Almost Forever

He’d have her, too, but first he had to get past those damnable barriers.

“Talk to me,” he said softly. “Don’t treat me as everyone else does.”

Startled, Claire looked at him, her eyes widening. What did he mean? How did everyone else treat him? “I don’t understand,” she finally murmured.

His eyes were green ice, with no hint of blue in them. “It’s poetic justice, my dear. My face makes me a target, a sexual trophy to be nailed on the wall above the bed, figuratively speaking, of course. Most women have no interest in me other than as a stud; I could be brainless for all the concern they have in me personally. I enjoy the sex, yes; I’m a healthy man. But I also enjoy conversation, music and books, and I would damn well prefer being considered as a person as well as a warm body.”

Claire was stunned, so stunned that she forgot the alarm that had been racing up and down her spine as he had stared at her with such cold ferocity. “But I’m not—that is, I haven’t been chasing you,” she stammered.

“No, with you it’s the opposite. You took one look at me and decided that with this face I can’t possibly be anything more than a playboy, letting myself be used as a living ornament in any woman’s bed.”

She was aghast; that was exactly what she’d thought at first, and now she was ashamed of herself. Claire was unusually sensitive, and because she was so easily hurt she went out of her way to keep from hurting anyone else. The idea that she had so casually labeled this man as pretty but useless appalled her. She had other reasons for wanting to keep her distance from him, but he didn’t know them; to him, it must seem as if she had simply written him off as being shallow and immoral, without getting to know him at all. He was angry, and he had every right to be.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized in a soft, earnest voice. “It’s true that I did think you were a playboy, but it’s also true that I realize I’m not in your league.”

He leaned forward, his eyes narrowed. “What do you mean by that? Just what is ‘my league’?”

Claire dropped her eyes, unable to meet that piercingly bright stare, and found that his hands were in her line of vision. They were lean, aristocratic hands, beautifully fashioned, but strong for all that. Was the man like his hands?

“Claire,” he prompted.

At last she looked up, her face composed, as usual, but her eyes revealed some of her vulnerability. “You’re far more sophisticated than I, of course, and far more beautiful. I’m sure women chase you unmercifully, but the other side of the coin is the fact that you can probably have any woman you want. I really don’t want to be your next target.”

He didn’t like her answer at all; his facial muscles didn’t move, but still his displeasure was a definite chill brushing across her skin.

“Then why did you come out with me? I realize I was being a trifle persistent, but you allowed yourself to be persuaded.”

“I was lonely,” she said, then looked away again.

At that moment the waiter appeared with their dinner, and the interruption gave Max time to control the explosion of fury in his mind. Damn her to hell! So she accepted his invitation only because she was lonely? Evidently he rated above television, but only just! He wondered savagely if his ego could take much more.

When they were alone again, he reached across the table and caught her hand, holding her delicate fingers firmly when she automatically tried to draw away. “You aren’t a target,” he said tersely. “You’re someone I met and liked, someone who looked at me without any hint of speculation about how well endowed I am or how bloody versatile I am in bed. Do you think I don’t get lonely, too? I wanted to be able to talk to you; I want a friend. Sex is something that can be had whenever I take the urge.”

There was color in her face again, as if she were faintly embarrassed, but suddenly there was a twinkle in her eyes. He’d seen it briefly the night before, and its reappearance caught his attention, made him realize how really lovely she was with that light dancing in her dark eyes. “Do they really?” she asked in a scandalized whisper.

He felt a bit disoriented, as if he’d just had a blow to the head. A moment before he’d been angry, but now he found himself completely bemused by the teasing humor of her expression. He shifted his grip on her hand and rubbed his thumb across the back of her fingers, absently savoring the feel of her soft flesh. “Ladies have become incredibly bold. It’s disconcerting to meet a woman and five minutes later find her hand inside my trousers.”

She laughed, and he felt himself become warm. At last he was gaining some ground with her! That was the way; she was lonely and badly needed a friend, while all her defenses were set up to deflect any romantic or seductive move. She wanted a friend, not a lover. Max didn’t agree with her choice, but he would have to go along with it for now or risk frightening her away.

