He shook his head. ‘Nothing would have changed my determination to star you in that particular vehicle.’ His eyes targeted hers again with their riveting power. ‘If you had been pregnant, Chloe, I would have had the storyline altered to accommodate it.’

‘Really?’

His mouth twitched with amusement at her wide-eyed wonderment. ‘Really.’

‘Then they were wrong.’ It was weird how much satisfaction that gave her, as though it totally vindicated her current course of action. ‘Not that it matters,’ she added. ‘It would be a worse mess now if I had got pregnant, with Tony fooling around with Laura behind my back. And I bet my mother knew about it, too. Nothing escapes her eye.’

‘I’d say that was a fair assumption,’ Max dryly commented. ‘She showed no outrage or disgust over their behaviour when I confronted them at the hotel. Only anger over the boat being rocked.’

Anger … Chloe winced, having been belittled by it too many times. And she’d always hated the strident way her mother dealt with other people, even with the man sitting opposite her, making sure she saw and covered all the angles. It was an agent’s job, but the manner in which it was done … Chloe imagined Max had quite enjoyed severing the business connection with her mother. It was a huge relief to feel free of it herself.

She sipped her drink, noticing that Max seemed to have drifted into a private reverie, gazing out across the pool, his eyes narrowed as though he was thinking through a problem, assessing its effects, how to deal with it. After a few minutes, he turned to her with a curious, inquisitive look.

‘Tell me … you’re only twenty-seven, Chloe … are you desperate for a baby?’

She flushed, embarrassed at having babbled on about having one, knowing many women waited until their early thirties before starting a family. ‘Not desperate, no,’ she quickly denied, then with a rueful little shrug, confessed, ‘I just wanted to have something I knew was real in my life. My mother would twist things around. Tony did, too. But a baby … well, there’s nothing more honest about a baby, is there?’

‘Honest,’ he repeated musingly.

‘I’m glad it didn’t happen,’ she blurted out. ‘It would have chained me to Tony for the rest of my life.’

‘Yes. At least this way you can put him behind you.’

She grimaced. ‘Except for the divorce.’

‘That can all be done through lawyers,’ he said dismissively. ‘There’s no need for you to meet. I was just wondering if you had the urge to rush into bed with someone else and get yourself pregnant.’

It shocked her into a vehement denial. ‘I’m not that stupid, Max!’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t think you’re stupid, Chloe, but people often don’t react sensibly to a traumatic change in their lives.’

‘I have a big enough problem sorting out my own life,’ she insisted. ‘I wouldn’t add a baby to it.’

He smiled, satisfied that she was not about to run madly off the rails and ruin this chance to get herself straight on a lot of things. Yet she sensed something more in his satisfaction—something sharkish. A little quiver ran down her spine.

‘I’m hungry,’ he said. ‘It’s lunch-time.’

Chloe breathed a sigh of relief. The something sharkish had nothing to do with wanting a bite out of her.

He picked up a mobile phone, which had lain behind the tray. ‘I’ll call Edgar to bring it out here. Shall I say lunch for two? It won’t be any trouble to Elaine. I ordered salad and she always keeps enough provisions for an army.’

The invitation was irresistible. Despite the occasionally disturbing undercurrent of strong physical attraction she couldn’t quite ignore, she liked talking to him, liked hearing his view of her situation, liked the way it clarified things in her own mind. She didn’t want to end this encounter by the pool. Besides, having eaten the scrumptious chicken casserole last night, the offer of another meal prepared by Elaine was an extra temptation.

‘Thank you. I’d like that.’

Max watched her smile, the sweet curve of her lips, the dimples appearing in her cheeks, the warm pleasure sparkling in her lovely blue eyes, and thought how artlessly beautiful she was. She wore no make-up. Her hair was drying in natural waves around her face—tighter than if she’d used a blow dryer. Her skin glowed, not a blemish on it anywhere.

He wanted to touch her, taste her, but now was not the time. He called Edgar and ordered lunch for two by the pool, knowing he had to keep this encounter a casual one, relaxing, enjoyable, trouble-free, building the case for her to stay the two months.

