Their Million-Dollar Night (5 page)

“They used to.”

“Really? Well, don't let me be the reason you stop.”

She laughed. “God, you are so sophisticated I forgot you were a guy.”

“What does that mean?” he asked. No one had ever said anything like that to him before. But to be honest, that was true of just about everything that Roxy said. She was a breath of fresh air in his world, which was filled with the jaded and cynical.

She winked at him. “Just that I thought you were too cool for lust.”

“Think again.” Obviously he'd been a little too gentlemanly in stopping earlier. He should have followed his primitive instincts and made love to her on the cushions.

“I am,” she said, with a blush that revealed more than she probably realized.

“So what's your hang-up with public nudity? I think together we can get you past that.”

“I don't think so,” she said, the humor dying in her as she scooted back away from the table and stood up.

He pushed to his feet and went around to her. Signaling the caterers to start cleaning up their picnic, he put his arm around her shoulders and led her down the beach to a rocky outcropping.

“I did it again. I said something that made you close up. What is it?”

“You're moving too fast, Max. I'm still getting used to the new me. I'm not ready for a man to notice me yet.” She moved so gracefully, he could see years of dance training in her posture and in her body. There was no hesitation to her movements today. Her injury, whatever it was, didn't seem to be bothering her.

“How were you injured?”

She looked out at the sea. Suddenly he realized that she must have done something to her body that
would require cosmetic surgery. That the surgeries she was referring to were aesthetic.

“Look at me.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him and he saw the tears in her eyes. Saw the way she clenched her jaw from saying too much. He stepped up on the rock next to her, easily finding his balance and pulling her into his arms.

He slipped his hand under her shirt at the small of her back, remembering the way she'd frozen earlier when he'd touched her there.

Carefully he brushed his fingertips over her back and felt the ridges left by scar tissue. He lifted her shirt to her midriff and leaned down for a closer look. The scars were still red, still healing, and they were vicious. He heard her gulp in a huge lungful of air and then felt her shaking in his arms. He dropped the edge of her shirt and pulled her into his arms, wishing he knew how to make this right.

R
oxy was glad to be back on the jet and headed toward Vegas. She wanted to go to her small house and hide. No matter how attracted she was to Max, they were from two different worlds, and she didn't want to fall for a man who'd be leaving in a few days time.

She especially didn't want to bare her soul to someone who might only be interested in her while he was here. Max hadn't said anything else or asked any more questions, but she saw in his eyes that he wanted to. That he needed to know what had happened.

Lourdes smiled warmly when they stepped back on the plane. Roxy took a seat close to the cockpit and questioned the pilot about her job while Max sat
in the back returning phone calls and receiving faxes. Finally it was time for takeoff and Lourdes shut the door, leaving Roxy with no choice but to turn and face the man who saw too much.

She'd found the sweater he'd left in the box of clothing for her and donned it. She didn't think she'd take it off around him again. Not that it would matter if she stripped naked. Now that he'd seen the ugliness she carried around with her he wouldn't want her to.

“Stop looking at me like I'm the Marquis de Sade.” He didn't even glance up from his paperwork. She knew he was busy, had heard his phone ring several times when they were on the beach, but he hadn't even glanced at it until they'd boarded the plane.

“I'm not. I wasn't thinking you wanted to have kinky sex with me.”

He looked up then, arching on eyebrow at her. “But I do.”

His words made her mind jump to images of the two of them in bed, maybe with her hands tied above her head. Max was so dominant outside the bedroom she couldn't imagine him being any other way in it. “Stop teasing me. We both know I'm not the woman you thought I was.”

“You say that as though I just discovered you were a transvestite.”

“Please stop trying to make light of this,” she said around the lump in her throat. She couldn't joke about her body. Not yet. Maybe never.

He caught a strand of her hair in his hand, rubbing it between his fingers. “I don't know how else to deal with this, Blondie. It's either joke with you or give in to the anger that someone would hurt you.”

“I used to love my body,” she said, because Max was the first person she'd met whom she didn't know from before the accident. “I was more than a little vain about it, and I was mean about people who didn't take care of themselves. I've been struggling with the fact that maybe this is some kind of cosmic payback for that attitude.”

He shifted the papers on his desk. “I don't believe in things like karma. I think we make our own. No matter where we start or what kind of baggage we are dragging with us, it's how we handle the present that defines us.”

