low enough that no one but her would hear him.
“Hello, Max.”
One black eyebrow lifted. “Hello? That’s it? You’ve been avoiding me for two months and all you’ve got to say is hello?”
She broke off a tiny crumb of her scone, lifted it to her lips and chewed as though it were a chunk of beef jerky. Stalling. He recognized the signs. Well, she could delay their talk as long as she wanted. But now that he had her cornered, so to speak, she wasn’t leaving until she explained why the hell she’d been so studiously avoiding him.
He pulled the chair beside hers even closer, then sat down, perching on the edge of the seat. Cradling his coffee between his palms, he stared at her, drinking in the sight of her. So many nights he’d woken up with her image drifting through his brain. He’d told himself he was remembering her wrong. No woman was that beautiful. No woman could be such a stirring mix of both innocence and sensuality. He’d almost believed his own lies.
Until now.
Now that night with her came roaring back, and he saw that not only was she everything his memory had promised, she was more. The scent of her alone—something light and floral—was enough to tempt him. As if he needed tempting.
“I was going to call you tomorrow,” she was saying, and Max jerked himself back to the present. With a woman like Julia Prentice, it only made sense to pay attention.
“Were you.” It wasn’t a question. More of a statement, letting her know that he didn’t believe her for a minute.
She got the message, he told himself, since a slight flush colored her cheeks and had her dropping her gaze from his.
“Look, I know you’re angry,” she said, and a muscle in his jaw twitched.
“I passed angry a few weeks ago.”
Lifting her gaze to his again, she shook her head and said, “We had one night together, Max. And when it was over, you made it perfectly clear you were only interested in a sexual relationship.”
He laughed shortly and glanced around, reassuring himself that no one was listening in. No one was. Everyone here was huddled with a group of friends or sitting solitarily behind a computer, the glow of the screen reflecting off their faces. He and Julia might as well have been on an island.
“Didn’t seem to bother you that night,” he pointed out.
“No, it didn’t,” she admitted, and licked her dry lips. An action that had his body tightening to the point of actual pain. “We both got carried away that night. We did things that—”
“I’ve been thinking about ever since,” he interrupted her neatly, making sure she was filled with the memories that had been haunting him.
He’d never been with a woman so controlled on the outside and so completely uninhibited in bed. She’d gotten to him despite his efforts to maintain a safe emotional distance. And that infuriated him. Max wasn’t stupid. He knew her type.
The society woman. Born into a world he’d only entered through years of hard work and persistence. She carried a pedigree and he was a junkyard dog. Their differences were blatant. But in bed, those differences hadn’t mattered. In those hours together, they’d each found something in the other that they hadn’t anywhere else.
At least, that was what he’d thought.
“Believe me when I say,” she told him, “that I’ve been thinking about that night, too. A lot.”
“Then why are you dodging me? We both enjoyed ourselves.”
“Oh, yes …”
“So what’s keeping us from having another night—and more—just like it?”
Her gaze drilled into his. “I’m pregnant.”
If she’d pulled the chair he was sitting on out from under him, Max couldn’t have been more stunned. Her simple statement. Her clear, steady gaze. The grim determination of her mouth. All made it clear she was telling the truth. But if she expected him to believe that it was his baby, she was in for a big surprise.
He knew something she didn’t and because of that one fact, he had no doubt at all that he wasn’t the father of her child.
“Congratulations,” he said tightly, pausing for a sip of his coffee. The hot, strong liquid burned his tongue and he hissed in a breath, relishing the sting because it gave him something else to concentrate on besides the unspoken plea in her eyes. “Who’s the lucky father?”
She drew her head back, widened her eyes and said, “You are, of course.”
He laughed. Loud enough that several heads whipped around to see what was so damn funny. Then Max sent a glare around the room and the interested parties found something else to look at. When he turned his gaze back to Julia’s, he sneered at her. “Nice try, but I’m not buying it.”
“What?” She looked as stunned as he felt. “Why would I lie?”
“An interesting question,” Max said, and set his coffee cup down on a nearby table. He silently congratulated himself on the calm he was maintaining. No one would know by looking at him that anger had spiked—along with a sense of disappointment. Taking her drink from her, he set it down, too, then muttered, “Get your purse. We’re leaving.”
“I don’t want to leave.”
“And if I was taking a vote, that would matter to me,” he said. Then, standing, he simply stared down at her until she grumbled, grabbed her bag and stood up. Taking her elbow in a firm grip, Max steered her out of the coffee shop and onto Park Avenue.
“Where are we going?” Her much shorter legs were scrambling to keep up with his long strides, but Max didn’t slow down.
He was a force of nature that somehow managed to part the throngs crowding New York City’s sidewalks. People stepped aside, moved out of his way, as he tugged Julia along in his wake. This was not a conversation he was going to hold in public. If she wanted to play out this game, then she’d damn well do it at his place, where he could tell her exactly what he thought of blue-blooded women trying to run scams.
His apartment building was much newer than hers. Less old money, more nouveau riche billionaire. It suited Max down to the ground. The doorman scurried to open the chrome-and-glass door, then stepped back as Max half dragged Julia across the gleaming tile floor to the bank of elevators.
He stabbed one of the buttons and while he waited, he looked down at her. “Not another word until we’re alone.”
Stiffly, she nodded, wrenched her elbow from his grasp and quietly smoothed her long, blond hair back from her face. He glanced at her reflection in the elevator door, and in spite of everything else he was feeling, desire reached up and grabbed hold of the base of his throat.
The elevator arrived with quiet speed, and once they were inside, Max entered his key card and punched the button for the building’s only penthouse. He lived at the top of the world, with a view that told him every time he walked into the room that he’d made it. He was on top. All of his hard work had paid off big-time, and he’d made his dreams come true.
At
