Mr. (Not Quite) Perfect (13 page)

‘It’ll just spoil things,’ she said unevenly, holding onto the track of the conversation with difficulty.

‘It will. It’ll never be the same again,’ said Max, his voice low and ragged. ‘I’m never going to be able to forget how you taste,’ he warned her. ‘I’ll never forget how you feel, how soft you are.’

‘So...we should stop,’ she tried, even as she pressed him closer, revelling in the feel of how hard he was, how strong, how male. Her blood was thumping and thudding and throbbing with urgency and she wanted him so much that she couldn’t think about anything else.

‘We probably should,’ said Max, his hands sliding under her dress, his mouth hot on her skin. ‘But there’s a problem.’

Allegra shuddered under his touch. ‘A...a problem?’

‘Yes.’ He lifted his head and brought his hands up to frame her face. ‘The problem is, I don’t want to stop, do you?’

She ought to say yes. She ought to put a stop to this right now. Max was right. They would regret this in the morning. But how could she say stop when her body was arching towards his and her skin yearned for his touch and her blood was running wild and wanting him blotted out everything else?

Her arms wrapped round his neck and she pulled him closer for a deep, wet kiss. ‘No,’ she murmured against his lips, ‘I don’t want to stop.’

EIGHT

Allegra surfaced slowly
to an awareness of an unfamiliar weight lying across her waist. She blinked at a bedside table. Not hers. The arm thrown over her wasn’t hers either. A warm male body was pressed against her back, a face buried in her hair. Steady breath stirred the air against her shoulder and she quivered as memory came whooshing back.

Max. Omigod, she had slept with Max!

Now
what was she going to do?

Allegra lay very still. Max was sound asleep and she didn’t want to wake him until she had worked out how she was going to react.

Could she pretend that she’d had too much to drink? But she had known exactly what she was doing, and Max knew it.

Okay, so she’d be casual.
Thank goodness we’ve got that out of our system, now we can move on
: that kind of thing.

Only being casual wasn’t going to be easy when she’d just had the best sex of her life. Her body was still buzzing pleasantly in the aftermath, and she flushed at the memory of the careening excitement, the heart-shaking pleasure that had left her languid and replete at last.

It would be so much easier if the sex had been disappointing, or even average. If Max had been a pedestrian lover, as conventional and dull as his suits. Instead...Allegra’s blood tingled, remembering the shattering sureness of his hands, of his mouth...oh, God,
his mouth
... In spite of herself, her lips curved. Who would have thought that the crisp and efficient engineer was capable of
that
?

How much more passion had Emma wanted?

Allegra wished she hadn’t thought about Emma. She’d been on the verge of turning over and waking Max, but now she’d remembered reality. Last night hadn’t changed anything. Max would be going to Shofrar soon, and if he took anyone with him it wouldn’t be his sister’s frivolous, fashionable friend.

And Libby! That was another complication. How would she feel if she knew Allegra had slept with her brother? But Allegra couldn’t keep a secret from her best friend. Allegra gnawed her bottom lip. She wished she could rewind the hours and go back to the night, to the darkness where nothing had mattered but touch and feel and taste, the glorious slide of flesh against flesh, the spiralling excitement, the splintering joy.

What time was it anyway? Very cautiously, Allegra reached towards the phone on the bedside table. Sensing her movement in his sleep, Max mumbled a protest and tightened his arm about her, pulling her back against his hard body. It felt so good that Allegra’s heart contracted, but she made herself wriggle free and grope once more for the phone.

Her fingers closed round it and she peered at the screen: 08:45. Holy smoke!

‘Max!’ She sat bolt upright in bed. ‘Max, wake up! It’s nearly nine o’clock!’

‘Wha...?’ Max struggled up, scowling at the abrupt awakening. His eyes were screwed up, his hair ruffled. Allegra wanted to take his face between her hands and kiss the grouchiness away. She wanted to push him down into the pillows and lose herself in his touch.

Instead she leapt out of bed, out of temptation. ‘I’m going to be late!’ she said, scrabbling frantically for her clothes. She found a bra, a pair of tights... What the hell had happened to her dress?

‘Wait...’ The sleep was clearing from Max’s face and his expression changed as he watched Allegra pounce on the dress that lay in a puddle on the floor, where it had fallen last night. He had a vivid memory of unzipping it slowly, of listening to the enticing rustle as it slithered down over Allegra’s hips, of catching his breath at the sight of her in a black push-up bra and lacy thong.

‘Allegra, wait,’ he said again as memory after memory of the night before flashed through his mind like an erotic slide show.

