Читать книгу Hot Nights with the...Australian - Nicola Marsh - Страница 14

AS Chloe stared at him in stunned disbelief, Tony caught sight of her and with an air of triumphant satisfaction, stepped back, his hand reaching for the door-knob, which turned because she hadn’t switched on the locking mechanism. It had completely slipped her mind—being with Max, thinking of Max. Apart from which, she was supposed to be safe on Max’s property.

The door opened and Tony was in before Chloe could do or say anything to stop him. ‘I wasn’t sure I had the right place with that damned dog here,’ he said, casting a malevolent look at Luther, who was still yapping and jumping at his legs as though to drive him out again.

Good dog, Chloe thought, wishing she had the physical strength to evict her highly unwelcome husband. ‘You have no right to be in this house, Tony,’ she threw at him in bitter resentment.

He glowered at her. ‘You’re still my wife, and Maxa-million-bucks Hart has no right to come between us.’

‘You didn’t mind Laura Farrell coming between us.’

He waved a sharply dismissive hand. ‘That was nothing.’

‘I don’t call a baby nothing.’

He rearranged his expression to apologetic appeal. ‘If you’ll just hear me out, Chloe …’

‘I don’t want to listen to another pack of lies from you. Which is why I took up Max’s offer of this house. What I would like to know is how you got past his security.’

He smirked. ‘I came by boat, snuck under his wharf to avoid triggering any alarm, climbed up the rock breakwater and beat his bloody security.’

‘Then I’d advise you to leave the same way or I’ll call the main house and you’ll get charged with trespassing.’

‘You won’t call anyone, Chloe.’ He moved quickly to stand between her and the telephone, which he must have spotted on the kitchen bench. He held up both hands in a non-threatening gesture. ‘I just want to talk with you. Given the years we’ve had together, I think I deserve the chance to …’

‘No!’ she cut in decisively, determined not to be moved by any persuasion he tried. ‘Our marriage is over, Tony. I won’t change my mind about that no matter what you say.’

The hands turned palm out in appeal. ‘I know you’re upset and you have good reason to be, but …’ He huffed and frowned down at Luther, who’d ceased yapping to sink his teeth into one of Tony’s trouser legs and was trying to tug him towards the door. ‘Will you call this son of a bitch off? He’s ruining my trousers.’

‘I do not appreciate your calling my dog nasty names. He’s simply doing his best to protect me from an intruder and I don’t give a damn about your trousers,’ she said, folding her arms belligerently. ‘It’s you who should call this off and go, Tony.’

‘Your dog?’ He looked sharply at her. ‘Since when did you acquire a dog?’

‘Since I walked away from the people who didn’t want me to have a pet. Namely you and my mother.’

‘It’s not practical for you to have a pet,’ he argued.

‘Not practical for me to have a baby, either.’

Recognising that appeasement was his only favourable course in the face of proven infidelity, he backed down, hands lifted in surrender this time. ‘Okay … okay …’ He tried one of his winning smiles. ‘It’s fine by me if you want to keep the dog. Look … I’ll make friends with him. What’s his name?’

Chloe did not back down. Nothing on earth would make her back down. ‘You don’t need to know his name. You’re not going to be part of his life.’

Tony ignored this assertion and crouched down, arranging his face in an indulgent expression as he reached out to pat Luther. ‘Hello, little guard-dog,’ he crooned. ‘You’re doing a good job but you’ve got the wrong guy. I’m a friend.’

Luther had great instincts. He didn’t believe Tony for a second. He growled at being touched by the enemy, released the trouser leg, snapped his head around and sunk his teeth into Tony’s wrist.

‘Bloody hell! He bit me!’ It was a cry of angry outrage.

Serve him right, Chloe thought with vicious satisfaction, trying to fool a dog like he’d thought he’d fooled her throughout their marriage. The blinkers had fallen off her eyes long ago on that score. No way could Tony charm her into believing anything or doing anything for him anymore.

But it was she who cried out as he shook Luther off, grabbed the dog’s wildly squirming body, strode to the door, yanked it open, hurled the little terrier outside and closed the door on him. She flew at Tony, fists beating at his chest as he stood in front of the door, preventing her from reversing his action.

‘How dare you treat Luther like that, you rotten bully!’ she yelled at him. ‘Get out of my way! Get out of my life!’

‘You’ve completely lost the plot, Chloe!’ he fiercely retorted, grabbing her wrists to stop the pummelling. ‘Calm down! All I want is a civilised conversation without a rabid dog distracting us and that’s what we’re going to have.’

‘Let me go!’ she screamed, struggling to pull out of his hold.

He forcibly hauled her over to the sofa and flung her onto it. ‘Sit there and shut up!’ he commanded, all primed to prevent her from moving, glaring down at her with meanly narrowed eyes.

Chloe obeyed, frightened he might do her worse violence if she tried to escape him. She sat still and retreated into grim silence, staring stonily at him as he pulled one of the rockers around so he could sit in face-to-face confrontation with her. Fear was pounding through her heart but she refused to show it. Tony’s behaviour was utterly contemptible. Yet the sense of being trapped again was eating at her mind, and all she could think of was how much she needed to be rescued.

