‘No, I do not want you to come over this evening so we can talk about it!’ he snapped decisively. ‘Why not? Because I already have someone here with me, that’s why!’

That ‘someone’ being Sophie?

Which was hardly fair, or completely truthful either, when Max seemed to be implying that she was here on a personal basis rather than a business one.

‘That sort of language is not in the least attractive, Cynthia. Goodbye to you too.’ Max closed the mobile’s cover with a decisive snap before putting it back in his jeans pocket. ‘Well?’ His brow was lowered and there was a scowl between his glittering green eyes as he turned to look challengingly across the room at Sophie, displeasure burning off him in waves.

Displeasure Sophie had no interest in having turned against her now that the hapless Cynthia had made an undignified exit!

‘Well what?’ She feigned an innocent expression.

An innocence that didn’t fool Max in the slightest, if the contemptuous curl of his top lip was any indication. ‘You seemed to have something to say on most subjects yesterday, so why not this one?’ he bit out scornfully.

The phrase ‘spoiling for a fight’ came to mind.

‘I don’t think it’s my place to have an opinion on the way in which you conduct your private life, Mr Hamilton.’ Sophie gave a dismissive shrug.

‘That didn’t seem to prevent you from doing exactly that yesterday,’ he drawled mockingly.

No, it hadn’t. And he had done very little so far in their acquaintance to dispel any of those preconceived ideas she’d had of him being a selfish and self-obsessed individual, after accidentally overhearing his conversation with Sally two days ago. This latest conversation with a woman called Cynthia hadn’t exactly endeared him to her either.

‘My opinions are my own, I hope, Mr Hamilton,’ she countered calmly.

His eyes narrowed to glittering green slits. ‘I asked you to call me Max.’

She nodded. ‘And I told you I would prefer to keep our association on professional terms.’

Max ran a frustrated hand through his hair, knowing his anger was directed towards Cynthia, and her inability to accept that things were over between the two of them, rather than at Sophie.

Hell, he and Cynthia had only been out together three or four times, and it had been pure coincidence that the two of them happened to be going to the same ski resort over the Christmas holidays. At least Max had thought it was, until Cynthia had revealed otherwise during their telephone conversations yesterday. He had certainly never given her, or any other woman, the idea that he was interested in settling down with them.

The slightly reproving expression now on Sophie Carter’s face told him that she thought otherwise. And Max certainly didn’t appreciate feeling as if he needed to defend himself, and his actions, to her.

‘Exactly how do you expect to be able to continue doing that when you’re going to be in my apartment over most of Christmas?’ he taunted challengingly.

Sophie had been asking herself the same question since their conversation the evening before. But only in as far as she was an outsider looking in. ‘Quite easily. I’ll be busy in the kitchen most of the time, and you and your family will be in the rest of your apartment.’

‘And what about your own meals?’

‘They will also be eaten in the kitchen, once I’ve finished serving you and your family.’

Max really wasn’t happy with the idea of Sophie waiting on them, let alone sitting in his kitchen eating her meals on her own. He doubted his sister would be too happy with that arrangement either, if she knew Sophie’s circumstances, which he had no doubt she would within a day of meeting Sophie. Janice’s years living in America had made her more open and friendly than her previous English reserve. Than Max’s own English reserve.

‘We’ll see,’ he answered non-committally now. He’d had more than enough arguments already this evening, this latest telephone conversation with Cynthia having left a nasty taste in his mouth.

As well as convincing Sophie that he was even more of a selfish bastard than she had already thought he was.

If that was even possible …

CHAPTER FOUR

‘WHAT THE HELL—?’

Sophie turned from where she had just taken a baking tray out of the oven at the sound of his harshly broken-off statement, only to instantly lower her gaze again as she saw that her boss was once again dressed in one of those perfectly tailored designer label suits, charcoal this time, his shirt a pale grey, as was the matching tie. His hair was tousled.

As if he had just got out of bed …

‘I made gingerbread angels and snowmen for when Amy arrives tomorrow,’ she supplied abruptly, thankful that her cheeks were already warm from baking, so that hopefully Max wouldn’t notice that she was also blushing from the turn her thoughts had just taken from merely looking at him.

