“Where am I…I mean…which room is mine?” Gabriella asked.

She could practically feel Max’s incredulous stare zinging down the phone line! He let a full thirty seconds of silence elapse before replying. “I thought the whole idea here is to convince your parents we’re still happily married, despite what the tabloids say.”

“It is.”

“Then which room do you suppose, Gabriella?”

She muttered, “The master suite?”

“Bingo! Any more questions?”

Indeed yes! But nothing would persuade her to come right out and ask, Will we be sharing the same bed?

She’d find out the answer to that soon enough!

Legally wed,

Great together in bed,

But he’s never said…

“I love you.”

They’re…

The series where marriages are made in haste…and love comes later…

Look out for more Wedlocked! books—

coming soon in Harlequin Presents®!

The Millionaire’s Marriage
Catherine Spencer

MILLS & BOON

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Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

“I’VE left word that you’re expected. If I’m not home when you arrive, the concierge will let you in.”

The words themselves were chillingly neutral but, even after all this time and despite everything, Max’s husky baritone still had the power to make her break out in goose bumps. Holding the phone away from her mouth so that he couldn’t hear how ragged her breathing had become, Gabriella fought the urge to beg him to be there himself to greet her and, matching his tone the best way she knew how, said, “Is it still Howard?”

“I’m surprised you remember, given the number of doormen who must have crossed your path in the last two years.”

He made it sound as if she earned a living paying illicit visits to married men’s hotel rooms! “There are few things about my life with you that I’ve forgotten, Max,” she said stiffly. “Howard was one of the more pleasant aspects. It will be nice to see him again and know there’s at least one friendly face in the building—unless, of course, you’ve poisoned his mind against me.”

“Hardly,” her estranged husband replied. “Your name rarely comes up in conversation, and then only in passing.”

Though there was little doubt he was being his usual brutally direct self, even more regrettable was the fact that the truth should hurt so much. “Are you quite sure we can pull this off?” she said. “Two weeks of facing each other across the table at mealtimes might not be a long time in the cosmic scheme of things, but I suspect it’ll seem an eternity when it comes to living them second by second.”

“I can manage it, if you can. And I have no doubt that you can. It will be, after all, a lot like your life—a charade. And let’s face it, Gabriella, you’ve always shown a talent for pretending. No doubt that explains your phenomenal latter-day success as a model. How else do all those glossy fashion magazines feature you as dewy virgin bride one day, sultry seductress the next, and beach bunny yet another?”

She’d made up her mind she wouldn’t get drawn into the retaliation game, no matter how he might try to provoke her, but his scornful dismissal of the success she’d worked so hard to achieve spurred her to respond, “Why, Max, I had no idea you followed my career so closely!”

“I don’t,” he said crushingly, “but I’d have to be brain dead not to recognize that, technically at least, I’m married to the most famous face in North America and possibly the world. Given your unquestionable versatility when it comes to make-believe, plus the fact that you’re an accomplished liar, I’m sure you can pull off the image of contented wife for a couple of weeks, especially since you have so much at stake and I plan to make myself as scarce as possible most of the time. All it’ll take is a little civility in public, a few harmless demonstrations of affection. We’ve been married over two years, Gabriella. Your parents aren’t going to expect us to act like besotted honeymooners.”

“Which is just as well, since a honeymoon’s one thing I’ve never had the pleasure of experiencing.”

But she knew about heartbreak, and loneliness, and rejection. She knew how it felt to be a bride standing beside a groom who, when he looked at her at all, did so with a blank indifference touched with loathing. She knew what it was like to lie alone in the big marriage bed while her husband slept in the guest room—a pain only slightly less unbearable than the few times when primitive need had driven him to come silently to her in the night then, when his hunger was appeased, just as silently leave her again.

She knew what it was like to be married to a man who hated her all the more because, once in a very rare while, he couldn’t resist her.

“Gabriella? Did you hear what I just said?”

Startled by his unabashed impatience, she jerked her attention back to the present. “Um…not exactly.”

“I asked what time they land in Vancouver.”

They: her aged parents who thought their only surviving child was blissfully happy with the grandson of a man they revered more than God! What if they saw past the subterfuge so carefully constructed for their benefit? What if her world-famous smile cracked, and she couldn’t disguise the misery?

Suddenly, when it was too late to change anything, she wondered why she’d ever encouraged them to leave their native Hungary and visit Canada, or why she thought she could pull off such a monumental deception. “Three o’clock tomorrow.”

“And you’re in Los Angeles now?”

“Yes. I stayed with a friend last night but I’m flying out at ten. I expect to be at the penthouse by early afternoon.”

“That should leave you enough time to unpack and reacquaint yourself with the place. And while I think of it, you might want to pick up a few supplies. The stuff in the refrigerator’s pretty basic and unlikely to measure up to your gourmet standards.”

Why did he do that? she wondered. Why imply that she was impossible to please and needlessly extravagant? Whatever else she’d contributed to the failure of their marriage, overspending his money was not on the list, for all that he’d been convinced his bank account was what had made her chase him to the altar.

But taking issue with him now would lead only to more acrimony and she already had enough to handle. “Grocery shopping’s at the top of my list of things to do,” she said, then waited, hoping he’d volunteer the information she most needed to learn, and so spare her having to be the one to raise a topic he surely hadn’t overlooked.

Once again, though, he disappointed her and with obvious relief said, “I guess that’s it, then. If I don’t see you today, I’ll catch up with you tomorrow at breakfast.”

“Before you go, Max…”

“Now what?” There it was again, the weary impatience she so easily inspired in him.

“Where am I… I mean…um, which room is…mine?”

So clearly taken aback by the question that she could practically feel his incredulous stare zinging down the phone line, he let a full thirty seconds of silence elapse before replying, “I thought the whole idea here is to convince your parents we’re still happily married, despite what the tabloids say.”

“It is.”

“Then which room do you suppose, Gabriella?”

Feeling like a none-too-bright child being asked to put two and two together and come up with four, she muttered, “The master suite?”

“Bingo! And since all my stuff fits easily into one closet, I hope you’re bringing enough clothes to fill the other, unless you want it to be patently obvious that, like your parents, you’re merely visiting. I don’t imagine, given your extensive wardrobe, that’s a problem?”

