the day he’d broken her heart and walked out of her life without so much as a flicker of remorse in those haunting eyes.
Afterwards, the pain had been unbearable. Feigning illness, she’d stayed in bed for days, curled up small and still beneath her duvet, chest aching with anguish, throat tight with tears she hadn’t allowed herself to weep for fear that her grandfather would notice.
But now was not the time for tears either and, swallowing the hard shard of misery in her throat, Margot greeted her PA with what she hoped was a reasonable approximation of her usual composure.
‘Good morning, Simone.’
‘Good morning, madame.’ Simone hesitated. Colour was creeping over her cheekbones and she seemed flustered. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were coming in today. But he—Mr Montigny, I mean—he said you were expecting him.’
Smiling, Margot nodded. So it was true. Just for a moment she had hoped—wanted to believe that she had somehow misunderstood Emile. But this was confirmation. Max was here.
‘I hope that’s okay...?’
Her PA’s voice trailed off and Margot felt her own cheekbones start to ache with the effort of smiling. Poor Simone! Her normally poised PA looked flushed and jumpy. But then no doubt she’d been a recent recipient of the famous but sadly superficial Montigny charm.
‘Yes, it’s fine, Simone. And it’s my fault—I should have called ahead. Is he in my office?’
She felt a stab of anger. Max had only been back in her life for a matter of minutes and already she was lying for him.
Simone shook her head, her confusion giving way to obvious relief. ‘No, he said that he would like to see the boardroom. I didn’t think it would be a problem...’
Margot kept smiling but she felt a sudden savage urge to cry, to rage against the injustice and cruelty of it all. If only she could be like any other normal young woman, like Gisele and her friends, drinking cocktails and flirting with waiters.
But crying and raging was not the Duvernay way—or at least, not in public—and instead she merely nodded again. ‘It’s not. In fact, I’ll go and give him the full guided tour myself.’
Straight out the door and out of my life, she thought savagely.
Turning, she walked towards the boardroom, her eyes fixed on the polished brass door handle. If only she could just keep on walking. Only what would be the point? Max Montigny wasn’t here by chance. Nor was he just going to give up and disappear. Like it or not, the only way she was going to turn him back into being nothing more than a painful memory was by confronting him.
And, lifting her chin, she turned the door handle and stepped into the boardroom.
She saw him immediately, and although she had expected to feel something, nothing could have prepared her for the rush of despair and regret that swept over her.
It was nearly ten years since he had walked out of her life. Ten years was a long time, and everyone said that time was a great healer. But if that was true why, then, was her body trembling? And why did her heart feel like a lead weight?
Surely he shouldn’t matter to her any more? But, seeing him again, she felt the same reaction she had that first time, aged just nineteen. That he couldn’t be real. That no actual living man could be so unutterably beautiful. It wasn’t possible or fair.
He was facing away from her, slumped in one of the leather armchairs that were arranged around the long oval table, his long legs sprawled negligently in front of him, seemingly admiring the view from the window.
Her heart was racing, but her legs and arms seemed to have stopped working. Gazing at the back of his head, at the smooth dark hair that she had so loved to caress, she thought she might throw up.
How could this be happening? she thought dully. But that was the wrong question. What she needed to ask—and answer—was how could she stop it happening? How could she get him out of her boardroom and out of her life?
Letting out a breath, she closed the door and watched, mesmerised, as slowly he swung round in the chair to face her. She stared at him in silence. This was the man who had not only broken her heart, but shattered her pride and her romantic ideals. Once she had loved him. And afterwards she had hated him.
Only clearly her feelings weren’t that simple—or maybe she had just forgotten how effortlessly Max could throw her off balance. For although heat was rising up inside her, she knew that it wasn’t the arid heat of loathing but something that felt a lot like desire.
Her mouth was suddenly dry, and her heart was beating so fast and so loud that it sounded like a drumroll—as though Max was the winner in some game show. She breathed in sharply. But what was his prize?
Gazing into his eyes—those incredible heterochromatic eyes—she saw herself reflected in the blue and green, no longer nineteen, but still dazzled and dazed.
All those years ago he had been model-handsome, turning heads as easily as he now turned grapes into wine and wine into profit. His straight, patrician jaw and high cheekbones had hinted at a breathtaking adult beauty to come, and that promise had been more than met. A shiver ran through her body. Met, and enhanced by a dark grey suit that seemed purposely designed to draw her gaze to the spectacular body that she knew lay beneath.
Her breath caught in her chest and, petrified that the expression on her face might reveal her thoughts, she pushed aside the unsettling image of a naked Max and forced herself to meet his gaze.
He smiled, and the line of his mouth arrowed through her skin.
‘Margot...it’s been a long time.’
As he spoke she felt a tingling shock. His voice hadn’t changed, and that wasn’t fair, for—like his eyes—it was utterly distinctive, and made even the dullest of words sound like spring water. It was just so soft, sexy...
And utterly untrustworthy, she reminded herself irritably. Having been on the receiving end of it, she knew from first-hand experience that the softness was like spun sugar—a clever trick designed to seduce, and to gift-wrap the parcel of lies that came out of his mouth.
‘Not long enough,’ she said coolly.
Ignoring the heat snaking over her skin, she stalked to the opposite end of the room and dropped her bag on the table. ‘Why don’t you give it another decade—or two, even?’
He seemed unmoved by her rudeness—or maybe, judging by the slight up-curve to his mouth, a little amused. ‘I’m sorry you feel like that. Given the change in our relationship—’
‘We don’t have a relationship,’ she snapped.
They never had. It was one of the facts that she’d forced herself to accept over the years—that, no matter how physically close they’d been, Max was a cipher to her. In love, and blindsided by how beautiful, how alive he’d made her feel in bed, she hadn’t noticed that there had been none of the prerequisites for a happy, healthy relationship—honesty, openness, trust...
The truth was that she’d never really known him at all. He, though, had clearly found her embarrassingly easy to read. Unsurprisingly! She’d been that most clichéd
