had finally disappeared. So she’d bought herself some food and sat and waited for the next train, and now she was running late.
Tara increased the speed of her stride, her stiletto heels click-clacking faster on the cement path. Her heart started to beat faster as well, a mixture of agitation and anticipation. With a bit of luck, Max’s plane might not have arrived yet. She’d hate him to think she didn’t care enough to be on time. Still, planes rarely seemed to land on schedule. Except when you didn’t want them to, of course.
The contrariness of life.
Once inside the arrivals terminal, Tara swiftly checked the overhead information screens, groaning when she saw that Max’s plane had landed, although only ten minutes earlier. The exit gate assigned was gate B.
Surely he could not be through Customs yet, she told herself as she hurried once more, her progress slightly hampered by having to dodge groups of people. Gate B, typically, was down the other end of the building.
Most of the men she swept past turned for a second glance, but Tara was used to that. Blondes surely did get more than their fair share of male attention, especially tall, pretty ones with long, flowing hair and even longer legs.
Tara also conceded that her new white hipsters were on the eye-poppingly tight side today. She’d been doing some comfort eating lately and had put on a couple of pounds since she’d bought them at a summer sale a fortnight ago. It was as well they were made of stretch material. Still, lord knew what the view of her was like from behind. Pretty in-your-face, no doubt.
Her braless state might have stopped traffic as well, if she’d been wearing a T-shirt or a singlet top.
Thankfully, she wasn’t wearing either. The pink shirt she’d chosen that day did a fair job of hiding her unfettered breasts.
In her everyday life, Tara always wore a bra. But Max liked her braless. Or so he’d said one night, soon after they’d starting seeing each other. And, being anxious to please him, she’d started leaving off her bra whenever she was with him.
But as time had gone by, she’d become aware of the type of stares she’d received from other men when Max had taken her out in public.
And she hadn’t liked it.
Nowadays, when she was with Max, she still left her bra off, but compromised by never wearing anything too revealing. She chose evening gowns with heavily beaded bodices, or solid linings. For dressy day wear, she stuck to dresses and covering jackets. For casual wear, she wore shirts and blouses rather than tight or clingy tops. Tara liked the idea of keeping her bared breasts for her lover only.
Her nipples tightened further at the mere thought of Max touching them.
She would have to wait for that pleasure, however, till they were alone in Max’s hotel suite. Although Max seemed to like her displaying her feminine curves in public, he was not a man to make love anywhere but in total privacy. And that included kissing.
The first time he’d come home after being away, she’d thrown her arms around him in public and given him a big kiss. His expression when she finally let him come up for air had been one of agitation, and distaste. He’d explained to her later that he found it embarrassing, and could she please refrain from turning him on to that degree when he could not do anything about it?
He had added later that he was more than happy for her to be as provocative and as assertive as she liked in private. But once stung by what she’d seen as a rejection of her overtures—and affection—Tara now never made the first move where lovemaking was concerned. She always left it up to Max.
Not that she ever had to wait long. Behind closed doors, Max’s coolly controlled façade soon dropped away to reveal a hot-blooded and often insatiable lover. His visits home might have become shorter and less frequent over the last few months—as Tara’s mother had observed—but whilst he was here in Sydney, he was all Tara’s. They spent most of Max’s visits in bed.
Her mother would see this as conclusive evidence that she was just a sex object to Max. A kept woman. In other words, a mistress.
But her mother was not there when Max took her in his arms. She didn’t see the look in his eyes; didn’t feel the tenderness in his touch; or the uncontrollable trembling which racked his body whenever he made love to her.
Max loved her. Tara was sure of it.
His not wanting to marry her at this time in his life was a matter of timing, not lack of love. Max had never said that marriage was never on his agenda.
And as she’d told her mother, she was in no hurry to get married, anyway. What she was in a hurry for was to get to gate B, collect Max and take him back to the Regency Royale Hotel, post-haste.
Fate must have been on her side, for no sooner had she ground to a breathless halt not far from gate B than Max emerged through the customs exit, striding purposefully down the ramp, carrying his laptop in one hand and wheeling a black carry-on suitcase in the other.
Tara supposed he didn’t look all that much different from dozens of other well-dressed businessmen there at the airport that day. Perhaps taller than most. More broad-shouldered. And more handsome.
But just the sight of him did things to her that she could never explain to her mother. She came alive as she was never alive when she wasn’t with him. Her brain bubbled with joy and the blood fizzed in her veins.
Tara conceded not every twenty-four-year-old girl’s heart would flutter madly at Max’s more conservative brand of handsome, or his very conservative mode of dressing. Tara rarely saw him in anything but a suit. Today’s was charcoal-grey. Single-breasted, combined with a crisp white shirt and a striped blue tie.
All very understated.
But Tara liked the air of stability and security which Max’s untrendy image projected. She liked the fact that he always looked a man of substance. And she very much liked his looks.
Yet till now, she’d never really analysed him feature by feature. It had been his overall appearance, and his overall aura which had initially taken her breath away. And which had kept her captivated ever since.
But as Max made his way through gate B, his eyes having not yet connected with hers, Tara found herself studying Max’s looks more objectively than usual.
Now, that was one classically handsome guy, she decided. Not a pretty boy, but not a rough diamond, either.
A masculine-looking man, Max had a large but well-balanced face, surrounded by a thick head of dark brown hair, always cut with short back and sides, and always combed from a side-parting. His ears were nicely flat against his well-shaped head. His intelligent blue eyes were deeply set, bisected by a long, straight nose and accentuated with thick, dark brown brows. His mouth, despite its full bottom lip, had not a hint of femininity about it and invariably held an uncompromising expression.
Max was not a man who smiled a lot. Mostly, his lips remained firmly shut, his penetrating blue eyes glittering with a hardness which Tara found sexy, but which she imagined could be forbidding, especially when he was annoyed, or angry. Tara suspected he could be a formidable boss, if crossed. She’d heard him a few times over the phone when he’d been laying down the law to various employees.
But with her, he was never really annoyed, or angry. He had been frustrated that time when she’d kissed him in public. And exasperated
