Revealed: His Secret Child (9 page)

She knew the answer. Max.

She had to grow up and harden up.

Forcing herself to concentrate, she opened up a draft article on the outcome of the latest town hall meeting, the bulk of which had been given over to Rafe Cameron's takeover of Worth Industries. The piece was scheduled for a week's time. It was all but completed but she decided, as she leaned back in her chair, what she really needed was some information from Rafe. She wanted his side of the story. He'd so far ignored her requests for an interview. She could ask Max, but as with their previous relationship they hadn't discussed work. They had a tacit understanding that things were fraught enough between them as it was, without bringing their conflicting work agendas into the picture.

Ten minutes later she gave up the pretense of working and opted for a video game. One where she was a gun-toting heroine and could blast away anything and anyone who got in her way. A world where everything was simple. It was clear who were the good guys and who were the bad. And it stopped her thinking about Max.

Max who had left her. Max who was back in her life.
Max who kissed like a dream. Max who shared some of her thoughts about resuming the physical relationship between them. Physical but nothing more. Max who wouldn't share anything of himself. Nothing personal like the fact that he'd had a twin who had died.

A blast from a rocket launcher and the bad guys got her. She'd been less than halfway to her high score but far too distracted.

The internet was at her fingertips. It wouldn't be difficult to find out what had happened to Dylan. But she didn't want to pry. And she wanted Max to tell her himself. When he was ready. If he ever was. Was that too much to ask for?

And she wanted to know things the internet could never tell her, like how it had impacted him, how he'd survived.

She restarted her game and tried to shut out the sound of laughter from the family room, a mix of childish delight and masculine amusement.

“You still play that one?” Gillian's avatar went up in a ball of flames as she fumbled the keys. Even though she'd been busted, she shut the screen down. Max stood in the doorway, Ethan sitting in the crook of his arm.

She shrugged. “Sometimes.”

“Looks like you're well set up for gaming in the family room, too.”

“It shows that I don't get out a lot, huh.” Gillian tried to make light of it. But what she really remembered was how she and Max used to play those games together. They were both fiercely competitive, whether it was racing cars around a track or through city streets, or hunting each other down through a futuristic city. They'd often bet on the outcome, the winner choosing how the other would reward them for their victory.

Usually that worked out well for both of them.

Needing to divert her attention, she glanced at her watch.
“Bath time, huh?” she said brightly. “Let's get you upstairs and undressed.”

Max quirked an eyebrow.

“Not you—Ethan.” Too late. Triggered by the recollections of one particular wager she'd lost, images of bathing Max flashed into her mind—lathering his broad muscled torso with soap, her hands sliding over slick skin.

“Do you want me to help?” Max asked, seemingly unaware.

“No. I'll be fine.” Annoyed with herself, the words came out sharper than she'd intended.

“I'd like to,” he said quietly, unperturbed. And it sounded like an order rather than an offer.

Gillian swallowed. “Sure.”

Max carried Ethan up the stairs, leaving Gillian to follow.

They bathed Ethan, put him to bed, reading to him till his eyes drifted closed. And for a time they sat in silence, Gillian on the edge of the bed, Max perched on the small chair in Ethan's room, his elbows resting on his knees. Silence and awareness surrounded them.

What now? she wondered. Evenings with Ethan were structured, relatively predictable and easy. Evenings with Max, in this new situation, were an entirely unknown quantity. Time together. Just the two of them.

Max stood, his gaze steady on her. “I'm going out. I'll see you in the morning.”

“Of course,” she said, covering a surprise that she had no right to. He was here for Ethan alone. He had a life to live. One that she wasn't a part of, one that she knew nothing about. Unless she asked him to stay. To touch her. She opened her mouth but the words of surrender lodged in her throat.

She was still sitting watching Ethan sleep when her front door opened and shut.

And it was late that night as she lay in bed that she heard
him return. The soft noises of him getting ready for bed sounded through the wall. She imagined him climbing into the bed they'd once shared—back when everything between them had been simple.

Did he think of her? Sometimes she could swear the answer was yes.

Reaching above her head, she touched her fingertips to the wall that separated them.

Thoughts and midnight fantasies were making a mockery of her resolution not to be the one to give in. Fantasies about leaving her bed, going to the one they had once shared so enthusiastically, slipping beneath the sheets, pressing her body to his. It was as if invisible threads bound her to him. A new one twining with the others with every look, every accidental touch, pulling her inexorably toward him.