The two of them hadn’t exactly parted well the previous evening, but even so Sophie had found herself thinking about Max—she now thought of him that way in her head, even if she refused to use that same familiarity to his face!—far too much once she had returned to Sally’s flat.

She had wondered, too, about the woman, Cynthia, who had telephoned him and been rebuffed so coldly. Had she misjudged him over that? Perhaps this woman Cynthia had deserved the coldness of Max’s brush-off? After all, Sophie knew nothing about his relationship with Cynthia; she could be a stalker for all she knew.

Sophie had half decided that she owed Max an apology today. And yet seeing him again, hearing his voice—and once again experiencing the shiver it gave down the length of her spine—she now thought better of it. She was far too aware of everything about Max Hamilton already and needed to keep him firmly at arm’s length, rather than try to become friends with him. If any woman could ever actually be friends with such a physically immediate man.

Sophie doubted she could.

Although she found his continued silence now more than a little puzzling.

She looked across at Max searchingly, noting the grimness of his expression. His face was pale and there were lines around his eyes and mouth; his jaw was tightly clenched.

‘Max?’ she queried uncertainly, not sure if he’d just had a bad day at work—after all, he was minus his PA now that Sally had arrived safely in Canada!—or if she had done something to upset him since he came home?

But considering he had only been in the apartment for a few minutes, she had no idea quite what that could have been.

Even if she did say so herself, the decorations had been tastefully finished, and the presents were all gaily wrapped and placed beneath the brightly lit tree in the sitting room.

But Max had known she was going to do that this morning, had left the written labels in the kitchen for his sister and niece as Sophie had asked him to do, so that she could put them on the parcels today.

Some of the food had been delivered today too, the things that weren’t perishable, but she had already put them away in the cupboards, so there was no clutter in here to annoy him either.

The only thing she could think of that might possibly have annoyed or irritated him was that she was once again still here when he returned from work. But, after today, she was going to be here most of the time over Christmas anyway.

Max gave himself a mental shake, aware that Sophie could have no idea why he had reacted in the way that he had to the smell of her cooking. ‘I … It’s just that I haven’t smelt baking like this since my mother …’ He broke off, mouth thinning into a tight line. ‘Well, in a long time,’ he completed abruptly.

Sophie eyed him quizzically for several seconds before prompting huskily, ‘How long?’

Since his parents had died that bleak Christmas sixteen years ago!

Since his own and Janice’s world had been shot to hell by some drunk driver who hadn’t bothered to stop at the red traffic light and had driven straight into his parents’ car, killing them both instantly.

He deliberately hadn’t thought about his mother’s baking for years; the way the house would be filled with the smell of it for days before Christmas. And she had always, always, even when he and Janice were both in their teens, made gingerbread angels and snowmen for them to eat in the week leading up to Christmas.

Entering his apartment and being instantly assailed by that same smell had brought back all the nostalgic memories of those happier Christmases, as well as the more painful ones since.

He had forgotten—chosen to forget?—the days of his mother baking cakes and puddings ready for Christmas. The joy of helping her wrap up the family’s Christmas gifts. The excitement of the whole family decorating the tree.

And in just a few short days Sophie Carter, with her Christmas preparations, had succeeded in bringing it all back to him with painful clarity.

It wasn’t her fault, of course, just a sequence of unfortunate circumstances, Janice and Tom’s marital difficulties having been the start of them.

Max drew in a deep breath before crossing the kitchen in two long strides. ‘These look delicious—Ouch!’ He let out a protest as Sophie smacked his hand away from taking one of the cooling gingerbread snowmen. ‘What was that for?’

‘They haven’t been decorated yet,’ she reproved. ‘And you haven’t answered my question,’ she added intuitively as she looked up at him questioningly.

Sophie looked extremely cute with her hair tied up with a black band, the freckles endearing across her cheeks and nose, with a light dusting of flour on the top of the latter, and wearing a red Santa pinafore to protect her red shirt and black jeans while she was baking.