“None at all,” she said, recovering a trace of the haughty composure that had made her an overnight sensation as a model. “I have three large suitcases packed and waiting.”

“I’m delighted to hear it. Any more questions?”

Indeed yes! But nothing would persuade her to come right out and ask, Will we be sharing the same bed?

She’d find out the answer to that soon enough!

She’d grown up in a palace—a small one, to be sure, and rather shabby around the edges, but a palace nonetheless. The Tokyo apartment she’d bought eighteen months ago, when she left Max, was small but exquisite. Her most recent acquisition, a house with a lovely little walled garden on the outskirts of Rome, was a gem of seventeenth-century elegance.

Still, as she stepped out of the private elevator on the twenty-first floor and stood under the hand-painted dome in the vestibule, the magnificence of Max’s two-story penthouse took her breath away, just as it had the first time she’d set foot on its hand-set marble floor.

Leaving her luggage and the sacks of groceries in the foyer, she crossed the vast living room to the right of the winding staircase and slid back the glass doors to the terrace. Tubs of bougainvillea, hibiscus and tibouchina in full flower lent splashes of exotic color to the sprawling rooftop garden. Yellow roses climbed up the south wall. A miniature clematis with flowers the size of bumblebees rambled along the deep eaves. The raised swimming pool and hot tub shimmered in the drowsy heat of the late June afternoon. People who didn’t know her real reason for taking up residence here again could be forgiven for thinking she’d entered paradise.

Beyond the parapet, the Vancouver skyline showed itself off in all its summer glory. Sunlight bounced off the glass walls of newly built office towers. Sailboats drifted on the calm waters of Georgia Strait. The graceful arc of the Lion’s Gate Bridge rose from the green expanse of Stanley Park to span the First Narrows as far as the North Shore where snow-kissed mountain tips reared up against the deep blue sky.

It had been just such a day that she’d come here as a bride, with the air so hot and still that the tears she couldn’t keep in check had dried on her cheeks almost as fast as they’d fallen. She’d been married all of forty-eight hours, and already knew how deeply her husband resented her. She’d stood in this very spot, long after sunset, and prayed for the hundredth time that she could make him love her. Or, if that was asking too much, that she could stop loving him.

Her prayers had gone unanswered on both counts, and remembering the weeks which had followed left her misty-eyed all over again.

Annoyed to find herself so soon falling back into old, bad habits, she gave herself a mental shake and returned to the cool, high-ceilinged living room. Like the city, it, too, had undergone some change, not by new additions but by the complete removal of anything that might have reminded Max of her.

“Do what you like with it. I don’t care,” he’d flung at her when, as a bride, she’d suggested softening the austerity of the decor with various wedding gifts and dowry items she’d brought with her from Hungary—lovely things like the antique tulip lamp, hunting prints and painted wall clock handed down from her grandparents, and the brass trivets and finely stitched linens from her godmother, all of which she’d left behind when she fled the marriage.

Now, the cherrywood accent pieces Max had chosen before he met her provided the only contrast to the oyster-white couches, carpets, walls and deep, carved moldings. Even the classic fireplace, swept scrupulously clean of ashes, looked incapable of warmth. He had erased every trace of her from his home as thoroughly as he’d erased her from his life and, while some might admire the severe elegance of the room, without the reminders of her childhood home and family, Gabriella found it cold and hostile.

Surely, he hadn’t thrown away those treasures her family had managed to save from the ravages of the political upheaval which had reduced so many once-wealthy families to poverty? Surely, as she went about the business of—how was it he’d put it, when they’d spoken on the phone that morning?—reacquainting herself with her former home, she’d find they’d just been stashed away somewhere?

Returning to the foyer, she averted her gaze from the stairs which led to the bedrooms, and carried the grocery bags to the equally barren-looking kitchen. Max’s claim that he had only basic supplies in stock had been, she shortly discovered, a masterpiece of understatement. Although the temperature-controlled wine cellar at one end of the room was well stocked, the refrigerator contained nothing but beer, a very old block of cheese, and a carton of grapefruit juice.

Apart from a couple of boxes of cereal and some canned soup, the lower cupboards were bare. The glass-fronted upper cabinets stood completely empty, the panes staring back at her like sightless eyes. Neither cup nor plate graced their shelves.

The copper-bottomed pots and pans hanging from a stainless-steel rack above the work island were linked by a fine network of cobwebs, giving testament to how infrequently they’d been taken down. As for the built-in range and double-wall ovens imported from France, Gabriella doubted either had been used since the last time she’d cooked dinner there, over eighteen months ago.

In fact, the entire main floor of the penthouse had the look of a showpiece owned by a man who stopped by only occasionally to check on his investment, and she had no reason to suppose the upstairs rooms would be any different. There was none of the casual clutter, no sense of the warmth that speaks of a home shared by a couple in love. Her father might be fooled into believing otherwise but, as things presently stood, her mother wouldn’t be taken in for a minute.

Realizing she had a host of shopping still to do, she searched through the drawers for a notepad on which to list the items needed. She didn’t find one. Instead, she came across a flowered apron with a ruffle around its hem, and a half-empty tube of hand cream.

The sight caused her stomach to plummet and left her feeling slightly sick. Neither had ever belonged to her and she couldn’t imagine any circumstance which would have persuaded Max to make use of them—in which case, who had?

Don’t do this to yourself, Gabriella, the voice of reason scolded. It’s going to be difficult enough to preserve your parents’ peace of mind by letting them think your marriage is on solid ground so get on with the job at hand, because it’s going to take you the rest of today to make the place look lived in.

By nine that evening, her manicure was ruined but the transformation she’d effected throughout most of the rooms was worth every chip in her nail enamel.

The pantry and refrigerator fairly bulged at the seams with delicacies. In the storage room under the stairs, she found boxes containing the missing heirlooms; also the Herend china she’d brought with her as a bride stowed alongside crates of wedding gift crystal and other reminders of her brief sojourn as lady of the penthouse.

Now, the china and elegant stemware and goblets were again on display in the glass-fronted upper cabinets. A pretty blue bowl filled with oranges, lemons and limes sat on the granite counter beside the brass trivets polished to a blinding shine. A braid of garlic hung next to the freshly washed copper-bottomed cookware, and pots of basil and oregano nestled in a wicker planter on the windowsill.

