The Master Player

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE rest of the working week passed without any upsetting incident. Chloe felt nervous about doing another shopping trip but she refused to be deterred from it, telling herself that would mean her mother was still dominating her life. She stocked up on her favourite foods and settled happily in the children’s house each night, loving the company of her darling little dog. She saw nothing of Max, which made her even more comfortable with the situation, feeling it proved her mother was totally wrong about his motives for taking her under his protective wing.

Saturday was a glorious day, tempting her outside as soon as she’d done her washing and tidied the house. It was great fun taking her dog for a frolicking walk down to the lower terrace. He had to stop and sniff at everything, yapped wildly at finding a frog, and generally leapt around with the sheer joy of living. Chloe laughed at his antics, vastly amused when he’d tumble over, then quickly stand on stiff legs, looking around suspiciously as though to ask, ‘What did that to me?’ before bounding off again.

She ended up rolling on the grass with him, much to his dancing excitement, and that was how Max came upon them on his way to the boatshed.

‘Hi, there!’ he called, startling Chloe into sitting bolt upright, which caused him to hastily add, ‘Don’t get up. It’s good to see you looking so relaxed and I’m just passing by. It’s such a perfect morning, I thought I’d take the catamaran out on the harbour.’

Like herself, he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and once again Chloe was struck by his awesome physique, her heart skittering, flutters in her stomach. He crouched down, his hands outstretched in open welcome as the puppy bounced across the grass to sniff him.

‘Hi, little fella.’ One hand was licked and Max used the other to scratch behind the dog’s ear, smiling at Chloe as he did so. ‘What did you call him?’

‘Luther.’

‘Luther,’ he repeated in surprise, raising a quizzical eyebrow. ‘That’s a serious name for a playful pup.’

‘It has dignity. He’s only ever going to be little but he thinks he has dignity and I’m giving it to him.’

‘Right!’ Max grinned, highly amused by the idea. ‘I can see that’s important.’

‘And he also reminded me of Martin Luther King.’

Both eyebrows shot up this time and Chloe grinned back at him as she explained, ‘He’s black and white and Martin Luther King fought for desegregation, wanting to bring blacks and whites together.’

‘Ah! You’ve clearly given it a lot of thought.’

‘A name deserves a lot of thought. You’re loaded with it all your life.’ She grimaced. ‘I’ve always hated mine.’

He looked slightly bemused by this and asked, ‘Why?’

She shook her head, not wanting to tell him it was how her mother made such a harsh gutteral sound of it when she was angry. ‘I just don’t like it.’

‘You could have it changed,’ he advised her.

She shrugged. ‘Too late for that. It’s a career name now.’

‘It’s never too late to make changes,’ he said seriously, straightening up and strolling towards her, Luther prancing around his feet. ‘What name would you prefer for yourself?’ he asked curiously.

‘Maria.’ It was soft and had a loving sound to it. ‘Ever since I saw the musical West Side Story, I’ve wished it was mine, though I guess it wouldn’t go so well with Rollins. Not as distinctive as Chloe.’

‘Maria…’ he repeated whimsically.

‘And I ended up marrying a Tony,’ she said with bitter irony. ‘Just goes to show how dreams can lead you astray.’

‘Well, you’ve woken up from that dream now, and Luther will give you more real devotion than your husband did.’ He dropped down on his haunches to pet the pup again. ‘Won’t you, little fella?’

He was right about that. Nothing about Tony’s devotion had been real. But that was behind her now, no point in dwelling on it. She had to look ahead. If she ever married again, she would make sure it was to a man of substance like…

Her gaze fastened on Max, who sprawled back on the grass, laughingly pretending that Luther had knocked him over. The pup leapt onto his chest and madly licked his chin. ‘Save me! Call him off!’ Max appealed to Chloe.

‘Luther, come here!’ she said firmly, and the little dog raced over to her, tail wagging like a windmill. She cuddled him on her lap, settling him down, eyeing Max with amusement as he rolled onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow. ‘I don’t think you needed to be rescued from a miniature fox terrier.’

His dark eyes twinkled teasingly. ‘He was getting a taste for me. He might have gobbled me up.’

