Max’s words echoed in the empty space where her family had once been. And not just his words. He’d betrayed to her feelings that she’d never suspected, an envy of the warmth of a family life he’d never experienced.

It was for him that she picked up the phone again, rang the familiar number. ‘Mum?’

‘Louise…’

‘I will come. Soon. I promise…’

Max stared at his cell phone, flicking through the names in its memory; the modern equivalent of a little black book. It was Saturday evening and he didn’t have a date. Hadn’t had a date since before Christmas. Longer. He tried to recall the last time he’d taken a woman out for the evening and discovered that it had been before his grandfather, the patriarchal William Valentine, had died the previous summer, precipitating the events that had thrown the Bella Lucia empire into such confusion.

He’d warned Louise that this business was hard on personal lives and he should know. But he was no longer involved in the day to day management of the restaurants. He was now responsible for the entire business and he had to think global, which, conversely, meant that his evenings-should he wish them to be-were suddenly his own.

He glanced again at the phone. There was only one person he wanted to phone but she was otherwise engaged with her dumb blond Australian, and, giving up, he tossed it onto the chair beside him, staring out unseeing over a Thames that reflected the gunmetal grey of the winter sky.

It was as if his memory had been overwritten and the only face in his brain’s database belonged to Louise.

Louise, her blue-grey eyes dancing, hair the colour of a wheat-field in summer, silk beneath his fingertips…

Louise, lips parted as if she were about to say something outrageous…

Louise, eyes more black than grey, lips soft and yielding under his own…

He turned abruptly from the window as the phone began to ring. Picked it up.

Not Louise but his mother.

‘Georgie?’

‘Max! Darling! How are you?’

‘Fine.’ He fought down the surge of feelings, of hope that for once she was calling him just for a chat. Like a real mother. ‘You?’ he asked.

‘Well, actually, darling, I’m in a little bit of bother…’

Left with the choice of calling Max and putting him straight, spending what was left of the afternoon working, or going home and playing handmaid to her unwanted guest, Louise decided on none of the above and went shopping, instead.

She found a beautiful coat in a bright, cheering red cashmere that came nearly to her ankles. Utterly gorgeous and warm enough to please a dozen mothers, she told herself as she opened her bag to take out her wallet. Then discovered that she was holding her cell phone.

Call him…

She shook her head, fighting off the memory of that moment in the kitchen when Max had held her, looked at her as if the only thing he’d wanted was to make her dream a reality. Before she could do anything she’d regret, she pushed her phone to the bottom of her bag out of harm’s way, found her wallet and paid for her coat.

Then she went in search of a hat, boots-no point in doing half a job-and threw in a scarf and lined gloves for good measure.

Then she undid all that good work by splurging on some gossamer silk underwear that had a tog value on the minus side of the scale.

Her subconscious did no more than raise its eloquent eyebrows. They said, ‘So, who did you buy those for?’

She ignored it.

Thermal underwear was taking sensible too far.

Cal did his best to interest her in going clubbing that evening, but she pleaded pressure of work. Instead she phoned Jodie, spending an hour telling her about meeting their mother and catching up with her news, then made a cup of cocoa, and, determined on a early night, went to bed with nothing for company but a couple of books she’d found about Meridia.

She hadn’t been to the gym all week and after yet another dream-filled night-this time spent chasing something unnamed, unseen that she was glad to wake from-she went and worked up a good sweat before going home and finishing off the Tim Tams for breakfast.

After that she spent the rest of the day at her office with her cell phone switched off and by the time she got home Cal had gone, leaving the flat a tip. Presumably the wilting flowers were his idea of thanks for her hospitality. She tossed them in the bin and got out the vacuum cleaner, glad to have something to keep her occupied. Stop her from dwelling on the fact that none of the messages on her machine had been from Max.

When the doorbell rang on the dot of five-thirty on Monday morning, Louise flipped the switch and said, ‘I’ll be right down.’

She slipped into her new coat, set the black velvet beret at a jaunty angle on her head, picked up her roomy shoulder bag and went downstairs.

Max was waiting in the car with the engine running.

‘Got everything?’ he asked as she slid in beside him, clipped her seat belt into place.

So much for Miss Business Efficiency of whatever year you cared to mention.

What was the point when she didn’t even get a ‘good morning’?

‘Everything important,’ she replied and ticking them off on her fingers, ‘Hairspray, lipstick, emergency nail repair kit…’ She looked across at him, suddenly wanting not to make him angry, but to make him laugh. ‘Safety pins…’

If he was tempted to smile, he did a manful job of hiding it and, too late to do any good, she wished she’d kept a rein on her temper, or at least her tongue.

A first, that.

They made the airport in what must have been some kind of record, for silence as well as speed, on roads that were relatively clear so early in the morning. Although half an hour had never felt so long.

Things didn’t improve when they reached the terminal building. Max just leaned across her, took an envelope out of the glove compartment and handed it to her.

‘You handle the check-in while I go and park.’

Unmistakably an order and considering it was combined with the silent treatment her immediate reaction was to tell him to stuff Meridia, stuff Bella Lucia and to go run his own errands. But even as she opened her mouth she found herself recalling her earlier regret and-another first-kept her peace.

‘Right. Well, I’ll be-’

‘I’ll find you, Louise,’ he said, cutting her short. Then, ‘Will you please move, before I get a parking ticket?’

