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 the penthouse, the elevator opened into his foyer. Six thousand square feet of living space, and Max, but for the housekeeper who came in daily and then left every evening, lived alone now. He’d tried marriage once.
He’d learned his lesson the hard way.
And part of that lesson was the reason he knew Julia was lying to him.
Stepping aside, he waved a hand, inviting Julia inside. She’d been here before, of course, their one and only night together. But damned if he hadn’t been seeing the ghost of her every day since.
“You want a drink?” he asked, walking past her and down two short steps into the living room. “Oh, wait. You’re pregnant.”
She didn’t respond to his goading, merely asking, “Do you have any water?”
He ground his teeth together, poured himself a stiff shot of scotch, then retrieved a bottle of water from the wet-bar fridge. Then he walked to where she stood beside a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows that displayed an incredible view of the city and the harbor beyond.
“I’d forgotten what a nice place this is,” she said, taking the water and unscrewing the cap.
He liked it. It was decorated in a clearly masculine style, now that Camille was gone. A few rugs dotted the wide-planked oak floor. Oversize sofas and chairs were gathered in conversational knots that were rarely used. A fireplace hugged one wall and on either side were bookcases, stuffed with everything from fiction to the classics.
“It’s a lovely view,” she said.
“Yeah. You mentioned that the last time you were here.” He sipped at his scotch and let the fiery liquid burn away the cold inside.
She glanced up at him. “I don’t know why you insisted on coming here, Max. I’ve already told you what I had to say.”
“Uh-huh. You’re pregnant with my baby.”
“That’s right.”
“That’s a lie.”
Her hand tightened on the water bottle. “Why would I lie to you about this?”
“Just what I want to know,” he murmured. “The night we were together, you told me you’d just come off a long-term relationship. So what I’m wondering is, why are you trying to palm off his baby as mine?”
Julia took another drink of her water. “Terry and I hadn’t been … together like that in months before we broke up. We were friends.”
“Too civilized for hot, sweaty sex, was he? No wonder you came to me for a night of good times.”
“That’s not how it was,” Julia argued, wondering how this had gone so wrong. She hadn’t expected him to be happy about a surprise pregnancy, but she also hadn’t expected him to deny being the father. “When we met, you and I, there was a connection. I felt it. You must have, too. A sort of—”
“Don’t make it into something it wasn’t, sweetheart,” Max said, reaching out to stroke the side of her face with his fingertips. “We were both needy that night and it was the best damn sex I’ve ever had. But it wasn’t more than that. There was no dulcet choir of angels singing. It was what it was.”
Julia felt as though he’d slapped her. This was exactly why she was no good at meaningless relationships. She needed to feel a bond with a man before she climbed into his bed. And that night, as swept away as she was by Max’s pure magnetism, she’d convinced herself that that bond was there. Could she possibly have been that wrong? Could she have mistaken pure sexual hunger for something else?
God, she was an idiot.
“So whatever you’re up to, it won’t work,” he said softly. Leaning to one side, he set his scotch down on a glass-topped table, then straightened up and moved in closer. “I don’t know what you’re after, Julia, but I know what we both need. What we both want.”
“No, you’re wrong,” she said as he pulled her into the circle of his arms. He held her tightly to him until there was no mistaking the hard, rigid length of him pressed against her. And just like that, her insides turned to liquid fire.
An ache blossomed between her legs, and the throbbing need she remembered from that one night with him began drumming in her veins.
His hands moved up and down her spine, sending tingling shards of awareness through her body, and suddenly, Julia couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t concentrate. Couldn’t quite remember that she’d planned to say no to him. To tell him that sex without commitment wasn’t what she was looking for.
He leaned down, brushed his mouth over hers and then pulled back, his gaze meeting hers, his eyes shining with a raw hunger that shook her to her core.
“Tell me now,” he whispered. “If you mean no, say it now and I’ll stop.”
Say it! her brain ordered.
But just as quickly, her body took over. There was no future with Max. He didn’t believe her about their baby. And to prove it to him with a paternity test, she’d have to wait until the child was born. So there was no convincing him. If she had half a brain, she’d walk out of this gloriously appointed apartment, away from this man with his near magical touch and console herself with the fact that she’d done the right thing. She’d told him about the baby. It was his choice to not believe her.
But she didn’t want to go.
She wanted another night.
Every square inch of her body was clamoring for it. Every beat of her heart made the need for him more desperate. So she made another decision that would no doubt come back to haunt her.
“I’m not saying no,” she said, and lifted her hands to his chest. She ran her palms across his open-collared dress shirt and felt the hard muscles beneath.
He drew in a long, deep breath, then let her go just enough to slide his hands to her breasts. Through the fine linen, he cupped her and ran his thumbs across her hardened nipples. The lacy bra she wore was not enough to keep the heat of his touch from seeping into her skin.
“Then say yes,” he demanded, squeezing her breasts a little harder, just enough to make her need him even more.
“Yes, Max. Damn you, yes.”
Triumph
