You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me (50 page)

‘I know you said you wanted to put a huge dent into the room-service bill, but isn’t this a little excessive?’ she hissed at Max.

‘But I only ordered dinner and a selection of DVDs,’ he hissed back. Then he cleared his throat. ‘Excuse me, but I think there’s been a mix-up. I didn’t order flowers or champagne or boxes of …
stuff.
’

‘These arrived by courier while you were out, sir.’ The most senior of the flunkies, judging by his age and the cut of his suit, handed Max an envelope. ‘Have a good evening.’

‘Who’s it from?’ Neve asked, as Max pulled out a sheet of notepaper and scanned the contents. ‘What does it say?’

‘Read it yourself.’ Max thrust the paper at her and Neve looked down at the childish scrawl.

Dear Max and Neve

I’m so gutted that you weren’t part of me and Dazza’s big day. Wish I’d never signed that stupid contract but two mill is two mill and I promised my Nanna she could have a new kitchen
.

Anyway, I wish you were here with us and I can’t believe you won’t get to see me in my red Dolce & Gabanna wedding dress and the leopardprint number they ran up for the evening reception
.

But you can still toast me and Dazza, unless you totally hate me
.

I hope you don’t
.

Lots of love

Mandy (McIntyre – but not for much longer!)

Max was looking boot-faced so rather than cooing over her new Clarins skincare products and his new watch, Neve told him to pick a DVD, while she ferried the plates over to the coffee table along with a bottle of champagne that she absolutely was not going to be drinking.

After demolishing her steak and salad and making major inroads into the chips, until Max was forced to slap her hand away so he could have some too, Neve reasoned that one glass of champagne wouldn’t kill her. People were always extolling the benefits of having some hair of the dog that had bit you the night before.

Besides, it was easier to talk to Max with a drink inside her, especially when there was still unfinished business between them and she had to tell him something that he didn’t want to hear.

‘Drink up,’ she ordered, as she filled Max’s glass, then took a cautious sip of her own champagne in case the taste triggered an horrific sense memory and she had to hotfoot it to the bathroom. It didn’t. It actually tasted rather nice.

‘So, was that note from Mandy hand-written?’ she asked casually. ‘It looked as if it was.’

‘Well, the little hearts over the i’s were a dead giveaway,’ Max said, as he got up and began to load their empty plates on to the trolley. ‘I’ll just put this outside the door.’

His response wasn’t exactly encouraging, but when he came back and sat down close enough so his thigh was pressed against hers, Neve persisted. ‘I understand why you’re angry with her, but I think it was really sweet that she took time out
on her wedding day
to get us presents.’

Max held up his hands in protest. ‘It’s not like she nipped down to Selfridges in between having her hair done and practising her vows.’

‘Well, no, but she obviously spent enough time thinking about how upset you would be that she got someone else to organise the gifts and she wrote a note in between having her hair done and practising her vows.’

‘Where exactly are you going with this, Neve?’ Max asked, his voice cold and forbidding, but if he’d been that annoyed he wouldn’t have tucked a lock of damp hair behind her ear.

‘Just that she obviously feels genuinely upset about uninviting you and you’re much more than a little cog in the McIntyre branding machine.’ Neve fixed him with her most flinty-eyed look, the one that could even get Celia to do the washing up. ‘You should call and thank her and let her know that you’re still friends. It will make you feel a whole lot better too.’

‘I think she might be a little busy cutting the cake and listening to Darren grunt his way through his speech,’ Max said sullenly and he was pouting too. It was adorable.

‘Well, leave a message then.’ Neve stared at him without blinking, until Max gave in with a sigh and pulled out his phone.

‘Waste of bloody time,’ he muttered under his breath, but he rang the number and looked completely flummoxed when someone answered.

‘Mandy? Why the hell are you answering your phone? Yeah? Well, wedding speeches are meant to be boring, so everyone has a chance to sneak out for a cigarette.’

