‘Please, Max,’ she said, imploring him to understand.

‘You have a problem being seen out with me?’ He shook his head. He was still smiling, but not right up to his eyes. ‘And I thought the reason we stayed in was because you couldn’t get enough of my body.’

‘Well,’ she said, desperate to tease him back to a smile, ‘there’s an upside to everything,’

‘But?’

‘But nothing. I don’t care about other people, Max, only Dad. He’s just getting over his heart attack…’

‘And you think if he knew that I was sleeping with his little princess the shock would kill him?’

‘I’m not…I’m not prepared to take the risk, are you?’ she said, flaring up briefly at his lack of sympathy. Then, silently begging him to understand. This affair was too hot to sustain itself for long; it would burn itself out in its own heat soon enough…‘You know how he feels about your father.’

‘Bitter. Chip on his shoulder a mile high.’ Max was not with her on this one. ‘But I’m not my father. Besides, don’t you think he should have got over that at his age?’

‘Try to understand, Max. Your father was the son of an adored second wife while my father saw his own mother abandoned, without support, dying of pneumonia.’

‘The country was at war, Louise. Life was hard for everyone.’ Then, ‘It’s not just that, though, is it?’

She shook her head. ‘No. Your father had everything. Not just two loving parents, but looks, charisma, women falling at his feet.’

‘Children of his own?’

‘Sons,’ she said, the word like a knife to her heart. But even as she said the word she finally understood why her father had wanted to keep the fact that she was adopted a secret. No, not so much a secret as sweeping it under the carpet. Pretending it wasn’t so. Because even in this, most basic of human functions, he’d been eclipsed by his younger, more glamorous half brother…

He’d never been able to forgive his father for being there for Robert. Caring more about Robert. Never able to forgive Robert for having everything.

Was she falling into the same mistake? Unable to forgive, to move on?

He didn’t deserve that from her.

‘He’s finally caught up in the son stakes,’ Max reminded her.

She shook her head.

‘But even in that he was deprived, don’t you see? He didn’t know they existed until last year. He blamed William Valentine for that, too.’

He shrugged. ‘To be honest I have more sympathy with your mother. Have you been to see her recently?’

She shook her head.

‘She needs you, Lou. No matter how much you enjoy Patsy’s company, Ivy’s your mother too.’

‘You think she’d understand…this? Us? Approve?’

‘Like Patsy, you mean?’

Maybe that was why she’d enjoyed the evening with Patsy so much. She hadn’t judged them. They hadn’t had to hide their feelings from her.

‘As my mother, Max. As John Valentine’s wife.’

‘The reason Patsy isn’t bothered, Lou, is because she hasn’t been involved. There’s no history.’

‘That’s not true!’

‘For Ivy, you’re her whole life. Talk to her, Louise.’

‘Not about us,’ she said, not wanting to go there. Determined to keep him with her on this one thing. ‘This isn’t…’

‘Isn’t what?’

She shook her head. ‘Serious,’ she said, opting for the easy answer.

‘Not serious?’ There was a momentary pause. ‘Are you telling me that you’re just playing with me? That all you want is my body?’

‘Absolutely,’ she said, grabbing at this chance to turn it into a joke.

‘Is that right?’ He let the past go and, with an imperceptible contraction of the lines fanning out from the corners of his eyes, began a slow, seductive smile that made her forget all about her mother, her father, instead jolting her into one-hundred-per-cent awareness of him. ‘Are you sure it isn’t because being with me makes you feel just the tiniest bit…wicked?’

‘Only “the tiniest bit”?’ she managed, through a throat apparently stuffed with cobwebs. ‘I was hoping for much better than that.’

His answer was to open his hand, cup her head, lean forward and kiss her, long and deep, his tongue a silky invader that ransacked her mouth, turning her limbs to water.

‘Better?’ he asked, when he’d done and she lay back, limp in her chair.

‘Much better,’ she said, smiling like an idiot in a way that would have confirmed all Gemma’s darkest suspicions.

Blissfully better.

Her plan had been to gorge on a glut of Max Valentine so that she would lose her appetite for his kisses, his love, but the truth was that they were addictive; the more she had, the more she wanted.

With him she held nothing back. There was no reserve. He turned her on like a searchlight.

‘So,’ she said, her voice pure vamp, ‘do you want to make out on my desk?’

He kissed her once more, but briefly, before straightening. ‘While I’d love to stay and play, sweetheart, I’ve got an appointment that won’t keep,’ he said, backing towards the door, grinning. ‘But hold that thought until our evening meeting. I’ll see you on my desk at six-thirty…’

‘You’re walking out on me?’ Okay, so she hadn’t actually meant it. Well, probably hadn’t meant it. But no way was she letting him get away with that…

‘It isn’t easy,’ he assured her, but he kept on walking.

She let him reach the door before she said, ‘So you don’t want to check that the underwear really does match the roses, then?’

He lost the grin. ‘You’re wearing it?’

‘There’s only one way to find out.’

When he’d gone, Gemma appeared in the doorway. ‘Max was in a hurry.’

‘He was late for an appointment with the accountant.’

Believing her had been his first mistake; coming back to check for himself had been his second.

Two out of three wasn’t bad.

She’d felt the need to test her power, make it as hard as humanly possible for him to leave, but he’d eventually managed to tear himself away. Late, it was true, but still not here. Not that she should be surprised. Max had always taken his responsibilities seriously. Put Bella Lucia before anything-anyone-else. It was, now she understood him a little better, easier to see why.

‘So?’ Gemma picked up the roses. ‘Do these go in water or the bin?’ She sniffed them, pulled a face. ‘They’ve got no scent,’ she said, as if that settled it.

