“No, no fight. There was just nothing there.” On his part, at least. It was just like Martine that she had hit on the crux of the entire situation: Max had been acting, and he was so good at it that he had fooled everyone.
* * *
Late Sunday night, just as she was finally dozing off to sleep, the telephone rang. Sleepily she propped herself on her elbow and reached for it, thinking it would be a wrong number. None of her family ever called that late, and Claire wasn’t the type to think that every late-night call meant an emergency. “Hello,” she sighed, pushing her tangled hair out of her face.
“Claire. Did I wake you, darling?”
She froze, horrified, that familiar deep voice with the crisp-edged accent making chills run down her body. She didn’t think, she simply reacted, replacing the receiver in its cradle so gently that it didn’t even click. A soft whimper rose in her throat. How dare he call her after what he’d done? Was he back in Houston? Sam had warned her that Max would be back, but she hadn’t thought that he would have the arrogance to call her.
The ringing began again, and she reached out to turn on the lamp, staring at the telephone with pain and indecision etched on her face. She had to cope with him sometime, and perhaps it would be better to do it over the phone rather than in person. It was cowardly of her, but she had endured a lot of pain; she wasn’t certain how much more she could take, and pride demanded that he not know how badly he’d hurt her. If she broke down in front of him, he would be able to see how horribly foolish she’d been.
“Hello,” she said again, picking up the phone and making her voice brisk.
“The connection must have been bad,” he said. “I know it’s late, darling, but I need to see you. May I come over? We have to talk.”
“Do we? I don’t think so, Mr. Conroy.”
“Damn it, Claire—” He stopped, realizing what she had called him. “You know,” he said, his voice changing as tension edged into it.
“Yes, I know. By the way, the connection wasn’t bad. I hung up on you. Goodbye, Mr. Conroy.” She hung up again, as gently as before. Crashing the receiver down would be too mild to even begin to express the way she felt, so she didn’t waste the effort. She turned off the lamp and made herself comfortable on her pillows again, but her former drowsiness was gone, and she lay awake, her eyes open and burning. The sound of his voice reverberated in her mind, so deep and smooth and so well remembered that it hadn’t been necessary for him to identify himself. She had known who it was, from the first word he’d said. Had he really thought he could take up where he’d left off? Yes, probably so. She had been such a pushover for him the first time that he wouldn’t have foreseen any difficulty in seducing her again.
Why did she still have to love him? It would be so much easier if she could hate him, but she couldn’t. She was hurt and angry and betrayed—she had trusted him, only to have that trust thrown in her face. But she didn’t hate him. There wasn’t a night that she didn’t cry for him, that her body didn’t ache with an emptiness that wouldn’t go away. Well, if she couldn’t hate him, she could at least protect herself by never, never letting him get close enough to hurt her again.
In his apartment, Max cursed viciously and threw the telephone across the room in a rare fit of violence. The instrument jangled crazily then lay on its side with the receiver beside it. Damn it. Damn it! Somehow she’d found out who he really was and probably put the worst possible connotation on it. He’d intended to tell her that night rather than walk into the offices of Bronson Alloys the next day and hit her with it cold, but at least then he would have been with her, able to hold her and love her out of her anger. Now it would be hell getting through her door again. She’d probably slam it in his face.
The telephone began a raucous beeping to signal that it had been left off the hook, and he swore again, stalking over to pick it up and crash the receiver down on the button. This damned job had been nothing but trouble. It had brought Claire into his life, but it had also been between them from the start, and now he had to get the merger negotiations out of the way before he could approach her again. He sat down, frowning at the carpet. He missed her more than he’d ever missed anyone in his life.
* * *
She looked up from the computer when the office door opened, and her heart stopped. Max stood there, flanked by two men who carried bulging briefcases. His face was expressionless, his turquoise eyes guarded. There was no point in playing games, so he said bluntly, “I’d like to see Sam Bronson.”
