White Heat (4 page)

Interesting place. But Max only had eyes for Emily, who was seated on a bar stool, sipping a cup of something that steamed around her face. She looked up as the two men came down the stairs. Her eyes appeared enormous, her skin stretched over the elegant bones of her face. She glanced from Max to the man clothed from head to toe in white hazmat gear.

Lowering the cup to her lap, she asked, “Did they find out what it was?”

“Not yet. Emily, this is Dr. Tesorieri. Doctor, Emily Greene. We need to be tested,” he told her briskly, shoving up the long sleeve of his T-shirt and baring his forearm.

Within minutes they were swabbed and had blood drawn. Max’s estimation of her went up several notches when he realized she didn’t like needles, but bared her arm for the swabbing. The skin around the corners of her eyes twitched as the doctor approached her with the syringe. She didn’t shut her eyes, but stared off into the middle distance, her even white teeth clamped down on her lower lip.

The doctor packed away his syringes, the nearly full, tightly sealed vials of blood—three from each of them—and disposed of the alcohol swabs inside a small, bright red medical waste container.

“I’ll let you know our findings.” The doctor’s voice was muffled behind the face mask.

“Yeah, you do that,” Max said, pulling his sleeve down. He glanced at Emily, who had her arm bent to hold on the cotton inside her elbow. She still looked pale and shell-shocked. He wanted to kiss away the indentation of her teeth marks on her lower lip.

It was fucking good to want things, he reminded himself.

Get over it.

She held up a pale bare foot with bright pink polish on her toes. “I need shoes.”

Even her feet turned him on. Craziness. “Where can I find them?”

“I have some packed, or I can just get my rain boots when we go up.”

“It’s raining. The boots will work. Here.” He handed her a large, black leather tote that had been sitting on top of one of her packed suitcases in the foyer. Damn thing weighed at least ten pounds. “I’ll get your cases from upstairs,” he told her, intentionally not sounding sympathetic, as he looked into those large, confused eyes. As scared as she was, he couldn’t allow himself to give her any comfort. He didn’t have time for her to fall apart. Time for explanations later. Right now he wanted her out of her house and somewhere far away.

He hoped she had some answers, even if she didn’t know what the hell the questions were.

THEY FACED EACH OTHER IN THE COOL, DAMP NIGHT AIR, OUT ON THE
street. Emily wasn’t surprised to find herself trembling. Delayed shock? It wasn’t every day a girl had a guy break into her house, let alone two. Still, she could wrap her brain around
that.
What was incomprehensible was the necessity for a hazmat team. For blood tests. For her to leave her home in the hands of strangers.

For going off with Max.

She flinched when he reached out with both hands and pulled the hood of her bright yellow slicker up over her head. She hadn’t even noticed it was raining. His knuckle accidentally brushed her cheek when he withdrew.

He put his hand out. “Keys.”

She curled her fist around them. “It’s a new car.”

“Yeah. Nice. You’re not driving it right now, you can hardly stand. Get in.”

Emily wanted to protest, she really did. She just didn’t have the energy. Silently she handed them over and climbed into the passenger seat of her own car. That about summed up her morning, she thought. She’d somehow lost control of her own free will. Just for now, she told herself. Just for now. It didn’t pay to depend on anyone but herself. But she could relax her rules and let the man drive her new car because she was shaking too badly to take the wheel.

When Max closed her door, she leaned her head back on the butter-soft black leather seat and closed her eyes.

He seemed to take up more than his fair share of the interior of her car as he adjusted the seat and familiarized himself with the controls. His dark hair was shaggy, falling into his eyes, which didn’t seem to bother him. Emily’s fingers itched to push it back out of his face. Instead, she clasped her hands in her lap, and reminded herself that this Max wasn’t in any way the same Max she’d made love to on every available surface of her palazzo last year.

Her skin prickled as she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. She didn’t trust him, although she couldn’t put her finger on why. He’d changed in some indefinable way that was unmistakable. She hadn’t seen this ominous rough side of him before. A side that, while it intrigued her, also scared the crap out of her.

