Kristin sat up and shoved the pillow up behind her and pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. “I find that hard to believe.”
He turned on his side, his head perched on his hand. “Why?”
“I can’t even count the number of women who came in and out of your life over the years I knew you.”
“The operative word there is out of my life,” he said. “You remained the one constant.”
“So when did you fall in love with me?” she demanded.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t really know, until you were gone. I have to say, your reason for running was pretty lame.”
“You underestimate the idiocy of a teenage girl in love,” Kristin said quietly.
“Yeah. There is that.”
“So what did you have in mind? An affair for the few weeks I’m here?” If he’d really loved her then, perhaps a proposal now wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility.
What about Flick? He doesn’t know he has a daughter.
For the very first time, Kristin felt guilty about keeping Flick a secret from Max. Now she was afraid to tell him, for fear that whatever feelings might have survived their ten-year separation would die a brutal death if he discovered the depth of her deceit regarding his daughter.
“There’s something I’ve been waiting ten years to tell you,” he said.
“What is that?” she said warily.
“A secret I discovered about my mother.”
“Are you sure you want to tell me now?”
He sat up with his back to her, his feet on the floor. “I’ve been carrying this burden around with me because there’s no one else but you I would trust with it.”
“You couldn’t tell Oliver?”
“Especially not Oliver,” Max said.
“Is it something to do with him? Maybe you shouldn’t tell me.”
“I overheard my mother arguing with her twin sister. Did I ever tell you she has a twin? Anyway, Aunt Alicia showed up at the Abbey for Christmas. My mother wanted her gone. My aunt had a teenage boy with her she said was her son. But she wasn’t married and never had been. She said Bull was the boy’s father.”
Kristin gasped. “No. Oh, no. Max, that’s awful. What did your mother say? What did she do?”
“She turned white. Which made me think she believed my aunt was telling the truth.”
“What did you do? What did you say?”
“I closed the door to my mother’s sitting room and walked away,” Max said. “I didn’t want to hear any more. I meant to tell you the night we had sex, but…” He smiled ruefully. “I got distracted. Later, I tried calling you, but you weren’t talking to me. You wouldn’t see me. You didn’t want anything to do with me.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, Max. What happened with your aunt? And her son?”
He shrugged. “I suppose my mother paid her off to stay away, because I’ve never seen either one of them again. It was just one more reason to distrust my parents. But I understood a little more about why my mother might have left my father. I mean, sleeping with his wife’s sister…”
Kristin slid her arms around Max’s waist from behind and held him tight. Little did he know how manipulative his mother could be. She’d bribed Kristin to get her to spend time with her son. Even knowing he might be hurt if he had feelings for Kristin that she didn’t return.
Of course, the duchess might truly want her son to be happy and believe that Kristin was the woman for him. She might want even Max to have the chance to be a father to his daughter.
Kristin felt confused about what she should do. She was tempted to confess his mother’s plot and her own part in it. But that would mean revealing the existence of Flick—and taking the chance that Max might be so angry about her deception that he would seek legal custody of their daughter.
She couldn’t take that chance. She couldn’t say anything. But she could tell the duchess she wanted no more part in her machinations. And she could enjoy the brief time she had with Max.
She glanced at the clock and saw they’d been talking for more than an hour. “We’re going to be late.”
Max smiled, reached around to pull her into his lap and said, “To hell with it.”
16
For the past week, Max had felt like he was living in a dream. He and Kristin had been playing tennis every morning, dating other tennis players in the evenings, and returning to her hotel room late at night to exchange notes and make love. So far, they hadn’t found anyone who stood out as a possible assassin. He’d even eliminated Elena’s father as a suspect.
Kristin kept her afternoons to herself, pleading that she needed private time. He hadn’t asked her what she did. He’d just been grateful for the time she was willing to spend with him.
Max wasn’t sure why he found making love to her so satisfying. Maybe it was the enthusiastic way she responded to him. Maybe it was the way she looked at him with acceptance. And love. He didn’t think he was mistaking what he saw in her eyes. Because it was the same thing he’d seen all those years ago without recognizing how rare and precious it was.
Tonight they were meeting up with Irina and Steffan for purely social reasons. He knocked on Kristin’s hotel room door and heard her humming on the other side. His heart jumped when she opened the door and smiled at him.
“Hello, Max. I’ll be ready in just a moment.”
He stepped inside and pulled her into his arms as the door closed behind him. “How about a kiss?”
She laughed, kissed him quickly and wriggled to escape. “I’d love to stay here and play with you, Max, but we need to meet Irina and Steffan at that Indian restaurant near the British Museum in half an hour.”
He’d left the choice of restaurant to her. “I like the taste of Indian food,” he said. “But I like the taste of you better.”
He slid his tongue along the seam of her lips and she opened to him. Her tongue dueled with his as he deepened the kiss. His hand sought out her breast, which was small enough to fit easily in his palm, and he used his thumb and forefinger to tease the nipple until it pebbled and he heard her moan.
