by Neesa Hart
Becky and Chip stared at her, astonished. Kelly alone seemed to sense the volatile nature of her mood. “Chip,” she said, with the soft authority Sidney had always admired. “I think now would be a good time for you to find Mr. Loden’s chef and decide how the two of you want to divvy up the kitchen responsibilities. Do you have the punch list I gave you?”
He nodded. Kelly waved him away with a sweep of her hand. “Good. Becky, I’d like you to gather the rest of our staff in about ten minutes so we can brief them.” She scanned the kitchen, then tucked her clipboard under her arm. “We’ve got two hours,” she continued, “and I’m going to make sure the guest rooms are up to spec.”
As Kelly picked up a tray of chocolates, Sidney gave the confections a final, assessing glance. The shaped candies were Sidney’s personal trademark. Individually made, each candy represented a guest’s personal interests. Before a major event, she interviewed her clients to determine how best to serve their guests. The chocolates, which her staff placed on the pillows of the guest room beds or at each place setting for meals, were a special touch her clients usually raved about.
Kelly paused on her way to the door. “Sidney, would you like to instruct the rest of the staff, or shall I?”
Sidney gave her a grateful look. “I’ll do it.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.” At her friend’s dubious look, Sidney laughed. “Don’t worry, I’ve delivered my last avenging angel speech for the day.”
“All right,” Kelly agreed. “I’m going to deliver the chocolates, then.” She inspected the tray. “You know, these look really good, Sid,” she said. “Even if you did make them at three this morning. No one makes them as well as you do.”
Sidney shrugged, unwilling to discuss why she’d been unable to sleep the night before, and had decided to personally make the chocolates—a duty she generally would have delegated. “I enjoy doing it. I hadn’t done them in a while, and I wanted to make sure I hadn’t lost my touch.”
Kelly gave her a shrewd look, but silently hoisted the tray of chocolates to her shoulder. As she strolled past Sidney, she whispered, “Sure you don’t want me to put the Cupid on Max’s pillow, Sid?”
Sidney frowned at her. “Did you listen to a word I just said?”
“Every one of them. That’s why I asked.”
“Kel—”
“Okay, okay. He sure is cute, though.” She sailed out of the kitchen without a backward glance.
Sidney almost laughed out loud. Max Loden was many things. Daunting. Charming. Elegant. Ruthless. Brilliant. Maybe even handsome. But never, ever had anyone described him as cute. Sidney sometimes doubted that Max had even entered the world as a baby. Instead, he seemed to have walked onto the stage of his life full-grown and ready for battle.
When his parents died, leaving a twenty-five-year-old Max full responsibility for his brother, his two sisters and his father’s struggling corporation, Max had taken the reins like a man born to lead. He’d made a lot of money, and a lot of enemies along the way. Sidney’s uncle, Philip Grant, had seen him through all of it. And while the world found Max’s eccentricities, razor-sharp business acumen and incomprehensible ability to take the wildest risk possible and make astounding profits from the venture both infuriating and intimidating, Philip adored him. His adversaries and even his colleagues claimed he had no heart, that he placed profits above people and that he’d step on anyone who got in his way. “Mad Max,” they called him. And as far as everyone could tell, he liked it.
But Sidney had never believed it, for reasons she’d told no one—not even Philip. On a cold rainy evening, years ago, not long after she’d come to live with her uncle, Max Loden had given her a gift so generous, so unthinkably extravagant that she’d tucked it close to her heart and used it whenever her confidence had needed it most.
He would never remember the incident, she was sure. She’d been fifteen. He was a college student bound for glory. Everyone agreed it was his destiny. She’d been afraid of him, and hadn’t known why. In those days, however, it seemed she had feared everyone. Even then people talked about him. He had what Philip called presence. He always seemed to be involved in terribly important, terribly serious business. While his brother and sisters were enjoying the carefree life afforded them by wealthy parents, Max appeared to know, somehow, that his destiny would be different—that, too soon, he would bear responsibilities far too heavy for most men’s shoulders.