Perhaps because he hadn’t had to use it? No. This was ingrained. Part of his DNA.

She’d foolishly expected
that
Max to call her to apologize. But she’d never be stupid enough to expect anything from
this
Max. She’d learned more about him in the last hour than she had in the four days they’d spent together last year. His personality then and now was like night and day. Light and dark.

She suspected this dark side was the real Max. The lines on either side of his mouth seemed deeper than before, but that might just be a trick of the streetlights playing on the rough stubble on his face. She couldn’t imagine suave, debonair Franco leaving home looking this disreputable; what a pity

Adrenaline seeped out of her, leaving her limp and dazed in the aftermath of so much violence. “I’ve never struck anyone in my life.”

“Could’ve fooled me. That trick with your knee must’ve taken a lot of practice. Buckle up,” Max adjusted his own seat belt to cross his large body. His deep voice stroked across her nerve endings like a mink glove, and she absently rubbed her arms through her soft sweater.

“How can you joke about it? I thought I was fighting for my life.”

“Believe me. I’m not. Good thing I don’t want kids, I think you gave me a knee vasectomy.”

“Glad to be of service,” she told him shortly, glancing at the familiar cars parked up and down her street. Her house was teeming with anonymous men in hazmat suits. Yet there were no strange vehicles anywhere on her street. “Where did those men inside park their cars? More important, where did they take the intruder?”

“Somewhere they don’t have visiting hours.” His tone was ironic. His irony pissed her off. Her attraction to this man was as irrational as it was irritating. Emily dragged in a shaky breath. After four months, her Maserati still had that new car smell. Unfortunately, it was obliterated with the achingly familiar scent of
him
instead.

She loved how he smelled. Fresh air with a hint of laundry soap underscored with a tang of clean, male sweat. Why the combination made her pulse race and her mouth go dry was illogical. Franco always smelled of expensive Bulgari Blu, but
his
cologne never made her pulse race or her heart do flip-flops.

Because she was the round hole she was trying to fit Franco’s square peg into. The analogy almost made her smile. Almost. Seeing Max again made her realize what a horrible mistake it would be to take Franco with her to Seattle, no matter how much she wished a relationship with Franco could work. Seeing Max again squashed those thoughts flat. On the other hand, spending time with Franco away from his rather demanding family might be just what their relationship needed. Just because Max was here again didn’t mean her entire life had to change.

She resented him just for
being,
and dismissed her thoughts as mere chemistry. She’d get over it. Her irritation with him would soon dispel those pesky chemicals once and for all.
She had even less in common with Max Aries than she did with Franco. She should just stick to painting and start collecting cats.

She assured herself that her stomach was doing somersaults because of recent events, but her rational mind knew that wasn’t the only reason she felt off center. Where had he gone when he’d left? Where had he gone? And what had he done? She wondered about the scar she’d kissed on his left hip. She no longer believed his story of a childhood bicycle accident. Not after she’d seen him in action an hour ago.

The man was a fighter. He had other scars, too. All of which he’d explained away easily and with humor that reminded her about all the things his father had – reluctantly — told her after Max had left without a word. Now they made her wonder, too, if he was more of a liar than she’d first thought.

Daniel had been right.

She remembered the feel of his hot skin against her lips, and the way he seemed to know her body better than she did. She didn’t want to remember. But she did. He’d left her without a word. No call. No e-mail. Not even a bloody fax to explain his sudden disappearance.

She’d felt foolish for feeling as though her heart had been ripped out after only a few days of knowing him. It defied logic. For months after he’d gone, she’d ached for him.

“You met him through your mother, right?”

Either Max had a short memory, or he hadn’t really been as attentive as she’d thought at the time the two of
them
had met. The only thing they’d had to talk about in the first hour of meeting was his father. After the first hour they hadn’t done a lot of talking. She rolled her head and opened her eyes. “Him who?”

“Daniel.”

“You should have asked him that yourself.” She resented the hell out of Max for ignoring his father over the years. Another straw on the pyre of her emotions about him.

“You’re here.”