Cute?

Max didn’t do cute!

He liked his women sophisticated, as well as tall and beautiful.

And Sophie Carter was none of those things.

Cute, but certainly not tall or sophisticated, and her face was intriguing—arresting?—rather than classically beautiful.

It had to be this family Christmas thing that was messing with his head, as well as the rest of his well-ordered life, because right now Max couldn’t think of anything he would enjoy more than kissing that dusting of flour off the tip of Sophie’s pert little nose, before laying siege to the sensuously pouting lips beneath. And to hell with the consequences!

Sophie wasn’t sure she was altogether comfortable standing this close to Max. So close she could feel the heat of his body through the thin material of her blouse, and smell that insidious lemon and sandalwood aftershave as it invaded her senses.

She certainly didn’t understand the emotion burning brightly in the glittering green eyes looking down at her so intently as Max reached up and released her hair from the confines of the black velvet band.

Or the way all the air suddenly seemed to have been sucked from the room.

Just as all the air left her lungs in a whooshing sigh as that dark head slowly began to lower towards hers.

As if having Max Hamilton kiss her had been inevitable.

As if she had wanted him to kiss her.

Which was …

There was no more time for thought. No more time for reasoned protest. No more time for anything but sensation, as Max’s arms moved about her waist while his lips now feathered lightly, caressingly, across the top of her nose, along the warmth of her cheek, before moving unerringly to claim her own slightly parted lips.

A questing, seeking, searing kiss, as Max’s lips sipped and tasted hers again and again, his arms tightening about her waist as he pulled her in against him to mould the softness of her curves against his much harder body.

Sophie was so stunned she didn’t know what to do with her own hands for several seconds as they lay flattened against the hardness of Max’s silk-covered chest. Feeling emboldened as she heard him give a low and throaty groan, she slowly moved her hands up onto his shoulders and then over and into the dark thickness of the overlong and silky hair at his nape.

Max deepened the kiss, feeling the capitulation of Sophie’s body as she leant into and against him, running the moist warmth of his tongue over her softly pouting lips as he tasted her before parting them and then venturing inside. He groaned softly as his tongue was instantly enveloped in the perfect heat of her mouth.

Much like his pulsing and rapidly lengthening erection would be welcomed into the moist and heated channel between her thighs?

Dear God!

Just thinking about making love to Sophie, of laying her naked on his bed, looking down at that glorious red hair, lit like a blaze of fire against the pillows behind her, her face flushed and aroused, before feasting on the creamy perfection of her body, was enough to cause his body to throb achingly.

Max deepened the kiss hungrily, his tongue thrusting rhythmically into her heat, even as the hardness of his thighs pressed against and into the softness of her abdomen, causing him to groan as he enjoyed the friction against his own sensitised and engorged arousal.

His arms tightened about her as he felt the tentative lick of Sophie’s tongue against his own, a shy duelling that lit an even deeper fire beneath his already raging desire.

He couldn’t remember ever being this physically aroused, this quickly, by any other woman. He had no thought for anything but Sophie, being closer to Sophie, making love to Sophie. His hands lowered to cup beneath her bottom and he lifted her up onto the uncluttered end of the table before unfastening the Santa pinafore and removing it completely, dropping it to the tiled floor, before he stepped in between her parted thighs.

Max groaned, his lips travelling across her cheek, down the length of her throat as he instantly felt her heat, drawing him in, the hardness of his erection pressing against and into that heat between her thighs, his body pulsing as he arched harder against the friction caused by her jeans.

‘Max?’ Sophie clung to Max’s shoulders, dazed by the depth of the passion that had sprung up so quickly between them.

She felt weak too, at the feel of the proof of that passion pressing so intimately against her between her parted thighs. She also felt achingly aroused by the warmth of Max’s hand caressing the naked flesh of her back beneath her blouse as his lips continued to explore and taste her throat, and then lower.

Quite when he had unfastened the front of her blouse Sophie had no idea, only becoming aware that he had done so as one of his hands moved beneath the smooth cup of her bra and she felt the warmth of his lips exploring the bared tops of her breasts.

