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He’d been gasping like a grounded fish, eyes streaming, familiar humiliation and impotent anger burning in his belly, and she’d stood there like a tiny fierce virago. When they’d left and he’d got his breath back she’d turned to him, worried.
Without even thinking about what he was doing, still dizzy, Max had straightened and reached out to touch her jaw. He’d said, almost to himself, ‘“Though she be but little, she is fierce.”’
She’d blushed and whirled around and left. He’d still been reeling from the attack—reeling from whatever impulse had led him to quote Shakespeare.
Darcy was reaching across to put her glass on the table now, standing up, clearly intending to leave. And why wouldn’t she after he’d just shut her down?
An impulse rose up within Max and he heard himself say gruffly, ‘It happened on the streets. Here in Rome, when I was homeless.’
Darcy stopped. She lifted her hand from the glass and looked at him warily. ‘Homeless?’
Max leaned his shoulder against the solid glass window, careful to keep his face expressionless. Curiously, he didn’t feel any sense of regret for letting that slip out. He nodded. ‘I was homeless for a couple of years after I was kicked out of Boissy.’
Darcy said, ‘I remember the blood on the snow.’
Max felt slightly sick. He still remembered the vivid stain of blood on the snow, and woke sometimes at night sweating. He’d vowed ever since then not to allow anyone to make him lose control again. He would beat them at their own game, in their own rareified world.
‘A boy went to hospital unconscious because of me.’
She shook her head faintly. ‘Why did they torment you so much?’
Max’s mouth twisted. ‘Because one of their fathers was my mother’s current lover and he was paying my fees. They didn’t take kindly to that.’
Darcy had one very vague memory of an incredibly beautiful and glamorous woman arriving at the school one year with Max, in a chauffeur-driven car.
She found herself resting against the edge of the desk, not leaving as she’d intended to moments ago. ‘Why were you homeless?’
Max’s face was harsh in the low light. ‘My mother failed to inform me that she’d decided to move to the States with a new lover and left no forwarding details. Let’s just say she wasn’t exactly at the nurturing end on the scale of motherhood.’
Darcy frowned. ‘You must have had other family... Your father?’
Max’s face was so expressionless that Darcy had to repress a shiver.
‘I have a brother, but my father died some years ago. I couldn’t go to them, in any case. My father had made it clear I was my mother’s responsibillty when they divorced and he wanted nothing to do with me. They lived in Brazil.’
Darcy tried not to look too shocked. ‘But you must have been just—’
‘Seventeen,’ Max offered grimly.
‘And the scar...?’ It seemed to stand out even more lividly now, and Darcy had to curb the urge to reach out and touch it.
Max looked down at his drink, swirling it in his glass. ‘I saw a man being robbed and chased after the guy.’ He looked up again. ‘I didn’t realise he was a junkie with a knife until he turned around and lunged at me, cutting my face. I managed to take the briefcase from him. I won’t lie—there was a moment when I almost ran with it myself... But I didn’t.’
Max shrugged, as if chasing junkies and staying on the right side of his conscience was nothing.
‘The owner was so grateful when I returned it that he insisted on taking me to the hospital. He talked to me, figured out a little of my story. It turned out that he was CEO of a private equity finance firm, and as a gesture of goodwill for returning his property he offered me a position as an intern. I knew this was a chance and I vowed not to mess it up...’
Darcy said, a little wryly, ‘I think it’s safe to say you didn’t waste the opportunity. He must have been a special man to do that.’
‘He was,’ Max said with uncharacteristic softness. ‘One of the few people I trusted completely. He died a couple of years ago.’
There was only the faintest low hum of traffic coming from the streets far below. Isolated siren calls that faded into the distance. Everything around them was dark and golden. Darcy felt as if she were suspended in a dream. She’d never in a million years thought she might have a conversation like this with Max, who was unreadable on the best of days and never spoke of his personal life.
‘You don’t trust easily, then?’
Max grimaced slightly. ‘I learnt early to take care of myself. Trust someone and you make yourself weak.’
‘That’s so cynical,’ Darcy said, but it came out flat, not with the mocking edge she’d aimed for.
Max straightened up from the window and was suddenly much closer to Darcy. She could smell him—a light tangy musk, with undertones of something much more earthy and masculine.
He looked at her assessingly. ‘What about you, Darcy? Are you telling me you’renot cynical after your parents’ divorce?’
She immediately avoided that incisive gaze and looked out at the glittering cityscape beyond Max. A part of her had broken when her world had been upended and she’d been split between her parents. But as a rule it wasn’t something she liked to dwell on. She was reluctant to explore the fact that it had a lot to do with her subsequent avoidance of relationships.
She finally looked back to Max, forcing her voice to sound light. ‘I prefer to say realistic. Not cynical.’
The corner of Max’s mouth twitched. Had he moved even closer? He felt very close to Darcy.
He drawled now, ‘Let’s agree to call it realistic cynicism, then. So—no dreams of a picturesque house and a white picket fence with two point two kids to repair the damage your parents did to you?’