On a shelf at the very back of the storage room, she discovered the large, silver-framed formal portrait of her and Max on their wedding day. Surprised and grateful that he hadn’t tossed it in the garbage, she’d dusted it off and set it on a side table in the living room, next to two small framed photographs she’d thought to bring with her, of her parents and the brother who’d died six years before she was born.

A fringed shawl she’d found in a bazaar in Indonesia lay draped across the back of one of the couches, its bronze and gold threadwork glowing like fire against the oyster-white upholstery. Flower arrangements blazed with color on the writing desk and sofa table, and filled the empty hearth.

She’d placed slender ivory tapers in the heavy Swarovski candlesticks on the dining room table. The antique sterling coffee service bequeathed to her by her great-aunt Zsuzsanna shone splendidly on the sideboard in whose top drawers lay the freshly ironed hand-worked linens.

Upstairs, the guest room and adjoining bathroom were prepared, with lavender sachets hanging in the closet, a vase of roses on the dresser, soaps and lotions arranged on the marble deck of the soaker tub. Monogrammed towels hung ready for use, the mirrors sparkled. Crisp percale linens covered the bed—that same bed where she’d found Max on their first night as husband and wife in North America.

She’d have thought the enormous emotional toll entailed in facing that room would have inured her to entering the other; the one in which she’d slept—and wept—for nearly six months before she’d found the courage to walk away from her loveless marriage. Yet, with the cool mauve light of dusk pooling around her, she found herself hesitating outside the door of the master suite, a clammy dew of apprehension pebbling her skin.

She was disgusted with herself. In view of everything she’d achieved since her marriage had fallen apart, how foolish of her now to fear four walls! Things could not hurt her. Only people had the power to do that—and even then, only if she let them.

Surely she’d laid those old ghosts to rest? And surely…surely…safeguarding her heart was a lesson she’d learned well since the last time Max had trampled all over it?

Still, she quaked inwardly as she pushed at the heavy door. It swung open in smooth, expensive silence, just as it used to do when, a lifetime ago, he’d paid those brief, late-night visits to her bed.

Inside the room, filmy floor-length curtains billowed in the evening breeze at the tall open windows. Avoiding the hulking mass of the bed itself, her gaze flitted instead from the bench at its foot where one of Max’s ties and a paperback mystery lay, to a pair of his shoes sprawled crookedly next to a chair, and from there to a navy golf shirt and three wooden golf tees tossed carelessly on top of a chest of drawers.

It was a man’s room; a room so devoid of a feminine presence that it might never have accommodated a bride. And yet the ghosts of yesterday sprang out at her from every corner, clamoring to be acknowledged.

Her first night there, she’d bathed in scented water, put on the gauzy peignoir trimmed with French lace that was part of her trousseau, sprayed a little perfume at her wrists and throat, and brushed her pale blond hair to satin smoothness against her shoulders. And waited for Max.

The sky had grown pearly with a new dawn before she’d finally accepted that he was not going to join her. And so, silly creature that she’d been then, she’d gone looking for him. And found him spread-eagled on the bed in the room across the hall, sleeping soundly with a sheet half covering him from the waist down.

For the longest time, she’d simply looked at him, bewitched all over again by his masculine beauty. Such skin, polished to bronze, such perfect symmetry of form, such sleek, honed strength!

Oh, how she’d ached to be enfolded in his arms, to be possessed by him! How she’d longed to feel his mouth on hers, claiming her soul; to hear his voice at her ear, hoarse with passion!

Driven by hunger and need and hope, she’d traced her fingertip along the curve of his eyebrow, smoothed her hand lightly over his dark hair. Made bold by the fact that he didn’t stir, she’d bent down to lay her mouth on his when, suddenly, his eyes had shot open.

Instantly awake, suspicious, annoyed, he’d growled, “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” she’d whispered, hoping the warmth of her lips against his would ignite an answering fire in him.

Instead, he’d turned his face away so that her kiss missed its mark and landed on his cheek.

“Don’t,” she’d begged. “Please don’t turn away from me. I need you, Max.”

She might as well have appealed to a slab of stone for all the response she evoked. Ignoring her completely, he’d continued staring at the wall, and even all these months later, she grew hot with embarrassment at what had followed.

She’d pulled back the sheet and touched him—tentatively at first—beginning at his shoulders and continuing the length of his torso until she found the sleep-warm flesh between his thighs.

“It doesn’t prove a thing, you know,” he’d informed her with quiet fury when, despite himself, he’d grown hard against her hand. “It’s a purely reflexive response—any woman could bring it about.”

“But I’m not just any woman, Max. I’m your wife,” she’d reminded him. “And I love you. Please let me show you how much.”

And before he had time to realize her intention, she’d let her mouth slide over the muscled planes of his chest to his belly and then, with a daring born wholly of desperation, closed her lips softly over the silken tip of his manhood.

His breathing had quickened. He’d knotted his fingers in her hair and tried unsuccessfully to stifle a groan. Sensing victory, she’d slipped out of his hold and the peignoir in one swift move, and aligned her naked body, inch for inch, against his.

She’d seen the corded tension in his neck, tasted the film of sweat on his upper lip when he’d grudgingly let her turn his face to meet hers and succumbed to the sweeping caress of her tongue over the seam of his mouth.

She’d known a glorious tremor of expectation when, unable to hold out any longer, he’d hauled her to sit astride him and braced her so that, with the merest surge of his hips, he was buried inside her, tight and powerful. She’d felt the muscled flex of his abdomen, the steely strength of his thighs. Seen the rapid rise and fall of his chest.

He’d spanned her waist, framed the curve of her hips, drawn a line from her navel to her pubic bone, and then farther still, until he found the one tiny spot in her body most vulnerable to his measured seduction.

Sensation had engulfed her and left her body vibrating, from the tips of her toes to her scalp. Such pleasure! Such exquisite torture! She’d yearned toward him, wanting to prolong the delight only he could bring, but encroaching passion had slammed down with such vengeance that neither of them had been able to withstand it.

