Christmas With a Billionaire: Billionaire Under the Mistletoe\Snowed in With Her Boss\A Diamond for Christmas (4 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

M
AX
PUT
ALL
thoughts of red satin thongs, and making love to Sophie, completely from his mind as he stepped back abruptly to pull the two sides of her blouse together, covering the fullness of her breasts. Hidden from temptation!

‘You might want to button up,’ he advised grimly as he turned away and strode towards the kitchen doorway, the sound of the voices in the hallway growing louder. As evidence that his unexpected visitors were on their way to the kitchen in search of him?

Something Max wanted to avoid, at least until Sophie had had the chance to refasten her blouse and straighten her appearance.

‘Who...?’

‘I suggest you do it now!’ Max grated forcefully as he stepped out of the kitchen without so much as a backwards glance.

Sophie was too bewildered to immediately do as Max instructed. Although the sudden burst of happy laughter in the hallway, and raised excited voices, finally spurred her into action. She hastily got down from the table and refastened her blouse with fingers that shook slightly.

There was nothing she could do about her flushed cheeks, over-bright eyes or her slightly swollen and sensitive lips, but she picked up the black velvet band from the floor before pulling the wildness of her loosened curls back up into the confines of a ponytail.

Only just in time too, as a woman appeared in the doorway. A tall and beautiful woman with silky dark hair, shoulder-length, and eyes that sparkled a deep, warm green. Her patrician features more than a little familiar.

A woman who could only be Max’s sister, Janice.

The woman and her daughter, who weren’t expected to arrive until tomorrow.

Janice gave a warm smile. ‘I’m sure my brother will introduce the two of us once he’s managed to extricate himself from my husband and overenthusiastic daughter,’ she drawled affectionately.

Sophie frowned at the mention of Janice’s husband.

Wasn’t it because his sister and her husband were having marital problems that Janice and Amy were joining Max in England for Christmas?

‘Is that...?’ Janice stepped further into the kitchen, very slender and elegant in a thick cream cable-knit sweater and black fitted jeans. ‘My goodness, it
is
gingerbread,’ she murmured wonderingly as she looked down at the biscuits on the cooling tray on top of the kitchen table.

‘Janice...’

‘Max, there are gingerbread angels and snowmen!’ She turned excitedly to her brother as he spoke to her from the kitchen doorway, a little girl held securely in his arms. A beautiful little girl, who bore such a likeness to her uncle she could only be Amy. ‘I’d forgotten just how evocative smells can be.’ Janice gave a shake of her head as tears now glistened in her eyes. ‘Max, do you remember—?’

‘Yes,’ he grated harshly.

Warningly, it seemed to Sophie.

Not that she had dared look at him again after that first glance, his expression grimly unapproachable, the green of his eyes as chilling as an Arctic wind.

‘I haven’t smelt gingerbread like this in years,’ Janice continued softly, completely undaunted—or simply unaware?—of her brother’s lack of warmth. ‘Not since the Christmas Mum and Dad died. Can you believe it’s been sixteen years, Max?’ she added sadly.

‘Yes,’ he rasped harshly.

Sophie looked sharply across the room at Max. She had thought the loss of her mother six months ago was bad enough, but his parents had both died at Christmas sixteen years ago? At the same time? Which surely must mean that their deaths couldn’t have been due to illness or natural causes?

Which also explained why Max had said he hadn’t smelt gingerbread baking ‘in a long time’? And the reason he had looked so grim when he’d arrived home earlier and smelt it in his apartment.

Could his parents’ deaths also be the reason that Max usually chose not to celebrate Christmas?

It would certainly explain his aversion to anything to do with the festive season.

As it explained why he chose to go skiing every year rather than join in any of the Christmas festivities.

And why he didn’t possess so much as a single Christmas decoration, let alone a tree.

And the fact that he’d had to ask Sally to have ‘Christmas delivered’ to his apartment.

Perhaps Max wasn’t such a bah humbug, after all, and it was more the case of the festive season holding such sad memories for him that he preferred to avoid everything to do with it?

Sophie felt slightly guilty now for judging him without knowing all the facts. If he had just explained—

But of course Max wouldn’t explain himself to her. Why should he? She had been employed by him, and was being paid by him, to ‘deliver Christmas’ to his apartment, and then only because of the expected arrival of his sister and niece. Of course Max wouldn’t feel a need to explain himself to someone whom he considered merely an employee.