“Could we be friends?” he asked gently, determined to act with restraint. Claire simply wasn’t like the women he had pursued with single-minded intensity; she was softer, more sensitive, with secret dreams in her eyes.

Claire’s lips still held a little smile. Friends? Was it possible to be friends with a man who was as sleek and beautiful as a cheetah? And why would he want to be friends with her? She was nothing out of the ordinary, while he was completely unordinary. Yet perhaps he really was lonely; Claire understood loneliness. She had chosen it as the safest course in life, but there were still times when she longed for someone to whom she could talk without guarding all but her shallowest layers. It wasn’t that she wanted to unburden her heart; it was the simple, everyday conversation of friends that she needed so badly. She had never had that even with Martine, dearly though she loved her. Martine was so courageous and outgoing that she couldn’t understand the hurts and fears of someone who lacked that courage. Nor had Claire ever been able to confide in her mother, because she had always feared and flinched from the inevitable comparison with Martine. Even when there was no comparison, fear of it had kept Claire silent.

“You could help me look for an apartment tomorrow,” he suggested, drawing her back from her thoughts. “A week in a hotel is straining my tolerance.”

His tone was testy, and Claire smiled at his accent, more clipped than usual. “I’d be happy to look with you. Do you have anything in mind?”

“My dear, I don’t know anything about Houston; I’m totally in your hands.”

“Buy a newspaper tomorrow and circle the apartments that you like best, and we’ll drive around to see them. What time would you like to start?”

“As early as it’s convenient for you; after all, I’m at your mercy.”

She doubted that he was ever at anyone’s mercy, but a light, happy feeling was swelling in her. His eyes were a warm, brilliant turquoise now, and his smile would have turned the head of a statue. She wasn’t proof against his charm, and suddenly it didn’t worry her.

Their food had been cooling in front of them, and they both realized it simultaneously. As they ate, Claire began to watch him with growing amazement; how could someone so lean eat so much? His manners were faultless, but nevertheless the amount he ate would have done a stevedore proud. His metabolic rate had to be high, because his movements were characterized by an indolent grace; he didn’t burn off calories with nervous energy.

She said as much, and he smiled at her. “I know. My mother used to scold me for eating too much in company. She said it made it appear as if they kept me in a dungeon on starvation rations.”

“Do you have a large family?”

“There seem to be hundreds of us,” he said blithely. “Aunts and uncles and cousins by the score. In the immediate family, I have one brother and three sisters, and eight assorted nieces and nephews. My father is dead, but my mother still rules us all.”

“Are you the eldest?” Claire asked, fascinated by his large family.

“No, my brother is the eldest. I’m second in line. Is your family a large one?”

“No, not really. Just my parents, and my sister Martine and her family. There are cousins in Michigan and an aunt who lives in Vancouver, but the relationship isn’t close.”

“A large family has its advantages, but there are also times when it closely resembles a zoo. Holidays are chaos.”

“Do you go home for all the holidays?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes it isn’t possible, but I pop over on the odd weekend.”

He made it sound as if it were only a matter of getting in a car and taking a half-hour drive, instead of “popping over” on a transatlantic flight. She was still marveling at that when he turned the conversation to her job; he asked interested questions about the sort of work done at Bronson Alloys, the market for special alloys and the uses for them. It was a fairly complicated subject, and Claire had studied intensely when she’d first gotten the job as Sam Bronson’s secretary, trying to understand the processes and the practical applications of Sam’s metallurgical genius; she knew her ground well but had to make a special effort to keep abreast. The ease and rapidity of Max’s understanding was amazing; she could talk to him as naturally as if he also worked in the field, without having to pause continually for complicated explanations.

Then they began talking about real estate, and the way Max explained it, it sounded fascinating. “You don’t actually buy the real estate yourself?”

