AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Maya’s glance was far away for a moment as memories of that liaison came flooding back. ‘He was all the things I thought I’d ever wanted in a man. Then one day I received a text from him…an intimate, private message—the sort of thing that a man sends to the woman he loves. Only it wasn’t for me…he’d sent it to me accidentally. That was the day I discovered he was having an affair with somebody else.’
Swallowing hard at the aching memory of yet again being betrayed by someone she’d trusted, Maya reached up to curl a few silken black strands of hair behind her ear. ‘My friends said I should have seen the signs. But people also say that love makes you blind, don’t they? Anyway, I didn’t see them—the signs, I mean. I stupidly believed everything he said and I paid for it. I rang him straight away and told him I never wanted to see him again. I didn’t. Clearly the other woman meant much more to him than I did.’
‘That’s tough. I’m sorry you had to find out the truth in such a crass way,’ Blaise commented thoughtfully, slowly twisting the stem of his crystal wine glass between long fingers as he regarded her. ‘But better that you found out his true character sooner rather than later.’
‘And what about you as far as relationships are concerned?’ Maya dared, watching how the candlelight cast some of his amazing sculpted features into shadow and the others into mesmerising relief—including the sexy little dimple that cleaved into his chin. Sensing that guard of his descend almost immediately, she half expected him not to tell her, and she couldn’t help but feel a little crushed that he would withhold such information after what she’d just revealed about her ex.
A sickening fear arose inside that he would turn out to be some kind of international playboy, with a woman in every port, and that he would break her heart. But what if she could steel her heart against full-blooded involvement with Blaise? What if she could accept a short-term affair instead? An affair with no expectations on her part other than more of the scalding passion she had enjoyed earlier? What then?
‘My most enduring relationship has always been with my work,’ he answered, with not a small touch of his trademark irony in his tone. Before continuing he drained the rest of the shimmering ruby wine in his glass. ‘I’ve always adored women…but as yet I’ve never found one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.’
‘Did you even want to?’ Maya questioned unhappily, suddenly knowing that, for Blaise, the notion of happy ever after with a woman he adored was probably not even on the agenda, if the truth be known. Now she considered again the possibility that he was one of those men who liked to play the field, to have his cake and eat it, as the old saying went.
And why wouldn’t he when he moved in the kind of circles where beautiful available women must be ten a penny? The small corner of Maya’s heart that had started to blossom beneath his kind words and sexy attention started to close up again—like a flower denied sunlight—and the sensation of an icy breeze rippled through her instead…even though she’d already tried to resign herself to a brief affair with him.
Sensing the downturn in her mood, Blaise smiled coaxingly at her. ‘Come on, Maya. Let’s not spoil this thing we have between us already.’ Frustration edged his tone.
‘Oh?’ she pushed to her feet, too upset to stay sitting. ‘And what is this “thing” we have between us, exactly…recreational sex? Of course…how could I forget?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
S HE’D left the table before Blaise could fully register the fact.
‘Damn!’ What had he said to make her act so unreasonably? He didn’t like the way he was suddenly feeling: as if he were one of those despicable men that had jerked her around—and he included her tragic father in that list. He’d been perfectly up-front from the start, hadn’t he? Even though he’d offered her the job as his temporary research assistant he’d made it crystal-clear that he desired her too, so what was she getting upset about? Covering his face with his hands, Blaise swore softly.
Minutes later, he found himself standing outside Maya’s bedroom for the second time that evening. As he rapped on the door, he was genuinely shocked at what a heightened state of emotion he was in. Not since he was a child, witnessing that first terrible row where his father had hit his mother across the face, had he felt so affected. God! What was the matter with him? He’d become expert over the years at disguising his feelings, and sometimes wondered if he hadn’t done too good a job. Most of the women he’d had relationships with had all but despaired that he was even capable of experiencing emotion, yet here he was, turned every which way imaginable because of the woman whose room he now waited outside.