Yet on that night, for reasons she might never know, he had stepped off his constantly spinning world to give Sidney’s self-esteem a desperately needed transfusion. And, in that instant, she’d mentally cast aside his critics as shallow fools and envious naysayers. And “Mad Max” had become, forever known to her alone, as “Max the Magnificent.”
Chapter Two
When Philip Grant recovered from the flu, Max decided two hours later, he would kill him. He stood in his study where he scanned the assembled guests on his terrace. The only light in this third-story room he used as a refuge came from the festive lanterns and mini-lights Sidney’s staff had strung through the trees. Dark clouds blotted out the crescent moon.
Which, he thought in a burst of grim humor, seemed wildly appropriate. The clouds of his temper had begun gathering earlier that day. His mood had rapidly progressed from foul to rotten. Greg, who had trouble committing to wearing the same tie all day, was predictably balking at the idea of betrothing himself to Lauren Fitzwater. Never mind that Greg had made certain promises—promises that Lauren had every reason to believe would lead to marriage. Greg was experiencing a very predictable bout of jitters. Max had been prepared for that. Max liked to think he was prepared for just about everything.
He had assured Greg, and meant it, that Lauren was the best thing in his life. Max’s desire to see Greg settled went far beyond the simplicity of a multimillion dollar corporate takeover.
Everyone needed stability.
Max should know. He’d spent his whole life without any. Stability, he’d learned, was the remedy for loneliness. So he’d strengthened his brother’s resolve, and considered it all part of a day’s work.
And while Greg’s burst of misgivings had proved mildly irritating, the beginning of his descent into hell hadn’t happened until later. His gaze narrowed and found Alice Northrup-Bowles downing a glass of champagne as she flirted with Max’s senior vice president. Damn the shrew. Her presence alone was enough to rattle him.
And then there was Sidney Grant. Sidney with her wise, intelligent eyes and that cocky little smile that made him want to kiss it right off her full mouth. What the hell was Philip thinking?
The old man was too shrewd, Max realized, not to know that his employer’s interest in his niece ran deeper than common courtesy. While Max had never told Philip the story, the evening years ago when he’d discovered Sidney in his parents’ library had left an indelible mark on him. He didn’t know why, and had long since given up trying to figure it out. He’d found her holding a dust rag in one hand, weeping over the broken remains of a porcelain figurine. She’d looked so desolate. Something in the bend of her shoulders, her tear-filled eyes, had struck a note in Max that had never stopped ringing.
The encounter hadn’t lasted long. Less than five minutes as he recalled, but he’d walked into that room, with no earthly idea why he felt moved to comfort her. And in the end, she’d comforted him. She’d told him how her twice-divorced mother had remarried again, had decided that Sidney’s presence in her home would make it too difficult for her new stepchildren to accept her as their mother. Philip asked his younger sister to send Sidney to him. Sidney’s mother had needed little prompting. She’d put her fifteen-year-old daughter on a bus the following afternoon.
Max remembered his sense of horror as her story unfolded. Even his parents, who had always remained slightly detached from their children’s activities, wouldn’t have contemplated anything so unspeakable. Sidney had mopped her eyes as she’d told him the tale, then apol
ogized for burdening him with it. She’d started crying, she’d said, and that was how she’d broken the figurine. She was on her way to find her uncle Philip to report the incident.
Max had shaken his head, handed her his handkerchief, and assured her he’d handle everything. She needn’t worry about the broken figure. “I’ll take care of it,” he’d told her. At her wide-eyed look, he’d explained, “That’s what I do.”
Sidney had looked at him with that expressive gaze and said, “You always take care of everyone, don’t you?” At his startled look, she’d managed a slight chuckle that had seared its way through his nervous system. “Uncle Philip told me.”
He vaguely remembered coughing. “I see.”