The baby issue had been a snag in his plans. It was a relief to have it dismissed. Though, for a few moments, that something special about Chloe had actually had him wondering how life would be if they filled the children’s house together. A brief flight of fancy. Not really feasible, given the jet-setting life he enjoyed, winning the challenges that added to his success in the battlefield he’d chosen.

They spent another two hours by the pool, sharing a leisurely lunch, chatting about the television business. He kept the conversation impersonal—safe—drawing Chloe out on how she saw and felt about the show, her part in it, her view of the other cast members and how they were dealing with their roles.

‘You know, Max, I don’t have a special gift for tapping into emotion on cue,’ she said at one point. ‘It’s not like some magic I was born with. When I get a part to play, I make up the whole life behind the character so I know everything about her in my mind, why she is doing or feeling the way she does in various situations. When I’m on camera, I am her. It’s real. I show it. That’s all.’

He respected the work she put into adopting a character, but she was wrong about not having a special gift. It was innate. The play of emotion was on her face all the time in her own life. He didn’t have to study her to read her feelings. They were mirrored in her expressions.

He’d first noticed her in a coming-of-age soap opera that had run for years. She outshone everyone else in the cast. He’d learnt that she’d been on television all her life—commercials featuring a baby, then a toddler, children’s shows, teenage shows. He kept her in mind, waiting to acquire a storyline that would showcase her special talent, and she certainly wasn’t disappointing him now that he had it.

By all accounts, her father had also been a very gifted actor. There were still people around who deplored his early death—suicide, in the grip of depression. He couldn’t imagine Stephanie doing anything to help him out of it, more like driving him into it with her self-serving demands.

He didn’t want Chloe falling into a depression, unable to put it aside to play her part in the show—a very solid reason for her to be here with him, out of her mother’s reach. She looked happy at the moment. Nevertheless, he couldn’t control her mood when she was alone.

An idea came to him. She’d wanted a baby. He’d give her a puppy or a kitten, something for her to look after and pet, another attraction for staying in the children’s house and it should lessen any loneliness she felt.

As it turned out, he didn’t need to add another attraction.

Edgar had been and gone with his tray-mobile, clearing the table and leaving them with coffee and a selection of Elaine’s petit fours. It more or less marked the end of lunch and Max knew he shouldn’t press Chloe into staying longer with him if she made a move to go. She finished her coffee and faced him with an air of decision.

‘I will stay the two months, Max.’

She said a lot more, expressing her gratitude for his offer, etc, etc, but he barely heard it, his mind buzzing with elation.

He’d won.

And he’d win all he wanted with Chloe Rollins before she left the children’s house.

She was his for the taking.

CHAPTER SIX

CHLOE was glad she had accepted Gerry Anderson’s services on Monday morning, glad that Max had instructed him to use the black Audi Quattro sedan with tinted windows for transporting her wherever she wanted to go. Paparazzi were camped outside the gates of the Vaucluse mansion. They were also at the entrance to the studios. Interest in the scandal was obviously running hot.

Once they were safely inside the grounds of the studio, she asked Gerry to stop the car and summon the security guard so she could speak to him. She rolled down her window as the man approached.

‘Miss Rollins?’ He tipped his cap to her.

She smiled. ‘Good morning. I just wanted you to know that my mother, Stephanie Rollins, is no longer my agent and I would not welcome her on the set.’

He nodded. ‘Mr Hart has already given instructions to that effect. Covers Mr Lipton and Miss Farrell, as well. Don’t be worrying they’ll be let in, Miss Rollins. They won’t.’

‘Thank you.’

‘No problem,’ he assured her with a friendly salute.

Max … one step ahead of her. He thought of everything. But at least she had acted decisively for herself this time and Chloe felt good about that. She was never going to allow anyone to make decisions for her again, or be talked into anything she didn’t want to do.

The whole day on the set felt better without her mother sitting in on everything, watching, criticising, coaching, fussing. No-one there was unaware of her situation, and at first the other cast members and the crew treated her with a kind of wary sympathy. Only after she had demonstrated that she was still on top of her role and determined to carry through every scene to be shot did they become more relaxed with her. Chloe felt her own confidence growing as she followed the director’s instructions without a hitch.