Caught in a maelstrom of emotion sharpened to dazzling brilliance by the spasms ravaging her body, she’d sensed her eyes growing heavy, slumberous almost. But his had remained wide open. Unblinking. Unmoved. As though to say, You might wreak havoc with my body, but you’ll never sway my heart or mind.

“Satisfied?” he’d said, when it was over. And, with that brief, indifferent question, managed to degrade their union to something so cheap and unlovely that she’d cringed.

Twenty-four months should have been time enough to lessen the hurt. A sensible woman would have forgotten it altogether. But she’d never been sensible where Max was concerned and if the tears scalding her cheeks now weren’t proof enough of that, the dull, cold emptiness inside where once she’d known warmth and life and passion, should have been.

What would it take, she wondered, to cure her of Max Logan and heal the scars inflicted by her marriage? Would there ever come a time that she’d learn to love another man as she still loved him—and if so, would she love more wisely the next time?

Although dense silence greeted him when he stepped inside the penthouse, he knew at once that she was there. Quite apart from her suitcases still parked by the front door, and the scent of flowers everywhere, as well as a host of other clues that she’d made herself thoroughly at home, the atmosphere was different. Vibrant, electric, and unsettling as hell. A forewarning of trouble to come.

Dropping his briefcase on the desk in his office—one area, he was glad to see, that she hadn’t tried to camouflage into something out of a happy homemaker magazine—he made a quick circuit through the rooms on the main floor before climbing the stairs. The thick carpet masked his footsteps thoroughly enough that she was completely unaware of him coming to a halt at the entrance to the master suite.

Shoving his hands in his pockets, he leaned against the door frame and watched her. She stood at the highboy dresser and appeared to be mopping her face with his golf shirt. But what struck him most forcibly was how thin she’d become. Not that she’d ever been fat or even close to it but, where once she’d been sweetly curved, she was now all sharp, elegant angles, at least from the rear. Her hips were narrow as a boy’s, her waist matchstick slender.

Though probably a prerequisite for all successful fashion models, it wasn’t a look that appealed to him. Even less did he like the air of fragility that went with this underfed version of the hellion he’d been coerced into marrying. It edged her too close to vulnerable, and once he started thinking along those lines, he was in trouble, as he very well knew from past experience.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d wipe your nose on something other than a piece of my clothing,” he said, relishing how his voice suddenly breaking the silence almost had her jumping out of her skin.

But when she spun around, the expression on her face made short work of his moment of malicious pleasure. He’d forgotten how truly beautiful she was. In particular, he’d forgotten the impact of her incredible eyes and, suddenly, he was the one struggling for composure as memories of the night they’d first met in her father’s house rushed back to haunt him.

“I’d like you to meet my daughter,” Zoltan Siklossy had said, as footsteps approached along the flagstone path that ran the width of the front of the rambling old mausoleum of a place.

Max had turned and been transfixed, the impact of the city skyline beyond the Danube forgotten. Backlit by the late May sunset, she’d appeared touched with gold all over, from her pale hair to her honey-tinted skin. Only her eyes had been different, a startlingly light aquamarine, one moment more green than blue, and the next, the other way around.

Fringed with long, curling lashes and glowing with the fire of priceless jewels, they’d inspected him. He’d stared back, mesmerized, and said the first thing that came to mind. “I didn’t know Magyars were blond. Somehow, I expected you’d all be dark.”

A stupid, thoughtless remark which showed him for the ignorant foreigner he was, but she hadn’t taken offence. Instead, she’d come forward and laughed as she took his hand. “Some of us are. But we Hungarians have a mixed ancestry and I, like many others in my country, favor our Finnish heritage.”

Though accented, her English was perfect, thanks, he later discovered, to an aunt who’d studied in London years before. Her laughter hung like music in the still, warm evening. Her hand remained in his, light and cool. “Welcome to Budapest, Mr. Logan,” she purred. “I hope you’ll allow me to introduce you to our beautiful city.”

“I’m counting on it,” he’d replied, bowled over by her easy self-assurance. Although she looked no more than eighteen, he believed her when she told him she was twenty-seven. Why not? After all, her parents were well into their seventies.

In fact, she’d been just twenty-two and the most conniving creature he’d ever met—not something likely to have changed, he reminded himself now, even if she did look about ready to keel over in a dead faint at being caught off guard.

“I’m not wiping my nose,” she whispered shakily, clutching the shirt to her breasts.

He strolled further into the room. “What were you doing, then? Sniffing to find evidence of another woman’s perfume? Checking for lipstick stains?”

Something flared in her eyes. Guilt? Shame? Anger? “Should I be? Do you entertain many women here, Max, now that I’m no longer underfoot all the time?”

“If I do, that’s certainly none of your business, my dear.”

“As long as we’re married—”

“You left the marriage.”

“But I’m still your wife and whether or not you like it, you’re still my husband.”

He circled her slowly and noticed that her eyes were suspiciously red-rimmed. “A fact which apparently causes you some grief. Have you been crying, Gabriella?”

“No,” she said, even as a fresh flood of tears welled up and turned her irises to sparkling turquoise.

“You used to be a better liar. What happened? Not had enough practice lately?”

“I…” Battling for composure, she pressed slender fingers to her mouth.

Irked to find his mood dangerously inclining toward sympathy, he made a big production of tipping the loose change from his pockets onto the shelf of his mahogany valet stand. “Yes? Spit it out, whatever it is. After everything else we’ve been through, I’m sure I can take it.”

Her voice, husky and uncertain, barely made it across the distance separating them. “I hoped we wouldn’t…be like this with one another, Max. I hoped we’d be able to…”

She swallowed audibly and dribbled into another tremulous silence.

“What?” He swung back to face her, stoking the slow anger her distress threatened to extinguish. “Pick up where we left off? And exactly where was that, Gabriella? At each other’s throats, as I recall!”

“I was hoping we could get past that. I think we must, if we’re to convince my parents they need have no worries about me.” She held out both hands in appeal. “I know you…hate me, Max, but for their sake, won’t you please try to remember there was once a time when we liked each other and, for the next two weeks, focus on that instead?”

CHAPTER TWO

HER reminder touched a nerve. They had liked each other, in the beginning. He’d been dazzled by her effervescence, her zest for life. Only later had he come to see them for what they really were: a cover-up designed to hide her more devious objectives.

