by a reaction bordering on panic. She had been playing with fire, and now she headed for town, and her own little apartment, with her heart hammering.

Her flat was over a delicatessen in the town square. She parked her car in the delivery yard and let herself into the building by a back door, into a narrow hall with a steep flight of stairs. The old red-patterned carpet was wearing thin, and the magnificent staircase in the Moated House came into her mind. Compared with that this was like climbing a ladder, and compared with that house Sara’s flat was a dump.

Through the door at the top of the stairs she went into the living room where a small lamp on a side table had been left on. There were toys on the floor so Beth and the twins must still be here, and they were—all three of them lay in the same bed, the children nestling in their mother’s arms.

A beam from a street lamp cast enough light to show Sara a picture that brought a lump to her throat. Her sister’s dark red hair fanned out over the pillow, and long, silky lashes lay like shadows on her pale cheeks. Sleeping Beth looked hardly more than a child herself, although she was only a year younger than Sara, and the flaxen-haired children were so fragile and so vulnerable that Sara wanted to put her own arms around them all, to protect them as she always did.

‘Oh, Lord, what is going to happen to you?’ she whispered, and she went quietly out of the room, closing the door very gently. At least she would have a bed to herself tonight. Last night it had been the sofa and the twins’ bilious turn.

She tiptoed into the bathroom, undressed and washed, making as little noise as possible. She often came back from these high-fashion affairs feeling like Cinderella, and her dress tonight had been rather special. Silky, in deep pine-green with bootlace-thin shoulder straps, tight fitting to the low hipline then flaring to mid-calf. With a haute couture label, although Sara had found it in an up-market jumble sale:

Most of her wardrobe came from sales and nearly-new shops, because she had to make every penny of her salary count. And she wouldn’t be wearing her ‘bargain’ shoes again. Worry and weariness were creasing her smooth brow so that her reflection in the bathroom mirror looked older than her twenty-three years. At this rate, she thought wryly, Beth will be mistaken for my daughter before long. And it was crazy that Beth’s troubles should make her seem more like a delicate child while Sara aged for both of them.

The sisters had a family resemblance in features. And both were redheads, but Beth’s hair was dark auburn while Sara’s flamed, and Beth’s soft, pretty mouth was stronger, fuller, more sensuous in Sara. Beth faced the world with wide eyes while Sara’s eyes often narrowed as she assessed the situation, and that included the men in her life. There had been men in Sara’s life but she’d never taken them seriously enough for a deep relationship to develop. A touch of mockery at the wrong time had lost her several would-be lovers.

Her reflection blurred in the mirror as a wave of fatigue swept over her. She had to get into bed before she slumped down on the bathroom floor. It was a narrow bed in the little spare room but Sara slid gratefully between cool sheets and was on the edge of sleep when a faint report brought her awake again. Somewhere they were still letting off fireworks, and her thoughts drifted back to the bonfire at the Moated House and to Max Vella standing beside her.

His arm around her shoulders had been light, but she could imagine a heavier touch crushing her so that the sheets and duvet seemed suddenly unbearably weighty. His face was in shadow that could have been a mask, and she didn’t need that flash of waking nightmare interpreted. Common sense was warning her loud and clear: if he should get in touch she would have to come up with a very good reason why she couldn’t see him again.

She could say that although she hadn’t taken a partner to the ball she did have a lover. Someone to whom she was completely committed. Max Vella’s world must be full of willing women. He wouldn’t bother with the likes of Sara if she played hard to get.

He probably wouldn’t get in touch because he wasn’t that interested, and when she rang him about the interview he would have changed his mind about that. She tossed and turned for a few more minutes, and then fell asleep.

She would have slept longer if she had not been woken by the sound of bells ringing in her head. The sound pierced the cocoon of her slumber, and still with her eyes shut she shook her head until the ringing stopped. When she did open her eyes very slowly daylight was streaming into the room, and she would have liked to pull the sheets over her head and go back to sleep.