Sidney tilted her head to one side. “So if you take care of everyone else, who takes care of you?” He’d stared at her, stunned. At his silence, Sidney had looked at him with that probing look that reminded him so much of her uncle. “Everyone needs someone to take care of them,” she’d whispered. “Even you.”
Her declaration had zeroed in on the secret part of himself he kept firmly hidden in a vault of self-control. Sidney’s softly uttered words had thrown open the curtains of his heart and sent light streaming through the window of his soul. He’d had to struggle to restore the internal security system that kept his emotions firmly in their fortress.
Without allowing himself to consider the reasons, Max had changed his plans that night, and taken his date shopping at Tiffany’s so he could replace the figurine. The incident with Sidney had rattled him more than he’d thought it should. He still wasn’t precisely sure why she’d managed to get to him like that, but he knew that in the handful of times he’d seen her thereafter, he’d felt inexplicably connected to her—as if something mysterious and irrevocable had bonded them together.
He’d made a point, over the next few years, to follow Sidney ’s life through Philip’s reports. With a few phone calls, he’d ensured she had the scholarship money she needed to attend college. She’d graduated summa cum laude, and he’d had nothing at all to do with that. He’d roundly cursed the philandering, weak-spined bastard she’d married soon thereafter, and silently cheered the guts it had taken for her to divorce him. Carter Silas had done a tap dance on Sidney’s confidence that would have unraveled most people, but Sidney had impressed the hell out of Max with the courage she’d shown in standing up to him.
Later, he’d learned, she hadn’t even begun to impress him. Though Sidney knew nothing of Max’s interest, he’d made it his business—compelled at first by the surge of protectiveness he’d felt when he first met her, and later by an odd fascination with wanting to know what she’d accomplish next.
Unknown to Philip, Carter Silas had done more than abuse Sidney’s self-esteem. On a snowy February night, Carter had drained their mutual accounts, embezzled a quarter of a million dollars from the brokerage firm where he worked, then left Sidney holding the legal bag while he fled town with his twenty-one-year-old mistress. Max had sent his accountant and his lawyers to Sidney’s aid, and hired a private detective to get incriminating pictures of her husband. Max had made absolutely sure that Sidney’s lawyers had everything they needed to nail the weasel, but, in the end, Sidney had done most of the fighting on her own. Thanks to Max, her lawyers had shaken the bastard down for enough of a settlement to ensure that Sidney was comfortable. Though the embezzlement charges had never been proven, Silas had floundered for several years until Max finally decided he wasn’t worth the bother.
When Sidney had started her temp agency, an effort Philip hinted had taken all the courage Sidney had left, Max had again placed private phone calls. His business associates had suddenly found themselves in desperate need of temporary staff. Sidney had charmed them all with her skill and poise, and he still received Christmas cards thanking him for recommending her to them.
Philip had never asked why Max had taken such a personal interest in his niece, and Max hadn’t offered an explanation. If he had his way, neither Philip nor Sidney would ever know that those few seconds in the library, when she’d looked at him with those sad, sympathetic eyes and earnestly asked who took care of him, had opened an aching chasm in his soul that had never healed. No one he cared about, he’d vowed, as long as he had power to stop it, would ever feel as alone as he had at that moment.
Now, she barely resembled the slightly bedraggled, self-conscious girl in his father’s library. Her dark hair, thick and luxuriant, framed an expressive face dominated by a pair of intelligent hazel eyes. He’d always liked the way she looked at him. No one else looked at him quite that way—as if she understood some secret part of him that remained hidden to the rest of the world.
And, if he were honest, his thoughts generally ran a more primitive course. With little or no effort, he found himself imagining just how Sidney’s eyes would look if he were making love to her. They’d grow misty, he knew, and the color would darken. Emerald green and intense, full of fire and need, they’d steal his breath.
He hadn’t bothered to question why he’d insisted she stay for the weekend. There were dozens of practical reasons for the decision, but Max knew none of them explained the knot of hunger that had been steadily growing in his gut since he’d found her in his kitchen that afternoon. His desire to have her on his property had little, if anything, to do with keeping her off the road at a late hour, or his worries about his guests.