“My father treats me as if I were made of bone china,” she’d confided, the day she took him on a walking tour on the Buda side of the Danube, some three weeks after he’d arrived in Hungary. “He thinks I need to be protected.”

“Not surprising, surely?” he’d said. “You’ve had a very sheltered upbringing.”

She’d batted her eyelashes provocatively. “But I’m a woman of the world now, Max, and quite able to look out for myself.”

Later that afternoon though, when they’d run into some people she knew and been persuaded to join them for refreshments at a sidewalk café near Fishermen’s Bastion, Max had seen why Zoltan Siklossy might be concerned. Although she made one glass of wine last the whole hour they were together, Gabriella’s so-called friends—social-climbing opportunists, from what he’d observed—ordered round after round and showed no qualms about leaving her to pick up the tab when they finally moved on.

“Let me,” Max had said, reaching for the bill.

“No, please! I can afford it,” she’d replied. “And it’s my pleasure to do so.”

But he’d insisted. “Humor me, Gabriella. I’m one of those dull, old-fashioned North Americans who thinks the man should pay.”

“Dull?” She’d turned her stunning sea-green eyes on him and he’d found himself drowning in their translucent depths. “I find you rather wonderful.”

For a moment, he’d thought he caught a glimpse of something fragile beneath her vivacity. A wistful innocence almost, that belied her frequent implicit reference to previous lovers. It was gone so quickly that he decided he must have imagined it, but the impression, brief though it was, found its way through his defenses and touched him in ways he hadn’t anticipated.

If she were anyone else and his sole reason for visiting Hungary had been a summer of fun in the sun, he’d have found her hard to resist. But there was no place in his plans for a serious involvement, and he hoped he had enough class not to engage in a sexual fling with his hosts’ daughter.

The way Gabriella had studied him suggested she knew full well the thoughts chasing through his mind, and was determined to change them. Her usual worldly mask firmly in place again, she asked in a voice husky with promise, “Do you like to dance, Max?”

“I can manage a two-step without crippling my partner,” he said, half bewitched by her brazen flirting and half annoyed to find himself responding to it despite what his conscience was telling him.

“Would you like to dance with me?”

“Here?” He’d glance at the hulking shadow of Mátyás Church, and the sunny square next to it, filled with camera-toting tourists. “I don’t think so, thanks!”

“Of course not here!” She’d laughed and he was once again reminded of music, of wind chimes swaying in a summer breeze. Good sense be damned, he’d found himself gazing at her heart-shaped face with its perfect strawberry-ripe, cupid’s-bow mouth and wondering how she would taste if he were to kiss her.

“My parents would like to throw a party for you,” she went on, drawing his gaze down by crossing her long, lovely legs so that the hem of her skirt, short enough to begin with, rode a couple of inches farther up her thigh. “They hold your family in such esteem, as I’m sure you know. Your grandfather is a legend in this city.”

“He took a few photographs.” Max had shrugged, as much to dispel the enchantment she was weaving as to dispute her claim. “No big deal. That was how he earned a living.”

“For the people of Budapest, he was a hero. He braved imprisonment to record our history when most men with his diplomatic immunity would have made their escape. As his grandson, you are our honored guest and it’s our privilege to treat you accordingly.”

“I’m here on business, Gabriella, not to make the social scene,” he reminded her. “It was never my intention to impose on your family for more than an hour or two, just long enough to pay my respects. That your parents insisted I stay in their home when I had a perfectly good hotel room reserved—”

“Charles Logan’s grandson stay in a hotel?” Her laughter had flowed over him again beguilingly. Her fingers grazed his forearm and lingered at his wrist, gently shackling him. “Out of the question! Neither my mother nor my father would allow such a thing. You’re to stay with us as long as, and whenever, you’re in Budapest”

A completely illogical prickle of foreboding had tracked the length of his spine and despite the bright hot sun, he’d felt a sudden chill. “I don’t anticipate many return visits. Once I’ve concluded the terms and conditions of the property I’m interested in buying and have the necessary permits approved, I’ll turn the entire restoration process over to my project manager and head back home.”

“All the more reason for us to entertain you royally while we have the chance then,” she’d said, leaning forward so that, without having to try too hard, he was able to glimpse the lightly tanned cleavage revealed by the low neck of her summer dress. She hadn’t been wearing a bra.

Responding to so shameless an invitation had been his first in a long line of mistakes that came to a head about a month later when the promised party took place. It seemed to him that half the population of Budapest showed up for the event and while he lost track of names almost immediately, everyone appeared to know not only of his grandfather but, surprisingly, of him, his purchase of the dilapidated old building across the river, and his plans to turn it into yet another of his chain of small, international luxury hotels.

“You see,” Gabriella had cooed in his ear, slipping her hand under his elbow and leaning close enough for the sunlit scent of her pale gold hair to cloud his senses, “it’s not just Charles Logan’s grandson they’ve come to meet. You’re a celebrity in your own right, Max.”

She looked exquisite in a sleeveless flame-pink dress made all the more dramatic by its simple, fitted lines. The eye of every man in the place was drawn to her, and his had been no exception. “I’m surprised people don’t resent a foreigner snapping up their real estate,” he’d said, tearing his gaze away and concentrating instead on the bubbles rising in his glass of champagne.

“You’re creating work for people, bringing tourism here in greater numbers, helping to rebuild our economy. What possible reason could anyone have to resent such a man?”

He’d been flattered, no doubt about it. What man wouldn’t have been, with a roomful of Budapest’s social elite smiling benignly at him and a stunningly beautiful woman hanging on his every word?

He should have been satisfied with that. Instead, he’d gone along with it when she’d monopolized him on the dance floor because hey, he was passing through town only, so what harm was there in letting her snuggle just a bit too close? Not until it was too late to change things had he seen that in being her passive conspirator, he’d contributed to the evening ending in a disaster that kept on going from bad to worse.

“Didn’t we, Max?”

Glad to escape memories guaranteed to unleash nothing but shame and resentment, he stared at the too thin woman facing him; the woman who, despite the fact that they lived hundreds of miles apart and hadn’t spent a night under the same roof in eighteen months, was still technically his wife. “Didn’t we what?”