Luther was madly yapping outside.

Was Eric still working somewhere in the grounds?

Would he hear the little dog’s distress and wonder?

But it wasn’t Eric her mind fixed on. She wanted Max to come—Max, her white knight, who’d been standing between her and her dragons, keeping them away.

Max decided the only way to get rid of this continually niggling frustration over Chloe was with a burst of intense physical activity—swim twenty lengths of the pool without a pause. It might also cool down the long-simmering desire she hadn’t wanted to know about. He kept remembering her reaction when he’d let her see it, the swift lowering of her eyes, the agitated reach for her glass of wine, then seizing the first reasonable opportunity to part from his company.

She wasn’t ready for him and Max wasn’t used to waiting. In the ordinary course of events, the women he connected with were only too eager to get into bed with him. No reservations at all. The problem was this situation was not ordinary. The connection was there with Chloe. He didn’t doubt that for a second. But she clearly had emotional issues, which were making her shy away from acknowledging the sexual buzz between them, let alone showing pleasure in it.

Did it frighten her?

Did she think it was too soon after her husband’s defection to be feeling anything towards another man?

Max didn’t give a hoot how scandalous an affair between them might be, but it could be worrying Chloe. Though surely she realised he would look after her, and on a purely practical level, there were many advantages in being attached to him. It certainly wouldn’t do her career any harm. He could find the best roles for her to play, take her places she’d never been, show her the world and show her to the world.

Unfortunately he suspected she didn’t have a worldly streak in her, and she was certainly not driven by ambition, which made her very different to most of the women he met. He’d recognised that from the start and found it very appealing. She’d been used, and suffered so much from it she’d never use anyone else to push her own barrow. He couldn’t change her feelings in that regard and didn’t want to. He just wanted … her.

Too much.

Too soon.

He headed out to the pool. The heat of the day was lingering on. Maybe Chloe would feel hot after her nap and come up for a swim. He wanted her so badly even a limited encounter with her was better than nothing. He’d no sooner stepped out on the pool patio than he heard Luther yapping in frantic ferocity for a little dog.

Something was wrong. Max instantly broke into a fast stride under the columned pergola that led to the steps down to the next terrace. It had been a bad summer for snakes. Eric had spotted a few on the property—harmless green tree snakes—but it didn’t mean there weren’t any red-bellied black ones around. Or a deadly brown one. Terriers were renowned for going after snakes. If Luther got bitten …

But why wasn’t Chloe calling him off? Surely she hadn’t let the dog out alone. He was only a pup—eight weeks old. Yet there was no sound from her. This felt like a bad scene. Adrenaline was pumping through him as the guest house came into view. Luther was clawing at the front door in a desperate frenzy. No Chloe in sight.

Max bounded down the steps. Luther didn’t even register his approach. The little dog’s attention was totally fixed on whatever was going on inside the house. Had Chloe fainted, collapsed, knocked herself out somehow?

A sense of urgency drove him into running to the front door, hand reaching instantly for the knob, testing if it was locked. It wasn’t. It turned. Both he and Luther burst into the living room, the dog belting straight for the man leaping up from one of the rocking chairs. Chloe was huddled on the far corner of the sofa, her face lighting with huge relief at seeing him.

The man turned, scowling at Luther, his expression sliding to angry defiance as he saw Max.

Tony Lipton!

With her husband distracted from her, Chloe pushed up from the sofa, ran around the chair he had occupied and threw herself at Max, who was only too happy to curl a protective arm around her and hold her close, so close he could feel the agitated rise and fall of her lovely soft breasts and the rapid thumping of her heart. He rubbed his cheek against her silky hair—too tempting not to—and glared at Tony Lipton over her head, hating him for having had an intimate relationship with Chloe and not even valuing it enough to care about her.

‘How did you get here?’ he demanded.

Chloe answered in a wild rush. ‘He came by boat, Max, and he threw Luther out and forced me to sit down and listen to him. I tried to make him go, but …’

‘Forced?’ Anger surged, the urge to punch out Tony Lipton rising to flash-point.

Fear flickered in the other man’s eyes. ‘Oh, for God’s sake! She’s making a drama out of nothing. I just wanted to talk to her,’ he jeered dismissively. ‘I have a right to, as her husband.’

‘No-one has the right to abuse someone else’s rights,’ Max shot back at him contemptuously, reining in the wildly violent streak this situation had tapped. Control had been the key to the life he had achieved for himself, gaining it, holding it, never letting it slip. That something about Chloe was affecting his judgement, stirring feelings that made him a stranger to himself—jealousy, hatred, savagery. He sternly checked himself and spoke with icy control. ‘This is my property. Chloe is my guest. She wants you to leave and I will not have that wish disregarded.’

‘A lot more than a guest by the look of it,’ came the rash retort, his eyes raking over Max’s almost naked body, belligerently ignoring the aggression he was inciting.