Her throat was dry, and she could hear the twins shrieking. She had to have a cup of coffee and a couple of aspirins or she would start the day with a thumping headache. This was a working day. She had to get into the office this morning, but first she had to find the strength to climb out of bed.

Almost at once the bedroom door opened and Beth came in with the twins skipping behind her. ‘Didn’t you hear the doorbell?’ said Beth. ‘This just came for you.’ And Sara struggled to sit up, mumbling.

‘What?’ It was a very large box of chocolates.

‘With a card,’ said Beth. Written on a white card in black ink Sara read, ‘No rum ruffles, try the hard centres. The interview. My office twelve midday.’ And the initials M.V.

‘A chauffeur brought them. Grey uniform, peaked hat, the lot. Who sent them?’ Beth was agog with curiosity as Sara went on staring at the card. Sara would have recognised the writing anywhere. She couldn’t remember seeing any of his writing before, but she knew he would use a thick nib and write without any flourishes. She said, ‘Max Vella. I met him last night. He’s giving me an interview.’

‘You must have made a very good impression on him last night,’ Beth said. ‘I’ve never seen such a big box of chocolates.’ It lay on the bed beside Sara, a box of fine Belgian chocolates the size of a tea tray. Josh reached for the box and his mother said, ‘Don’t even think about it—and how you can after those truffles.’

Sara would have to explain just what had happened before the gossip reached Beth about her sister and Max Vella. Beth would know that it was nonsense. It was quite funny, it should cheer Beth up, but Sara then realised that if she didn’t hurry she’d be late for work. She would have liked to take time and trouble, fixing her hair and her make-up, choosing something smart and efficient-looking for the midday interview. Getting an interview was a fantastic stroke of luck, but she would have been happier if she hadn’t been seeing him again so soon. In about a week’s time would have suited her better.

Beth was still trying to persuade Sara to eat a slice of toast as Sara struggled into her coat and hurried out of the flat. Toast would have stuck in her throat. ‘I don’t have time for breakfast,’ she called, although it was the thought of facing Max Vella again that was playing havoc with her nerves.

The offices of the Chronicle were across the town square from Sara’s first floor flat. That had always been great—from her door to her work in less than five minutes. But it meant that this morning she shot into Reception with her coat unbuttoned, still trying to smooth down her hair.

The girl behind the counter said, ‘Hello, hello, you didn’t waste your time last night, did you?’

‘Oh, heck.’ Sara stood still and breathed deep. ‘Has Carl been talking?’

There had been a Chronicle photographer at the ball. He must have come back with the news about Max Vella and Sara. ‘Believe me,’ said Sara, ‘it was not what it seemed.’

A door from the front office led into the editorial department, and there she faced her colleagues, all of them waiting for her version of last night’s goings-on. Trying to explain at this stage would be hopeless. She said, ‘Sorry, it isn’t that good a story, whatever Carl’s been telling you.’

‘Come off it,’ Carl said huffily. He knew what he’d heard, what he’d seen. ‘You were getting on with Vella like a house on fire, never mind a bonfire. And then you went off upstairs with him, just the two of you.’

‘He was showing me round the house. I’ve never seen round it before.’

Carl hooted. ‘Ha! All those rooms with fourposter beds in them.’ Bedrooms had just been part of the guided tour like other rooms, but everywhere they had gone she had been conscious of the dynamic force of the man beside her.

‘You went up the stairs,’ Carl was declaring as if this was his proof positive. ‘But nobody saw you come down again.’

‘There’s more than one staircase in that house,’ Sara said scathingly.

Carl grinned. ‘A backstairs way out? What time did you leave?’

‘Before you did,’ she said, and she didn’t want any more of this. ‘Get any good pictures?’ she asked.

‘I missed the best,’ Carl had to admit. ‘You barefoot and him carrying you into the courtyard.’

She couldn’t explain that either, and the editor spoke up. ‘Max Vella? We are talking about Vella?’ And Sara nodded. ‘Doesn’t sound like him,’ the editor mused.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Sara said wearily. ‘I’ll ask him when I see him again. He’s giving me an interview at twelve o’clock.’