She laughed.

He smiled, and this close to her, his smile set off a fountain of buzzing female hormones inside Chloe. He was so attractive, for one wild moment, she fiercely envied Shannah Lian’s intimate relationship with him, wishing she could experience him as a lover. Her mind instantly clamped down on the shockingly wayward thought and sought some normal distraction from it.

‘Did you have a dog when you were a boy, Max?’

The smile turned into a sardonic grimace as he shook his head. ‘The circumstances I lived in then…it wouldn’t have been fair on a dog.’

Not fair on him, either, she thought. A drug-addicted mother would not have given him a stable life.

‘I had a job on Sunday mornings for a while,’ he said reminiscently. ‘Pulling a barrow of newspapers around the neighbourhood, blowing a whistle for people to come out and buy. Their dogs always came out and I made friends with them. They’d follow me down the street until their owners called them back. I always enjoyed doing that paper run.’

‘You’ve come a long way since then,’ Chloe murmured.

‘Yes. And still too much on the move to acquire a dog.’

Or a wife.

She wondered if those early years with his mother had taught him not to get attached to anyone or anything, to count only on himself. But this place had called to him.

‘You have a home now,’ she said.

‘A home to come home to. I travel a lot, Chloe.’

‘Do you ever get tired of it…the travelling?’ she asked curiously.

‘The flights can be tedious. Australia is a long way from anywhere else. But I like having the world as my playground. Not being limited.’

She sighed. ‘You make me realise how limited my world has been. I haven’t even been outside this country. My mother always had more work lined up for me, hardly ever a break.’

‘You can change that, too.’

Yes, she could. Freedom was a powerful thing if she learnt to use it wisely.

‘Have you ever been sailing, Chloe?’

‘No.’

‘Then come out on the catamaran with me,’ he invited, his dark eyes challenging her to take on a new experience. ‘We’ll only be gone an hour or two and Eric will mind Luther. He’s up on your terrace trimming the hedge.’

Max watched temptation war with caution. She wanted to accept, but undoubtedly her mother had fed her fears about being alone with the big, bad shark. The dog had made this little encounter safe, put her at ease, but without Luther…

She turned her gaze to the harbour. Her chin lifted slightly. Then with an air of self-determination, she looked back at him and said, ‘You’ll have to tell me what to do.’

‘You don’t have to do anything except sit or lie on the deck and enjoy skimming across the water,’ he assured her, smiling as he pushed himself onto his feet. ‘While you fix Luther up with Eric, I’ll take the catamaran out to the wharf, ready for you to board.’

There was eager delight on her face as she scrambled up from the grass. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

‘No hurry. Get a hat, too, and put on some sun-block cream.’

‘Okay.’

Max felt a zing of triumphant satisfaction as he headed down to the boatshed. Stephanie Rollins was fast losing her influence on Chloe. Which was all to the good. He wanted her to feel free, to make choices for herself, and she’d just chosen to be with him, despite the witch’s warnings.

Once they were out in the harbour, Max realised winning had its downside. He had the exhilarating pleasure of watching Chloe’s uninhibited joy in the speedy ride across the water, her laughter when waves splashed over the hull, leaving them both dripping wet. She didn’t care about how she looked. She simply loved all the sensations of sailing. And it stoked Max’s desire for her to the point of severe physical discomfort.

Several times he had to turn away from her, focus fiercely on manipulating the sail, changing the cat’s direction, waiting until the tension in his groin eased. His baggy shorts gave him some cover but not enough after they’d got wet, and it certainly didn’t help that Chloe’s damp clothes clung to every luscious curve of her body.

He couldn’t remember ever being on fire for a woman to this extent. He wanted to lick the salt water from her beautiful face, taste her laughter, peel off her clothes, bury his face in her breasts, suck the nipples that were poking out at him so teasingly, bury himself so deeply inside her nothing else would matter-all-consuming sex, devouring all the reasons why they shouldn’t have it.

He knew she wasn’t immune to his sexual attraction. The occasional sharp intake of breath, the quick look away, the self-conscious curling up of her long, bare legs-all revealing little actions. The big question was-would she fight what she wanted with him, or welcome it?