She turned, tousle-haired, wide-eyed, clutching her pile of clothes to her chest, forgetting that it was a little late for modesty. ‘Didn’t you hear what I said? It’s nearly nine!’

‘Nearly
nine
?’ This time it got through. He scrambled out of bed, stark naked. ‘Shit! I was supposed to be at work half an hour ago!’

‘You can have the shower first,’ she said. ‘You’re quicker than me.’

Max hesitated, dragged a hand through his hair. He was
never
late for work, but he couldn’t leave it like that. He might not have thought ahead last night, but he knew the morning wasn’t supposed to be like this, and he found himself saying the words he never thought he would hear coming out of his mouth: ‘We need to talk.’

‘I know,’ said Allegra, not quite meeting his eyes, ‘but later.’

Perhaps later was better, Max told himself as he showered and shaved as quickly as he could, which was pretty damn quickly. By the evening he might have had a chance to get a grip of himself. It would have been too hard to talk with Allegra’s scent still clogging his brain, with his heart still thundering with the memory of her sweetness, her warmth, her wicked, irresistible smile. She had turned him upside down, inside out.

She had turned him wild.

Max shrugged on his shirt, knotted his tie, dressed himself in his civilised suit, but underneath he still felt stripped bare. He’d been unprepared for the wildness of his need for her, for the way the feel of her set something free inside him.

So free that he’d lost his mind, lost himself. Max set his jaw, remembering the foolishness he’d spouted, the incoherent words that had tumbled out of him as they’d moved together, up and up through swirling darkness towards the shattering light. He hadn’t known what he was saying, but now the words were out, how the hell was he going to put them back?

* * *

He was at the round table, filling out a visa form for Shofrar, when Allegra got home that night. The moment he heard the key in the door, every cell in his body seemed to leap in anticipation, but he had his expression well under control by the time she appeared in the doorway.

There was a pause, then Allegra said, ‘Hi.’

‘You’re back late.’ Max hated the accusing note in his own voice. Anyone would think that he was keeping track of her, that he’d been sitting here, just waiting for her to come home.

‘I’ve been to the launch of a new jewellery collection.’ Allegra hesitated, then came into the room. She was wearing skinny leopard-print jeans, a tight T-shirt and a leather jacket, with chunky earrings and shiny boots. Her hair was pulled back in one of those messy twists that Max disliked. She looked funky, hip, a million miles from the elegant woman who’d taken his arm last night.

From the woman who’d short-circuited every single one of his fuses last night.

She unzipped her jacket and dropped her bag on the sofa. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked, perching on the arm so that she could take off her boots.

‘A visa application for Shofrar,’ said Max.

Allegra glanced up from her right boot. ‘Already?’

‘I saw Bob Laskovski again today. One of the project managers out there has been in a car accident. He’s okay, I think, but they’re bringing him back to hospital here. Bob wanted to know if I could go out earlier.’

She stilled. ‘How much earlier?’

‘The end of next week.’

‘Oh.’

‘Bob was asking about wedding dates,’ said Max, relieved to hear that he sounded so normal. ‘He was anxious to reassure me that I could come back in a month or so to sort stuff out, and that you could join me whenever you’re ready.’

‘I see,’ said Allegra. She bent her head and went back to fiddling with her boot. ‘Well...that’s good. You must be pleased.’

‘Yes,’ said Max. He should be delighted. This was exactly what he had wanted, after all. So why didn’t he
feel
pleased?

He wished Allegra would look up. He wished she didn’t look so trendy. He wished they hadn’t started on this awful stilted conversation when they should be talking about the night before. ‘What about your article? Can we fit in the last tests by next week?’

She pursed her lips, considering, apparently unbothered by the fact that he would be leaving so soon. ‘I’ve arranged with Darcy that you’ll go with her to the opening of the new Digby Fox exhibition on Tuesday evening,’ she said.

‘Who’s Digby Fox?’ he said, disgruntled.

‘Only the hottest ticket in the art world at the moment. He’s a really controversial artist but anyone who’s anyone will be there to look at his new installations.’

‘And Darcy wants to go to this?’ Max couldn’t hide his scepticism.

‘She wants to change her image and be taken more seriously. And Digby Fox is really interesting,’ she told him. ‘But that would be your last challenge. The costume ball isn’t for another month, you’ll be gutted to hear, so you’ll miss that.’

‘What, no waltzing after all?’

‘No.’ Allegra’s smile was a little painful.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Max.

‘No you’re not,’ she said, sounding much more herself. ‘You told me you’d rather stick pins in your eyes than waltz.’

‘I’m sorry to let you down,’ he clarified. ‘I promised I’d do it.’