“I hope you're right. But I'm struggling, Max. You're the first man to look at me and make me forget that I'm not who I used to be. And that frightens me, because we both know that this isn't ever going to go beyond an affair.”

Max left his desk area and joined her on the low couch toward the front of the plane. She didn't have a magazine and thought about pretending to go to sleep but knew Max wouldn't fall for it. She wasn't
surprised when they reached their cruising altitude and he unfastened his seat belt and hers.

“Take your sweater off.”

“No.”

“The only way you're going to get past it is to stop viewing your body as something abhorrent.”

“I don't think seeing it in broad daylight is going to help.”

“How about seeing it through my eyes?” he asked, stretching his arm behind her and drawing her into the curve of his body. He was big and strong. Solid in a way so few men in her life ever had been.

She stared at Max, afraid for a minute to trust him. Okay, she was afraid to trust herself. She'd been serious when she mentioned the fact that all they had between them was the possibility of an affair. Max wasn't a forever kind of guy…at least not for her.

“Trust me,” he said.

Strangely she wanted to. She'd never have left Vegas with any other man she'd known only twenty-four hours. There was something very trustworthy about Max Williams. “I think I do. But the last man I trusted…”

“Did this to you?” He slipped his hand under the layers of her clothing and traced over her scars.

“I'm not sure about this,” she said, grasping his wrist and trying to stop him from moving any farther up her body. From discovering the extent of her scarring.

“Tell me what happened.”

She took a deep breath. No one knew the whole truth. She'd been too embarrassed ever to utter the words
My ex-boyfriend is stalking me.

The words appeared in her head—
A guy I dated over a year ago never got over me. And one night when I went into my dressing room, he was waiting. We had a fight and he…he…stabbed me. Several times. He left my face alone because he said it was my body that I loved and worshipped.

But they made her feel dirty and guilty and she couldn't say them out loud. Especially to Max, who was all that was sophisticated and polished. For God's sake, the man took her to breakfast in another state. How could she say that her own vanity had driven an ex-boyfriend to come after her?

She couldn't. She liked Max. She wanted him to like her, to think that she was worth this trip to the beach on his Learjet.

He framed her head with his hands and leaned down, kissing her with exquisite gentleness and making her doubts fall away. She wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his shoulder. Then quietly told him the story of the night that had changed her life.

 

Max knew that it would take more control than he had at the moment to conceal his anger from Roxy. The quiet rage that had grown as she spoke in that
soft, hesitant voice. He held her in his arms and made plans. If it was surgeries she wanted, he would see that she had them.

He'd make sure that Technety never saw the light of day again and that the other women in the show were protected. Because she worried about that as well. He didn't question or understand why what he felt seemed magnified. He only knew that it was, and he couldn't tolerate anything other than fixing this problem.

“You're quiet.”

“I'm quiet because I'm trying to find a way to speak around my rage. And no, you haven't disappointed me.”

She tipped her head back against his shoulder and looked up at him. “That's the sweetest thing anyone has said to me.”

“Ever?” he asked, lowering his head so that his lips brushed against hers. He wanted to make the physical part of the relationship all-powerful so that she wouldn't notice the fact that his emotions were kept hidden away. And he was going to keep them locked away because Roxy made him feel things more intensely than any other woman had, and there was danger in that. Whenever he reacted from that raw emotional place everything in his neatly ordered life fell apart.

“Ever,” she confirmed.

He hardened and groaned. He wanted this woman.
He wanted to strip her naked and then take her. Make her forget about the imperfections which seemed so large in her mind.

He pulled his mouth free and dropped kisses down the length of her neck, sucking on the sweet spot at the base. She smelled so womanly, all fresh air and sea breeze, but more than that, her scent was the essence of Roxy. Sassy and shy. Tasting her was addictive.

“You are so beautiful,” he said, framing her face in his hands and looking into her eyes. They were fathomless and he couldn't read what she felt there. That bothered him, because he'd thought she would be easy to read. What else was he missing about her?

“Don't talk, Max. I don't want to think—just feel, okay?”

But he couldn't after that. He didn't want her to kiss him because she wanted an escape from her life. He wanted her to want him with every part of herself. He rubbed her back and knew that he was going to regret being noble. Not taking what he wanted went against the grain. But Roxy wasn't just an object to be acquired. She…she was getting to him.