The next half-hour she spent with the editor, planning the interview. The Chronicle was a longestablished county newspaper that rarely had anything very exciting to publish. Jim Kelly had been in this job for twenty-odd years. He was delighted that one of his staff would be interviewing the local tycoon who had never given an interview before.

‘Get some human interest,’ Sara was instructed. ‘Where he came from, what local plans he’s got.’

Like the dodgy deal I overheard, Sara might have said, when there were no names mentioned and nothing to tie it in with anything. ‘Human interest,’ she repeated, and Jim Kelly chuckled.

‘Some say Vella isn’t human but you seem to have surprised them all last night.’

‘Last night was pretty surprising all round,’ Sara muttered.

Afterwards she wrote captions for the pictures Carl had taken, and an account of the ball, the charity getting the proceeds, and a list of local bigwigs who had attended. She made no mention of course of herself, although she was going to be a main topic in any discussion of last night at the Moated House.

She was beginning to regret all of it. This morning she would have given a lot to put back the clock and keep out of the darkened room so that she never came up against Max Vella or anything that happened afterwards. Watching the office clock edging round to midday, her tension was building up by the minute, and when there was a phone call for her she hoped it was Vella’s office, postponing their meeting.

It was Beth. ‘Are you all right?’ Beth wanted to know. Assured that Sara was fine, she went on apologetically, ‘I’m going to have to talk to Jeremy. He’s at home and I’ve got to find out, well, how bad things are. Well I have, haven’t I?’

Sara was resigned to this; it was the way it always happened. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Get the figure and we’ll talk about it.’

One thing that never surprised Sara was her brother-in-law. Jeremy Bolton was a problem and always had been. Two nights ago Beth had phoned Sara’s flat in tears. ‘It’s happening again, he’s been betting on the horses again. He’s lost, of course, he always loses, but he never seems to learn. He promised me, and now—Oh, I’ve got to get away, I’ve got to get the twins out of here. I can’t think straight; I don’t know what to do. We can’t go to mother’s; you know how she is when she’s upset. She can’t listen, she can’t take it in. Sar, will you fetch us?’

Since then her sister and the twins had been staying with Sara, and now Beth was on her way to a tearful reunion when Jeremy would promise everything and Beth would believe him.

Tonight Sara would be drawn into that, but first she had a confrontation with Max Vella and it was a toss-up which meeting she was dreading more. Her sister’s husband was a never-ending drain on Sara’s finances and energy. He depressed her, but she knew what she was dealing with with Jeremy. No surprises there.

But Max Vella was as menacing as walking into an uncharted minefield. He was always civil with the press, open-handed to charities. Sara had heard it said, ‘He’ll be Sir Max before he’s forty, if he isn’t in jail.’ But she had never heard of him giving any journalist a face-to-face interview before.

She had amused him last night. He did have a cruel sense of humour. He had made her squirm with the hit man joke, scared her silly. He could be making a fool of her with this interview. She could imagine him sitting behind a huge desk, dominant and arrogant, while she perched on the edge of a small chair, stuttering her questions. He could imply as he had last night that she wasn’t much of a journalist if she blew it and ended up getting no story at all.

But she was good at her job, and she had to stop undermining her self-confidence by wondering why he had agreed to talk to her. The only important fact was that he had, and there was no reason why he should scare her. Well not scare her exactly but make her apprehensive, because he was the kind of man who overawed most people, and Sara couldn’t know what mood he would be in when she was shown into his office.

She arrived dead on time. She didn’t want to hang around and she was not keeping him waiting. So it was five minutes to twelve when she walked through the revolving doors into the office block and was taken to the top floor by a young man in a smart suit and what could be an old school tie.

Young men usually tried to chat up Sara. This one eyed her appreciatively but said nothing as they travelled up in the smooth, fast-moving lift. The lift doors opened onto an area of ash-panelled walls and thick grey carpeting. A door was open. Sara’s guide said, ‘Miss Solway, sir,’ and Sara thought, Into the lion’s den, and then, Well he can’t eat me, and went in with her long-legged stride.