Max had been watching her as she spoke, and he could see the joy she found in what she did glowing in her face. Her eyes were animated, her lips curved up in a smile, her hands busy making images of her excitement for him to see. He imagined that that passion for her work was a reflection of the way she lived her life, of the way she loved. He had a sudden overwhelming desire to see her in her own sphere, living her life. She intrigued and aroused him beyond anything he had ever felt for another human being in his whole life.
“Is there anything that you won’t write for clients, or for yourself?” he asked. He knew precious little about romance novels himself, and before meeting Tina had had no interest in knowing, but he supposed there would be as many kinds as there were lovers in the world.
“There seems to be a market for incest and BDSM stories. I won’t write those, or stories about swingers, orgies, voyeurs, exhibitionists, and those into bestiality.” Her lips curved down faintly in evident distaste. He could well understand the feeling.
An idea struck him as they talked, and Max followed his instincts and asked, “Would you happen to have a copy of one of your books that I can read? Perhaps we can discuss it together when I’m through.”
He could see that he had shocked her with his request. But somehow he knew that reading her work would give him a little more insight into who she was and what she valued most. And it would give them something to talk about, since he had lost interest in Hobbes, at least for the moment.
“I can share one of my newer stories with you if you have a tablet,” she said.
“I would like to purchase it, if I may,” he replied. “One must never cheat the artist of her due.”
Tina shook her head faintly. “Consider it my way of saying thank you for taking in a stranger and disrupting your holiday.” When he opened his mouth to protest, she said firmly, “I insist.”
Max subsided. He would give in to her for the moment. Once he knew the name under which she published her books, he was free to purchase as many as he wished, should he choose to do so. He smiled and inclined his head.
“I’ll send it to you when I get back to my room,” she promised. She looked at him speculatively for a moment, then asked, “So, what do you do for a living?”
He had expected the question, and was prepared with an answer that would satisfy her without giving away too much. “I am…an ambassador for my country.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh! I see.”
Max managed to swallow his chuckle. She saw nothing, of course, and he shouldn’t be amused by her reaction, but it was such a delight to him to find someone who didn’t know who he was. Her next words brought a smile he couldn’t withhold.
“I’m really sorry now that I have disturbed your peace and quiet, Ambassador.”
She struggled to rise from the couch, and Max sat forward, reaching out his hands to stop her.
“Please, Tina, it’s just Max. And you have not disturbed me in the slightest.” At least, not in the way that you are thinking. “Won’t you please stay? We were having such a pleasant conversation.”
She was clearly reluctant to remain, and he decided to give her some breathing room. “If you like, you can fetch your laptop and share the book with me now. Perhaps while I read, you can get some writing done? If you feel up to it, of course. I imagine a writer is always at work, no?”
He wanted to put her at ease, and it seemed to work. She rose and smiled faintly at him. “I’ll just go get it, then.”
Max watched her walk away, her long legs round and smooth in the body-hugging jeans she wore, her hips swaying gently, her back straight. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from her, and only managed to breathe when she turned out of the room. Standing quickly, he went to the window, hoping that the scenery would help him bring himself back under more control. Tina obviously thought she was somehow a burden to him, and he wanted to eradicate that thought from her mind. In its stead, he wanted to plant the knowledge that he was a man who was very much captivated by her and only wished to get to know her better.
The last woman he had been interested in had been a beautiful Russian whom he had really hoped to find more in common with than he had. And in the end, she had been the one to dissolve their relationship when she fell for someone else. Her lover was not a prince, but she was happy, and so was Max, who had been immeasurably relieved that he had not had to disappoint her. But even with Sofia, his interest had been more of the sort that a person feels for a beautiful work of art. He had felt no passion, no personal attraction to her. There had been no spark. His fascination with Tina, on the other hand, seemed only to grow the more time they spent together, and the spark was only growing stronger.
His father’s words reverberated in his memory as he stared out at the snow-locked landscape. He was not getting any younger, and he acknowledged that he wanted a partner for his own, someone he could lavish his whole heart on, as his father had done with his mother for all their life together. Max yearned for that kind of emotional bond, that physical closeness, that passion, that purity of love and devotion with a woman. Tina Cooper had come into his life when he was most vulnerable, but she had no way of knowing that, and nothing in her behavior suggested that she would exploit that knowledge if she had it. He was prepared to explore the feelings she was stirring up in him, to see where they might lead.
“I’ll need your email address.”
Tina’s voice just behind him brought Max back to the moment and he turned to her with a smile. He gave her the address and watched as she plugged it in, pulled up some files on her laptop and selected one which she attached to the email and sent it immediately. Then she went back to her spot on the sofa, her laptop closed on her lap. Max wanted to check his email right away, but he didn’t want to spend any time in her presence not getting to know her. Before he could speak, however, she said, a curious light in her eyes,
“If you don’t mind me asking, Am…Max,” she caught herself with a faint flush, “how difficult a job is it being a diplomat in these times?”