Neve decided to sneak out herself and give Max some privacy. She sat on the bathroom floor and had read a chapter of
Lavender Laughs in the Chalet School
, when Max stuck his head round the door.

‘It’s OK, you can come out now,’ he said, and the pout had been replaced with a smile, which was a welcome relief, even if the pout had been prettier. ‘Mandy and I are friends again.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Neve said, and when she tried to sidle past him, he pressed her up against the wall and pinned her wrists above her head for good measure.

‘Thank you,’ he said, and sealed it with a long, slow kiss that made Neve glad they’d decided to stay in. ‘I won’t forget this, Neve. Not any of it.’

‘You’re welcome,’ she said, and kissed him back with so much ardour that it took a while for her to realise that Max was trying to disentangle himself.

‘It’s far too early for
that,
’ he said prissily, putting some distance between them. ‘There are several items on tonight’s schedule that we have to get through before I can let you ravish my innocent body.’

‘I thought there’d be mutual ravishing.’ Neve folded her arms and tried hard not to pout; there was no possible way she could look as pretty as Max with her lower lip jutting out. ‘Did you want to watch another DVD?’

Max was on his knees in front of the wardrobe and rooting through his weekend bag. ‘No, you owe me a rematch,’ he said, and pulled out a little green box that looked very familiar.

‘Um, if you look in my holdall, you might be in for a surprise,’ Neve told him, and waited until he pulled out her little green box. ‘Snap!’

‘I can’t believe you brought Travel Scrabble!’

‘Well, you did too!’

‘Yeah, but I didn’t bring the
Oxford English Dictionary
as well. I wondered why your bag was so heavy.’

Neve flung herself down on the sofa. ‘We’ll use my set,’ she decided. ‘I wouldn’t put it past you to sneak in some extra blank tiles to try and get one over on me and my awesome vocabulary skills.’

‘Of course, I am still in a delicate emotional state,’ Max said, as he sat cross-legged on the floor on the other side of the coffee table. ‘Can I trust you not to take advantage of that?’

‘My hangover isn’t completely gone,’ Neve said, rustling the bag of tiles. ‘So I’d say it’s a pretty even playing-field.’

Max waited until they’d picked out a letter each to see who’d go first, and when he drew an A and Neve an R, he got a look on his face that was half leer, half glee.

‘Oh, Neevy,’ he said in a sing-song voice. ‘Shall we make this a little more interesting?’

‘Define interesting.’

‘Best of three. If you win a game, then the loser has to pay a forfeit.’ The look was definitely more leer than glee now.

‘Define forfeit.’

Max gave a shudder of pure delight at his own cunning. ‘The loser has to do one thing that the winner asks them to do. No questions. No arguments. No faffing.’

Neve’s eyes narrowed. ‘OK, define thing.’

‘You know what I mean.’ Max stuck his hand in the bag of tiles. ‘A sex thing. Something that will get the other one off.’

If Neve had the ability to arch one eyebrow, she’d have been doing it about then. ‘Alfred Mosher Butts is turning in his grave,’ she bit out and she didn’t know why she was so embarrassed because she couldn’t wait to get the Scrabble over and done with so they could get on with the sex things, but Max was still in a very unpredictable mood and she didn’t think that was going to lead to anything good.

‘Who’s Alfred Mosher Butts? I swear you just make this stuff up to distract me because you know I’m the better player.’ Max arranged his tiles with a beatific smile that made Neve clench her fists.

‘He invented Scrabble!’ Neve groped for her own tiles. ‘Let me remind you that I won last time and I’m probably going to win all three games now and you’ll be begging for mercy, so just think about
that.
’

Max
could
arch one eyebrow. ‘At your mercy? If that’s meant to be a threat then it’s not working. In fact, I’m tempted to throw all three games.’ He gave Neve a mischievous look. ‘We’d better shake on it, Pancake Girl, just to make it official.’

Neve shook Max’s hand with every last ounce of strength she possessed, which was a lot, but he just smirked. ‘Now, now. It’s against the rules to nobble your opponent.’