Only because she didn’t have the energy to be anywhere else right now. “He attended a fashion show in Milan,” she repeated what she’d told him when they’d first met last year. “My mother was one of the models. I was eleven.” Even at that age she’d known, and had been in awe of, the great Daniel Aries. He was a legend in the art world. “One thing led to another, and by the end of the week he agreed to mentor me.” Years later she suspected that Daniel and her mother had had a hot and steamy affair that lasted a year or more, but all she cared about was that she was permitted to attend a string of high-profile art schools in Italy.

“How come you didn’t live with him?”

“Because I went to a boarding school in Rome. And loved it.” No one depended on her. She’d been allowed to make her own decisions and choices based on what
she
wanted and needed. It had been the most liberating, peaceful time of her life. “You lived with your mother after the divorce, right?”

“They never divorced,” Max informed her.

“Really?” Max hadn’t mentioned that before, but then neither had Daniel. The Aries men certainly kept things close to their chests. “I could have sworn Daniel told me they divorced when you were in your early teens.”

“He walked out when I was eleven. Literally went out for cigarettes and never came back. My mother cried a hell of a lot less with him out of the picture.”

“You must’ve been devastated, too,” she said gently. Awful for any child, but she suspected particularly hard on a boy that age.

“I barely noticed he was gone.”

“Your mom died a couple of years ago, right?”

He glanced at her with a small frown. “Yeah. How do you know?”

“Daniel got very drunk the day he heard.” Max had sent a fax with the news. That was it. A fax to tell his father that the mother of Daniel’s child was dead. “Breast cancer, right?”

“Yeah.”

Was the breakup of his parents’ marriage what had turned Max from a conscientious student into a wild kid? Last year, after Max had left, Daniel had admitted that he was aware of his son’s wild lifestyle. Emily had immediately gone to see her doctor after her mentor had given her the gory details of his son’s sexcapades.

She’d been furious—not at Daniel, who wouldn’t have imagined she’d fall into bed with his promiscuous son. But with herself for blindly doing the unthinkable with a man she knew nothing about. Because of her mother’s lifestyle, which included drugs, two unwanted pregnancies and who knew
what
else unpleasant, Emily was always so damned cautious before starting any relationship.

Not with Max. They’d used condoms.
Most
of the time, but for months afterward she’d waited for the STD shoe to drop.

That, coupled with the way she’d allowed herself to be seduced by him within hours of their first meeting, had left her with a tangle of unsorted emotions she still hadn’t resolved. She’d always had the option of saying no. She just hadn’t wanted to. Hardly his fault she’d succumbed to his considerable allure.

Lots of men had tried, with considerably more charm and finesse, to get her into their beds. She’d hadn’t collapsed like a soufflé into
their
arms.

Meeting Franco a few months later had gone a long way in helping her forget Max. Of course, even after four months of dating him, she hadn’t slept with Franco. She wanted to be sure. Or as sure as a woman
could
be before falling into bed with a man.

Too bad she hadn’t been as smart and cautious before falling like a rock for Max. She’d toppled into bed with a man she knew she shouldn’t want, but just had to have. More fool her.

She’d learned her lesson.

For the millionth time, she wondered why Max had left her waiting for him at La Baraonda last March without a word. Alone she’d waited for him for three ridiculous hours sipping Chianti, looking at her watch, worrying that something terrible must’ve happened to keep him from her. She hadn’t been back to her favorite restaurant since, although Franco was dying to try it.

What had kept Max from her that night? Why had he never called to offer an apology or, at a minimum, a lame excuse? The questions had stopped twirling around in her head after several months. She’d met Franco at the Uffizi. And she’d almost forgotten Max Aries, damn it. Now he and all the unanswered questions were back.

“Why didn’t you return my calls in time to come to your father’s funeral, Max?” She’d girded herself to hear his voice again, but, in the end, hadn’t had to face her demons because she’d left half a dozen messages on an impersonal machine. Which only added more fuel to her annoyance.

“I was out of town.” He glanced in the rear-view mirror before turning down a side street. “Your messages didn’t reach me until yesterday.”