“Like each other, at one time. Very much, in fact.”

“At one time, Gabriella, and they are the operative words,” he said, steeling himself against the look of naked hope on her face. “As far as I’m concerned, everything changed after that party you coerced your parents into hosting.”

“You’re never going to forgive me for what I did that night, are you? Nothing I can say or do will ever convince you that I never intended to trap you into marriage.”

“No. You stooped to the lowest kind of deceit when you let me believe you’d had previous lovers.”

“I never actually said that.”

“You implied it, more than once.”

“You were a sophisticated, worldly North American and I wanted to impress you—be like the kind of women I thought you admired, instead of a dowdy Hungarian virgin who hadn’t the first idea how to please a man.”

“My kind of woman wouldn’t have behaved like a tramp.”

“I was desperate, Max—desperately in love with you. And foolish enough to think that giving myself to you might make you love me back.” She bit her lip and fiddled with the thin gold chain on her wrist; the same gold chain she’d worn when she’d come sneaking through the darkened halls and let herself into his room while everyone else slept, himself included. “Your time in Budapest was coming to an end. You were making plans to return to Canada, and I couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing you again.”

“So you made sure you wouldn’t have to by adding lies on top of lies.”

She flushed but her gaze, locked with his, didn’t waver. “No. When I told you I was pregnant, I believed it to be true.”

“How convenient that the ink had barely dried on the marriage certificate before you discovered otherwise.”

She gave a long drawn-out sigh. “Oh, Max, what’s the point of rehashing the past like this? You don’t need to spell it out for me again. I already know how you feel.”

“You can’t begin to know how I feel,” he practically snarled, self-disgust sweeping over him afresh at the memory of how the night of the party had ended. Bad enough that he’d been duped into making love to a novice without the final humiliation of opening his door to hustle her back to her own room and coming face-to-face with her father.

“I thought I heard a noise and came to investigate,” Zoltan had said, his voice trembling with suppressed anger at the sight of his guest standing there in a pair of briefs, and his daughter wearing a transparent negligee that showed off every detail of her anatomy. They couldn’t have looked more guilty if they’d been caught stark naked! “I had no idea…this…is what I’d find.”

Over the years, Max had made his share of mistakes, but none had filled him with the shame flooding over him that night. For the first time in his life, he hadn’t been able to look another man in the eye.

“You could have told my father what really happened,” Gabriella said now. “You didn’t have to leave him with the impression that you’d lured me to your bed.”

“Do you really think that would have made him feel any better, when the damage had been done already? His beloved child had been deflowered by a man he’d welcomed into his home and treated like a son. He thought the sun rose and set on you. Still does. What was to be gained by letting him know you’d come to my room uninvited? Why the devil would I have wanted to add to his misery by telling him that?”

“If it makes any difference at all, Max, he knew I was as much to blame as you, and he forgave both of us long ago.”

“But I haven’t forgiven myself. And I sure as hell haven’t forgiven you.”

She sank down on the bench at the foot of the bed, and he saw that the slump to her shoulders was not, as he’d first assumed, that she was dejected so much as utterly exhausted. “Then why did you agree to our pretending we’re happily married?”

“Because I owe it to him. He’s eighty-one years old, his health is failing, and I refuse to send him to his grave a day earlier than necessary by letting him in on the true state of our relationship.”

“He might be old, but he’s not blind. If you’re going to curl your lip in contempt every time you look at me, and recoil from any sort of physical contact, he’ll figure out for himself within twenty-four hours of getting here that we’re a long way from living in wedded bliss. And my mother won’t take a tenth that long to arrive at the same conclusion.”

“What are you suggesting, my dear?” he inquired scornfully. “That in order to continue bamboozling them, we practice married intimacy by holding an undress rehearsal tonight?”

Color rode up her neck, a pale apricot tint so delicious it almost made his mouth water. “We don’t have to go quite that far, but would it be such a bad idea to practice being civil to one another?”

“Depends on your definition of ‘civil.’”

“I won’t initiate sex when you’re not looking, if that’s what’s worrying you, Max. Subjecting myself to your outright rejection no longer holds any appeal for me.”

“I’d be more inclined to take that assurance seriously if we were occupying separate beds.”

He waited for the reproaches to follow, a variation on her old theme of You don’t even try to understand how I feel, followed by a crying spell. Instead, she stood up and faced him, her spine poker-straight and her expression uncharacteristically flat. “I won’t dignify that remark by trying to refute it. Believe whatever you like, do whatever you like. For myself, I haven’t eaten since early this morning, so I’m going downstairs to fix myself a light supper.”

“You look as if you haven’t eaten in a month or more, if you ask me,” he shot back, irked by her snooty attitude. He wasn’t used to being blown off like that, nor was he about to put up with it. “And if how you look now is what being stylishly thin’s all about, give me good, old-fashioned chubby any day of the week.”

“I can’t imagine why you’d care how I look, Max, and I’m certainly not fool enough to think your remark stems from concerns about my health.” She brushed a surprisingly badly manicured hand over her outfit, a cotton blouse and skirt which whispered alluringly over silky underthings. “What you apparently aren’t able to accept is that what you prefer in a woman is immaterial. I’d like it better if we could be cordial with each other because it’s a lot less wearing than being disagreeable. But you need to accept the fact that I’m long past the stage where your approval is of the slightest consequence to me.”

If she’d slapped him, he couldn’t have been more stunned. The Gabriella he used to know would have turned cartwheels through downtown Vancouver during the afternoon rush hour, if she’d thought it would please him. “But you still need me, Gabriella,” he reminded her. “Why else are you here?”

“Only for the next two weeks. After that, I’ll be as happy to leave you to wallow in your own misery as you’ll be to see me go.”

Well, hell! Baffled, he shook his head as she stalked out of the room. This new, underfed edition of the woman he’d married didn’t believe in mincing her words—or give a flying fig about anything he might say or do as long as he didn’t blow her cover during her parents’ visit.

On the surface at least, a lot more than just her dress size had changed since she’d entered the world of international fashion. Unless it was just another act put on solely for his benefit, his wife appeared to have developed a little backbone since she’d flounced out of his life within six months of forcing her way into it!