Max smiled. He was pleased by her interest in his work, even if she didn’t know the half of it. “It is increasingly a game of chess. And one must constantly upgrade one’s skills, or the game will be lost.”
He knew his answer was cryptic, but how else was he to explain his job as ‘ambassador’ without giving away the full extent of everything he actually did? He didn’t want to talk about his role as the leader of his country. He had come away to escape from that, to become just the son who would bury his beloved mother and reconnect with his American family. It was a burdensome intrusion for him to think about being a sovereign prince and all that that job required just now. The slight frown on her face told him she was puzzled and perhaps affronted by his reticence.
“It has become a more difficult task to be the iron hand in the velvet glove,” he added, trying to smooth her ruffled feathers and keep the camaraderie building between them with out giving anything more away. “I am happy to escape from the demands of my job for a little while.”
She nodded. “I do understand that,” she said. “I’m sorry for bringing it up. I was just curious, and…” she paused, looking at him with an odd expression on her face. “And it was research.” Her tone was that of a guilty child, confessing what she had done to an irate parent.
Max chuckled. “I’m flattered and happy to have helped you. And thank you for understanding. So,” he gestured to her laptop, “are you going to write anything today?”
Tina shook her head. “Not just now. As you said, we’re having a pleasant conversation, and it would be rude of me to ignore you while I write.”
Max smiled. “You are very kind. My mother would have liked to know you.”
Immediately as the words left his lips, Max stiffened. He had no idea why he had said that. It had not been his intention to mention his mother, and now he would need to be careful how he answered the inevitable questions Tina would have about his unwitting revelation. Indeed her nex
t words proved she was as sharp as he expected.
“Why do you speak of your mother in the past tense?”
Max sighed. “She passed away recently.”
The best answer was usually the one that did not offer any scope for further questions. Immediately, Tina’s eyes filled with sympathy. “I’m so sorry, Max. Please accept my condolences.”
Such raw emotion swamped him in that moment that he had to force himself to remain where he was by the window. He had managed to push his grief into the background of his thoughts by caring for Tina through the worst of her illness. But now that she was recuperating, and he had little else to do than keep her company, the pain and sorrow were resurfacing. Max wished that he could drown them in the arms of the woman who was looking at him with such understanding in her eyes. The thought brought another wave of feeling washing over him. It made his skin tingle with heat.
“Thank you, Tina.” His voice was hoarse, thick with unspoken emotion, and he cleared his throat.
“Perhaps I should give you some space,” she said. “We can always talk again later.”
Max was having none of that. He wasn’t about to deny himself the absolute pleasure of her company because he missed his mother. He would grieve when he was alone.
“I would feel better if you stayed with me,” he said. “Perhaps we can play a game?” He had learned long ago how to read people by the games they played, and how they played them.
Her face brightened. “Sure. What do you have?”
He went to the sideboard and opened one of the doors, looking inside to see what was available. “There’s chess, Scrabble, Monopoly…”
“I dislike Monopoly, and though I’d love to play chess, I don’t know how. So, Scrabble?”
“Scrabble it is.”
Max pulled the game from the cupboard and went to sit across from her, setting the game up while she adjusted herself on the sofa. Tina wore red-striped woolly socks and he watched her wiggle her toes in them as she wrapped the blanket around herself. He passed her the bag and she pulled a letter out. Then he pulled one out, and as he had the earlier one, he started. From the first seven letters he made the word ‘JOT’, as everything else was a consonant. He loved how she waited, eyeing the letters she had and weighing her options. Then she wrote ‘JETTY’, and they were off.
His next word was ‘MYSTIC’, playing off her ‘Y’. No big scores as yet, but he wanted to open up the board, to see if she would beat him at the game he had mastered when he was learning English as a small boy. He had no doubt that as a writer she had many words at her disposal, and it tickled him to think he might have met his match in her. They played back and forth, apparently evenly matched. Max watched her tongue steal out to moisten her lips as she tried to find words to move ahead decisively. And though he didn’t care about winning, he baited her, finding words that just put him ahead of her so she would keep showing him her tongue. He felt no guilt about it, either. In the absence of any deeper connection, he’d take watching her lick her lips over nothing at all.
“It’s your turn, Max.”