Risky business.

Rushing into it might break her trust in him.

But it was damned difficult to hold himself back.

At least another week, he told himself. Keep building the chemistry between them, breaking down the mental barriers, issuing tempting invitations, which would seem simply companionable, no reason to refuse-no reasonable reason.

‘Had fun?’ he asked as he brought the catamaran in beside the wharf, grabbing the ladder to hold the craft steady for Chloe to get off.

She glowed at him. ‘It was brilliant, Max. Thank you so much.’

He grinned. ‘Hungry work, sailing. Like to join me for lunch by the pool after you’ve cleaned up?’

Again the hesitation.

He pushed, teasingly adding, ‘We can feed Luther tit-bits under the table.’

Including the dog sealed it.

She laughed. ‘He loves chicken.’

‘I’ll ask Elaine to make us chicken caesar salads.’

‘That would be great. You’ll have two eager guests.’

‘Glad to have the company.’

Chloe told herself it was stupid to deny herself the pleasure of his company. He was a brilliant, fascinating man. The powerful tug of his strong masculinity would affect any woman. It wasn’t special to her. She just had to learn to deflect it, concentrate on their conversation. This was a chance to learn more about him and his life and she wanted to know how he’d managed the journey he’d taken to here, what it took to become the man he was.

It was the right decision to go. The lunch was delicious. Max was totally relaxed, enjoying Luther’s appetite for chicken as well as his own. Chloe had tied a sarong over her swimming costume, and relieved of being over-conscious of her body in his presence, she relaxed, too. Max had already been in the pool for a swim when she’d arrived and had a towel tucked around his waist-a decent enough covering to allay the unsettling awareness of his body.

Luther curled up on one of the lounges and went to sleep while they lingered at the table, finishing off the bottle of wine Edgar had brought with their lunch. Chloe screwed up her courage to do some probing into Max’s background, telling herself it was okay if he rebuffed her. He had a right to his privacy. She could apologise and backtrack into neutral subjects.

‘Max, I know your mother died of a drug overdose when you were sixteen. You must have been through worse things than me in your growing up years,’ she started off, her eyes earnestly appealing for his forbearance when she saw the shutting down of all expression on his face. ‘I just want to know how you moved past it.’

He turned his gaze away from her, eyelids lowered to half-mast. For several tense moments, Chloe sensed him brooding over whether to answer her or not, his mind travelling back to the past, sifting through it, weighing up whether he was prepared to reveal anything. When he finally spoke, it was in a very dry, dismissive tone.

‘When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. You move on because there’s no alternative.’ He looked back at her, his eyes very dark and intense. ‘You have the harder road to travel, Chloe. You know there’s someone you can retreat to if you find it too difficult. That may weaken your resolve to move on.’

‘I’ll never go back to my mother,’ she said vehemently, knowing she had been weak not to make the break before this. The feeling of being hopelessly trapped in a relentless cycle of demands was gone now, thanks to Max.

He smiled. ‘I hope not. Today I’ve seen a vitality in you that was missing when you were yourself, not playing a role for the camera.’

He made her feel more alive than she’d ever been. This wasn’t make-believe, escaping from reality. It was how she actually felt here and now. ‘Did you daydream as a kid, Max?’-escaping his realities?

‘No. I watched television. I absorbed television. I didn’t have a normal bed-time and it blocked out my mother’s crazy stuff. I’d sit there working out why one show had more popular appeal than another. Was it the storyline? Was it the actors? Was it the camera work? What would I do to make it better?’ His eyes twinkled in mocking amusement at having turned a bad time into something good. ‘Probably the best preparation for what I do now-judging what viewers will like and what they won’t, getting the right cast and the right crew to give a show optimum appeal.’

‘But you didn’t start off in television,’ Chloe remarked, puzzled that he hadn’t headed straight for it, given his intense interest.

He shook his head. ‘I didn’t want to be an odd-job boy at a television studio, which was all I could have been in that industry at sixteen.’

‘You might have been cast in a show if you’d tried out for one.’ He certainly had the male x-factor that was very marketable in television.