What would he do if she gave in to that pull?

He'd let her in. He'd even give her pleasure. He just wouldn't give her anything of himself, wouldn't let her touch his heart.

Not that she wanted to. Did she? Somewhere beneath the physical yearning for him was a deeper yearning.

And she so wasn't going there.

 

At midday on Thursday, Gillian stood in front of the reception desk at Cameron Enterprises trying to convince the beautiful but unobliging woman who manned it that she should be allowed through to put a few questions to Rafe. She was running out of time to include his side of the story in her article. Sometimes the personal, and ever so slightly pushy, approach worked best. She wasn't having much joy with it today. The receptionist wouldn't even confirm whether Rafe was in.

Max would answer her questions, but she didn't want Max's
smooth interpretations. She wanted to hear Rafe's words, watch Rafe's eyes.

“Gillian?” She turned at the sound of Max's voice and the surprise in it. “Is everything all right? Is Ethan okay?” Concern etched lines in his forehead.

“Everything's fine. Ethan's with Mrs. McDonald.”

His gaze softened, and he raked a hand through his hair. Not, she was guessing, for the first time today. It was something he did when he worked. It served only to change him from suave and sexy to rumpled and sexy.

She realized she was staring. Drinking in the sight of him.

And he was staring back, his gaze lingering as though captivated.

The receptionist cleared her throat. “Ms. Mitchell wants to speak to Mr. Cameron.”

Grasping her elbow with one hand, Max gestured with his other toward the suite of offices he'd just appeared from. “Ms. Mitchell,” he said with pointed meaning, “can talk to me.”

“D
o they know we're married?” Gillian asked as he pushed open the door to his office.
That we've been living together? Do they know that you made my coffee this morning? That the scent of your aftershave lingers in my bathroom?

He held the door as she walked past him. “Rafe knows. That's all. And he's not one for watercooler gossip.”

Was there any significance to his lack of sharing that news? Did he not want people to know because he didn't consider it a real marriage? But given that she'd told no one either she decided not to probe too deeply for meaning.

“How did he take the news? First Chase and now you with connections to the opposition.”

“If you want to know the truth, he thought that us being married would put you in his camp.”

She spun back to him and caught the amusement in his eyes, the suppressed grin.

Gillian smiled. It was one of those increasingly frequent
moments of connection that, as always, hovered on the brink of something else, something that begged to be more. She dragged her thoughts back from the paths they wanted to run down. Paths that broke through restraint. “So he's not as smart as everyone says.”

“Maybe not about relationships.”

Any smugness Gillian might have felt vanished. Turned out she wasn't so smart about relationships either. It was there in his eyes, the wanting. It spoke to her without words, called to her.

She looked away from Max and around his office. A broad pale desk, clear except for his laptop and a coffee cup, dominated the center of the room; behind it rose a high-backed leather chair. A slender potted palm graced one corner of the room.

“So, is this business or—”

She swung back to him. The unspoken work hung in the air.

He still stood with his back to the door, but he was frowning as though he hadn't meant to further raise the spectre of pleasure. Something shifted in the air. Heat slithered down her spine. And suddenly it grew difficult to breath. The cool reserve of the man sharing her house had vanished. Memories of forbidden kisses surfaced. Kisses that had led nowhere because of where they were at the time, because of Ethan's presence.

“Business.” Gillian swallowed. That was why she'd come here, but her thoughts were anything but businesslike. This was the first time she'd been alone with him and away from Ethan, away from the home they both trod so warily in.

She had to look away; she couldn't let him see her need for him. She crossed to the tinted windows and stared out unseeing. “I wanted to ask Rafe some questions.”

“Perhaps I can help.”

He
could
help. Only he could.

But right now they couldn't get any farther apart. He with his back to the door, she across the office at the window. The distance felt like a canyon. She ached to cross it and didn't know how, didn't know the right steps to take. The ones that would stop her falling into the abyss. The click of the door locking sounded in the stillness.

“Gillian.” Her name was a whisper threaded with need.

Close.

He stood at her side. Canyon crossed.

Like Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz,
the power, the words she needed to say were inside her, had been all along. “Max.” She reached blindly for him.

His palms slid over her jaw, fingers threading into her hair as his lips covered hers, searching and hungry. As hungry as she was for him, a wanting she'd denied since he'd stormed back into her life, a wanting she'd denied for three lonely years.