“No. I act as a consultant, investigating properties for people who are interested buyers. Not all property is suitable for investment or expansion. There are the geological considerations, first of all; some land simply isn’t stable enough to support large structures. There are other variables, of course: the depth of the water table, any bedrock, things that effect the price effectiveness of locating a building on that particular plot of ground.”

“You’re a geologist, too?”

“I’m a gatherer of facts. It’s like putting a puzzle together, with the difference that you have no idea what the finished product will look like until it is finished.”

They lingered over coffee, still talking, and gradually Claire realized how hungry she’d been for simple conversation, for the sharing of ideas and opinions. He was extraordinarily intelligent, but he didn’t parade his mental capabilities about for anyone to admire; his intelligence was simply there, a part of him. For her part, Claire had always been unusually studious, losing herself in the varied worlds offered by books, and she was both astonished and delighted to discover that one of his favorite writers was Cameron Gregor, a wild Scotsman whose books were horribly difficult to find and who was her own favorite.

They argued fiercely for almost an hour over which book was Gregor’s best; Claire forgot her reserve, leaning toward him with her eyes shining, her face lit with pleasure. After a while Max realized that he was arguing for the sheer pleasure of watching her, not because of any real difference of opinion. When passion brightened her face, she was almost incandescent; jealousy began to eat at him, because all of that fire was for books, and none for him.

Finally he held up both hands, laughing. “Shall we stop trying to change the other’s mind and dance instead? We’ve totally ignored the music.”

Until that moment Claire hadn’t even realized that a band was playing, or that the dance floor was crowded with people swaying to the slow, bluesy tunes. A saxophone was crying pure mournful notes that almost brought tears to her eyes; it was her favorite type of music. He led her to the dance floor and took her in his arms.

They danced well together; he was tall, but her heels brought her up to a comfortable height, allowing her to nestle her head just under his chin. He knew just how to hold a woman, not so tightly that she couldn’t maneuver and not so loosely that she was unable to follow his lead. Claire gave a quiet sigh of pleasure; she couldn’t remember enjoying any evening more. The firm, gentle clasp of his fingers around hers told her that she was in capable hands, and still there was the sense of control about him that reassured her. Unconsciously she breathed in the faint scent of his cologne, so quiet that it was just barely there, and beneath that was the warm, musky scent of his skin.

Somehow it felt right to be in his arms, so right that she failed to notice her reaction, the way the rhythm of her heartbeat had increased just a little. She felt pleasantly warm, even though the restaurant was cool and her shoulders bare. They laughed and talked and danced together, and she hated for the evening to have to end.

When it did end, he walked her to the door of her apartment and unlocked it for her, then returned the key to her. “Good night,” he said in an oddly gentle tone.

She lifted her head and smiled at him. “Good night. I enjoyed the evening very much. Thank you.”

That breathtaking, whimsical smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “I should be thanking you, my dear. I’m looking forward to tomorrow. Good night again, and sleep well.” He bent and pressed a light kiss on her cheek, his mouth warm and firm; then the brief pressure was lifted. It was a kiss as passionless as that of a brother, asking nothing of her, not even response. Smiling at her, he turned and left.

Claire closed and locked the door, a smile still on her lips. She liked him; she really liked him! He was intelligent, humorous, widely traveled, and remarkably comfortable to be with. He had been a perfect gentleman toward her; after all, he’d as much as told her that he could have sex any time he wanted it, so perhaps she was a welcome change for him. She was a woman who wasn’t after him. There was no pressure to perform, no sense of being pursued because of his startling physical beauty.

While they’d been dancing, Claire couldn’t help noticing that other women had followed him with their eyes, sometimes unconsciously. It was true that some women stared at him openly, with curiosity and even hunger evident in their expressions, but even those who would never think of leaving their own escorts hadn’t been able to keep from looking at him periodically. His golden good looks drew the eye like a natural magnet.

Even her own. Lying in her bed, pleasantly tired and relaxed on her silk sheets, she kept seeing his face in her mind’s eye. Her memory was a loop of film spliced to run endlessly, and she replayed every changing expression she’d seen, from anger to humor and every nuance in between. His eyes were green when he was angry, blue when he was thoughtful, and that vivid, wicked turquoise when he was laughing or teasing.