‘Max didn’t buy them for the scent.’ And her smile returned as she remembered exactly why he’d bought them. For the moment he was finding more than enough time for pleasure. ‘Put them in water, Gem. I’ll have them on my desk.’

Next time he called in, he’d see them there and he’d remember, too.

She caught herself. Next time? She shook her head as if to clear it. Enjoy the moment, she reminded herself. Enjoy each time he broke stride, found precious time to be with her.

Then she smiled. She might not have been able to do more than delay him but she’d done a very satisfactory job of distracting him. The image she’d planted in his head, her scent, the taste of her, would be with him all the time he was with the accountant, discussing the costs for fitting out and launching Bella Lucia in Meridia.

When Gemma returned with the vase, she lingered, fussing with the flowers until Louise put down her pen, sat back and said, ‘Okay. You’ve obviously got something on your mind. Out with it.’

‘It’s nothing.’ Then, finally, she looked at her. ‘Just…You will be careful, Lou?’

‘Careful? Is this where I get the “safe sex” lecture?’

‘Well, if you think you need a refresher course, but to be honest I was more concerned about your heart. Max Valentine is not exactly Mr Commitment, is he?’

‘That’s not fair!’ Louise responded without thinking. Defending him. Who, in all his life, had ever been one hundred per cent committed to him? Put him first?

Then, as Gemma’s eyebrows hit the ceiling and she realised that she’d overdone it, she tried to limit the damage.

‘I’m not looking for commitment,’ she said. And it was true, she wasn’t. Hadn’t been…‘This thing between Max and me…’

How to explain it to Gemma? Impossible when she wasn’t entirely sure what it was herself. It had all seemed so simple…

‘This “thing”?’ Gemma prompted, making quote marks that suggested scepticism, if not downright sarcasm.

No, it was simple.

‘It’s not serious. Really,’ she stressed when her PA, who knew her far too well to be easily fooled, did not look convinced. ‘It’s just unfinished business, that’s all. Something that’s been simmering away since we were adolescents. It should have happened a long time ago. Would have if we’d known the truth, that I was adopted. That there was no impediment to a relationship.’

‘So all that snapping and snarling at one another was no more than repressed lust and now, what, you’re just getting it-getting him-out of your system?’

‘You see? Easy,’ she said, with more conviction than she actually felt. It had been so heart-stoppingly special to look up, see him there. ‘It’s no more than a bit of fun,’ she insisted.

Gemma was looking at her a little oddly and even as she said the words she knew, deep down, that it had gone way beyond that.

But it was a temporary madness. It had to be. She’d given herself until the fourteenth. On that day all debts would be paid and by then Max Valentine would be out of her system, as Gemma had so neatly put it.

‘So why be coy?’ her PA persisted. ‘It’s not as if either of you are involved with anyone else. Max is apparently wedded to his job and it’s been nearly three years since you split up with-’

Louise stopped her with an impatient gesture. She didn’t want to think about James, let alone talk about him.

‘Dad’s had enough shocks lately, don’t you think? You know the history.’

She’d spilled it all to Gemma, needing someone completely neutral to talk to after her father had blurted out that she was adopted. It was Gemma who’d held the tissues, poured the brandy, found out how to trace her real mother.

‘I can see that your dad wouldn’t be exactly thrilled by the idea of you and Max as an item,’ Gemma admitted, ‘but neither of you are kids…’

‘No. We’re not. I told you, it’s no more than a…’ Louise made a vague gesture, unable to say the words again.

‘A bit of fun,’ Gemma said, obligingly filling in the blanks for her.

‘So,’ she said. ‘You must see why we’re not broadcasting it.’

‘And Max feels that way too?’

Her PA was nothing if not persistent. ‘You were the one who pointed out his commitment problem.’

‘So I did.’ Then, brightly, ‘And actually I do understand, boss. If I was having “a bit of fun” with a man who put an urgent appointment with his accountant ahead of some hot lunchtime sex, I wouldn’t want anyone to know, either.’

‘Gemma!’

‘No, honestly, your secret is safe with me,’ she said, grinning wickedly, ‘although next time you might try-’

‘Enough!’

‘Only trying to help,’ she said, turning to go. Then, turning back, ‘Just do yourself a favour, Lou, and remember that while Max Valentine is undoubtedly having fun-’ She held up her hands ‘-okay, okay, you’re both having fun,’ she went on quickly before Louise could interrupt. ‘But when it’s all over, when he’s got you out of his system, he’ll be able to walk away without a backward glance.’

Once she would have believed that, before he’d opened up to her about his mother, his childhood. Not just that painfully cryptic moment on the plane but in the quiet moments of intimacy he’d somehow been able to respond to her queries about how things had gone with a frankness that had shown her a new side of his character. She knew that the charming, untouchable, totally in control Max Valentine had a vulnerability that she suspected no one else had ever seen.

But she was vulnerable, too, hiding inside her own shell, and with an archness she was far from feeling she said, ‘Are you suggesting that I won’t?’

‘All I’m saying, Louise, is that it’s taken you three years to get over James Cadogan. I very much doubt that you’re a woman who can do detached “fun”.’

‘Gem-’

‘It’s okay, lecture over,’ Gemma said, backing off. ‘I’m going to get a sandwich. Can I bring anything for you?’

‘Please,’ she said, relieved to be moving into safer territory. ‘Salmon,’ she said. ‘And a blueberry yoghurt.’

‘Anything else?’

A chance to do things again, perhaps. Max had been casual enough about her need for secrecy, but he didn’t like it. It wasn’t as if they were doing anything wrong, anything they need be ashamed of. They were together and, no matter how temporary their affair was intended to be, in some deep, hidden recess of her soul, she knew she wanted the world to know, to see what they had.

‘Lou?’

She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’ Nothing anyone could give her.