Max didn’t throw the first game. Instead, he left Neve floundering in his wake with a rack full of vowels, while he got the q, z, j and x and used two of them on a triple word score.

His success and her low score, the lowest she’d ever got in a game of Scrabble, was all the motivation Neve needed to get her head in the game. Especially as Max had done a victory lap around the room, even though she’d told him that it was extremely undignified.

She won the second game by a decent margin, and halfway through the third game, when Max realised he was trailing by nearly fifty points, it suddenly became a battle to the death. They were both going to get off at least once so really it was a win/win situation, but that third unclaimed orgasm was a point of principle and they stopped teasing each other, stopped talking and instituted a three-minute time limit on each round.

Even though Max got up to all his usual tricks of using two tiles to make six different words and block off the board, Neve knew she was going to win. Failure was not an option.

She liked to think she was graceful in her victory, unlike certain other people. ‘Honestly, Max, it could have gone either way,’ she murmured demurely when she beat him by one hundred and twenty-seven points. ‘It was just luck.’

‘I’ve never seen anyone get two triple word scores with one word.’ Max sounded close to tears. He sighed. ‘OK, how do you want me?’

Neve sat back and stretched luxuriously. ‘Well, you won the first game. You can go first,’ she said magnanimously. He’d spent most of the first two games talking about blow jobs, mainly to distract her, but she wasn’t averse to the idea. ‘So, what’s it to be?’

It was odd how Max could alter the mood between them with just a quirk of his lips. What had been playful suddenly became heavy with tension as his eyes darkened and he caught his lower lip between his teeth.

‘Stand up,’ he said, no trace of teasing in his voice now. Instead it had a commanding edge that made the breath catch in Neve’s throat as she did as she was told.

She stood there, arms swinging nervously as Max walked over to the bed and sat down. ‘Now what?’ she asked hoarsely.

‘I want to see you naked,’ and he said it uncertainly, as if he knew he was treading on dangerous ground. ‘Please, Neevy.’

Neve shut her eyes. ‘I can’t,’ she said imploringly. ‘Pick something else because I won’t be comfortable like that and neither of us will have much fun.’

‘But I want you to …’ Max shook his head. ‘Come here, come to me.’ He spread his hands. ‘Just come here.’

Neve stood between Max’s legs, even let his hands rest on her hips, but her expression was resolute. ‘I don’t feel comfortable or relaxed when I’m naked,’ she repeated, her voice so low that Max had to lean closer to hear her.

‘I want you to be comfortable with me,’ he said softly. ‘I want you to trust me like I’ve trusted you with stuff I haven’t told a living soul, and anyway I’ve pretty much seen every bit of you now. Maybe not all at once, but I’ve seen your body.’

‘But it’s different when it’s dark and we’re in bed and, Max, it’s not just a bit of cellulite.’ She turned her head so she wouldn’t have to look at him. ‘You can’t lose a hundred and seventy-five pounds without it leaving its trace. I have stretchmarks and loose skin, and my stomach looks like corrugated cardboard. Feels like it too.’ She felt brave enough to cup his face in her hands because he was still looking at her so sweetly that she thought she might cry. ‘I know you don’t like me to mention it, but you’ve been with other women and I can guarantee that out of all of them, I have the worst body, the ugliest and—’

‘Shhh, shhh.’ Max kissed her hands and he didn’t try to shower her with empty compliments that she hadn’t been fishing for and wouldn’t have believed anyway. ‘It’s been three months now, Neevy, and you always smell nice and you’re funny and you try and take care of me, and do you really think I’m going to get up and go and not come back because you’ve got bingo wings? Please credit me with some integrity.’

He’d only said ‘bingo wings’ because he knew it would make her smile, and Neve was. She was even letting him undo the buttons of her blouse, because his speech had touched her and she wanted to believe him. But when his fingers delicately traced the puckered, silvery grooves that were etched into her sagging skin, Neve flinched, and if Max hadn’t had one arm around her hips, anchoring her to the spot, she’d have wrenched herself away from him.