for me to have a successful career. They never had the opportunity to get a good education or well-paid job themselves so they scrimped and saved for years to put me through private school. It’s a point of pride for my dad in particular. Apparently he never shuts up to his friends about me working with “the movers and shakers in the Big Smoke”.’ She shot him an embarrassed grimace.
He smiled. ‘You’re lucky—my mother couldn’t give two hoots whether I’m successful or not. She’s not what you’d call an engaged parent.’
Her brow furrowed in sympathy. ‘And your father?’
‘I never met him.’ He leant back with a sigh. ‘My mother fell pregnant with me when she was sixteen and still maintains that she doesn’t know who he was. She was pretty wild in her youth and constantly moved us around the country. Barely a term at school would go by before she had us packing up and moving on. She couldn’t bear to stay in the same place for long. Not that she’s exactly settled now.’
Her gaze was sympathetic. ‘That must have been tough when you were young.’
He shrugged. ‘It was a bit. I never got to keep the friends I made for very long.’
He thought about how his unsettled youth had impacted on the way he liked to live now. He still didn’t like change, even all these years later; it made him tetchy and short-tempered. Which was something Cara had got to know all about recently.
Keen to pull his mind away from his own shortcomings, he leaned forward in his seat and recaptured eye contact with her. ‘So what happened when you handed in your notice?’
She started at the sudden flip in subject back to her and twisted the stem of her glass in her fingers, looking away from his gaze and focusing on the garish liquid as it swirled up towards the rim. ‘My boss didn’t even bat an eyelid, just tossed my letter of resignation onto his desk and went back to the email he was typing, which confirmed just how insignificant I was to him. I took a couple of weeks to get my head straight after that, but I needed another job. I’ve never earned enough to build up any savings and my landlord chose that moment to hoick my rent up. I sent my CV out everywhere and got a few interviews, but every one I attended was a washout. It was as if they could sense the cloud of failure that hung around me like a bad smell.’
‘And that’s when Poppy sent you to me.’
Wrinkling her nose, she gave him a rueful smile. ‘I told her a bit about what had happened before she went off to shoot her latest project and she must have thought the two of us could help each other out because she emailed me to suggest I try you for a job. She made it sound as if you were desperate for help and it seemed like fate that I should work for you.’
‘Desperate, huh?’ He leant back in his seat and raised an eyebrow, feeling amusement tug at his mouth. That was textbook Poppy. ‘Well, I have to admit it’s been good for me, having you around. It’s certainly kept me on my toes.’
‘Yeah, there’s never a dull moment when I’m around, huh?’
The air seemed to grow thick between them as their eyes met and he watched in arrested fascination as her cheeks flamed with colour.
Sliding her gaze away, she stared down at the table, clutching her glass, her chewed nails in plain view. He’d known it the whole time, of course, that she was fighting against some inner trauma, as her nerve and buoyancy deteriorated in the face of his brittle moods. Her increasingly ragged nails had been the indicator he’d been determined to ignore.
But not any more.
A string quartet suddenly started up on the terrace behind them and he winced as the sound assaulted his ears. He’d never liked the sound of violins and an instrument such as that should never be used to play soft rock covers. It was a crime against humanity.
‘Come on, let’s take a walk around the grounds and clear our heads,’ he said, standing up and holding out his hand to help her up from the chair.
She looked at it with that little frown that always made something twist in his chest, before giving a firm nod and putting her hand in his.
A WALK WAS exactly what Cara needed to clear her head.
She couldn’t quite believe she’d just spilled her guts to Max like that, but it was a massive relief to have it all out in the open, even if she did still feel shaky with the effort of holding herself together.
Of course, seeing the concern on his handsome face had only made her ridiculous crush on him deepen, and she was beginning to worry about how she was going to cope with seeing him every day, knowing that they’d never be anything more than colleagues or, at the very most, friends.
A twinkling light in the distance danced in her peripheral vision and she stopped and turned to see what it was, feeling her heels sink into the soft earth beneath her feet. Pulling her shoes off, she hooked her fingers into the straps before running to catch up with Max, who was now a few paces ahead of her, seemingly caught up in his own world, his head dipped as a frown played across his brow.
‘Hey, do you fancy walking to that lake over there?’ she asked him.
‘Hmm?’ His eyes looked unfocused, as if his thoughts were miles away. ‘Yes, okay.’
The sudden detachment worried her. ‘Is everything okay?’ Perhaps, now he’d had more time to reflect on what she’d told him, he was starting to regret getting involved in her messed up life.
She took a breath. ‘Do you want to head back to London? I wouldn’t blame you if you did.’
Turning to look her in the eye again, he blinked, as though casting away whatever was bothering him. ‘No, no. I’m fine.’ His gaze flicked towards the lake, then back to her again and he gave her a tense smile. ‘Yeah, let’s walk that way.’
It only took them a couple of minutes to get there, now that she was in bare feet, and they stopped at the lakeshore and looked out across the water to the dark, impenetrable-looking forest on the other side.
‘It’s a beautiful setting they’ve chosen,’ Cara said, to fill the heavy silence that had fallen between them.
‘Yes, it’s lovely.’ Max bent down and picked up a smooth flat stone, running his fingertips across its surface. ‘This looks like a good skimmer.’ He shrugged off his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, revealing his muscular forearms.
Cara stared at them, her mouth drying at the sight. There was something so real, so virile about the image of his tanned skin, with its smattering of dark hair, in stark contrast to the crisp white cotton of his formal shirt. As if he was revealing the man inside the businessman.
Supressing a powerful desire to reach out and trace her fingers across the dips and swells of his muscles, she took a step away to give him plenty of room as he drew his elbow back and bent low, then flung the stone hard across the water.
A deep, satisfied chuckle rumbled from his chest as the stone bounced three times across the still surface, spinning out rings of gentle ripples in its wake, before sinking without a trace into the middle of the lake.
He turned to face her with a grin,