She was shaking inside, her composure on the verge of collapse. Perhaps it was the cruel irony of the setting: the big marriage bed, so invitingly close they could have tumbled onto the mattress together in a matter of seconds if the mood had taken them, juxtaposed beside her finely tuned awareness of his unabashed animosity. Or perhaps it was as simple as his having shown up unexpectedly and taken her by surprise. In any event, she had to get away from him before she burst into tears of pure frustration.

Given that he’d acted as if she was the last person he wanted to spend time with, she didn’t expect him to follow her downstairs, but he showed up in the kitchen about five minutes later to announce, “I’ve taken your luggage up to the bedroom.”

“I could have managed it on my own, but thank you anyway,” she said, laying out the French bread, cold barbecued chicken, olives, heart of palm salad, and mango salsa she’d purchased at the gourmet deli down the street.

He ambled over to inspect the food. “That chicken looks pretty good.”

“Are you hinting you’d like some?” She pulled a chef’s knife and fork from the wooden cutlery block next to the countertop cook surface and slid the chicken from its foil-lined bag to a cutting board.

“If you’re offering, yes. Thanks.” He helped himself to an olive and cast an appraising eye over the changes she’d made in the kitchen. “You’ve been busy. This place almost looks lived in.”

Choosing her words carefully because, although she itched to ask him who owned the apron and hand lotion, she wasn’t about to give him another opportunity to tell her to mind her own business, she said, “It had a somewhat unused look, I thought.”

“Because I’d stored all the china and stuff you left behind, you mean? Not everyone appreciates fine things, Gabriella, and knowing how you value yours and would eventually want to reclaim them, it seemed best not to leave them where they might get damaged.”

She managed an offhand shrug. “But you were always very careful with them…unless, of course, you’re referring to…other people?”

“What you’re really asking is if I ever let another woman loose in here.” He removed two of the wineglasses she’d arranged in the upper cabinet, then strolled behind her to the refrigerator. She heard him rummaging among its contents, and the clink of a bottle tapping the edge of a shelf before he swung the door closed. “Well, as it happens, I did. For about a month, beginning the week after you left.”

Hearing him confirm her worst fears shocked Gabriella into betraying the kind of distress she’d sworn she’d never let him witness in her again. “You mean to say you didn’t even wait until the sheets had grown cold before you let another woman into my bed?” she squeaked, and refusing to vent her outrage where it truly belonged—on him!—she accosted the hapless chicken, wielding the knife with savage intent. “Why doesn’t that surprise me, I wonder?”

“I didn’t say that.” Calmly, he rummaged in one of the drawers for a corkscrew.

“Not in so many words, perhaps, but the implication is clear enough! And so is the evidence!” Brandishing the two-pronged fork, she gestured at the drawer. That drawer! “I saw what’s in there, so don’t bother denying it.”

He laughed. “And what is it that you saw, my dear? A body?”

“Don’t you dare laugh at me!” Hearing her voice threatening to soar to top C, she made a concerted effort to wrestle herself under control. “I found the apron and the hand lotion.”

“Well, as long as you didn’t also find high heels and panty hose, at least you don’t need to worry you’re married to a cross-dresser.”

“Worry? About you?” she fairly screeched, aiming such a wild blow at the chicken carcass that a wing detached itself and slid crazily across the counter. “Let me assure you, Max Logan, that I can find better things to occupy my mind!”

Suddenly, shockingly, he was touching her, coming from behind to close one hand hard around her wrist, while the other firmly removed the knife from her grasp and placed it a safe distance away. “Keep that up and you’ll be hacking your fingers off next.”

“As if you’d care!”

“As a matter of fact, I would. I don’t fancy little bits of you accidentally winding up on my plate.”

“You heartless, insensitive ape!” She spun around, the dismay she’d fought so hard to suppress fomenting into blinding rage. “This is all one huge joke to you, isn’t it? You don’t care one iota about the hurt you inflict on others with your careless words.”

“It’s the hurt you were about to inflict on yourself that concerns me.” As if he were the most domesticated husband on the face of the earth, he pushed her aside and started carving the chicken. “You’re already worried your parents might guess we’re not exactly nuts about each another, without your showing up at the airport tomorrow bandaged from stem to stern and giving them extra cause for concern.”

“Don’t exaggerate. I’m perfectly competent in a kitchen, as you very well know.”

He jerked his head at the unopened bottle of Pouilly Fuissé. “Then make yourself useful and uncork that.”

“Do it yourself,” she snapped, the thought of how quickly he’d taken up with someone else once she’d vacated the scene rankling unbearably. She had honored her wedding vows. Why couldn’t he have done the same?

“Now who’s being unnecessarily hostile?”

She detected marked amusement in his voice. Deciding it was safest to keep her hands busy with something harmless lest she forgot herself so far as to take a meat cleaver to him, she began preparing a tray with plates, cutlery and serviettes. “At least,” she said, “I haven’t given you grounds for divorce.”

“There are some who’d say a wife walking out on her husband is ample grounds for terminating a marriage.”

“Then why haven’t you taken steps to end ours?”

Finished with the chicken, he turned his attention to the wine. “Because we agreed there was no pressing need to formalize matters, especially given your parents’ age, health and religious convictions.” He angled a hooded glance her way. “Unless, of course, you’ve found some urgent reason…?”

“I’m not the one who went out shopping for a replacement within a week and had the bad taste to leave his possessions lying around for you to find!”

“Neither am I, Gabriella,” he said mildly, his mood improving markedly as hers continued to deteriorate. “The woman you perceive to be such a threat was a fifty-nine-year-old housekeeper I hired to come in on a daily basis to keep the place clean and prepare my meals. The arrangement came to an end by mutual agreement after one month because there wasn’t enough to keep her busy and she was a lousy cook. She must have left some of her stuff behind by mistake.”

Feeling utterly foolish, Gabriella muttered, “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

“Because you immediately assumed the worst before I had the chance to explain anything. Now that we’ve cleared up the misunderstanding, though, I suggest you take that pout off your face, smile for a change, and join me in a toast.” He passed a glass of wine to her and lifted the other mockingly. “Here’s to us, my dear wife. May your parents be taken in by appearances as easily as you are, and go home convinced their daughter and son-in-law are living in matrimonial clover!”