A wanting that grew more powerful, more urgent as his mouth moved over hers. In this unrestrained kiss, one that was proving no point other than that she could lose herself in him, she remembered everything. The promise and fulfillment of him.

She held on to him, gripping his shoulders even as she was gripped by sensation in return. His lips on hers, his arms around her, their bodies melding together.

This was what she had been missing. The lack of him had been the empty space within her.

She found buttons, undid them and slid her hands beneath his shirt over the hard plane of his stomach, up over his chest. Beneath her palm, his heart beat as wildly as hers. His breathing had become as ragged as hers. His need for her inflamed her own.

She wanted him.

Desperately.

The needs so long denied were beyond repressing now.

She wanted everything he could offer. And he would know it.

Just as she'd worked his buttons undone, he'd found hers and returned the favor. With one arm around her, holding her to him, his other hand found and caressed her breast, cupping the weight, teasing the aching nipple so that she jerked with the need that streaked through her and gasped into his mouth.

In their kissing they turned and moved as though in a dance till she felt his desk press against the backs of her legs. He lifted her up, setting her on his desk. He pushed up what little of her skirt hadn't already ridden up. His palms spread over her thighs and slid upward as he stepped into the space between her legs.

He uttered a gentle oath under his breath as his fingers rose to trace the edge of her bra over the swell of her breasts, and his thumbs rubbed over the peaks of her nipples.

Dipping his head, he claimed a nipple through delicate lace, sucking, creating a gentle abrasion. She bit her lip to keep from crying out as sensation, a jolt of current, coursed through her.

She was so lost in swirling feeling she didn't realize he'd unfastened the clasp between her breasts till her bra fell open. She heard his harshly indrawn breath, saw the wonder and desire in his eyes. Wonder and desire that made her burn even more for him.

He bent his head and nipped gently at the spot where her shoulder swept to her neck. She tipped her head back, gave him access to her throat, heedless of everything except the heat he ignited, the fire within her. In scant minutes he'd turned her to a quivering mass of need.

With his hands hot and possessive on her breasts, he trailed kisses up her neck, igniting fire across her skin. He worked
his way along her jaw till his lips found hers and his fingers threaded into her hair, angling her head to deepen the kiss. His tongue teased hers, skimmed teeth. Her mouth, her body, remembered and responded to him. He was her past and her present. Her now. Sensing and responding to her needs. Taut with needs of his own.

He stepped back long enough to ease her panties from her, dropping them to the floor before stepping close again.

She slid her palms over his chest, over small male nipples, over contoured muscle, over the gentle abrasion of hair. She remembered his touch, remembered the feel of him beneath her fingers, and remembered the desperate wanting he stirred, the tingling that crawled through her. A wanting that had only intensified in the years she'd been without him.

Her hands dipped eagerly lower to unfasten his pants and free the length of him. He produced a condom that they put on him together. Wrapping her fingers around the heavy, solid silk of him, she guided him toward her center. She rubbed him against herself, positioned him perfectly. Then looked up. He watched her from hooded eyes, his lips parted, his breathing heavy.

“Touch me,” she whispered as she wrapped her legs around his hips. “Take me.” Her voice was desperate with wanting.

With a savage groan, he slid home in a single slow deep thrust, burying himself in her. Filling her.

Time stood still, poised on the brink of perfection.

He slid slowly out and back again, his fingers pressing into her skin as he gripped her hips to pull her on him even more fully.

And then again and again.

Every touch, every movement, drove her need higher till she was lost in a fog of desperation that built and built along with the fierce rhythm they found until she exploded around him, fighting back the scream that clawed at her throat.

He plunged his fingers into her hair as he covered her mouth with his, taking her cry of pleasure inside him as she clutched at his shoulders, her anchor in a spinning world, as his release pulsed inside her, his hips driving his final thrusts against hers.

Satisfaction rippled through her as the tension seeped from their bodies. Muscles relaxing, he wound his arms around her, held her tight to him, his head resting on hers. Gillian inhaled the scent of him—cologne, man, sex. She wanted to stay like this. The one place things were pure and simple between them.

He tilted her face up, studied her for a moment, then brushed a gentle kiss across her lips.