Her voice roused him, and he felt his face heat at having been caught staring at her. Refusing to meet her gaze, he studied the board. He had only two letters left, and he would win if he could play them both. Where could he put a ‘K’ and an ’S’? He studied the board, not finding any place where he could use them both. After a minute of painstaking searching, just as he was about to give in and use the ‘K’ alone, he saw the spot. Where ‘FI’ and ‘QIS’ were joined, there was an open space. Max put the ‘K’ and the ’S’ before and after the open ‘IS’ and leaned back, a smirk of triumph on his face.
The word sat between them like a living temptation — ‘KISS’. He couldn’t kiss her, like he wanted to more in that moment that anything else, so he made a facetious comment instead.
“How very serendipitous!” he teased. “What better way to end the game than with a kiss?”
Tina’s cheeks warmed and she lowered her eyes to the two remaining tiles in her hand, refusing to look him in the eye. He waited, determined to get her to acknowledge the electricity that zipped between them. When she finally raised her eyes to his face, she had rearranged her own to be cool and expressionless.
“I never kiss on a first date, Mr. Ambassador,” she said quietly.
Max laughed. She was quick and witty, and too smart for her own good or his. “Ah, good to know, Ms. Authoress. However, I would like to point out that this wasn't a date. I never play games on dates.”
He watched the grin she tried to hide overwhelm her cheeks, and listened to her soft chuckles with delight. He wondered if she knew that he was no longer talking about board games.
“Good to know, Mr. Ambassador,” she quipped again, echoing his earlier response to her.
“Would you care to play again?” he asked, gathering the tiles and placing them back in the bag. Anything to keep her with him.
“Perhaps later.”
She smiled at him, but he could see the weariness she was trying to hide. He hid his own disappointment. He had been so engrossed in watching her as they played, and in enjoying her company, that he had not given a thought to the fact that she was still not completely well. He opened his mouth to apologize for being inconsiderate and then thought better of it. He would not embarrass her with an apology merely to salve his conscience. Instead, he would make it easy for her to take a rest. He replied quickly.
“I’ve just remembered a call I need to make. Please forgive me, but I must for take my leave of your pleasant company for a while, Tina.”
He rose, giving her his brightest smile. She stood up as well, saying as she walked away, “I’ll just have a lie down. Thanks for the game.”
Max watched her leave, dragging a hand over his face. Relief and disappointment warred inside him, each seeking dominance in his thoughts. He ignored them both. Whatever was going to happen between him and Tina would happen, no matter how he felt about it. Sighing in resignation at being without her company for the moment, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and called his aunt. Conversation with the family would help him while away the time until he saw Tina again.
Chapter 4: A Mutual Attraction
The room was almost dark when Tina opened her eyes. Was it night already? How long had she been asleep? She blinked to clear her vision as she sat up in bed, pulling the blanket up around her shoulders as she shivered. Reaching for her cell phone, she woke it to see that it was late afternoon. She had been asleep for almost four hours. Whatever had made her sick, it was certainly also making her exhausted. She hadn’t slept this much in ages.
The blinds had been closed, which explained the almost total darkness. Assuming that Max had done it, she rose to re-open them, and then went to relieve herself. His thoughtfulness and attentiveness were winning her over big time, and she would have to keep a cool head to avoid being bowled over by him. She had missed lunch and her tummy was rumbling, a sure sign that she was on the mend. It was too late for lunch and too early for dinner, but maybe she could have an apple or something to dull the hunger pangs and quiet her tummy. She slipped out of bed, dragging on the clothes she had taken off earlier, and went in search of the kitchen.
She didn’t want Max or Peter to keep waiting on her hand and foot, as though she were some kind of princess in a fairy tale. She was just an ordinary woman who had temporarily lost her way, and who was recovering from a one-day bug or something. Turning to the left, instead of to the right as she had done earlier, she found her way to a staircase which she descended slowly, taking in the grand open spaces of the open concept living room below. The fireplace there was enormous, the couches a chocolate leather, and the view positively breathtaking. Tina took in the spaciousness as she stepped off the last stair, and turned to her left.
The kitchen was an open, airy space that flowed from the large dining room which seated ten at the enormous oak table next to the living room. Tina wondered whether Max owned the chalet o
r was merely renting it. She couldn’t imagine him not owning such a luxurious space. She could see a wraparound porch beyond the glass windows, and though they were buried in snow, she saw the outlines of outdoor furniture in two separate areas. It must be nice to have the comfort of your own private resort, almost. Maybe some day, when she had made it big more than once, she could buy herself a smaller version of the magnificent home she found herself in.
Someone cleared his throat and she turned her gaze away from the splendor around her to find Peter watching her with a solicitous smile on his face.
“How may I help you, Ms. Cooper?” he asked.
“Please call me Tina,” she responded, smiling at him. “And no, I’ll just help myself if you don’t mind. I’m much better today than I was two days ago. You’ve been very kind to me, but I don’t want to impose on your goodwill more than I need to.”
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