Grand Passion (12 page)

Max was making it clear that he wanted to take her to bed.

It was a subtle form of seduction. Since that one kiss in the solarium, there had been no overt moves from Max. But Cleo could feel the mesmerizing desire in him whenever he was in the same room. It flowed over her and around her, enthralling her as nothing else had ever done.

Usually Cleo sought out the calm of the meditation center after one of the unpleasant dreams, but this afternoon she had come here to think about Max.

She gazed into the large yellow crystal that was the only object in the room and knew that she had reached a turning point in her life.

The crystal caught the pale light of the cloudy day and glowed a soft, warm gold. Cleo stared into the amber depths and thought about the past and the future.

She had always been very certain that if and when the right man showed up in her life, he would fall in love with her just as she would fall in love with him. She had been sure that the bond would be there between them from the moment their eyes met.

But Max Fortune knew very little about love and probably trusted the emotion even less.

He did, however, know a great deal about desire.

Soon, Cleo knew, she would have to make a choice. She could either surrender to the powerful sensual thrall of desire that Max was forging, or she could draw back to the safe place within herself.

She could draw back and wait
.

Wait for what? she wondered. There would be no other man like Max. He was the man in the mirror.

But she had created the mirror, she reminded herself. The only things she saw in the glass were the things she, herself, projected into it.

The truth was that when she looked into the mirror of her mind and heart, she never saw a clear reflection of the man for whom she waited. Yet she was sure that Max was that man.

Earlier this afternoon she had confronted the fact that she was very probably in love with him.

The incident that had triggered the knowledge was a small one, but it had had a devastating impact on Cleo. It had made her realize that she had reached a point of no return.

It had all come about innocently enough. Sylvia had been busy when the time came to pick Sammy up from kindergarten. Max had offered to fetch him. Cleo had invited herself along for the trip because she had wanted to pick up some things at the drugstore in town.

She and Max arrived at Sammy's school a few minutes early and sat in the Jaguar in the parking lot, waiting for the children to come pouring out of the gate.

“One of us is always very careful to be here when Sammy gets out of school,” Cleo had explained. “He gets very anxious if there's no one waiting.”

“I see,” Max said. He rested one arm on the wheel and watched the school entrance.

At that moment the door opened, and a dozen screaming kindergarteners dressed in rain coats and hoods raced out onto the sidewalk. Cleo spotted Sammy in his little yellow slicker. The boy was scanning the cluster of waiting vehicles, searching for his mother's car or, perhaps, Cleo's familiar red Toyota. He didn't recognize the green Jaguar immediately. His small face crumpled with alarm.

“He doesn't see us,” Cleo said. She reached for the door handle.

“I'll let him know we're here.” Max opened his door and got out.

Sammy saw him at once and broke into a happy, relieved grin. He dashed toward the Jaguar, heedless of the rain puddles. Max opened the back door.

“Hi, Max,” Sammy said as he scrambled into the back seat.

“Hi, Sammy.”

Sammy looked at Cleo. “Hi, Cleo.”

“Hi, kid.” Cleo turned in the front seat to smile at him. “How was school?”

“It was okay.” Sammy opened a folder. “We made pictures. I did one for you, Max. Here.” He removed a crayon drawing and held it out to Max.

Cleo realized that she was holding her breath. She knew in a moment of stunning clarity that if Max failed to properly appreciate Sammy's picture, he was the wrong man for her. It was that simple.

Max eased himself slowly back behind the wheel and closed his door. He took the crayon drawing without comment and examined it for a long moment.

Silence filled the Jaguar.

Then Max looked up, his gaze gravely serious. He turned in the seat to face Sammy. “This is one of the most beautiful pictures I have ever seen, Sammy. Thank you.”

Sammy glowed. “Are you going to put it on the wall in your room?”

“Yes. Just as soon as we get home,” Max said.

Cleo let out the breath she had been holding. She knew then that her fate was probably sealed. She had fallen in love with Max Fortune.

Cleo felt another presence in the meditation room at the same moment that a shadow fell on the yellow crystal. She pulled her mind back to the present and waited.

“Andromeda said I would find you here.” Max's cane thudded softly on the hardwood floor.

Cleo looked up at him. His eyes held the same shimmering intensity that she had seen in them when he had examined Sammy's drawing that afternoon. He held a single red rose in his right hand.

“Hello, Max.” Cleo did not dare look at the rose. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to give you this.” He dropped the rose lightly into her lap.

Cleo picked it up as if it might explode in her hands. Chapter five, she thought. The man had, indeed, been studying
The Mirror
.

The red rose in chapter five had symbolized seduction. Cleo wondered what Max would think when he got to the last chapter in the book. That chapter featured a white rose as a symbol of love.

Cleo wondered if Max could only go as far as the red rose.

“I don't know what to say,” she whispered.

Max smiled. “You don't have to say anything.”

Her eyes met his, and she knew that he spoke the truth. There was no need to say anything, because Max knew exactly how close she was to falling into his arms.

The inn's lounge was quiet again that evening. The handful of guests were clustered around the hearth sipping espressos, lattes, and sherry. Cleo sat on her favorite stool and watched Max wash and dry glasses. Neither of them had referred to the small scene in the meditation center that afternoon.

“You know, you're really good at that,” she said as Max rinsed another glass and set it on the tray. “You're good at everything around here. Remind me to have you take a look at one of the water pipes in the basement tomorrow. It's leaking.”

“Something is always leaking around this place,” Max said. “One of these days you're going to have to put in new plumbing.”

Cleo sighed. “That will cost a fortune.”

“You can't run a place like this without making occasional capital investments.”