Claire didn’t betray her feelings by even a flicker of emotion. “Yes, Mr. Conroy,” she said neutrally, as if there were nothing unusual in his presence there, as if she had never lain naked in his arms and burned with desire. She got to her feet without another glance at him and knocked briefly on Sam’s door, then entered and closed it behind her, leaving Max and his associates to wait. She came out after a moment. “Go in, please,” she said, holding the door open for them.
His gaze lingered on her face for a fraction of a moment as he passed her, a
nd there was something hard and threatening there, something that frightened her. She kept her face blank; he might have been a stranger to her. When the door closed behind them, she sat down at her desk again and clasped her shaking hands to still them. Seeing him had been like taking a knife in the chest, a sharp, brutal pain that almost doubled her over. Odd, but she’d forgotten how handsome he was, or perhaps that had been blanked out. The lean, chiseled planes of his face had stunned her anew, and underlying that was the memory of how he’d looked in the throes of passion, his hair damp with sweat, his eyes burning in his taut face. He’d braced himself above her, and the muscles in his torso had rippled with power—
Stop it! she ordered herself, biting down on her lip hard enough to bring blood. Wincing, she grabbed a tissue and blotted the tiny drop of blood away. She couldn’t let herself keep thinking about him. There was no point in it, no use in tormenting herself with memories of that one night. She had a job to do, and if she concentrated on it she just might get through the day.
But the day was a nightmare. She was called in to take notes, and it was almost more than she could bear to sit so close to Max, feeling his eyes on her as she scribbled page after page. Sam was a hard-nosed negotiator, and he was determined to win everything he could. An emergency meeting of the board of directors was called, and the office hummed with activity.
Finally they went out for lunch. As soon as the office was empty, Claire collapsed into her chair, her eyes closed in relief. She hadn’t known how hard it would be to see him again. He hadn’t said a personal word to her, but she had been vividly, painfully aware of him.
She heard a sound at the door and hastily opened her eyes. Max stood there with his hand on the knob. “Get your bag and come with us,” he said curtly. “You haven’t had lunch, either.”
“I brought my lunch, Mr. Conroy, but thank you for the invitation.” She kept her voice even as she uttered the careful courtesy, her face a blank wall that hid her thoughts. His mouth tightened, and she knew that her answer had angered him. Without another word he turned and left the office.
It was a lie that she had brought her lunch. She put on a pot of fresh coffee and ate a pack of crackers that she found in her desk, telling herself that she had to start eating better. She wasn’t going to let herself lapse into a decline like some Victorian maiden. She was going to get through this somehow.
Her first instinct was to quit her job and get as far away from Max as she could. She wanted to be safe; she wanted to get her emotions back on an even keel and forget about him, if that were possible. She even typed up a letter of resignation, but when she reread it, she knew that she couldn’t do that and deleted it. She wasn’t going to let this take command of her life. She was going to continue just as she always had. She would get on with the everyday business of living. She wasn’t going to run. Running and hiding was a childish reaction. It wouldn’t be easy, facing Max and doing her job without letting him see how he affected her, but she really had no choice if she wanted to face herself in the mirror every morning.
She had changed a lot in the past few years, changes that hadn’t been easily attained. She was more self-confident now. She would never be as bold and eager for new experiences as Martine, but she had found a quiet inner strength that she’d learned to trust. No matter what it took, or how painful it was, she was going to do her job and ignore Max Conroy as best she could.
They came back from lunch, and the negotiations resumed. Max somehow maneuvered things so that he was sitting next to her while she took notes, forcing her to concentrate on getting the notes right and not letting him know how his nearness affected her. Whenever she glanced at him, she would find his eyes on her, narrowed and intent, and she knew that he wasn’t going to let the subject of their relationship drop gracefully. She stopped looking at him even when he spoke. That was the only way she could keep her composure—to pretend that he didn’t exist.
Max watched her, trying to read her expression, but her quiet face was a total blank. If she had been aloof before, she was totally unreachable now, and her distance from him made him furious. She was ignoring him, and that was the one thing he didn’t intend to allow. He was hampered now by the job at hand, but it wouldn’t last forever. When it was finished, he was going to smash down those damned defenses of hers and never let her build them again.
CHAPTER 8