‘It can’t be helped. If you can make it to the Digby Fox preview I’ll have enough material,’ she said. ‘It’s a shame about the ball, but maybe I’ll ask William if he’d go with Darcy. I’m sure he knows how to waltz.’

William? Max bristled at her careless assumption that he could be so easily replaced. The last thing he’d wanted to do was make a fool of himself at some stupid ball, but still...

Allegra was being exasperatingly reasonable. Why couldn’t she go all dramatic and start weeping and wailing about the tragedy of her unfinished article? Max would feel so much better if she did. All this politeness was getting to him. They needed to stop this and talk about the night before.

‘Look, Legs,’ he began but, before he could finish, his phone started to ring. Max cursed.

‘Aren’t you going to get that?’

‘It can go to voicemail.’

‘It might be important.’

Muttering under his breath, he snatched up the phone and looked at the screen in disbelief.

‘Who is it?’ asked Allegra.

‘It’s Emma,’ he said slowly.

Allegra got up, dropping her left boot on the floor. ‘You should talk to her,’ she said. ‘I’m going to get changed anyway.’

She left her boots lying as they were, and Max watched, churning with frustration, as she walked out barefoot. The boots looked as abandoned and forlorn as he felt, and Max bent to put them neatly side by side as he pressed the answer button on his phone.

‘Hello?’ he said.

* * *

In her room, Allegra leant back against the door and drew a deep breath. That had gone better than she’d feared. She’d been calm, cool. She hadn’t cried. She hadn’t thrown herself into his arms and begged him not to go, although it had been a close run thing when he’d told her that he was going to Shofrar next week.

Next week.

It was all for the best, Allegra told herself. Let’s face it, last night had been a one-off. It had been incredible, amazingly so, but they were still the same people as they’d been before, who had different lives and wanted different things. Of course it was tempting to imagine that they could recreate the previous night, but really, what would be the point? It would just make it harder to say goodbye in a week’s time.

Emma had rung at just the right time. She was what Max really needed. Allegra hoped that she was telling Max that she had made a terrible mistake and wanted to go back to him. She really did.

A nasty headache was jabbing right behind her eyes and her throat felt tight. Allegra pulled the clip from her hair and changed her tight jeans for a pair of pyjama bottoms patterned with faded puppies, sighing at the comfort. Wrapping a soft grey cardigan around her, she padded back down to the kitchen and poured herself a bowl of cereal. She was tempted to eat it there but it felt like avoiding Max, and that would make it seem as if last night was a big deal, which it wasn’t at all. Besides, she hadn’t heard his voice when she passed the sitting room door, so presumably he’d finished talking to Emma.

Sure enough, when she carried her bowl back to the living room Max was sitting at the table once more, but he wasn’t filling in his form. He was staring ahead, turning his pen abstractedly between his fingers. He looked tired, and a dangerous rush of emotion gusted through Allegra.

What would it be like if she could go over and massage his shoulders? Would he jerk away in horror, or would he let his head drop back against her breasts? Would he let her slide her arms down to his chest so that she could press her lips to his jaw and kiss his throat the way she had done the night before?

Allegra’s chest was so tight that for a moment she couldn’t move. She could just stand in the doorway in her old pyjama bottoms and the sleeves of her cardigan falling over her hands, and when Max glanced up and their eyes met the jolt in the air was so unexpected that she jerked, slopping the milk in the bowl of cereal she held.

‘Allegra...’ After that one frozen moment, Max pushed back his chair abruptly and got to his feet, only to stop as if he had forgotten what he was going to say.

‘How was Emma?’ Allegra rushed to fill the silence. She slouched over to the sofa and stretched out on it to eat her cereal, deliberately casual.

Max hesitated. ‘She wants to meet.’

‘Hey, that’s great news!’

‘Is it?’

‘Of course it is.’ Allegra kept beaming, which was quite hard when you were trying to eat cereal at the same time. ‘Come on, Max, you want her back. You know you do.’

‘If I wanted her that much, I wouldn’t have slept with you last night,’ he said.

‘That didn’t mean anything. We both agreed that.’ Deliberately she finished her cereal, scraping around the bowl, not looking at Max. Just another slobby evening, nothing on her mind.

‘We knew what were doing,’ she persevered when Max said nothing. ‘It was meant to be a bit of fun, wasn’t it?—and it
was
, but it’s not as if either of us want a relationship. We know each other too well for that. We’d drive each other mad!’

Allegra had been practising this speech all day, but Max didn’t seem impressed. He came over to the sofa, took the bowl from her unresisting hand and set it on the table. Then he nudged her legs so that she lifted them for him to sit down.