Her cheek tingled warmly where he’d kissed it, and sleepily she pressed her fingers to the spot. Sharp curiosity and a sense of regret pierced her; what would it have been like if he’d kissed her mouth, if there had been passion in his touch instead of the cool pleasantness with which he’d ended the evening? Her heart leaped at the thought, and her lips parted unconsciously. She wanted to know the taste of him.

Restlessly she turned on her side, forcing the thought away. Passion was one of the things she’d forced out of her life. Passion was dangerous; it made sane people suddenly turn into unreasonable maniacs. Passion meant a loss of control, and a loss of control ultimately led to terrible vulnerability. She was sometimes lonely, she admitted to herself, but loneliness was better than leaving herself open to the sort of devastating pain she’d barely survived once before. And she was afraid; that was another, more difficult thing that she admitted, lying there in the darkness. She lacked the self-confidence with which Martine faced every morning. She was afraid to let anyone get too close to her, because she might not be all they had expected, and she didn’t know if she could bear the pain of rejection.

It was far better to be friends rather than lovers. Friends didn’t risk as much; friendship lacked the intimacy that necessarily gave lovers the sure, deadly knowledge of where and how to inflict the most hurt when the relationship went bad.

And friendship was what Max wanted, anyway. If she threw herself at him, he would probably turn away in disgust. He didn’t want passion, and she was afraid of passion. Daydreams—or nighttime fantasies—about him were a waste of time.

Chapter Three

Until she answered the telephone the next morning and heard his voice, Claire hadn’t realized just how much she had been looking forward to seeing him again. Her heart gave a little leap of joy, and her eyes closed for the briefest moment as she listened to his cool, deep voice, and his clipped, exceedingly British upper-class accent that delighted her ear. “Good morning, Claire. I’ve realized that we didn’t set a time for me to pick you up today. What would be good for you?”

“Noon, I think. Have you seen any likely prospects in the paper?”

“I’ve circled three or four. Noon it is, then.”

It disturbed her that just the sound of his voice could affect her. She didn’t want to miss him when he wasn’t there, didn’t want to look forward to seeing him again. Just friends. That was all they were going to be, all they could be.

But when she dressed, she once again found herself paying far more attention to her hair and makeup than usual. She wanted to look good for him, and the realization caused a small pain deep inside her chest. There had been times before when she’d hovered anxiously before her mirror, wondering if she would come up to par, if the Halseys would approve of her, if Jeff would look at her with desire in his eyes again.

The situations weren’t the same at all; at that time she’d been desperately trying to hold together a disintegrating marriage, and now she was simply going to spend the day with a friend, helping him look for an apartment. If Max made her heart beat faster, that was something she would have to ignore and never, never let him see.

Telling herself that was one thing, but schooling her features to reveal only a pleasant welcome when she opened the door to him was another thing entirely. She’d seen him in a formal white dinner jacket and in a severely conservative gray suit and had thought at the time that nothing could make him look any better, but in casual clothes he was almost breathtaking. His khaki pants, crisp and neat, outlined his lean hips and belly. The emerald green polo shirt he wore had a double impact: it revealed the surprising muscularity of his arms and torso, and intensified, darkened, the shades of green in his eyes until they were the color of some paradise lagoon. Those eyes smiled down at her, and deep inside her something stirred.

“I’m ready,” she said, picking up her lemon-yellow garden hat. It matched her yellow-and-white striped sundress, which Martine had persuaded her to buy more than two years ago, insisting that the sunny color suited her. Claire had to admit that Martine’s taste, as usual, was impeccable. She didn’t wear the dress often, preferring more businesslike attire, but the morning was so bright and warm that nothing else had seemed suitable.

He put his hand on her bare arm, his lean fingers gently curving around her elbow. It was only a polite gesture, but Claire felt her skin tingle under his touch. An instinct of self-protection told her to move away from him, but it was only a small voice, easily swamped by the disturbing rush of warmth generated by the light touch of his hand. Just walking beside him gave her pleasure.