It was suddenly clear to Max that Tony wanted to goad him into a physical fight regardless of any injury to himself, wanted to make an accusation of assault, milk another sensational story out of the situation. No way was Max about to oblige him. He wouldn’t lower himself to gutter behaviour no matter what the provocation.

‘Get out, Tony. Get out while the going is still good. You can’t stop me from calling the police and having you charged for trespass, and if you continue to stalk Chloe, I’ll have a court order issued to legally prevent you from coming anywhere near her. It won’t be her name or mine dragged through mud. It will be yours.’

Tony’s hands clenched into fists. He glowered at Max, hating his power, wanting to somehow bring him down. ‘Chloe is my wife,’ he said as though that exonerated his behaviour.

Chloe twisted around to hurl her own response at him. ‘I told you our marriage is over. I’m never coming back to you. Never!’

‘Because he’s filled your head with other options,’ he yelled back at her, shaking an accusing finger at Max. ‘You’re a fool to trust him, Chloe. Once he’s had what he wants from you, he’ll dump you like he dumps all his women.’

‘I don’t care!’ she snapped. ‘He gives me what I need, and even if it is only a short-term thing, I’d rather be with him than you.’

Elation spilled through Max’s mind. She had just made an active choice. He’d won. All he had to do now was get rid of the hanging-on husband.

‘Give it up, Tony,’ he tersely advised. ‘You’re in a no-win situation. Leave now or I’ll call the police.’

Luther, who’d lined himself up with Max and Chloe, growled his own warning.

Tony turned his vitriol onto him. ‘Bloody dog!’

Luther charged, teeth bared to take a chunk of the enemy. Tony kicked him viciously right across the room. Chloe screamed and ran to check the little dog for injury.

Max’s control snapped. With Chloe’s scream reverberating through his head and outrage at the callous cruelty to a little pup pumping through his heart, he took one step forward and king-hit Tony Lipton on the jaw. The sight of him, sprawled on the floor near the door, still despoiling the children’s house that should have been a safe refuge, could not be borne. Max grabbed the back of his shirt collar and dragged him outside, dropping him on the lawn before quickly returning to the living room to see how Luther was.

‘Do we need to call a vet?’ he asked Chloe, who was cradling the little dog on her lap.

‘I don’t think anything’s broken,’ she answered anxiously. ‘I think he just tumbled, Max.’

‘I’ll look him over as soon as I get back from dumping Tony in his boat.’

‘You needn’t dump him gently,’ she said with vehement feeling.

A fierce exhilaration zinged through Max as he headed back to her decisively ex-husband, who had managed to draw himself up on his hands and knees, shaking his head dazedly. It might not have been a wise move, punching out Tony Lipton, but he couldn’t bring himself to regret it. Justice had been served, albeit in a primitive fashion, and he’d certainly not damaged himself in Chloe’s eyes.

He grabbed Tony’s collar again and the waistband of his trousers, lifted him onto his feet, and began frog-marching him across the lawn to the steps leading to the bottom terrace.

‘Let me go! Let me go!’ he gurgled, arms flailing as he tried to balance himself.

‘You used force on Chloe and force on her dog. Have a taste of it yourself,’ Max said, using unrelenting strength to push him along.

‘I’ll get you for this! You’ve broken my jaw.’

‘No witnesses,’ Max mocked.

‘Chloe …’

‘Will not testify on your behalf. You kicked her dog.’

They reached the steps and Tony struggled against Max’s grip. ‘All right! All right! I’m going! Just get your hands off me.’

‘Okay. But try anything stupid and I’ll throw you down the entire flight.’

Max let him stumble down the steps by himself, following to ensure Tony did, in fact, leave the property. He’d tied his boat to a pole at the base of the wharf—a small hired outboard motorboat—hidden by the rock breakwater. Max watched him clamber into it, untie the rope, start the motor and head out into the harbour. Neither man said goodbye.

Max waited until the boat was completely out of sight. He didn’t think Tony Lipton would be returning in a hurry. Nevertheless, he made a mental note to have the security system tightened up on his harbour frontage. There should not have been a loophole for an intruder to scramble through. He’d failed Chloe on that count. If she now felt unsafe in the guest house, would she be willing to move into the mansion with him?

One step at a time, Max told himself. He had to get back to her now, seize whatever advantage he could from the positive flow of emotion towards him—ride the wave of opportunity.

He’d taken quite a few steps before it struck him he’d be breaking his own rules if he invited Chloe to share his own living quarters. In all his relationships with women, he’d never co-habited with any one of them, consciously avoiding any claim of a de facto wife partnership that could demand a financial settlement at the end of the affair. He hadn’t wanted a wife, hadn’t wanted a woman to fill that role in his life and he’d always made that quite clear.

That special something about Chloe was blurring all the rules that made his life what it had become. He’d just acted completely out of character. He should be appalled at his loss of control, not savouring the satisfaction it had given him. Life with his mother had been chaos and he’d hated it. Order, logic, a sane approach to everything … that was his safety net. He had to move with care where Chloe was concerned. Satisfying his desire for her was one thing, leading into an area of heavy commitment quite another.

But the only future he had to think of right now was this time with her and he was going to make the most of it.