“Easy for you to say,” she grumbled. “You're not the one who has to come up with the money. I wish Benjy would come back.”

“Ben.”

“Right, Ben. He had a knack for handling the plumbing.”

Max seemed to hesitate. “Speaking of Ben—” He broke off abruptly and glanced toward the door. “Ah, I see we are about to entertain another one of your gentlemen callers.”

“My what?” Cleo glanced around in surprise. “Oh, that's Nolan.”

“The budding politician?”

“Yes. I wonder what he wants.”

Nolan walked purposefully toward the bar. He was wearing a handsome leather jacket, a discreetly striped shirt, and a pair of dark slacks. His light brown hair was attractively ruffled and slightly damp from the rain. He smiled broadly at Cleo, just as if he hadn't labeled her book pornography a few days ago.

“Hello, Nolan.” Cleo peered at him warily. “What brings you here?”

“I wanted to talk to you.” Nolan sat down on the stool next to Cleo's. He glanced briefly at Max. “You're new here, aren't you?”

Cleo stepped in to make introductions. “Nolan, this is Max Fortune. He's a new employee. Max, this is Nolan Hildebrand.”

“Hildebrand.” Max inclined his head and continued drying glasses.

“Fortune. I'll have a double decaf nonfat grande latte,” Nolan said.

Max elevated one brow, but he did not respond. He turned to the espresso machine and went to work preparing the coffee drink.

Cleo idly stirred her tea. “Gosh, Nolan, I hope you're not jeopardizing your chances of getting elected next fall by being seen here with me tonight. I'd really hate to have that on my conscience.”

Nolan had the grace to look abashed. “You've got a right to be annoyed with me, Cleo. I handled that scene at the cove very badly.”

“Was there a good way to handle it?” Cleo asked. She was aware that Max was listening to every word.

“I shouldn't have come unglued just because you wrote that book,” Nolan muttered. “It wasn't that big a deal. I want to apologize.”

Cleo widened her eyes in surprise. “You do?”

Nolan nodded his head with sober humiliation. “Yeah. I behaved like an ass. Will you forgive me?”

Cleo relented instantly. “Sure. Don't worry about it. I know it must have been a shock to find
The Mirror
stuffed into your mailbox along with that note.”

“You can say that again.” Nolan gave her a rueful smile. “It's still hard for me to believe you wrote something like that. I mean, it just seemed so unlike you, Cleo. All that stuff about ribbons and mirrors and scarves and so on.”

Max put a small paper napkin down in front of Nolan and positioned the latte glass in the center. “A fascinating tour de force in the neoromantic style, don't you think?”

“Huh?” Nolan blinked and turned to scowl at Max.

Max picked up another wet glass and went back to work with the dish towel. “I think
The Mirror
offers a unique and insightful perspective on the interior landscape of female sexuality.”

Nolan scowled. “Who the hell did you say you were?”

“It varies. Tonight I'm the bartender,” Max said. “But getting back to
The Mirror
; I have to say that I was very impressed by the intricately layered depths of many of the scenes. Weren't you?”

Nolan stared at Cleo. “You said no one else around here knew you'd written that book.”

“Excepting family, of course,” Max murmured.

“Family? What family?” Nolan demanded.

“Never mind,” Max said. “Didn't you find that there was extraordinary shape and substance to the eroticism in the book? It goes far beyond the overtly sensual and into the realm of the philosophical.”

“Look, I didn't come here tonight to talk about Cleo's book,” Nolan ground out through set teeth.

“A definite sense of far-flung resonance pervades every chapter, every scene of the book,” Max continued. “The fluent narrative voice conjures up an alternative reality that takes on a life of its own. For the male reader, it creates an alien world, a distinctly female world, and yet I'm sure you found that there was a strange sense of familiarity about it.”

“Christ, I don't believe this,” Nolan muttered. “Cleo, I wanted to talk to you about something very important.”

Cleo gulped the last of her tea, nearly choking on her own laughter. “Sure, Nolan,” she sputtered. “What's on your mind?”

Nolan shot a wary glance at Max and lowered his voice. “This is sort of personal.”

“The portrayal of a female view of sexuality in
The Mirror
was nothing short of riveting,” Max offered as he poured more tea into Cleo's cup. “The reader has the sense that the narrator is both the seducer and the one who is seduced. It brings up several interesting questions about the matter of reader identification, as far as I'm concerned. What was your conclusion?”

“Can't you shut him up?” Nolan asked Cleo.

Cleo looked at Max and saw the gleam in his eyes. “Probably not.”

“The reader must ask himself, for example,” Max said in measured, pedantic tones, “just who is the seducer in
The Mirror
? Is it a work of autoeroticism? Is the narrator actually seducing herself when she looks into the mirror?”

That was certainly what the reviewers had believed, Cleo thought. She waited with a sense of impending fate to hear what Max had to say about it.

“I'm trying to have a private conversation here,” Nolan said in a tight voice.

Max ignored him. “Personally, I think something far more complex is going on. Women writers, after all, are interested in relationships. I believe that the figure in the mirror is the
other
, and that, initially, at least, he is actually the seducer. But there's another problem in the book. I think the man in the mirror is just as trapped in his world as the narrator is in hers.”

Cleo froze. None of the reviews that had appeared on
The Mirror
had understood that fundamental fact. Her eyes met Max's, and she nearly fell off the bar stool when she saw the deep, sensual understanding in his gaze.

She gripped the edge of the bar and held on for dear life. That shattering moment of silent communication did more to melt her insides than anything her imagination had conjured up when she wrote
The Mirror
.