She was quietly illuminating parts of his soul that had been dark and dusty for too long. And he knew that he wanted to be more to her than just a means to forgetting her reality.

“I ruined the mood, didn't I?” she asked, slipping off his lap and back into her seat.

“No, you didn't. I was rushing you and I'm sorry.”

“Well, I'm not. Rush me some more. That way I don't have to think about how different we are.”

He was tempted. But he'd learned early in life that all the good things were worth waiting for. And he didn't want to make love to Roxy for the first time on the jet. He wanted to do it in his bedroom where he could stand her in front of a mirror and make her see the woman she really was.

“When you're ready for me, the differences won't matter.”

 

Roxy had never been so glad to be back in a casino in her life. She felt unkempt, exposed from her time on Max's plane. She just wanted to escape and find a quiet place to regroup. She stood awkwardly in the portico in front of the hotel while Max tipped the valet and gave him the keys to the Jaguar that had been waiting for them at the airport.

“I guess this is goodbye. Thanks for breakfast.”

She turned and started walking toward the employee parking area. Max caught her arm. She felt the steel in his grip and knew that he wasn't happy at the way she'd tried to dismiss him.

Well, she wasn't happy, either. She couldn't look at Max right now, because she was still embarrassed that she'd confessed so much to him.

“We're not through yet.”

“I'm tired, Max. I need a break. I know that I owe you an apology for what happened on the plane.”

“No, you don't. I really don't mind waiting. When we do make love I want to take you in a bed, where I can stretch you out and really worship that luscious body of yours. But I want it to be about more than sex when we're together.”

She warmed inside, where the real Roxy had always lived. The shy dancer who just wanted to lose herself in the movements. She knew the image she projected was of an outgoing woman who could come through anything. But deep inside she'd always felt insecure, still the awkward adolescent who'd been dropped off at a group home.

Max, for all his worldliness, had seen past the facade to the woman beneath.

A group of Japanese tourists were headed straight for them and Max used his body to move her out of the flow of traffic. He backed her up against the sun-warmed wall of the casino, his tall muscular body surrounding hers and caging her.

“Have dinner with me tonight,” he said, rubbing his lips over hers. His breath was minty and warm.

She opened her mouth, hoping for a deeper kiss, but he only nipped at her lower lip and lifted his head.

“I'm waiting.”

“Are you asking me?” She knew he wasn't. He was so used to having his way.

“Only if I have to. I think there's something between us that deserves to be explored.”

“Shouldn't you be playing poker? That
is
why you came to Vegas.”

“I think I've hit the jackpot already.”

She started to close her eyes against the charm she saw in his, but then she forced them open. She made herself look up and down the strip. To see the fake Eiffel Tower and pyramid. To remind herself that this was Las Vegas, baby. The place where sinful behavior was indulged in. Men like Max came to Vegas for one reason and one reason alone.

But the way he held her didn't feel as though he was looking for a cheap thrill. And he'd stopped earlier, on the plane, when she was willing to go further. “What do you want from me?”

“A chance.”

“Why?”

“Because it's been a long time since anyone has interested me as much as you do. I love the contradictions of you. The mystery of what makes you tick. And I want to solve it.”

She leaned forward, breathing in the scent of his aftershave mixed with the salt from the sea breezes. “Max, I'm not worth all this effort.”

“You are to me. I'll pick you up. Does eight sound good?”

“You're not going to listen to me are you?” she asked.

He gave her a half smile. “I always listen. It's just that sometimes you say things you don't mean.”

“How can you know that?”

“Because I've held you in my arms and looked deep into your eyes. I'm beginning to know what makes you tick.”

“Then maybe I should pass on dinner. If you figure me out then I'll have no place to hide.”

“You don't need to hide from me.”

“What about you?”

“I'm not hiding from you.”

But she knew he was. He was dazzling her with fancy plane trips and expensive trinkets. He was keeping the focus on her and she was letting him. “What about from yourself?”

“I'm forty, the CEO of an international conglomerate and I've lived a full life. There's nothing to hide.”

She tipped her head to the side studying him. She knew he had secrets. Real secrets, the same as she did, and she wanted to know them, because she already liked him too much. She was very afraid that before too long, liking would turn to love. And, as he'd said, he was a sophisticated, successful man. The kind that didn't marry a former topless dancer.