Although quite where their earlier intimacies now put them in regard to maintaining that distance, Sophie had no idea!

She glanced across at Max from beneath lowered lashes, her heart giving a leap in her chest as she recalled the feel of his lips against hers, along the column of her throat and across the bared tops of her breasts. Breasts he had also cupped and held, caressed. Her nipples tingled now, tightening inside her red satin and lace bra, just thinking of the intimacy of those caresses.

She had also told him she was wearing a matching red satin thong, for goodness’ sake.

Her cheeks flushed just thinking about that part of their conversation...

In the circumstances, it really was just as well that she had persuaded Sally into not revealing that Sophie was her cousin!

Max gave her a hard and mocking grin, as if he were fully aware of some of her thoughts before he turned his attention back to his sister. ‘Perhaps we should just make the introductions, Janice?’

‘Oh. Of course.’ His sister dragged her gaze away from the gingerbread to turn and look at Sophie with curious eyes. ‘I’m Janice Hilton, Max’s sister.’ She smiled warmly at Sophie. ‘And that’s my daughter, Amy, in Max’s arms. And this—’ she turned to smile at the tall, blond-haired man who had just entered the kitchen and moved to stand beside her before draping his arm about her shoulders ‘—is my husband, Tom.’

‘I think Sophie has already guessed that much,’ Max drawled ruefully.

‘Sophie?’ Janice echoed lightly, Max knowing by the sharpness of the curiosity in his sister’s avid green gaze that she was more than a little interested in knowing who—or what—Sophie was to him.

Which was a question Max would also like an answer to.

Until tonight he would have said that Sophie was a temporary—intrusive!—and paid addition to his household. An irritating necessity if he was going to give Janice and Amy a family Christmas with all the trimmings.

Until tonight?

Be honest with yourself, at least, Hamilton
, he inwardly berated himself; he had found Sophie intriguing from the beginning. Had found her conversation amusing as well as interesting. And although she bore absolutely no resemblance to those model-beautiful women he usually dated, Sophie undoubtedly had her own attractions.

Her eyes were such a deep and dark brown a man could drown in them, for one.

Those freckles across her nose and cheeks were a temptation to kiss them, for another.

Her lips were full and pouting, and extremely kissable.

As for the creaminess of her breasts...!

Max hadn’t been able to resist kissing them either. Or touching them. As for caressing them? Sophie’s breasts were extremely responsive, the nipples plump and full. As delicious and succulent, in fact, as two ripe berries, and Max had wanted to gorge himself on them.

The fact that Sophie’s lips were red and slightly puffy from the heat of their kisses, with a slight redness on her chin and down her neck, thanks to the five o’clock shadow on his own jaw, was evidence of how close he had come to doing exactly that.

Lord knew how far things would have gone between the two of them if Janice and family hadn’t arrived so unexpectedly.

Which raised the question—what was Tom doing here with his wife and daughter?

Not that Max wasn’t pleased to see his brother-in-law, or that Janice and Tom were so obviously back together, because he couldn’t have been happier on both those counts. He had always liked Tom, and it had to be better for all of them, but especially for Amy, if Janice and Tom had resolved their differences. Max just wished he had known about the reconciliation before the three of them had actually arrived.

Not that it made a lot of difference in the grand scheme of things, because Janice had already informed him out in the hallway that the three of them would now be spending Christmas with him rather than just two, and that they’d arrived a day early so that they could surprise him.

Any explanations about the reconciliation, if Janice and Tom cared to give any, could be made after Amy was safely in bed. And, if not, then Max considered it was none of his business.

‘Sophie Carter,’ Max answered his sister briskly now. ‘Employed by me, to answer my “organising Christmas for you” prayer,’ he added drily.

‘Oh.’

Max chuckled ruefully. ‘Try to look a little less disappointed by that explanation, sis,’ he drawled mockingly. ‘You’re embarrassing Sophie.’

Sophie was beyond mere embarrassment right now. Way beyond, after the intimacies she and Max had indulged in before the arrival of his sister and her family.

Max had also, in just a few brief words to his sister, placed Sophie firmly in the role of employee.

‘It’s time I cleared up in here and left you all to enjoy the rest of the evening together,’ she announced briskly as she moved round the table to start putting the now cooled gingerbread into a storage box ready for decorating tomorrow morning. ‘Unless you would like me to prepare something for dinner before I go?’ she offered with a politely enquiring glance in Max’s direction, letting him know that she had no delusions about what had happened between them earlier and could be just as coolly businesslike as him.

