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“Of course. Anna, don’t you remember…must have been, oh…it was the year you went to school.”
And what a horrid year that had been. “But you never told me.”
“You were so unhappy, and your father and I thought it best not to give you a reason to come home.”
She waved that away even though her mother wasn’t there. “I will ignore the fact you didn’t want your one and only child home with you, but why didn’t anyone tell me about it later?”
“I don’t know.” She heard the shrug in her mother’s voice. “I think by the time you returned, so upset things hadn’t turned out the way you wanted, we just didn’t say anything. Hank cut back. Max took over. Easy as that.”
“Max was what, twenty-three?”
“Just turned twenty-four. And you know Max, he insisted. If it wasn’t because of such a horrible thing, Max would have thrown a huge party because he’d been chomping at the bit to take over. Because of that, Charise wasn’t really excited over Cynthia.”
“I’m getting the feeling that more than one person feels that way.”
“Oh, she’s a nice enough girl, considering her father, but her whole life would have been wrapped up in being an executive’s wife. Max’s need to please, to make sure she was happy, would override everything. Charise has always said that Max is too much like his father, including in this.”
“Hmm, well, he seems to be taking it okay. He came over that night, we had a mutual breakup party.”
And then really hot sex. But her mother didn’t need to know that part.
“Mutual breakup? So you and Brent the writer broke up?”
Anna ground her teeth at the question. Instead of correcting her mother on her ex-boyfriend’s name, Anna just went on with the conversation.
“Yeah. Anyway, we had margaritas and enchiladas. Max is doing fine.”
“Okay. That’s good because I really didn’t want to come up there. The drive from Pensacola gets longer each time.”
Anna breathed a sigh of relief at that. Her parents in town, Max on a mission, and the gossip would be too much. It was guaranteed to be an explosive situation.
“Is there anything else, Mama? I’ve got to get some orders in before the lunch crowd hits.”
After she hung up with her mother, Anna’s mind started working overtime. All her suspicions had been confirmed by that phone call. Max did have an overblown sense of doing the right thing.
Twenty-four. Although she was older than that now, she couldn’t imagine taking over a family business at that age, not one as big as the Chandlers. It was one of the biggest employers in the area so if it failed, so did the economy for their little town. And to have no choice because of his father’s health…
She would not be an obligation. Not that in Max’s mind that was how he phrased it. He’d been running the show since the start, and it was time she took back control. After grabbing her purse, she told Myra she had some errands to run. The main one being teaching a certain Maxwell Thurston Chandler that he wasn’t the only one who had some power.
* * *
Max was lookingover a proposal for a new ad campaign when Jeanine buzzed in.
She was laughing as she said, “Anna’s here to see you, Max.”
Delight and warmth spread through him. Anna had been trying to avoid his office since they started sleeping together, worried about the image. Which, again, was odd for her. Anna rarely worried about what people thought of her.
“Send her in.”
Anna walked in, offering him a secret smile as she made her way to his desk, and around it to him, resting her rear against the edge. She was dressed in a spandex orange T-shirt that had the name of her restaurant on the front, and another of her full broomstick skirts. He remembered watching her dress that morning, feeling a sense of satisfaction that he’d been there to witness her private female rituals.
“How’s work been?”
He took her hand, tangling her fingers with his. “Okay. Just looking over some boring paperwork. How was business this morning?”
“Not too bad, busy as usual.” She was still smiling at him, her eyes filled with warm mischief that had his body heating.
She pushed away from the desk and pulled him up out of the chair. Without pausing to say a word, she slid her hand behind his head and dragged him down for a wet, open-mouthed kiss. Her tongue slipped inside, tangled with his. He could taste her, the coffee she’d had and a bit of mint. That one kiss sent his mind spinning and his cock twitching. The scent of her drove him insane, coffee beans and wildflowers.