Darcy sucked in a breath at Max’s unwitting perspicacity. Damn him for once again effortlessly honing in on her weak spot: her desire to have a base. A home of her own. Not the cynical picture he painted, but her own oasis in a life that she knew well could be upended without any warning, leaving her reeling with no sense of a safe centre.
Her career had become her centre, but Darcy knew she needed something more tangibly rooted.
She tried to sound as if he hadn’t hit a raw nerve. ‘Do I really strike you as someone who is yearning for the domestic idyll?’
He shook his head and took a step closer, reaching past Darcy to put his glass on the table behind her. She knew this should feel a little weird—after all they’d never been so physically close before, beyond their handshake when she’d taken the job. But after the intensity of their day spent cocooned in this office, with the darkness outside now, and after Max had revealed the origin of his scar, a dangerous sense of familiarity suppressed Darcy’s normal impulse to observe the proper boundaries.
She told herself it was their shared experience in Boissy that made things a little different than the usual normal boss/PA relationship. But really the truth was that she didn’t want to move as Max’s arm lightly brushed against hers when he straightened again. The sip of whisky she’d taken seemed to be spreading throughout her body, oozing warmth and a sense of delicious lethargy.
Max looked at her. He was so close now that she could see how his eyelashes were dark gold, lighter at the tips.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you are looking for the domestic idyll. You strike me as someone who is very focused on her career. A bit of a loner, perhaps?’
That stung. Darcy had friends, but she’d been working away so much that she only saw them if she went back to the UK. He was right, though, and that was why it stung. The revelation that she might be avoiding platonic as well as romantic relationships was not welcome.
She cursed herself. She was allowing fatigue, a sip of whisky and some unexpected revelations from Max to seriously impair her judgement. There was no intimacy here. They were both exhausted.
She straightened up, not liking the way that put her even closer to Max. She looked anywhere but at him. ‘It’s late. I should get going if you want me to be awake enough to pay attention at dinner tomorrow evening.’
‘Yes,’ Max said. ‘That’s probably wise.’
Her feet seemed to be welded to the floor, but Darcy forced herself to move and turned to walk away—bumping straight into the corner of the desk, jarring her hip bone. She gave a pained gasp.
Max’s hand came to her arm. ‘Are you okay?’
Darcy could feel the imprint of Max’s fingers, strong and firm, and just like that she was breathless. He turned her towards him and she couldn’t evade his gaze.
‘I... Thanks. It was nothing.’ Any pain was fast being eclipsed by the look in Max’s eyes. Darcy’s insides swooped and flipped. The air between them was suddenly charged in a way that made her think of running in the opposite direction. Curiously, though, she didn’t want to obey this impulse.
And then something resolute crossed his face and he pulled her towards him.
Darcy was vaguely aware that Max’s grip on her arm wasn’t so tight that she couldn’t pull free. But a sense of shock mixed with intense excitement gripped her.
‘What are you doing?’ she half whispered.
His gaze moved from her mouth up to her eyes and time stood still. Max’s other hand moved around to the back of her neck, tugging her inexorably towards him. His voice was low and seductive. ‘I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what this would be like.’
‘What what would be like?’
‘This...’
Before Darcy’s brain could catch up with the speed at which things were moving Max’s mouth came down and covered hers, fitting to her softer contours like a jigsaw piece slotting into place.
He was hard and firm, masterful as he moved his mouth against hers, enticing her to open up to him—which she found herself doing unhesitatingly. The kiss instantly became something else...something much deeper and darker.
Max was bold, his tongue exploring the depths of her mouth, stroking sensuously, making her lower body clench in helpless reaction. His body was whipcord-hard against hers, calling to her innermost feminine instincts that relished such evidence of his masculinity.
The edge of the desk was digging into Darcy’s buttocks, but she barely noticed as Max urged her back so that she was sitting on it, moving his body between her legs so she had to widen them.
It was as if he’d simply inserted himself like a sharp blade under her skin and she’d been rendered powerless to think coherently or do anything except respond to the feverish call of her blood to taste this man, drink him in. It was intoxicating, heady, and completely out of character for her to behave like this.
Max’s hands were moving now, sliding down the back of her silk shirt, resting on her waist over the belt of her trousers. And then he moved even closer between her legs and Darcy felt the thrust of his erection against her belly.
It was that very stark evidence of just how far over the edge they were tipping that blasted some cold air through the heat haze clouding her brain.
Darcy pulled back to find two slumberous pools of tawny gold staring at her. Their breathing was laboured and she was aware of thinking with sudden clarity: Max Fonseca Roselli can’t possibly want me. I’m not remotely his type. He’s playing with me.
She jerked back out of his arms and off the desk so abruptly that she surprised him into letting her go. Her heart was racing as if she’d just run half a marathon.