She went up on tiptoe to fit them together where it would do the most good and rubbed herself against his arousal. Her hand came seeking between them, and he groaned as she traced the length of him behind the fly of his jeans.
“I want you,” he rasped.
“We’ll be late to dinner,” she protested.
“I’ll be quick.”
She laughed and said, “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
He shot her a chagrined look and shoved her skirt up to palm the heart and the heat of her. And discovered she wasn’t wearing any panties.
“What did you expect?” she said when he raised his brows in surprise. “The way you keep tearing them off, I’m not going to have any left.”
“I’ll buy you more. Or not.” He slid two fingers inside her as her mouth sought his. And discovered she was hot and wet and ready.
She unsnapped and unzipped his jeans and shoved them down as he turned and braced her against the closed door and lifted her to impale her. She gripped his hips with her legs as he drove himself to completion.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I should have waited—” He cut himself off as he looked into her dazed eyes and saw her sated expression.
She glanced up at him and said, “What?”
He chuckled. “Forget it.”
She released her grip on his hips, but he had to hold her upright, since her legs wobbled like jelly.
“This door seems to be your favorite place to make love,” she said.
He shot her an abashed look. He just never got very far into the room before he wanted to be inside her. The door made a handy vertical support for lovemaking.
“I’ll see what I can do about making it into bed when we get back here tonight,” he promised.
“Max, I don’t think—”
He kissed her to keep her from protesting
. He couldn’t seem to get his fill of her. They often made love twice a day. Or three times, if they woke up in the middle of the night. But she was always willing. And he had a lot of years to make up for. Years when he’d yearned for someone who would look at him like K did when she made love to him.
Kristin shoved her curly hair away from her face as she headed for the bathroom. “Give me a few minutes,” she said. “And I’ll be ready to go again.”
“Promise?”
She stared at him for a moment in disbelief. When he grinned and shrugged, she stuck out her tongue, ruffled her hands through her hair and shut the bathroom door in his face.
He liked that she hadn’t put her hair up in a bun since he’d first taken out the bobby pins and let it fall free. Her ponytail had reappeared on the tennis court, sprouting through the back end of the ball cap she wore to keep the sun off her face.
Max realized he was falling in love with her all over again.
It wasn’t just the sex. Although he had to admit that was pretty spectacular. K had always been a good listener. That hadn’t changed. And she’d always supported him when he faced adversity. That hadn’t changed either.
There was something new in their relationship that hadn’t been there when they were teens. He’d been trying to put a finger on it for the past few days.
Perhaps it was that K stood on equal footing with him now. The age difference that had made him the more worldly one when they were kids, was insignificant now. Perhaps it was that K understood and shared his interest in keeping the world a safe place. Interesting—almost odd—that they’d ended up in virtually the same line of work. Maybe it was finding all her good qualities combined in one person.
Along with the spectacular sex, of course.
For the first time in his life, he was thinking it might be nice to spend his life with one woman. And it wasn’t Veronica, with whom he’d been trying to establish a relationship before K had shown up. He didn’t know Veronica well enough to compare her in every way to K. But really, there was no comparison.
He wanted K back in his life.
Which was a problem, considering the realities of her life in America and his life in London and the travel required by his work for the CIA. Not that he had to keep his job, but it gave him something to do with his life that wasn’t philanthropy or polo.
Would Kristin be willing to quit the FBI? He didn’t think so. Although that might become a moot point, if she was fired. She still hadn’t heard from SIRT. She lived every day on pins and needles, and he knew from how much she cared that she wanted to keep her job.
Max’s brows furrowed in thought. Unfortunately, he didn’t think his problem was going to be solved by her losing—or quitting—her job. He could tell from the reports K gave him about the men she interviewed on dates that she was too good an asset for the FBI to lose.
He wondered if she wanted kids. Would she leave the FBI to be a full-time mother? That was a challenge worthy of her time.
He wanted a family. Two kids, maybe. Or four. Not three. That left an odd man out. But not right away. He wanted time to enjoy having K to himself.
Kristin reappeared looking so beautiful he wanted her again.
“I’m ready,” she said with a smile.
“Me, too,” he quipped. “But I think I can control myself till after dinner.”
She laughed. And then blushed.
And he knew she wanted him as much as he wanted her. He headed straight for the hotel room door, knowing it would be too easy to get distracted again.
They had a short walk to the spot where Max had managed to find a parking spot for his Porsche. The weather had remained beautiful, sunny and warm, with no sign of the rain that made an umbrella a necessary addition to any outing in London.
The sidewalks were busy, and Max slid an arm around Kristin’s waist and pulled her close to rescue her from a mother pushing an old-fashioned baby carriage through the crowd.
“I’m looking forward to catching up with Irina,” he said.