He wanted her.
Like a blow to the head, the knowledge had hit him squarely when he’d seen her standing there in the midst of well-ordered chaos. He wanted her.
Hell, he’d probably wanted her for years. Why he hadn’t recognized it before, he had no idea. Maybe it was the impossibility of the whole thing. Sidney Grant, and everything she deserved in life, was as out of reach to him as a normal family in a little house with a dog, a picket fence and a two-car garage. So far out of reach, in fact, that he’d never even allowed himself to contemplate what it would be like to have her in his life.
Until today. Until he’d seen her wearing a ridiculously seductive tuxedo and commanding a small army. A surge of adrenaline had raked him, and he recognized it instantly. It was the same feeling he got when he looked at a stock report and saw the future; the same feeling that overcame him when he analyzed a financial statement and knew the hidden potential of a buried asset or an underutilized resource; the same feeling, he mused, that drove him to gamble millions of dollars on what seemed like bad odds. And with customary dispatch, he’d listened to his gut feeling and not to his head.
With a carefully executed strategy, he’d ensured that he’d have her undivided attention for the next several days. He had her safely in his sphere, where he could watch and listen. He could examine the tension in his gut and sift through the messages screaming through his brain. For three days, he could concentrate on nothing but the hungry need he felt each time he looked at Sidney Grant.
The thought brought a wry smile to his lips. If the heaviness he’d felt in his lower body since earlier that day was any indication, he didn’t even need to look at her to feel the effects of her sway over him. He’d retreated here, to his third-story office, to clear his head. It hadn’t worked. Evidently, thinking about Sidney worked just as well as watching her. If he survived this weekend, he decided, he’d satisfy several of his more pressing curiosities, and see if this feeling had the kind of payoff he expected.
“I thought I’d find you here.”
At the sound of Sidney’s voice, Max felt need pour through his veins like lava. He turned from the window to find her watching him with the same quiet intensity she’d had long ago in his parent’s library. His fingers flexed at his sides as he struggled for equilibrium. Easy, he warned himself. Don’t overwhelm her. “Hello, Sidney. What brings you up here?”
She held a bottle and two glasses in her hand. “Philip mentioned that if you disappeared up here during the party, you’d probably want this.” She set the bottle on his desk.
“Philip thinks
of everything,” he said quietly, wondering if Philip had thought of the consequences of sending Sidney to him.
“He does.” She hesitated. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. I just wanted to deliver this. If there’s nothing else you want, I need to get back downstairs.”
“Do you?” He glanced at the terrace again. “Your staff certainly seem to have everything under control.”
She offered him that slight smile, the one that drew his attention straight to her mouth and kept it there. “They do. But it’s a large party. Someone has to see to the details.”
He wasn’t ready for her to leave yet. He was never, he’d long ago admitted, ready for Sidney to leave him. “Do they know where to find you?”
She searched his expression. “Yes.”
With a wave of his hand, he indicated the leather chair across from his desk. “Then sit. You’ve been on your feet all afternoon.” At her surprised look, he managed a slight smile. “And don’t ask me how I know.”
“You’re omniscient?” she quipped.
He shook his head at that. “Hardly. But Philip tells me you’re maniacal about quality service. I understand what that means. If I were in your place, I’d have checked everything twice, then checked it again.”
Surprise flickered in her gaze, but she eased into the chair. “I can spare a few minutes, I guess.”
“Thank you.” Max studied her for several tension-filled seconds. Her eyes, he admitted with some chagrin, weren’t the only things about her that had him struggling for breath. The tailored lines of her uniform did nothing to disguise a lithe figure and the kind of curves designed to catch a man’s attention. It skimmed her body in all kinds of interesting ways, yet managed through some tailoring miracle to still appear subdued. After fifteen seconds in her presence, he’d felt his fingers tingling with the urge to thrust one hand into her hair, and snake the other around her waist so he could feel the imprint of her curves against his body.
