by Jessica Hart
“I think you look beautiful,” he said simply, and the colour rushed up into her face.
“Thank you,” she said awkwardly.
His sincerity had obviously thrown her. It probably would have been easier to stick to their usual banter, but Max was tired, tired of reminding himself of all the reasons why he shouldn’t touch Flora the way he so badly wanted to.
Flora forced a smile. “Since we’re being polite, you look pretty good yourself.”
Max looked down at himself in surprise. He had on a white shirt, still open at the throat, dark trousers and a cummerbund, and the black tie was draped around his neck ready to be tied.
“It’s so unfair,” she went on. “Women have to go to a huge amount of effort to look good, but men just have to put on a dinner jacket to look a million times better.”
“It’s not all easy,” said Max. “Ties are just another form of torture, and I’ve been struggling with these cufflinks.” He lifted his wrists to show his cuffs. “Hope gave them to me, so I thought I should wear them, but I’d forgotten what a pain they are to fasten.”
“Here, let me have a go.” Flora walked over to him, very conscious of the silky fabric swishing around her legs like a caress. It was the most expensive dress she had ever bought, but when she had seen Max’s face, it had been worth it.
I think you look beautiful.
As briskly as possible, she took hold of his wrist and tried to slip the cufflink into the buttonholes. His nearness was distracting. She could smell him, clean cotton and clean male skin, and feel the strength of his arm. In her heels, her face was on a level with his, and although she tried to keep her eyes fixed on the cuff, the edge of his jaw snagged at the corner of her gaze, and no matter how hard she focused on the wretched cufflink, all she could think about was how easy it would be to look up and lean just a little closer, to turn her head, just a little, to press her mouth to his.
Flora swallowed hard. One cufflink done, thank God. She turned her attention to the other wrist when Max obligingly held his arm up. His chest was rising and falling steadily, and she wondered if he could hear her galloping heart or the thrum of hazy excitement beneath her skin. Desire clenched like a fist in her belly.
At last. The second cufflink was fastened into place.
“Thanks,” said Max in a strained voice.
Flora’s pulse was a deafening boom, but from somewhere she dredged up the strength to step back. They had a ball to go to, and if Hope didn’t reappear, things were going to get very difficult.
She summoned a smile. “We’d better go. Holly and Ben will be waiting.”
Max’s hands were not quite steady as he fixed his tie and shrugged into his dinner jacket. He was tempted to damn the ball, but Flora was right. His children were waiting, and his sister was God knows where. There was a potential disaster to be averted. He couldn’t stay here and peel that dress off Flora.
Because it was such a special occasion, all the children except for little Katja had been invited to the opening of the ball. Not that Ben appreciated the honour. Resentful at being scrubbed up, he stood in the corner with the young princes while Holly twirled and showed off the dress that Stella had bought her specially. It brought her lots of compliments that she accepted with a quite alarming composure.
“Where’s Hope?” Holly’s clear voice rang through the crowd. “I want her to see my dress!”
It was a good question, and unfortunately Crown Princess Anna had heard it. “Yes, where is Hope?” she asked frowning. “Everybody’s here except her and Jonas. It’s too bad of them to be late.”
“Well ...” Max cleared his throat, and was preparing to make a clean breast of it when Flora touched his arm. When he glanced at her, she was smiling, and he followed her gaze to the door where Hope stood with Jonas.
One by one, everyone in the room stopped talking and turned and a hush fell over the room. Jonas’s face blazed with triumph, but it was Hope’s expression that made Max’s throat close. She was stunning, glowing with happiness as she held Jonas’s arm. Her copper hair tumbled free to her shoulders, and she looked every inch a princess. Relief, love and pride in her clamped like a tight band around Max’s chest.
Without realizing what he was doing, Max took Flora’s hand and squeezed it. “It’s going to be okay,” he said, and she nodded as she squeezed back.