Twenty minutes later, they sat at the glass-topped patio table on the west side of the terrace. The Pouilly Fuissé stood neck-deep in a silver wine cooler. A hurricane lamp flickered in a sconce on the wall.

Outwardly, they might have been any of a hundred contented couples enjoying the mild, calm evening. Inwardly, however, Gabriella was a mess. Poking her fork into her barely touched meal, she finally braved the question which had been buzzing around in her mind like an angry wasp from the moment he’d misled her into thinking his housekeeper had been a lover. “Have you really never…been with another woman, Max? Since me, I mean?”

“Why don’t you look at me when you ask that?” he replied in a hard voice.

Because, she could have told him, if she’d dared, it hurts too much. You’re too beautiful, too sexy, too…everything except what I most want you to be, which is mine.

“Gabriella?”

Gathering her courage, she lifted her head and took stock of him, feature by feature. He leaned back in his chair, returning the favor with equal frankness, his eyes a dark, direct blue, his gaze steady.

His hair gleamed black as the Danube on a starless night. His skin glowed deep amber against the stark white of his shirt. He shifted one elbow, a slight movement only, but enough to draw attention to the width of his chest and the sculpted line of his shoulders.

Miserably, she acknowledged that everything about him was perfect—and most assuredly not hers to enjoy. She knew that as well as she knew her own name. Devouring him with her eyes brought her nothing but hopeless regret for what once might have been, and painful longing for something that now never could be.

Nonetheless, she forced herself to maintain her steady gaze and say serenely, “Well, I’m looking, Max, so why don’t you answer the question? Have you been with anyone else?”

He compressed his gorgeous mouth. Just briefly, his gaze flickered. “You want me to tell you I’ve lived like a monk since you ran off to pursue a career?”

“I want you to tell me the truth.”

He shook his head and stared out to where the last faint show of color from the sunset stained the sea a pale papaya-orange. “No, you don’t, Gabriella. As I recall, you’re not on very good terms with honesty and I doubt you’d know how to handle it in this instance.”

She flinched, his reply shooting straight to her heart like a splinter of glass. Normally the most brutally candid man she’d ever met, his evasion amounted to nothing but an admission of guilt delivered as kindly as he knew how.

Unbidden, the night she’d lost her virginity rose up to haunt her, most particularly the exquisite pleasure he’d given her after he’d recovered from the shock of finding her in his bed and before he realized her duplicity. How practiced he’d been in the art of lovemaking; how knowing and generous and patient. And most of all, how passionate!

Had she really supposed all that masculine virility had lain dormant during her absence, or that he’d feel obligated to honor wedding promises he’d made under duress?

If she had, then she was a fool. Because what right had she to expect either when he’d never professed to love her? When she hadn’t a reason in the world to think he might have missed her after she walked out on a marriage which had been a travesty from the start?

But the truth that hurt the most was the realization of how easy it would be to fall under his spell again. His tacit admission that there’d been another woman—possibly even women—was the only thing which pulled her back from the brink. Another minute, a different answer, and she’d have bared her soul to him!

Staggered by her near self-betrayal, she murmured shakily, “I see.”

“I suspect not,” he said, “but the real question is, does it matter to you, one way or the other?”

“Not in the slightest,” she lied, the glass sliver driving deeper into her heart and shattering into a million arrows of pain.

“Should I take your indifference to mean there’ve been other men in your life?”

“No,” she said forthrightly, unwilling to add further deceit to a heap already grown too heavy to bear. “I’ve never once been unfaithful, nor even tempted.”

“Not even by those pretty plastic consorts you team up with in your photo shoots?”

“Certainly not.”

He hefted the bottle from the cooler and splashed more wine in their glasses. “Why should I believe you?”

“Because I’m telling the truth.”

A mirthless smile played over his mouth. “The way you were when you told me you were pregnant? The way you were when you intimated you’d had a string of lovers before me?”

“I’m not that person anymore.”

“Of course you are, Gabriella. People never really change, not deep down inside where it matters. They just pretend to.”

“When did you become so cynical, Max?” she asked him sadly. “Did I do that to you?”

“You?” he echoed cuttingly. “Don’t flatter yourself!”

The pain inside was growing, roaring through her like a fire feeding on itself until there was nothing left but ashes. For all that she’d promised herself she wouldn’t break down in front of him, the scalding pressure behind her eyes signaled how close the tears were, and to her horror she felt her bottom lip quiver uncontrollably.

He noticed. “Don’t you dare!” he warned her, in a low, tense voice, starting up from his chair so violently that its metal legs screeched over the pebbled concrete of the terrace. “Don’t you dare start with the waterworks just because I didn’t give you the answers you came looking for! I know that, in the old days, tears always worked for you, but they aren’t going to get you what you want this time, at least not from me, so save them for some other fool.”

When she first started modeling, there’d been times that she’d found it near impossible to smile for the camera. Days when she’d missed Max so badly, it was all she could do to get out of bed and face another minute without him. Nights when she hadn’t been able to sleep for wanting him, and mornings when she’d used so much concealer to hide the shadows under her eyes that her face had felt as if it were encased in mud.

But she’d learned a lot more in the last eighteen months than how to look good on command. She’d learned discipline, and become expert at closing off her emotions behind the remote elegance which had become her trademark.

She called on that discipline now and it did not fail her. The familiar mask slipped into place, not without effort, she had to admit, but well enough that she was able to keep her dignity intact.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” she said, rising to her feet with fluid, practiced grace, “but I stopped crying over you so long ago that I’ve quite forgotten how.”

“Don’t hand me that. I know what I saw.”

She executed a smooth half turn and tossed her parting remark over one provocatively tilted shoulder. “What you saw was a flicker of regret for the mistakes I’ve made in the past—a passing weakness only because weeping does terrible things to the complexion, especially when one’s face is one’s fortune. Good night, Max. I’ve worked hard enough for one day, so if you’re feeling energetic, you might try loading our plates and cutlery into the dish-washer—always assuming, of course, that you remember how to open it. Oh, and one more thing. Please don’t disturb me when you decide to turn in. I really do need to catch up on my beauty sleep.”

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