men’s T-shirts and boxer shorts she’d worn, with her hair a mess. Not much to admire there.
He hadn’t finished and his voice brushed her skin with his breath as he turned to face her. ‘And I was privileged to see your hair wild and loose and the real you without the public face of composure that keeps me at arm’s length so very efficiently.’
This was serious stuff and she wasn’t sure where it had come from. The mood on the veranda had deepened to one of charged closeness and she couldn’t help softening against him. Georgia forced her arms to cross to block out the intimacy. To block it out because suddenly she wanted to reach across the seat and hug him for seeing a real person and not an object to own, like Sol had.
Obviously Max recognised the moment too and she must have given away more than she’d intended because she saw his surprise and the next thing he’d acted on the impulse she’d denied herself.
Very slowly but with intent his hand slid up her spine to the back of her head to hold her in place and then he leaned across and kissed her gently.
His lips savoured hers in a long slow exploration and his breath was warm as it mingled with hers.
Suddenly boneless, she sighed into him because it felt so damn wonderful and right and what she desperately wanted, and just for a moment she followed Max’s lead as she felt her fingers tighten on his shirt and she pushed her hand against him back and forth just to feel the hard heat of his chest.
But this wasn’t right. She forced her fingers open and then his shirt slipped away, just like the moment had to. The last thing Max needed was a clinging vine, he’d said himself he admired her independence, and she pushed the feelings away along with his chest because she already owed this man too much.
She could not get involved with Max. Not while Sol’s presence in her life hung over her.
She sat back and, Max being Max, he let her go. Which was a shame but the right thing to do.
For her to offer something that wasn’t really there wouldn’t be fair to Max and she was beginning to think if she let down the barriers and allowed him into her own rapidly beating heart, she would never find herself when she left.
‘Thank you, kind sir,’ was all she said, and she leaned forward to stand up. ‘I think I’ll check on Elsa.’
Max’s hand caught her wrist and the strength in his fingers halted her rising.
‘I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.’
She looked at him, at his strong jawline and then his warm golden eyes, and she said quietly, ‘You didn’t embarrass me, Max.’
‘Then why are you running away?’ His voice, too, was barely audible.
She breathed in and the faintest tinge of his aftershave remained on her skin. ‘You had a nice life before I came along.’
He laughed cynically. ‘I nearly married the wrong woman before you came along. You saved me from a fate worse than death. I’ve been very happy with you, Georgia.’
‘Tayla offered what you wanted, Max. A free life without the dramas of a family. Elsa and I have plenty of dramas. You haven’t married the right woman yet. I’m only the stopgap.’
Just when he thought they might have made progress, he’d lost her. He could see it. ‘What if it doesn’t feel that way to me?’
‘Then you would be thinking with another part of your body, not your brain.’
Ouch. She definitely wasn’t ready to change their relationship. He’d like to get his hands on that ex-husband of hers and throttle him. He was beginning to think there was more to his nastiness than she’d said. He let go of her wrist and she stood up.
She nodded and left almost at a run, and Max gazed out over the veranda. He’d scared her—but for a moment there he’d thought she was on the same wavelength as he.
Max watched a tiny meteorite arc down towards the ocean and disappear before it reached the water, a bit like the opportunity that had just passed him.
He could wait. He would have to. He would wait until she was secure in herself.
He guessed that wasn’t going to happen until she knew Elsa was safe from her father, but he hoped he, Max, wasn’t too old to enjoy it by then. It was so damn hard to keep his hands off her.
He wondered what he could do differently to dissipate the awkwardness he’d created between them.
For someone who had never had a problem with come-hither lines, he’d botched it badly. No doubt the difference being this time he was emotionally involved and becoming more so every second.
The feel of her lips against his had been as poignant as he’d anticipated. The need to feel the rest of her against him rose like Mount Warning in the distance and just as appropriately named. He would have to be patient.
Georgia gently pushed open the door to Elsa’s room and moved to stand beside the cot. Her tiny daughter lay in a shaft of moonlight and her rosy cheeks glowed with health as she sucked her lip gently in her sleep.
Why couldn’t she and Elsa have the wonderful life she had begun to suspect Max could offer her?
Because even now Max might be hurt when the time came that she had to leave with Elsa because from what he’d said tonight, he could certainly become attached to her daughter.
Max had told her he’d planned not to have children with Tayla so the same reasons were still there. Yet here she was with a baby that was anything but easy at times. The upheaval in Max’s life had been caused by a child he wasn’t even the father of.
Apart from recently, the poor man hadn’t even left the house except for work because of her and Elsa. Even Mrs White saw that.
But she, Georgia, was a mess and Max didn’t deserve that or the danger she would bring in the future.
Max had no idea how much trouble Sol could be and although she really needed to leave now, before she did any more damage, she couldn’t. It wouldn’t be safe to leave while she was still vulnerable to Sol with Elsa so young.
She glanced down at her defenceless daughter again and reality slapped her with the obvious she had begun to forget. What was she doing even contemplating her own happiness before the safety of Elsa?
As a mother she should be concentrating on her baby and setting up her future life, not fantasising about a man she could bring to ruin by association.
Her problems were not Max’s, though he obviously was beginning to think they were. They needed to avoid the type of comments and moves he’d made tonight or it was all going to become much harder. She would never be free to take on emotional issues with any man and Max didn’t deserve that.
On Tuesday morning Georgia stayed out of the kitchen until Max had gone to work.
Cowardly, but she hadn’t been able to face him, because some time in the night she had discovered that with all the reasons for not staying with Max the one that loomed largest was the fact that she’d fallen irresponsibly in love with him.
She was a fool. Though this time, at