Max raised his head to look down at her breasts with eyes of deep, dark green. ‘This is beautiful,’ he murmured admiringly as both his hands now cupped her beneath the red satin and lace of her bra. ‘Do your panties match?’ he enquired gruffly as the soft pads of his thumbs stroked unerringly across the pouting fullness of her aroused nipples, pressed noticeably against the satin material. ‘Sophie?’ he encouraged huskily as she made no reply.

Sophie moistened the dryness of her lips with the tip of her tongue before answering him. ‘Yes. I—But it’s a thong, not panties.’

His gaze flickered sharply up to meet hers. ‘A thong?’ he repeated in a strained voice.

Sophie nodded, knowing her cheeks were the same fiery shade of red. ‘My mother told me that a woman can wear whatever she wants on the outside and still feel feminine and desirable if she’s wearing sexy underwear underneath.’

Max raised dark brows. ‘Your mother told you this?’

She smiled slightly. ‘Yes.’

Max nodded. ‘She was right.’ He groaned, just imagining Sophie wearing only that red thong.

A tiny scrap of material that would barely cover the fiery red curls between Sophie’s thighs at the front, and separate the firm and naked globes of her bottom at the back. Buttocks that he wanted to cup as he pushed that skimpy satin aside and thrust inside her—

‘What the—?’ Max bit out an expletive as he now heard the door to his apartment opening and the sound of voices out in the hallway.

Only three people, besides himself, knew the security combination for entering his apartment. Sally would be safely in Canada by now. Sophie was half naked in his arms. Which only left—

Oh, hell!

CHAPTER FIVE

MAX PUT ALL thoughts of red satin thongs, and making love to Sophie, completely from his mind as he stepped back abruptly to pull the two sides of her blouse together, covering the fullness of her breasts. Hidden from temptation!

‘You might want to button up,’ he advised grimly as he turned away and strode towards the kitchen doorway, the sound of the voices in the hallway growing louder. As evidence that his unexpected visitors were on their way to the kitchen in search of him?

Something Max wanted to avoid, at least until Sophie had had the chance to refasten her blouse and straighten her appearance.

‘Who …?’

‘I suggest you do it now!’ Max grated forcefully as he stepped out of the kitchen without so much as a backwards glance.

Sophie was too bewildered to immediately do as Max instructed. Although the sudden burst of happy laughter in the hallway, and raised excited voices, finally spurred her into action. She hastily got down from the table and refastened her blouse with fingers that shook slightly.

There was nothing she could do about her flushed cheeks, over-bright eyes or her slightly swollen and sensitive lips, but she picked up the black velvet band from the floor before pulling the wildness of her loosened curls back up into the confines of a ponytail.

Only just in time too, as a woman appeared in the doorway. A tall and beautiful woman with silky dark hair, shoulder-length, and eyes that sparkled a deep, warm green. Her patrician features more than a little familiar.

A woman who could only be Max’s sister, Janice.

The woman and her daughter, who weren’t expected to arrive until tomorrow.

Janice gave a warm smile. ‘I’m sure my brother will introduce the two of us once he’s managed to extricate himself from my husband and overenthusiastic daughter,’ she drawled affectionately.

Sophie frowned at the mention of Janice’s husband.

Wasn’t it because his sister and her husband were having marital problems that Janice and Amy were joining Max in England for Christmas?

‘Is that …?’ Janice stepped further into the kitchen, very slender and elegant in a thick cream cable-knit sweater and black fitted jeans. ‘My goodness, it is gingerbread,’ she murmured wonderingly as she looked down at the biscuits on the cooling tray on top of the kitchen table.

‘Janice …’

‘Max, there are gingerbread angels and snowmen!’ She turned excitedly to her brother as he spoke to her from the kitchen doorway, a little girl held securely in his arms. A beautiful little girl, who bore such a likeness to her uncle she could only be Amy. ‘I’d forgotten just how evocative smells can be.’ Janice gave a shake of her head as tears now glistened in her eyes. ‘Max, do you remember—?’