It was a magical evening. A spectacular buffet that had Flora clucking with approval was laid out in one of the reception rooms, while the dancing took place in a staggeringly ornate ballroom. Under the chandeliers, the women’s dresses were a kaleidoscope of colour. Their hair was decorated with glittering tiaras, and jewels glowed at their ears and throats. The San Michele princes and other nobles wore lavish uniforms that were almost as beautiful as some of the dresses, but many of the men like Max wore dinner jackets, the plain black and white a perfect foil for all the extravagance, colour and glitz.
Holly was persuaded reluctantly to bed at last, after making Flora promise faithfully to tell her everything about the ball the next day. Ben and the two princes had made an earlier escape, leaving Max and Flora at last with no responsibilities, both giddy with relief at not having to worry about Hope any longer.
They stood together to watch Jonas and Hope dance the traditional slow waltz alone, and then, when the band struck up a livelier tune and everyone took to the floor, it seemed completely natural when Max turned to her. “Let’s dance,” he said.
All evening, Flora had been agonizingly aware of him. Max, with his lean, tough body. Max with his stern face and imperious nose. She couldn’t drag her gaze from the hard, exciting line of his cheek, the heart-shaking angle of his jaw, the cool, firm line of his mouth set in a way that sent heat rolling through her. And now here he was, holding out his hand, and when she took it, he eased a way for them through the guests now crowding onto the dance floor around Jonas and Hope.
“I thought you couldn’t dance?” she said, raising her voice over the music and the laughter and chatter.
“I can’t,” he said. “But I can hold you.”
There was a short, sizzling silence between them, then Flora moved in to him and put one hand on his shoulder. “So you can,” she said.
Wooden would normally be a good way to describe Max on the dance floor, but with Flora in his arms it didn’t matter. She fit perfectly against him as if she had been made for him. He rested his cheek against her temple and smelled the light summery scent of her hair and he thought about the way she smiled, the way his heart eased when she was in the room. He thought about the way she had kissed him, and desire thudded in his heart. He wanted to tangle his fingers in her hair and drag her mouth to his, to lose himself in her softness and her warmth.
Enough with the dancing. He wanted her to himself. “Let’s go,” he said before the first number had ended.
Flora pulled back slightly. Her eyes were dark, and he knew that she had been thinking the same as he had. “Do you think we can?”
Max took her hand in a firm grip. “My sister’s going to be a princess,” he said. “We can do whatever we like.”
They slipped out of the ballroom, leaving the dancers to their music, and hurried down the sweeping marble staircase. Never had the way back to their room seemed so long. By the time they got to their corridor, they were walking faster and faster until they were almost running. Max fumbled with the handle, and pulled Flora through, swinging her round so that he could close the door and press her back against it to kiss her with desperate, hungry kisses.
“You know how we decided that this would be a bad idea?”
“Mmn?” Flora blizzarded kisses along his jaw as she groped at the buttons on his shirt, desperate to get at his skin beneath, reduced to tugging the shirttails out of his trousers instead.
Max cupped her face between his hands and made her pause and look at him.
“I’ve changed my mind,” he said raggedly.
Flora’s answering smile made his heart swell. “So
have I,” she said.
When Flora woke the next morning, bright sunlight was angling through a chink in the shutters and slanting across the floor. “Remind me again why we thought this would be a bad idea?” Max murmured. He was kissing his way along Flora’s shoulder to press his mouth to the sweet angle of her neck, making her arch and shudder with pleasure. There were worse ways to be woken up.
“Um ...” Flora was replete and satisfied, as languidly relaxed as a cat stretching in the sunshine. “Weren’t we afraid it would make things awkward?” she suggested lazily.
“I don’t feel awkward, do you?”
With an effort, she engaged her brain and rolled onto her side to face him. “We might when we get back to Combe St Philip,” she made herself say.
“Perhaps.” Max skimmed his hand over her hip. “But we’re not home yet. This place doesn’t seem real somehow. The normal rules don’t apply.”
“What goes on in the palace, stays in the palace?” Flora suggested, and a smile touched his mouth.