“I’m surprised you haven’t kept in closer touch with her,” Kristin replied as she inched even closer to avoid two small children holding hands on either side of their mother. “It always seemed to me that Irina was more of a mother to you than your own mother while you were on the tour.”
“She was,” Max said. “I’m not sure why we lost touch. We were talking once a week. Then every couple of weeks. Then once or twice a year. And not at all for the past couple of years.” Max shrugged. “My fault, I guess. I suppose I didn’t need a mother as much once I got older.”
“You always need your mother,” Kristin said sharply. “And mothers never stop loving and caring for their children, no matter how grown-up and independent they are.”
He laughed at her ferocity on the subject. “I’m not going to argue with you, K.” He was reminded that Kristin had been without a mother most of her life. Maybe that was what made her so animated on the subject. “You must admit, my mother—”
“Worries about you,” Kristin interjected.
His brows rose to his hairline. “I don’t believe what I’m hearing. You really think the Mean Witch cares for me?”
She bit her lip and shot him a guilty look.
Which made him suspicious. He opened the passenger door of his Porsche, waited for her to get in and closed the door behind her, all the while watching her. He got into the car, started the engine and pulled out into traffic before he said, “What makes you think my mother cares for me?”
“All mothers—”
“I thought we’d established that my mother is the exception to the rule,” Max said. “Yours, too, for that matter.”
“Maybe,” Kristin conceded. “But Max, you must admit, she’s had a difficult time—”
“Hold up just one minute,” Max interrupted. “Now you’re on her side? What is this, K?”
She chewed on her fingernail while she stared at him. “I’m wondering if perhaps you’ve misjudged her, Max.”
“She sent me off to boarding school when I turned seven. We barely spoke during the holidays. She never showed up at a single match I played,” he said. “Not once during my entire junior tennis career. That doesn’t leave me with any warm and fuzzy feelings toward her.”
“Maybe she had reasons—”
Max snorted. “Come on, K. You know better than that. You managed to be around for me for three years, despite all the traveling you had to do.”
“She didn’t have just one child,” Kristin pointed out. “She had five. And a husband, who must have wanted some of her time.”
Max had never thought of his siblings as taking any of his mother’s time, because it didn’t seem like she spent any more time with them than she had with him. Maybe he was wrong. And he knew at one time his father had loved his mother. Which would have made quite a few demands on her time.
“Maybe she wasn’t able to be there for you because she was sad and unhappy about what was happening between her and your father.”
He stared at her incredulously.
Kristin cried, “Watch out!”
A horn blared and he swerved the Porsche back into his lane. “What on earth has gotten into you? I don’t believe what I’m hearing.”
“I think you should give your mother another chance, Max. That’s all.”
“Why? What’s different now? Has she been in touch with you? Is that what this is all about?”
He watched her face turn pale. Watched her open her mouth to speak and close it again before she finally said, “I talked with my father today on the phone. He’s not doing well, Max.” Tears brimmed in her eyes and she turned away, sniffing to hold them back. When she turned to look at him again, her eyes were filled with pain. “He said he wants to die.”
“I’m sorry, K. I didn’t know.”
“I want to leave and go home and be with him, but he said he doesn’t want me there. He doesn’t want to see me. I think maybe I should go anyway.”
Ma
x pulled the Porsche to the curb in the shade of an oak and turned off the ignition. He turned to her and said, “What can I do to help?”
She sniffed and said, “Just listening is a help.”
There wasn’t room in the Porsche to pull her into his lap, so he settled an arm around her shoulder and pulled her toward him and kissed her gently on each cheek, catching a teardrop with the second kiss. “Take it easy, baby. Let me see what I can do about getting him flown here.”
“He’s in rehab.”
“There are rehab facilities here. Let me do this for you, please. I need you here for this assignment.” He made his plea professional, rather than personal, because he wasn’t sure she was ready to hear how much he wanted her to stay in London for the rest of her life. Getting her father here would be a step in the right direction.
“All right, Max. I’ll pay you back. I promise.”
“When we get to the restaurant, I’ll make a few phone calls. We should have your dad here before we play our exhibition match. If he’s up to it, maybe he’ll want to come.”
She brightened and said, “What a good idea! That’ll give him something to work toward over the next couple of weeks. Thank you, Max. You don’t know how much this means to me.”
He felt his throat swell with emotion. Pleasing her, making her happy, made him feel ten feet tall. Bloody hell. He had it bad. If only he could be sure she shared his feelings, he’d ask her to marry him tonight.
“K…”
“What is it, Max?”
“Nothing. We’re here. We can talk about it later tonight.”
17
Kristin wondered if she’d made a mistake accepting Max’s offer to bring her father to London. But she’d been terribly worried when she’d talked to Harry. Surprisingly, the duchess had made the same offer earlier in the day. Which was what had motivated her to speak so kindly of the Mean Witch to Max.
Flick had phoned Kristin, crying because her grandfather didn’t want her to call anymore. The duchess had suggested bringing Harry to London so Flick could be closer to him.
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