He opened the car door for her, and when she was seated, he leaned down to tuck her skirt out of the way, another of his casually courteous gestures that disturbed the even rhythm of her pulse. Thank God he didn’t have any romantic interest in her! If she responded to him this strongly when he was merely being polite, what would it be like if he were making an effort to charm her? With an almost helpless fear, she realized that she wouldn’t stand a chance against him.

Lying on the seat between them was a newspaper, folded open to the ads for apartments for rent, and several of them had been circled. Max pointed to the first one. “This seems suitable. Are you familiar with the area?”

Claire picked up the newspaper and glanced at his choices. “Are you certain you want to look at these?” she asked doubtfully. “They’re terribly expensive.”

He gave her an amused glance, and Claire looked up in time to see it. She flushed suddenly; if she’d thought about it, she would have realized that he had no need to worry about money. He wasn’t flashy, but the signs were there for anyone to read. He dressed well; his clothing was tailored instead of bought off the rack. All the trappings of wealth were there, from his Italian shoes to his impossibly thin Swiss wristwatch, as well as being evident in his speech and manner. Perhaps he wasn’t rich, but he was certainly comfortable; companies would pay dearly for his services. She’d made a fool of herself by fretting about what he could afford to pay for an apartment.

“If I must travel so much, the people who pay me must be prepared to keep me in comfort,” he said with a chuckle in his voice. “I need privacy, but enough space to entertain when it’s necessary, and the apartment must be furnished, as I refuse to cart my furniture about the country.”

She gave him stilted directions to the first apartment he’d circled, her cheeks still warm. He began to tell her amusing tales of the pitfalls he’d encountered when he first came to the United States, laughing at himself, and gradually Claire began to relax. She had a horror of making social gaffes, a fear that had been born in the early days of her marriage when it had seemed as if everyone was pressuring her to “live up” to her newly acquired position as Jeff Halsey’s wife. As one of the Halseys, even by marriage, she’d been expected to be socially perfect; even the smallest mistakes had been so terribly public that every social function had become an exercise in endurance for Claire.

But Max didn’t let her retreat into her shell. He talked to her easily, without letting awkward silences fall between them. He sprinkled small questions through his conversation, compelling her to answer them and in that way contribute, until the last traces of embarrassment had faded and she was smiling naturally again. He watched her carefully, gauging her reactions. He’d be damned if he would let her draw back behind those cool, blank barriers of hers. He had to teach her to trust him, to relax in his company, or he would never be able to get any information from her. This damned takeover irritated him. He wanted it out of the way so he could concentrate on Claire and discover more about the woman behind the defenses. He was becoming obsessed with her, and that knowledge irritated him, too, but he couldn’t simply shrug it away. Her cool, distant manner attracted him even while it drove him mad with frustration. She had a habit of drifting away in her thoughts, those deep brown eyes revealing secrets that he couldn’t read and she wouldn’t share with him. His reaction to her confused him; he wanted to make love to her until all the shadows in her eyes were gone, until she burned for him, until she lay warm and helpless beneath him, her skin dewy from the heat and violence of his possession … and he wanted to protect her, from everything and everyone except himself.

She didn’t want him in either capacity, as lover or protector. She wanted him only for companionship, which was almost as exciting as warm milk.

The first address he’d marked was a group of condominiums, turning their bland identical faces to the street. They were new and expensive, but they were nothing more than brick growths on the Texas soil. Claire glanced at Max, unable to imagine him living there. He surveyed the condos; then his aristocratic brows climbed upward. “I think not,” he said mildly and put the car in reverse.

Absurdly pleased that she had been right in her estimation of him, Claire picked up the paper and studied the addresses of the other apartments he’d marked, trying to place them. Houston had grown so rapidly that she wasn’t certain where two of the apartments were, but one address she did recognize. “I think you’ll like the next one better. It’s an older building, but the apartments are very exclusive.”