Sympathy gave way to curiosity. She wasn’t acting like a traumatised woman. Had she left her unfaithful husband and plunged into an affair with Maximilian Hart? No-one put it into words but Chloe read the speculation in their eyes. Oddly enough, she wasn’t embarrassed by it. While it wasn’t the truth, she sensed that people wouldn’t blame her for it if she had. In fact, during the break for lunch, there was envy in some of the women’s eyes when one guy brashly asked her if Max’s guest house matched his mansion.

‘It’s much smaller,’ she answered dryly, and her quelling look put an immediate stop to any further questions touching on her private life. She didn’t want to describe how special the children’s house was, nor reveal her decision to stay on there for two months. It was no-one else’s business but hers and Max’s.

However, she inadvertantly broke the confidentiality of their arrangement later that afternoon. After leaving the studios, she asked Gerry to drive her to her favourite greengrocer’s market at Kensington, wanting to stock up with fruit and vegetables and be relatively independent of Elaine’s provisions for the guest house. Gerry insisted on accompanying her into the market, saying the car had been followed, although not into the parking station, which allowed some room for doubt as to whether the pursuit had been coincidental or deliberate.

Coincidental, Chloe thought. The tinted windows of the car had frustrated the paparazzi this morning. Why waste their time following her again? Max was the better target and she wasn’t with him.

But it was deliberate.

Chloe had only been shopping for a few minutes when an all too familiar voice cracked at her like a whip with stinging force.

‘It’s a shameful state of affairs when a mother is reduced to chasing a car to make contact with her daughter!’

The lettuce she’d been holding spilled from her hand. Her heart jumped and so did the rest of her body as she spun to face the oncoming attack. Her mother was livid with anger, her steel-blue eyes shooting furious arrows of accusation, her hands already lifting like talons to grab Chloe’s shoulders and shake her. The old instinct to cringe swept through her but this time Chloe fought it. She was not a child to be shaken into submission and her mother did not own her anymore. Her spine stiffened and she stood her ground, although her stomach cramped and her legs started to tremble.

Gerry Anderson stepped between them and her chest almost caved in with relief at being shielded by him.

‘Get out of the way! She’s my daughter!’ her mother hissed, grabbing his arm, trying to pull him aside.

‘Miss Rollins?’ Gerry was looking to her for direction.

He would strong-arm her mother away and swiftly escort her out of here if she gave the word. The temptation to flee quivered through her mind, but she’d been weak for far too long, letting her mother run her life. Running away from her now meant she still had power over her, would always have power over her. It had to stop if she was ever to forge an independent life.

She shook her head. ‘I’ll talk to her but stay near, Gerry.’ She turned to her mother, eyes flashing determination. ‘If you create any more of a scene, my bodyguard will step in and we’ll go. Is that clear, Mother?’

‘Your bodyguard,’ she savagely mocked as Gerry stepped aside for the two women to face each other. ‘Max Hart’s, you mean. He’s taking you over, lock, stock and barrel and you’re too blindly naive to see it.’

‘He is simply protecting me from the kind of harassment you’re dealing out right now.’

‘And why is he doing it, Chloe? Have you asked yourself that?’

‘I don’t care why. I’m out of the mess of my marriage, which you hid from me so I’d keep on working and bringing in the money. I’m not so blindly naive that I can’t see that, Mother.’

‘You’ve been working today to bring in the money for Max Hart.’

‘He didn’t deceive me.’

‘It was for your own good,’ she snapped defensively. ‘The affair would have blown over without any pain for you if Laura hadn’t got herself pregnant.’

‘I don’t like your judgement of what is good for me. I’m not going to take it anymore.’

‘You need me, Chloe,’ she bored in. ‘You’ll be lost without me. I’ve handled everything for you for so long …’

‘I’ll learn to do it myself.’

‘You think that can be done in a day?’ she jeered.

‘No. I expect it will take a while.’

‘Making a host of bad judgements. For a start, where do you intend to live?’

Chloe hesitated, not having thought that far yet.

‘You can’t stay in Max’s guest house forever,’ her mother pushed, mocking Chloe’s indecision.

‘No, of course not.’

Maybe her lack of any urgent concern over where to live gave the situation away.

Her mother pounced. ‘He’s invited you to stay on, hasn’t he? How long?’