‘I didn’t want to be an actor. I wanted to run the show, Chloe, be in control.’

Master of his own fate, she thought. Had the drive for control been born in him or was it a reaction to the out-of-control life his mother had led? Her own life had been so overwhelmingly controlled, any overt rebellion crushed by abusive tirades, she’d lost the spirit to even try for any control. Until Max had stepped in. She fiercely resolved to be mistress of her own fate after she left here.

‘Getting a job at a publishing house was a stepping stone to the big picture,’ he went on. ‘It was the same field-selling stories, appealing to what people wanted whether it was fiction or non-fiction. I made it to marketing manager by the time I was eighteen. Which opened doors for me to get where I wanted to be.’

Chloe didn’t know his exact age-somewhere in his late thirties. It was an amazing accomplishment to have risen from nothing to a billionaire television baron. ‘It must give you a tremendous sense of satisfaction, having achieved the wealth and power to choose what shows you want to produce,’ she remarked admiringly.

‘Mmm…’Ruthless purpose flashed into his eyes. ‘My way.’

‘Like getting me for the lead role in this show,’ she murmured, remembering what he’d told her. ‘You didn’t care how much my mother haggled over the contract.’

His mouth quirked and the expression in his eyes simmered into something else-something that made her heart skip and sent tingles along every nerve. ‘I wanted you,’ he said.

On the surface it was a professional comment but it didn’t feel like one. She quickly lowered her gaze and covered her inner confusion by picking up her almost empty glass of wine and slowly finishing it off. Was she hearing what she wanted to hear, seeing what she wanted to see? Max was in a relationship with another woman-a stunningly beautiful woman who was probably as self-assured as he was. Why would a man like him find a lame duck like herself desirable?

Apart from which, she shouldn’t be excited by the idea that the attraction she felt with him was returned. It made her situation here perilously close to her mother’s nasty reading of it. Although Max had made no move on her. Not even the suggestion of a move. They were just talking. Which was what she should be doing instead of thinking.

‘What was your favourite show when you were a boy, Max?’ she asked, forcing herself to look at him with curious interest.

‘M*A*S*H,’ he answered without hesitation. ‘The script was brilliant, the cast of characters was brilliantly balanced, the acting was superb, and it could make you laugh and cry and tug at every emotion in between. I loved that show.’

Love…she could hear it in his voice and wondered if he’d ever loved a woman with the same fervour, loving everything about her.

‘Did it get to you, too?’ he asked.

Chloe had to drag her mind back to the conversation. She shook her head. ‘I’ve never seen it. My mother dictated what I watched.’

He grimaced, then looked consideringly at her. ‘Would you like to see some of it? I have the whole collection of M*A*S*H in my library. I could give you the first season’s episodes to watch and if you enjoy them…’

‘Yes, please.’ Chloe jumped up eagerly, seizing the opportunity to end the foolish meandering in her mind. ‘Could we go and get the discs now, Max? The activity this morning and the wine over lunch…I’m feeling drowsy so I want to head off for an afternoon nap. But I’d love to see what you saw in M*A*S*H when I wake up.’

He nodded agreeably, rising from his chair, and she quickly collected Luther, who was still asleep. The excursion to Max’s library only took ten minutes. It was an amazing library, the shelves more stocked with CD discs of movies and television shows than books, although there were stacks of them, as well. Max moved straight to the M*A*S*H collection, handed her a set of discs and invited her to exchange them for others anytime she liked. Chloe thanked him and quickly took her leave.

She was tired and she did go to sleep, driving off the madly mixed-up thoughts of Max by reading a book until her eyelids drooped. Luther’s yapping woke her, the insistent noise bringing her slowly out of deep slumber. She rolled over on the bed, intending to scoop the dog up to cuddle him back into silence, then realised the yapping was coming from the living room.

Frowning over what might have disturbed the little dog, she pushed herself off the bed, automatically re-covering herself with the silk kimono she’d donned for her afternoon siesta and tying the belt securely as she walked out of the bedroom.

And stopped dead.

A face was peering through the glass panes of the front door, a face she never wanted to see again-the face of Tony Lipton!