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“Have you ever needed to use this?”
“No. But it made sense to build one.”
Confused and intrigued, I nod, watching him move around. He grabs my hand and leads me past another reception room before we reach the kitchen, the heart of the house. It must take up half the square meterage of the ground floor space all on its own. A wall of sliding doors leads to the garden beyond, illuminated by sunken lighting.
“Max, this is beautiful.”
“Do you like it?”
“I love it,” I stress. “Do you back on to the heath?”
“I do.”
“Bet Logan loves living with you.”
Casting another look around, I sigh with happiness. Think of the best kitchen you’ve ever seen in a glossy magazine, and then improve on it tenfold. “You have very good taste,” I compliment. “As a designer I would expect nothing short of stupendous, and this really is the most inspired house.”
“Ava, haven’t you put it together yet?”
I stop. Stare. Frown. “Nooo?” I say, unsure.
He seems to find that amusing, and confounding. “I’ll have to tell marketing to do better.”
As much as I’m not one for unknowns, I decide not to ask anything more because I’m enjoying the mystery, theje ne sais quoiabout this man. But I start to run his surname over and over in my head as he leads me down some low tread stairs. I can smell the chlorine before I see the pool, but it is again, amazing.
“Thirty-metre indoor pool in the basement,” Max announces proudly.
“You do like to swim,” I point out, remembering how he enjoyed early lake swims while I remained snuggled up in bed.
He points out some things regarding towels, a shower and WC, the plant room, and a communication panel on the wall if we need to get hold of him or Jeremy for any reason.
“And there’s a sauna for us right down there,” he clarifies.
We climb the spiral staircase to the first floor where four jaw-dropping bedrooms and three bathrooms can be found. And then we take the stairs to the second floor, a smaller floor plan due to the mansard roof. Here, there’s a spacious master bedroom with a stunning balcony that runs the whole width of the room and overlooking the rear garden.
“This is my office and workshop,” Max says, leading me on yet another heart-soaring adventure. Large ash wood doors, used in all the thresholds I note, lead from the bedroom to his office. But there’s actuallyanotherdoor a metre after the first one, just like the one in the panic room downstairs.
As with everything else, the room is enormous, with space for two large desks each the size of a car. Drawers and cupboards fit underneath, all controlled by an electronic locking system.
“This room locks too,” Max explains, pointing to a familiar-looking control panel. “The same comms system and door operation applies if we need to use it.”
I nod, my mind whirling. It’s always awewith Max and the prospect of that has my heart skipping. And trying to piece together who exactly Max works for, and what he does, has been consuming me for the past several minutes.
I move to the tables. On top of one is a variety of small, intricate-looking tools that I don’t know the names of them. But I can see the extendable magnifying glasses, the bright spot lamps and some polishing cloths. And a laser?
Max nudges me along to the other desk on which lies a huge mood board. It takes me a second to register the pictures, but they’re of me. And several are of me and Max in the hot tub, or by the snowy lake.
“I recently got inspired again,” he says quietly. “I met this incredibly brave, strong woman who captivated me on so many levels. I’ve been busy these past few days working on new projects and ordering materials, and it’s all thanks to you.”
My heart beats erratically, the weight of expectation feeling heavy. “That’s a lovely thought—that I could’ve been helpful in some way.”
“You have. For months I lost my creativity, my spark. But you’ve ignited something and it’s so easy to design at the minute. I have endless ideas and I just need a few more weeks to get them all specced up and drawn.”
“Where are they? Can I see?”
He points to an iMac on a desk by the wall, above which is another mood board with plants and flowers and geometric shapes from the natural world. “This is where I normally get my inspiration: nature and the patterns within nature.”
It must be why he loves being near the heath, I speculate.
