'I got myself. I grew up. I learned about art, and beauty and truth, and about love,' she smiled wistfully.
'And where have you put all this education to use?' he asked brutally. 'How many men have you been out with, like this, since Simon died?'
'A few.' To relieve the intensity of their conversation
Sarah made a bright joke about some of her matchmaking editor's pushier candidates, but it fell flat and Max muttered something under his breath. 'What did you say?'
‘I said—clumsy idiots.'
'My clumsiness as much as anything,' Sarah admitted. 'I went out with them for all the wrong reasons. At that stage I wasn't ready to make any kind of concession to any man.'
'But now you're ready to experiment a little,' he said, deceptively casual.
Her reply was too quick, too emphatic. 'No. No. Not at all.'
'Liar,' he challenged and she stilled, like an animal cornered. Max's steady eyes were almost straw-coloured in the lamplight—the colour of the champagne in her glass. Champagne eyes and champagne, they both beckoned her to recklessness.
In a moment she was lost, her own honesty defeating her, at last giving in to the strength of the attraction he held for her. She had tried to avoid it, been careful to nurture dislike, explaining away the tension that she felt in his presence as antagonism. But it wasn't. It was more complex than that, and more simple. It was sexual tension, and she felt it enveloping her now, prickling across her body like a rash. She lowered her lids, flustered, and lifted them again. He was still watching her, with a virile certainty that was intoxicating; he was way ahead of her, on all counts. He knew she wanted him, he wanted her—the desire in his eyes no longer veiled, but burning a steady flame. Sarah didn't want to fight him, or herself, any more. There was a sense of inevitability about it, as though every encounter, since their first meeting, had been leading up to this. Deep within her the battle had been fought and lost some time before; only her timidity, her fear of the unknown depths of her own passion, had prevented her from admitting it.
The searing moment of mutual recognition was interrupted by the waiter, who took their silence as a cue to offer a few pleasantries, cleared the table and re-laid for the main course. The red wine was delivered, opened, tasted and poured, and the chateaubriand, a tender, succulent fillet of beef, crusty brown on the outside and meltingly pink at the centre, arrived on a silver salver surrounded by an array of crisp-tender vegetables.
Max calmly began to eat while Sarah wondered where her appetite had gone, and tried to ignore the pangs of a more urgent hunger.
'Eat. It's good,' she was told, and Max smiled approvingly as she obediently picked at her food.
'What a good child you are when you're not arguing.'
'I'm not a child.'
'You are in some things,' he said, supremely confident. 'You don't know very much about men. About the way they think and act, about how they feel in relationship to you. Don't you know that coolness and disinterest is a challenge to any man's masculinity?'
'Is that all I am to you, a challenge?'
His smile glittered at the note of chagrin. 'Mere challenge I can resist; mystery is something else. The question is, what am I to you?'
That was a question Sarah didn't even want to consider.
'A challenge, perhaps,' she murmured, trying for archness and achieving mockery.
His eyes narrowed. 'Perhaps you do know. Perhaps this nervous apprehension is just a pose.'
She didn't pretend to misunderstand. 'I loved Simon. I never looked at another man while he was alive, and afterwards I never wanted to.' Then she felt embarrassed at the blatancy of her statement, but Max simply nodded and began to draw an intricate pattern with his fork on the white linen table-cloth. A lock of straight black hair fell forward over his brow and he was frowning slightly with concentration. Sarah longed to lean over and make contact, sooth out those furrows, make him look at her again with that warm, sensuous gaze.
'What about friends? People you knew before and during your marriage . . . othe
r artists?'
‘I more or less lost touch with them all,' she said meekly. 'Quite a few of Simon's so-called friends were just hitching a ride on his reputation. After he had gone we had no common interest any more.'
The pattern became even more intricate. 'All of them. You have no contacts in the art world now?'
'Acquaintances. Except—' she paused, fascinated by the convoluted wanderings of the fork, and the fork paused also.
'Except?'
'I have one friend, a painter ... I owe him a lot.' 'You have a close relationship?' 'Not the kind you're implying.'
'No romance?' He seemed to tire of his game, throwing down the implement and stretching his shoulders back against his chair. He sounded vaguely triumphant, Sarah thought, annoyed. It was a bit late now, asking whether she was involved elsewhere, when he had already made his dishonourable intentions clear.