And, with the arrival of his sister and her family, that was exactly what Sophie intended to be in future, as far as Max Hamilton was concerned!

‘I seem to have done nothing but eat since we left New York,’ Janice refused lightly. ‘How about everyone else?’

‘I’d like to go and look at the big tree and then go to bed, Mummy,’ Amy answered tiredly.

‘I’m good too, thanks,’ Tom also refused.

Which left only Max...

Only Max?

Sophie gave an inward quiver as she realised that he—maintaining a distance from him—was going to be her biggest problem over Christmas.

CHAPTER SIX

S
OPHIE
LOOKED
AT
M
AX
enquiringly, even as she inwardly willed him to say no to her offer to stay and cook dinner for him. Because she dearly wanted to leave now; she needed to get out of Max’s apartment, away from Max, in order to go home and regroup.

If that was even possible after what had just happened between them.

But she had to at least try.

Max Hamilton was a billionaire and she was a struggling student. Max was sophisticated and she was far from being that. Max was a rich and handsome playboy with a legion of women in his past—and present?—and she hadn’t so much as had time to go out on a single date in over three years. Also, Max was an experienced lover and she was still a virgin!

‘Let’s go and look at the tree in the other room, hmm, Amy?’ Tom Hilton was the one to lightly break the silence. ‘I’m pretty sure I saw presents beneath it!’ he teased his young daughter.

Amy gave a squeal of excitement even as she struggled to be put down from her uncle’s arms, before grabbing hold of her father’s hand and dragging him out of the kitchen and down the hallway to the sitting room.

There was a continued and awkward silence in the kitchen once father and daughter had left, causing Janice Hilton to look between Sophie and Max curiously.

‘Er... Perhaps Amy would like to help me decorate the gingerbread in the morning?’ Sophie prompted when she couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

‘That’s really kind of you; I’m sure she would love it.’ Janice smiled warmly. ‘Remember, Max, how we always used to?’

‘Not now, Janice!’ her brother rasped harshly.

‘Perhaps not,’ she accepted with a wistful sigh. ‘I think perhaps I should go and join Tom and Amy in the sitting room now, and leave the two of you alone to talk,’ she added with a rueful glance at the stony-faced Max. ‘Nice to meet you, Sophie.’ Janice paused in the doorway. ‘Oh, and did you know you have white powder—possibly flour!—on the back of your jeans, Sophie?’

Sophie’s cheeks blazed with warmth as she looked over her shoulder and saw the flour on the backside of her jeans, glaring at Max as the other woman left the room to join her husband and daughter in the sitting room. Obviously, the flour had got there when Max had lifted her up onto the kitchen table.

‘Don’t blame me!’ He held up his hands defensively.

Sophie looked up from brushing the flour off the back of her jeans, certain that her face must look very hot—and even more bothered!

‘And who else should I blame, when you’re the one that lifted me onto the table in the first place?’

‘I don’t remember you protesting at the time,’ Max came back mildly, outwardly amused by Sophie’s embarrassment, but inwardly irritated too—because he very much doubted he had heard the last on the subject from his sister.

Brown eyes glared daggers at him. ‘And I don’t remember being given much opportunity to protest.’

Max returned that gaze quizzically. They both knew her statement wasn’t completely truthful, that Sophie could have demurred at any time—when he first kissed her lips, when his tongue and lips had searched out the delectable hollows of her throat, when he had clasped her bottom and carried her over to the table, when he had unfastened her blouse, cupped her breasts and caressed them—and Max would have stopped.

At least, he hoped that he would.

Sophie, with her blazing red hair and refreshingly unusual and freckle-faced beauty, had a way of turning his well-ordered world upside down. Of turning him upside down. So much so that things like caution and self-control seemed to fall by the wayside the moment he was with her.

As they did now.

His body was still hot and aching, telling Max all too clearly that he wanted to continue where the two of them had left off. Something that was impossible, and would be for some time, now that his sister, brother-in-law and niece had arrived to stay.

‘Never mind,’ Sophie dismissed abruptly before visibly forcing the tension from the slenderness of her shoulders. ‘Now that your brother-in-law is here, would you like me to go present shopping for him too, before I come back here in the morning?’