Some space and air between them brought Darcy back to full shaming reality. One minute they’d been knee-deep in the minutiae of Montgomery’s life and business strategies, and the next she’d been sipping fine whisky and Max had been telling her stuff she’d never expected to hear.
And then she’d been climbing him like a monkey.
She’d never behaved so unprofessionally in her life. She lambasted herself, and ignored the screeching of every nerve-end that begged her to throw herself back into his arms.
Max looked every inch the disreputable playboy at that moment, with frustration stamped onto hard features as he observed his prey standing at several feet’s distance. His cheeks were slashed with colour, his hair messy. Oh, God. She’d had her hands in his hair, clutching him to her like some kind of sex-starved groupie.
When she felt she could speak she said accusingly, ‘That should not have happened.’
Her hair was coming down from its chignon and she lifted her hands to do a repair job. The fact that Max’s gaze dropped to her breasts made her feel even more humiliated. If they hadn’t stopped when they had— She shut her mind down from contemplating where exactly she might be right now.
Allowing him to make love to her on his desk? Like some bad porn movie cliché: Darcy Does Her Boss.
She felt sick and took her hands down now her hair was secured.
Max looked at her and didn’t seem to share half the turmoil she felt as he drawled, with irritating insouciance, ‘That did happen, and it was going to happen sooner or later.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Darcy snapped on a panicked reflex at the thought that he had somehow seen something of her fascination with him. She was aghast to note that her legs were shaking slightly. ‘You don’t want me.’
Max folded his arms across his broad chest. ‘I’m not in the habit of kissing women I don’t want, Darcy.’
‘Ha!’ she commented acerbically as she started to hunt for her discarded shoes. She sent him a quick glare. ‘You really expect me to believe you want me? That was nothing but a momentary glitch in our synapses, fuelled by fatigue and proximity.’ She finally spotted her shoes and shoved her feet into them, saying curtly, ‘This shouldn’t have happened. It’s completely inappropriate.’
‘Fatigue and proximity?’
Max’s scathing tone stopped Darcy in her tracks and she looked at him with the utmost reluctance. He was disgusted.
‘That was chemistry—pure and simple. We wanted each other and, believe me, if we’d been wide awake and separated by a thick stone wall I’d still have wanted you.’
Darcy’s heart pounded in the explosive silence left by his words. He wanted her? No way. She shook her head. Panic clutched her. ‘I’ll hand in my notice first thing—’
‘You’ll do no such thing!’
Darcy’s heart was pounding out of control now. ‘But we can’t possibly work together after this.’ She crossed her arms tightly. ‘You have issues with PAs who don’t know their place.’
He scowled. ‘What just happened was entirely mutual. I have no issue with that—it was as much my responsibility as yours. More so, in fact, as I’m your boss.’
‘Exactly,’ Darcy pointed out, exasperated. ‘All the more reason why I can’t keep working for you. We just crossed the line.’
Max knew on some rational level that everything Darcy was saying was true. He’d never lost control so spectacularly. He was no paragon of virtue, but he’d never mixed business with pleasure before, always keeping the two worlds very separate.
In all honesty he was still reeling a little from the fact that he’d so blithely allowed it to happen. And then his conscience mocked him. As if he’d had a choice. He’d been like a dog in heat—kissing Darcy had been a compulsion he’d been incapable of ignoring.
All day he’d been aware of her in a way that told him the feeling of desire that had sneaked up on him wasn’t some mad aberration. As soon as she’d arrived for work he’d wanted to undo that glossy chignon and taste her lush mouth. All day he’d struggled with relegating her back to her appropriate position, telling himself he was being ridiculous.
Then they’d ordered takeout and she’d sat cross-legged on the floor, eating sushi out of a carton with chopsticks, and he’d found it more alluring than if they’d been in the glittering surroundings of a Michelin-starred restaurant. And when she’d taken her shoes off earlier and knelt down on the floor, to spread papers out and make it easier to sort them, he’d had to battle the urge to stride over and kneel down behind her, pulling her hips back—
Dio.
And now she was going to resign—because of his lack of control. Max’s gut tightened.
‘You’re not walking away from this job, Darcy.’
She blinked, and a mutinous look came over her face. Her mouth was slightly swollen and Max was distracted by the memory of how soft it had felt under his. The sweet yet sharp stroke of her tongue against his... Maledizione. Just the thought of it was enough to fire him up all over again.
Darcy was cool. ‘I don’t think you have much choice in the matter.’
A familiar sense of ruthlessness coursed through Max and he reacted to her cool tone even when he felt nothing but heat. ‘I do—if you care about your future job prospects.’
Darcy paled and a very unfamiliar stab of remorse caught at Max. He pushed it aside.
‘I will not remain in a job where the lines of professionalism have been breached.’
Feeling slightly desperate, and not liking it, Max said again, ‘It was just a kiss, Darcy.’ He ran a hand impatiently through his hair. ‘You’re right, it shouldn’t have happened, but it did.’
He thought of something else and realised with a jolt that he’d lost track of his priorities for a moment.