“Exactly. Once we’re back to reality, we can pretend this never happened. We’ll draw a line when go home,” said Max. “We can be sensible then.”
Flora couldn’t imagine ever forgetting the night they had just spent, but Max was right. Things would probably seem different when they were back in Combe St Philip.
“Okay,” she said. “It’s just one more thing to pretend, and we’ve got so good at pretending it’s hard to remember what’s real and what isn’t now.”
“I know what you mean,” said Max with feeling. “Are we or are we not engaged, for instance? I keep losing track.”
“We are for the next twenty-four hours,” said Flora. “We’re madly in love until our flight home, and then we stop.”
His warm hand moved possessively over her. “The flight back isn’t until tomorrow,” he pointed out, and she smiled and moved closer to wind her arms around his neck.
“We might as well make the most of being engaged then, don’t you think?” she said, and Max smiled too as he rolled her beneath him.
“I think we should,” he agreed.
Afterwards, Flora was hard put to say exactly what they had done that last day in San Michele. It passed in a blur of laughter and a shimmering, bone-melting awareness of Max beside her, and all she remembered was the leap of her senses whenever he so much as grazed her hand with his own. The deep throb of anticipation. The longing to say goodnight to everyone and go back to their room. Max’s smile when he closed the door behind him. “Come here,” he said, and she went.
But all too soon the night was over, and they were packing in silence. Reality seeped in with daylight, and with it the knowledge that this magical interlude was over.
When her phone beeped, Flora actually jumped. “It’s Ally,” she said puzzled. “I wondered where she’d got to ...”
“Don’t tell me she’s disappeared now!” said Max.
“She wants me to pack her pack for her.” Flora was reading the text. “She’ll see us at the airport.”
She texted back: Where r u?
But there was no reply.
At least packing for Ally took her mind off the fact that she was never going to touch Max again. They had agreed. What went on in San Michele, stayed in San Michele. It had been fun, but it was better to draw a line now rather than prolong the inevitable ending in the cold light of reality. Their lives were too different. They wanted different things. It would never work. Oh, there were so many reasons to be sensible! It was pointless to wish that they could stay in San Michele forever.
Ally nearly missed the flight. She ran across the tarmac just as the steps to the plane were about to be towed away.
Out of breath, she sent Flora a quick grateful smile. Tell you later, she mouthed as she hurried down the gangway and flung herself into the seat at the back, where she fell asleep almost before the plane had taken off. In truth, Flora wasn’t sorry to postpone a conversation with her friend. Ally would know at once that something momentous had happened, and Flora didn’t want to talk about those two magical nights with Max. She had to pretend they had never happened.
If she could.
It was raining when they landed at Bristol, a dreary depressing drizzle that seemed to punish them for the sunshine in San Michele. There were no luxurious limousines to meet them now, only the hassle of finding the car in the car park, sitting in traffic jams and dealing with fractious and overtired children.
“It doesn’t take long to get back to reality, does it?” said Max, grim-faced at the steering wheel as they edged through roadworks.
Flora looked out of the window as the windscreen wipers slapped back and forth. “No,” she said. “No, it doesn’t.”
Sweetie mewed so piteously when Flora let herself into the cottage that she bent cautiously and picked him up, half expecting to be savaged for her presumption. Instead of scratching and wriggling free as he usually did, he purred, and she buried her face in his soft fur. “Did you miss me, puss?” Was it her imagination or was he thinner?
Max hadn’t even switched off the engine, when he dropped her off. He carried her case to the door but all he said was, “See you tomorrow.” Holly and Ben had been sitting in the back of the car, so they hadn’t been able to talk, and anyway, what was there to say? They had both agreed to draw a line when they got home.
He’d left her at the cottage to drive straight to Stella’s, to drop off the children and pick up the dogs.
To pick up his life that didn’t include her.