Too soon he pulled away from her, rebuttoning his shirt, refastening his pants. Her head forward, her hair curtaining her face, Gillian fumbled the catch of her bra. Strong hands eased hers aside, capable, steady fingers did the clasp up. She met his gaze as he trailed his fingertips over the swell of her breasts before reaching for the sides of her blouse and reverently buttoning up the buttons he'd so recently undone.

She could read little of his thoughts in his steady blue eyes. Could only hope nothing of hers showed. Lovemaking had always been seismic between them, but she didn't think it could be enough anymore. She wanted…more. That cry she'd swallowed had been his name. They never should have… She looked away, eased herself off his desk, found her panties and pulled them up her legs, smoothed her skirt back into place. Had they just destroyed the fragile balance of their arrangement, of their developing relationship?

 

Max watched Gillian shutting herself off from him. He touched her chin, felt her new tension, a fear almost. With gentle pressure he lifted her face so she had to meet his gaze. “It's okay.”

She gave a tiny shake of her head. “Is it?”

On some level, he'd known almost from the start that their physical relationship would resume, though it had taken a little longer to acknowledge that fact and, till today, to yield the desire. What he hadn't known was that giving in and making love to Gillian would shake the careful foundations of his world.

“Don't make it complicated. Don't get all regretful.” Easy for him to say because he was making the same heartfelt pleas to himself. If they could just keep this simple. He never deluded himself, but he was giving it his best shot now.

“But…”

He shook his head. “You know we're good together, in so many ways. And this is most definitely one of them. Don't make it confusing or something dark and furtive. We can have this much.”

“But…” That same word again, an unfinished protest.

He waited and, when she said nothing more, prompted. “But what?”

She opened her mouth, the lips he'd so recently kissed now devoid of lipstick, looking kiss-swollen and temptingly kissable again. Her hair, disordered and wild around her face. She looked exactly like she was, a woman who'd just had sex with him in his office. “Nothing,” she said with a frown, the word clipped.

“Tell me what's on your mind.”

“It's just that…”

He waited.

“This—” she gestured between the two of them “—could complicate everything.”

“Or it could simplify everything.”

“I don't think that's how it works.”

“How about we try it and see?”

A one-sided grin touched her lips. He knew that half smile, her cynical reporter's grin. “So you get sex on tap?”

Sex on tap with Gillian sounded like his own personal fantasy. “Not just me. You can't tell me I was the only one who wanted that. That I'm the only one of us thinking about when and where it's going to happen next.”

She picked up her purse. “I'm not ready for this conversation.”

“It's not like you to run.”

“This is not like any situation I've been in before. I need time to think. It's not just the two of us to consider. We can't walk away if it goes bad. We're married now.”

He nodded. It wasn't like any situation he'd been in before either. Though he didn't feel the need to think about it. “We could analyze this to death or we could just accept it for what it is. Great, almost perfect chemistry. And we could let it go at that without the need to probe it from fifty different angles, to look for possible pitfalls.”

She headed for his door. “Maybe it is that simple. For you. But I just need to be certain. Everything has happened so fast between us. Including this.” Confusion clouded her green eyes. Gillian who always had a clear-cut position on everything, Gillian who always knew where she stood, and had no qualms letting everyone else know.

She stopped with her hand on his door, seemed to be gathering her strength, putting on her facing-the-world attitude. “Wait,” he said.

He crossed to her and did his best to smooth her hair back into place. She bit her lip and wry amusement touched her eyes. “Do I look like…?”

He nodded.

“Damn.”

“Take a minute. At least till that flush of color fades from
your cheeks, and from here.” He touched the vee of skin revealed by her blouse, but only briefly.

Gillian swallowed.

He kissed her once quickly, lightly, because he could. Because after days of restraint, having broken through that barrier, something within him sang in celebration.

Then he stepped back from the temptation of her. “These questions you had for Rafe—you can ask me.”

She shrugged then glanced at his door, clearly torn between her need to leave and to not be seen looking like a woman who'd just had sex with him in his office. “I wish I could but it's more personal opinion and background that I'm after.”

She took a deep breath and pulled open his door. Max walked with her through to the reception area.

Her step faltered when she saw Maggie Cole, one of the secretaries, handing a sheaf of papers to the receptionist. Maggie looked over, her gaze taking in Max's hand at Gillian's elbow, her eyes behind the lenses of her glasses widening. “Gillian,” she said, surprise in the questioning pitch to her voice.