Well, at least she intended coming back in the morning; there had been every chance that she wouldn’t, after their earlier intimacies.

‘Fine.’ Max nodded. ‘I— You don’t have to go right away,’ he continued huskily. ‘You could always stay and have a drink with all of us? It will give you a chance to get to know Janice, Tom and Amy better.’ He instantly had cause to regret his impulsive offer, as Sophie now eyed him suspiciously.

‘I— No, thanks,’ she refused abruptly, her gaze now refusing to meet Max’s. ‘It’s late and I— Henry will be expecting me home any minute,’ she finished determinedly.

‘Henry?’ Max repeated sharply. ‘Who the hell is Henry?’ His voice had deepened accusingly as he continued, without waiting for her to answer, ‘Damn it, I asked you the other day if there was anyone you should be spending Christmas with.’

‘And I told you there wasn’t,’ she maintained stubbornly.

His eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t want to spend Christmas with the man you’re obviously living with?’ Max couldn’t remember ever feeling this angry in his life before.

Sophie lived with a man called Henry!

This innocent-looking little sprite, with her honest brown eyes, smart—and utterly delicious!—mouth, lived with a man called Henry.

Sophie realised she had made a mistake the moment she’d mentioned Henry’s name, but at the time she had been too flustered by thoughts of her and Max together just minutes ago, too desperate to leave Max’s apartment, to escape him, to think properly before speaking.

And now that she had spoken there was no way she could either retract the statement or admit that Henry was a cat; there was every chance that Max knew his PA had a cat called Henry, and that he would then add two and two together and come up with the correct answer of four. Namely, that Sally knew Sophie rather better than he had previously been informed. Which would not only be embarrassing for all of them but might endanger Sally’s job as Max’s PA.

‘Henry and I are currently sharing a flat, yes.’

‘And just how long has this arrangement with Henry existed?’ Max demanded to know harshly.

Sophie shrugged uncomfortably, not fooled for a moment by the softness of Max’s tone. The dangerous glitter in those green eyes told an altogether different story. ‘Just the past few days.’

‘The past few days?’ Max echoed incredulously. Disgustedly. ‘And you don’t want to spend Christmas with the man you’ve only just started living with?’

She shrugged uncomfortably. ‘I need the money you’re paying me more—’

‘Damn it, you almost allowed me to make love to you just now,’ Max rasped accusingly.

‘I don’t recall there being much “allowing” about it. You just took,’ Sophie came back defensively as she forced herself to meet Max’s gaze, uncomfortably aware of the contempt he now felt towards her as that emotion glittered uncensored in those dark green eyes.

Contempt as well as disgust.

And it would be wholly deserved contempt and disgust if Sophie really were living with a man called Henry and had earlier allowed, and responded to, Max’s kisses and caresses.

As it was, there was no way she could explain who Henry really was, not without also implicating her cousin in the deception they’d carried out.

‘Perhaps it is time that you left.’ Max spoke evenly.

‘Yes.’ Sophie could no longer meet those contemptuous green eyes.

Max’s mouth twisted mockingly. ‘After all, you really don’t want to keep Henry waiting any longer.’

She gave a pained frown. ‘Max—’

‘Yes?’

Sophie inwardly quaked at the unmistakable disgust Max managed to engender in just that one word. ‘Never mind.’ She gave an uncomfortable shake of her head. ‘As I said, I’ll be a little late in the morning, as I have to shop for those presents for your brother-in-law.’

He gave a dismissive shrug of those powerful shoulders. ‘I’ll be at work anyway.’

Her eyes widened. ‘But your family is here and it’s Christmas Eve!’

He nodded tersely. ‘And?’

And she had already known that Max Hamilton hadn’t become a billionaire without working as hard as he played. That taking Christmas Eve off work to spend the day with his family probably hadn’t even occurred to him, let alone been a real possibility.

‘And nothing,’ she accepted distantly. ‘I was only being polite by informing you why I might be a little late in the morning.’

His mouth twisted with hard derision. ‘I think the two of us have gone way past being “polite” to each other, don’t you?’

Yes, they probably had, Sophie accepted heavily.

There was no probably about it.

Max had seen her breasts earlier, covered only by that red satin and lace bra, for goodness’ sake. Had kissed and caressed them until they still ached with arousal. And he had so obviously fantasised about seeing her in the matching thong too, once she’d told him she was wearing one.

Yes, the two of them were way, way past being polite to each other.