‘This is none of your business!’ Chloe retorted defensively.

‘Longer than a few days. Longer than a week for you to think you don’t need me. A month? Two months?’ Speculation turned to triumphant certainty. ‘Yes. Two months. Until shooting all the episodes for the show is over. That would suit him very nicely. And you’re so gullible you got sucked right in.’

‘It suits me, too,’ Chloe hotly insisted, hating how her mother twisted everything.

Her claim was dismissed with a derisive snort. ‘Out of the frying pan into the fire!’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Her eyes glittered with contempt for Chloe’s intelligence. ‘Max Hart is worse than Tony, flitting from woman to woman. He’s setting you up for when he gets rid of Shannah Lian. Which will be very soon. Mark my words! You won’t have two months free of him. I’ll bet the bank on that.’

Dangerous … the undertow of physical attraction … impossible to ignore yet she hated her mother’s interpretation of the situation.

‘You’ll end up in a bigger mess than you have now,’ she went on in her disparaging voice. ‘You need me, Chloe. I’m the one who’s always protected you. Max Hart is a shark. He’ll eat you up and when you’ve satisfied his sexual appetite …’

‘That’s enough!’ Chloe cried. ‘I don’t have to listen to this and I won’t! Gerry …’ She turned to him in urgent appeal. ‘I want to go now.’

He immediately hooked one arm around hers, holding the other one out in a warding-off gesture. ‘Excuse us, Mrs Rollins,’ he said politely, starting to move Chloe along the shopping aisle towards the exit.

‘When you know I’m right, come home to me,’ her mother sliced at her. ‘I’ll look after you.’

Chloe maintained a stony face, looking straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge the claim that she couldn’t look after herself.

She would.

As for the rest, Max wouldn’t force her into anything she didn’t want.

All along he had given her choices.

Not like her mother, who dictated what was to be done.

And not like Tony, who cheated on women, playing two at once.

At least she could be her own person with Max. She liked that. It was a positive step. She was never, never going to take the backward step of running home to her mother for help. For anything!

‘Would you like me to drive you to another shopping mall?’ Gerry asked as he saw her settled in the car.

She had forgotten the trolley containing the few pieces of fruit she had selected. They had walked out, leaving it standing in the aisle. ‘Tomorrow afternoon,’ she said, in too much emotional turmoil to think of food and knowing she could make do with what was available in the kitchenette. ‘Let’s go straight home, please, Gerry.’

He nodded and took the driver’s seat without comment.

Home … tears pricked her eyes at that slip of the tongue. The children’s house was not her home, yet it felt more like one than any of the places she’d lived in with her mother. Even the Randwick apartment that she and Tony had furnished had been more to his taste than hers—wanting to please him. He’d probably insist on keeping it as part of the divorce settlement. Chloe decided she didn’t care. Sometime in the next two months she would find a place of her own and please herself with the furnishings.

It was difficult to keep blinking away the tears. Her chest was tight with them. Max had made it possible for her to put the past with her mother at a distance since Friday night, but meeting her face to face … she felt both physically and mentally drained by the effort of standing up to her, standing up for herself. She had run away from the confrontation in the end, with the help of the bodyguard Max had had the foresight to hire. Would she have managed otherwise?

She wasn’t sure. The old sense of helplessness had welled up in her although she’d fought it as hard as she could. It wasn’t easy to shed a lifetime of being dominated, being told what to do and torn up emotionally if she resisted, giving in because she couldn’t bear the many manifestations of her mother’s anger. She needed the refuge Max had given her, needed the time to build up her own strength of purpose. Yet was her mother right? Did Max have a personal as well as a professional motive for helping her? Was she hopelessly gullible? What was the truth?

The tears spilled over. She tried desperately to mop them up and regain some composure as they arrived at Max’s mansion. Gerry opened the passenger door for her and she kept her head down while alighting from the car. ‘Thank you,’ she choked out, swallowing hard before adding, ‘I’ll see you in the morning, Gerry.’

‘Have a good night, Miss Rollins,’ he replied.

‘You, too,’ she mumbled and bolted for the children’s house, wanting its cosy comfort to embrace her and close out all the horrid feelings aroused by the meeting with her mother.

