Almost Forever Read online

  “Then what is the issue? I’d like to take you to the dinner party and dance with you afterward. I think we’d have fun, don’t you?”

  “I’m monopolizing your time—”

  “No, dear,” he interrupted gently. “I’m monopolizing yours. I like being with you. You don’t have emotional fits all over my jacket. I freely admit to being selfish, but I’m comfortable with you, and I like being comfortable.”

  Claire gave in, knowing that for her own emotional safety she should stay as far away from him as possible, but she simply couldn’t. She wanted to be with him, see him, talk to him, even if only as a friend, and the need was too strong to be controlled.

  After lunch he walked her across the street. While they had been eating, the sky had rapidly filled with dark clouds, promising a spring shower. Max glanced up at the sky. “I’ll have to run to beat the rain,” he said. “What time are we having dinner tonight?”

  Claire turned to stare at him in disbelief. “Dinner tonight?” Three nights in a row?

  “Unless you have other plans. I’ll be the chef. After all, it’ll be the first meal in my new apartment. You don’t have other plans, do you?”

  “No, no other plans.”

  “Good. Strictly casual tonight, too, so you can relax. I’ll collect you at six-thirty.”

  “I’ll drive,” she said hastily. “That way you won’t have to leave in the middle of cooking.”

  He gave her a cool, deliberate look. “I said I’ll collect you. You’re not driving home alone at night. My mother would disinherit me if I allowed such a thing.”

  Claire hesitated. She was beginning to learn how determined Max was to have things his way. He was unyielding once he’d made up his mind. Behind the pose of sophisticated indolence was pure steel, cold and unbreakable. She had glimpsed it a few times, so briefly that she had never been quite certain of what she’d seen, but she was too intuitive not to sense the strength of the man behind the image.

  Max tilted her chin up with his finger, bringing his charm into play as his eyes twinkled at her. “Six-thirty?”

  She glanced at her wristwatch. She was already late and didn’t have time to argue over such an unimportant detail. “All right. I’ll be ready.”

  He was an expert at getting his way, she realized some ten minutes later. If charm didn’t work, he used that cold authority that appeared without warning, and vice versa, but usually the charm would be enough. How often had anyone refused him, especially a woman? Probably not in this decade, Claire thought ruefully. Even as wary as she was of handsome charmers, she hadn’t been immune to him.

  She rushed home after work, alive with anticipation. Quickly she showered and shampooed and was just beginning to blow-dry her hair when the telephone rang.

  “All right, spill your guts,” Martine drawled when Claire answered the phone. “I want to hear all about that gorgeous man.”

  When Claire thought about it, she realized that it was nothing less than a minor miracle that Martine had curbed her curiosity for as long as she did, instead of calling Claire at work.

  Claire paused, and a tiny frown pulled at her brow. What did she know about Max? That he had three sisters and a brother, was from England, and dealt in real estate. Her family already knew that much, from the adroit answers he’d given them the day before. She knew that he had expensive tastes, dressed elegantly and had impeccable manners. Other than that his life was a blank. She remembered asking him questions, but oddly enough, she couldn’t remember his answers. She didn’t even know how old he was.

  “He’s just a friend,” she finally answered, because she didn’t know what else to say.

  “And the Mona Lisa is just a painting.”

  “In essence, yes. There’s nothing between us except friendship.” He’d never even kissed her, except for those sexless pecks on the cheek and forehead, and it wasn’t that he didn’t know how to go about it. He simply wasn’t interested.

  “Ummm, if you say so,” Martine said, her skepticism evident. “Are you seeing him again?”

  Claire sighed. “Yes, I’m seeing him again.”

  “Aha!”

  “Don’t ‘aha’ me. We’re friends, without the capital F that Hollywood uses so meaningfully. You saw him, so I’m sure you won’t have any trouble imagining how he’s chased. He’s tired of it, that’s all, and he feels comfortable with me because I don’t chase him. I’m not after a hot romance.”

  On the other end of the line, Martine raised her expressive eyebrows. She readily believed that Claire wasn’t after a hot romance, but she didn’t for one minute believe that Max Benedict was seeing her sister merely because he was “comfortable” with her. Oh, he was probably used to being chased, all right, and every hunting instinct man possessed would have been aroused when Claire looked right through him as if he were sexless. Martine knew quite a lot about men, and one look had told her that Max was pure male, more predatory than most, smarter than most and possessed of a sexuality that burned so vividly she wondered how Claire, who was so unusually sensitive to other people, could fail to see it. But perhaps Claire was too innocent to recognize that energy for what it was. Even though she’d been married to Jeff Halsey, there had always been a certain distance to her, a dreaminess that separated her from other people.

  “If you’re certain…”

  “I’m certain, believe me.”

  She finally got off the phone with Martine and glanced anxiously at the clock. It was almost six. She hurriedly finished drying her hair, but she didn’t have time to do anything with it except leave it loose. He’d said to dress casually, so she pulled on beige linen pants and topped them with a loose blue sweater with a deep neckline and a shawl collar. Was that too casual? Max was always so well dressed, and he had the English sense of formality. Another look at the clock told her that she didn’t have time to dither over her clothes; she still had to do her makeup.

  Just as she pulled a brush through her hair one last time, the doorbell rang. It was six-thirty exactly. She picked up her bag and hurried to open the door.

  “Ah, you’re ready, as usual,” he said, and fingered the collar of her sweater. “You’ll need a jacket. The rain has turned chilly.”

  Tiny raindrops glittered on his tweed jacket and in his golden hair as he leaned against the doorframe, waiting for Claire to get a jacket. When she rejoined him, he draped his arm over her shoulders in a friendly fashion.

  “I hope you’re hungry. I’ve outdone myself, if I do say so.” His smile invited her to share his good humor, and when he hugged her into his tall body as they walked, she was content to lean against him. To be that close to him was a painful pleasure that she knew she should resist, but for the moment she simply couldn’t pull away. She felt the heat of his body, the strength of the arm that lay so casually over her shoulders, and smelled the warm, clean scent of his skin. Her eyes closed briefly on the longing that welled inside her but she pushed it away. It would do no good to pretend, even for a moment, that the way she felt could ever come to anything—all it would bring her was pain. She was destined to be Max’s buddy, and that was all the arm around her shoulders signified.

  “I hope you like seafood,” he said as they entered his apartment. The gilt-edged mirror over the Queen Anne table reflected their movements as he took her jacket from her and shrugged out of his then hung both in the small coat closet in the foyer. Attracted by the mirror, Claire watched him in its reflection, noticing the grace of his movements in even that small chore.

  “This is Houston. The Gulf is at our back door. It would be unpatriotic or something not to like seafood.”

  “Shrimp in particular?”

  “I love shrimp in particular.” She licked her lips.

  “Would that include shrimp creole?”

  “It would. Are we having shrimp creole?”

  “We are. I got the recipe in New Orleans, so it’s authentic.”

  “It’s hard for me to imagine you puttering around in a kitc