‘Yes,’ he grated harshly.

Warningly, it seemed to Sophie.

Not that she had dared look at him again after that first glance, his expression grimly unapproachable, the green of his eyes as chilling as an Arctic wind.

‘I haven’t smelt gingerbread like this in years,’ Janice continued softly, completely undaunted—or simply unaware?—of her brother’s lack of warmth. ‘Not since the Christmas Mum and Dad died. Can you believe it’s been sixteen years, Max?’ she added sadly.

‘Yes,’ he rasped harshly.

Sophie looked sharply across the room at Max. She had thought the loss of her mother six months ago was bad enough, but his parents had both died at Christmas sixteen years ago? At the same time? Which surely must mean that their deaths couldn’t have been due to illness or natural causes?

Which also explained why Max had said he hadn’t smelt gingerbread baking ‘in a long time’? And the reason he had looked so grim when he’d arrived home earlier and smelt it in his apartment.

Could his parents’ deaths also be the reason that Max usually chose not to celebrate Christmas?

It would certainly explain his aversion to anything to do with the festive season.

As it explained why he chose to go skiing every year rather than join in any of the Christmas festivities.

And why he didn’t possess so much as a single Christmas decoration, let alone a tree.

And the fact that he’d had to ask Sally to have ‘Christmas delivered’ to his apartment.

Perhaps Max wasn’t such a bah humbug, after all, and it was more the case of the festive season holding such sad memories for him that he preferred to avoid everything to do with it?

Sophie felt slightly guilty now for judging him without knowing all the facts. If he had just explained—

But of course Max wouldn’t explain himself to her. Why should he? She had been employed by him, and was being paid by him, to ‘deliver Christmas’ to his apartment, and then only because of the expected arrival of his sister and niece. Of course Max wouldn’t feel a need to explain himself to someone whom he considered merely an employee.

Although quite where their earlier intimacies now put them in regard to maintaining that distance, Sophie had no idea!

She glanced across at Max from beneath lowered lashes, her heart giving a leap in her chest as she recalled the feel of his lips against hers, along the column of her throat and across the bared tops of her breasts. Breasts he had also cupped and held, caressed. Her nipples tingled now, tightening inside her red satin and lace bra, just thinking of the intimacy of those caresses.

She had also told him she was wearing a matching red satin thong, for goodness’ sake.

Her cheeks flushed just thinking about that part of their conversation …

In the circumstances, it really was just as well that she had persuaded Sally into not revealing that Sophie was her cousin!

Max gave her a hard and mocking grin, as if he were fully aware of some of her thoughts before he turned his attention back to his sister. ‘Perhaps we should just make the introductions, Janice?’

‘Oh. Of course.’ His sister dragged her gaze away from the gingerbread to turn and look at Sophie with curious eyes. ‘I’m Janice Hilton, Max’s sister.’ She smiled warmly at Sophie. ‘And that’s my daughter, Amy, in Max’s arms. And this—’ she turned to smile at the tall, blond-haired man who had just entered the kitchen and moved to stand beside her before draping his arm about her shoulders ‘—is my husband, Tom.’

‘I think Sophie has already guessed that much,’ Max drawled ruefully.

‘Sophie?’ Janice echoed lightly, Max knowing by the sharpness of the curiosity in his sister’s avid green gaze that she was more than a little interested in knowing who—or what—Sophie was to him.

Which was a question Max would also like an answer to.

Until tonight he would have said that Sophie was a temporary—intrusive!—and paid addition to his household. An irritating necessity if he was going to give Janice and Amy a family Christmas with all the trimmings.

Until tonight?

Be honest with yourself, at least, Hamilton, he inwardly berated himself; he had found Sophie intriguing from the beginning. Had found her conversation amusing as well as interesting. And although she bore absolutely no resemblance to those model-beautiful women he usually dated, Sophie undoubtedly had her own attractions.

Her eyes were such a deep and dark brown a man could drown in them, for one.

Those freckles across her nose and cheeks were a temptation to kiss them, for another.

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