Max felt his jaw tightening with anger as he listened to Gerry Anderson’s report. Stephanie Rollins was obviously going to be relentless in her drive to get her cash-cow daughter back in her clutches. She was a shrewd operator, sowing doubts, fears and seeds of suspicion in Chloe’s mind—everything possible to undermine trust in him. It was good that Chloe had defied her, but at what cost?

‘The mother’s a very nasty piece of work,’ Gerry summed up. ‘I’d say there’s been physical as well as mental abuse in their relationship. I’m not into hitting women but I sure wanted to thump that one.’

‘While I sympathise with the urge, be warned that she’d sue you for assault and manipulate the situation her way,’ Max advised.

‘Miss Rollins …’ He shook his head. ‘Something about her gets to me. You did good to rescue her from that woman.’

Doubts about his motives had been seeded in the bodyguard’s mind, too. Max read them in the eyes scanning his, asking if he was going to be good for Chloe Rollins in the long run. Which was none of Gerry Anderson’s business, and he knew it, so it wasn’t put into words. But he cared—that something about Chloe would inspire it in most men—and the caring made him say, ‘She was crying in the car. Don’t know if there’s anything you can do about it….’

‘I can provide a distraction,’ Max said with a reassuring smile. ‘You may well be looking after a puppy at the studios tomorrow whenever Miss Rollins is required on set.’

The bodyguard’s concern was swallowed up by a wide grin. ‘No problem, Mr Hart. Got a dog of my own. Always liked them.’

The report over, they both stood and shook hands. The bodyguard made his exit from the library. Max sat back down on the chair behind his desk and thought about where he was going with Chloe Rollins. There was no question in his mind that he’d done her a good service by separating her from her mother. But would he be good for her in the long run?

He’d never asked that question of himself in his pursuit of other women. They’d always known the score with him and he hadn’t ever felt responsible for the choice they made. But Chloe was different. She was very, very vulnerable. He had to take that into account or he might find it difficult to live with himself afterwards.

Chloe cringed at the knock on her door. She’d cleaned up her tear-blotched face, had a long, hot shower to ease the tension in her body, wrapped herself in the silk kimono she favoured for lounging around after working all day, and was curled up on the window seat in the living room, trying to empty her mind by watching the traffic on the harbour. She didn’t want to see or talk to anyone, didn’t want to think.

The knock was repeated.

Several times.

Becoming more insistent.

It forced her to realise that whoever it was probably knew she was home and would be concerned if she didn’t appear. With a reluctant sigh, she uncurled herself, swung her feet onto the floor and headed for the door. Eric’s weather-beaten face was almost pressed against one of the glass panes, relief replacing worry when he caught sight of her approach.

Chloe made a rueful grimace, indicating she wasn’t dressed for receiving visitors, though she didn’t mind speaking to the kindly old handyman who’d helped her move in here, opening and disposing of the boxes brought by the removalist. He was in his seventies, wiry in build and still surprisingly strong, his skin deeply tanned from working outdoors, though he always wore a cap to protect his bald head from getting sunburnt.

He smiled encouragingly at her, showing the yellowed teeth that had been discoloured from too many years of pipe-smoking. He was carrying a basket, loaded with bags—probably something he wanted to deliver to her. It wasn’t until she was almost at the door that she saw he wasn’t alone. A few paces behind him stood the unmistakable figure of Max Hart, his back turned to her, his head slightly bent as though he was studying the lawn.

Her heart instantly leapt into a faster beat, her hand lifting in agitation to the loose edges of the kimono gown near her breasts. Her bare breasts. She felt her nipples hardening as alarm jagged through her mind. If her mother was right about what Max wanted with her, she couldn’t let him see her so readily naked in this gown. He might take it as an invitation. Besides, even though her body was covered, just his presence made her too acutely aware of it, too aware of his dynamic sexuality and how it affected her.

She gestured to Eric to wait and fled to her bedroom. Off with the robe, underclothes on, slacks, top, a quick brush through her hair and she was reasonably presentable. No make-up but that was good. It meant she wasn’t trying to look attractive. She paused long enough to take several deep breaths, needing to calm herself, then went back to the front door, opening it without hesitation, speaking in an apologetic rush.

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