But she had a life of her own too, Flora reminded herself as she fed Sweetie and loaded the washing machine. She had good friends and a great career, a chance one day soon to open an incredible restaurant, the restaurant she had been dreaming about since she was seven.
And before that, the prestige of catering a royal wedding, no less. She had picked up some great ideas from the palace chef. There had been no opportunity talk about menus in San Michele, but now Hope and Jonas were officially engaged, the wedding preparations could begin in earnest. Hope would be coming over in a few weeks, and they could make some decisions. She would need to hire some more fridges and hobs for the wedding itself, Flora reckoned, and some assistants too. She must start thinking about that soon.
So she really didn’t have time to mope about Max. They had drawn a line, and she would stick to it.
Flora had a bright smile ready when he came into the kitchen next day. True, the sight of him brought a flash of feeling so intense that for a moment she couldn’t speak, but the next moment she had recovered and was able to offer him a coffee in a voice that sounded almost unnaturally steady.
It was almost as if they had never been away. Max was taciturn, taking his coffee away with him to his study. Nobody would ever have guessed that he had rolled her beneath him and teased kisses across her belly, that he had smiled as his hands moved hungrily over her, sending pleasure spooling through her. Flora told herself that tiny shiver under her skin was because it was cold, and nothing to do with the memory of how good he had felt, of the hard press of his body, the devastating warmth of his mouth.
She refused to let herself remember. There was no point in remembering. As the days passed, Flora reminded herself of that every day. She cooked and she baked and she made notes but still every time she heard the back door or the skitter of dog claws on the quarry tiles, her heart lurched into her throat and the memories came crowding back anyway.
It might be awkward, she had said, and it was. Day by day, the tension grew until it was suffocating, blotting out all attempts to behave naturally. Max’s visits to the kitchen grew briefer and briefer.
Just as well, Flora told herself, but she missed him. She missed the sardonic tone, the roll of his eyes, his long fingers curled around the mug. She missed the way he had smiled at her in San Michele.
For the first time in her life, Flora lost her appetite. She was bored with baking, and lost all her inspiration for the wedding menu. It was just food, after
all. Who cared about flavour? People just wanted to eat. They didn’t care about colour or texture or seasoning.
Almost a week dragged past. It was raining again, a slow, steady drip onto the tiles outside, and Flora was beating eggs drearily when the back door banged, followed by hasty steps along the passage. The kitchen door opened. Max stood there, framed in the doorway, looking grim.
Flora stopped beating. “What on earth’s the matter?”
“You,” he said, striding towards her. “Or maybe it’s me.” He took the bowl from her and plonked it on the table. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to be sensible,” he said as her mouth dropped open. “I’ve spent my whole life being sensible. Now I want to make a fool of myself over you.”
Hauling Flora towards him, he kissed her furiously, as if she had driven him to distraction, and after an astounded moment, Flora wound her arms around him and kissed him back, as hungry as he was. The fetters clamping her to reality had snapped open, freeing her in a glorious, giddy rush. Half laughing, half desperate, they grabbed at each other, ripping and tugging at clothes, kissing frantically, stumbling back to the kitchen table where they both lost control completely in the nicest possible way.
“Dear God,” said Max afterwards, his face buried in her neck, his voice ragged. “What have you done to me?”
“Me?” Flora pretended outrage as they disentangled themselves. “I was just beating eggs when you came in and had me against the kitchen table! That was so unhygienic,” she said. “Don’t do it again. Or not very often.”
“Sorry.” Max helped her straighten her clothes. “I wasn’t thinking. That’s the trouble. I can’t think when you’re around, and I can’t think when you’re not.”
Deeply pleased, Flora adjusted his collar. “I know what you mean.”
“Look, I know nothing’s changed,” he said. “I know you’re not planning to be around forever, but while you are around ... why don’t we make the most of it?”
It was perfect, Flora told herself. She and Max had agreed a no-strings affair to get each other out of their systems. There would be no commitment and they would keep their independence, although Max was cross when she got out of bed later that night and got dressed.