She manfully resisted the temptation to drop his passport and the tickets in the nearest bin and take a taxi home, but he was unappreciative of her restraint and once they were boarded, closed his eyes, suggesting that even silence was a strain. That he couldn’t bear to look at her.

Because he thought that she was involved with Cal? Nothing else had changed since the evening they’d spent talking about the business over supper, not touching, keeping their distance after that searing kiss.

Which meant what, exactly?

That he was jealous?

She glanced at him as if some clue might be found in his posture. In the give-away tension around his closed eyes as she watched him.

‘Are you together?’ The stewardess, breakfast tray in hand, joined her in regarding Max, unsure whether or not to disturb him.

‘Never met him before in my life,’ Louise replied, turning away and smiling up at the woman.

‘Oh. Right. I don’t suppose he said anything about breakfast, then?’ The woman sounded harassed. No doubt someone had already given her a hard time for trying to do her job, something Max would never do. He knew the stresses and was always considerate of anyone in the service industry.

Unless it was her, of course.

He’d always made an exception in her case.

And recalling her revelatory thoughts about Cal, she asked herself, So why would he bother? Unless he cared?

The stewardess was still waiting.

‘Breakfast? Oh, wait, he did say something about looking forward to it.’ Feeling a desperate urge to smile, she instead raised her eyebrows, inviting the woman to agree that he was clearly crazy. ‘I guess he didn’t have time to eat before he left for the airport.’

That finally did raise a smile-or maybe it was a grimace-and Max opened his eyes, straightened in his seat.

‘Now would be a very good time to use one of those safety pins, Louise,’ he said. ‘To fasten your lips together.’

Max regretted the words the minute they left his mouth. He’d spent most of the weekend reminding himself that it was always a mistake to mix business with pleasure, but when she’d swept out of the front door in that dramatic scarlet coat, sexy little hat, common sense had taken a hike. Even so, he’d thought he’d covered himself with the most innocuous of remarks.

“Got everything?” What was there to take offence at in that?

And now he’d done it again. This time with intent.

Apparently they couldn’t be together for more than a minute without one of them lighting the blue touch-paper. This time he was the guilty party and there was an apparently endless moment while he waited for the explosion. He was ready for it, wanted it, he realised in a moment of searing self-revelation. At least when they were fighting he knew he had her total attention. That she wasn’t thinking about anyone but him.

It didn’t happen.

Instead of taking the tray from the still hovering stewardess and tipping it in his lap, she leaned forward, picked up her bag and, from a miniature sewing kit, extracted a clip of tiny gold safety pins.

She unhooked one, turned and offered it to him. ‘Go ahead, Max.’

In the clear bright light of thirty thousand feet, her eyes were a pure translucent silver and for a moment he couldn’t think, speak, move.

‘Whenever you’re ready,’ she prompted. And pushed out her lips, inviting him to get on with it.

It was all he could do to stop the brief expletive slipping from his own lips.

‘It’s a bit small,’ was the best he could manage. ‘The pin,’ he added, quickly, in case she thought he was referring to her mouth.

Too late, he realised that there was no safe answer as she lifted one brow and said, ‘So, I have a big mouth.’

Pushing him, inviting him to do his worst…

He felt a surge of relief. This was better. ‘Too big for this pin,’ he said, closing his hand around hers. Happy to oblige.

They were six miles above the earth. Where could she go?

‘Sorry about that,’ she said.

Her mouth was innocent of a smile but without warning a dimple appeared in her left cheek and he felt a surge of warmth, knowing-because he knew her as no one else did-that it was there.

‘I’m rarely called to pin up anything bigger than a shoestring strap, or a broken zip at a photo-shoot.’ The dimple deepened as if she were having serious trouble keeping the smile at bay. ‘I’ll make a note to pack something larger in future.’

‘Good plan,’ he said, taking the pin, letting go of her hand. Touching her was firing up the kind of heat that no shower was cold enough to suppress. ‘In the meantime I’ll hang onto this one, just in case.’

‘In case of what?’

‘Just “in case”’, he said, dropping it into his ticket pocket. ‘Who knows when one will encounter a shoestring-strapped damsel in distress?’

Then, because this elegant, perfectly groomed version of Louise was so different from the way she’d looked on Saturday, warm, tousled and sleepy from the bed she’d shared with Cal Jameson-when for a moment he’d looked into her eyes and seen himself reflected there, as if he were the centre of her soul-he turned away, unable to bear it.

‘I’ll pass on the food, thanks,’ he said to the stewardess. ‘Just leave me the juice.’

‘Me, too,’ Louise said. Then, turning to him, ‘Do you want to run through what we’re doing today, Max?’

Not as much as he’d hoped, but work had always served him well enough in the past.

‘Why not?’ And he watched as she produced a folder, opened it, handed him a copy of the papers. Within minutes he was absorbed in the ideas she’d managed to throw together over the weekend. ‘Impressive,’ he said. ‘Considering the distractions.’

For some reason that made her smile.

‘I spoke to my mother, too. Ivy…’

‘You called her?’

‘She called me. She wanted me to go to lunch yesterday.’

‘Perhaps there was something in the stars.’ She frowned, not understanding. ‘My mother called me, as well. She wanted me to bail her out of jail.’

He hadn’t meant to tell her. He’d never told anyone. Not his father, not Jack. She was his mother. His cross.

‘Max…’ Louise laid her hand over his. ‘I’m so sorry. Is she in desperate trouble?’

‘Nothing that money won’t sort out. Unpaid bills. It just took a bit of sorting out.’