Adored

  “So.” He grinned down at her. “Siena. Tell me. What do you want?”

  Oh God. She couldn’t say it. She wanted him inside her so badly she could cry, but she could not say the words. Not to Max. Not to him.

  “I want you,” she stammered frantically, arching her pelvis up against him. “I want you, Max. Please.”

  He shook his head. “Sorry, sweetheart,” he whispered right into her ear. “I’m afraid that’s not good enough.”

  Siena started to whimper. If he didn’t do it soon, she was going to come right here, before he’d even touched her.

  “Tell me what you want me to do to you. Exactly. I want to hear you say it.”

  “Jesus, Max, I can’t!” She sounded almost angry. Why wouldn’t he just fuck her?

  “Really?” he teased her, running the tip of his tongue slowly along her lower lip. “You can’t say it? A few minutes ago you weren’t so shy, were you? Or wasn’t that you who said I wanted Tiffany’s lips around my cock?”

  “God, I’m sorry, okay?” said Siena, now squirming as much in embarrassment as excitement.

  “Don’t apologize,” said Max, releasing her hands and pulling off her underwear with one swift motion. Much as he wanted to hear her beg him for it, he didn’t have a second’s more self-control left in him. “You can show me how sorry you are.”

  And with that, he thrust deeply into her, feeling the strong spasms of her almost immediate orgasm as he did so. Her hands were on his back, in his hair, on his buttocks, pulling and clawing at him, biting into his shoulders in the most totally abandoned display of desire he’d ever felt in a woman. If it were possible, Max thought, she actually wanted this even more than he did.

  He tried to hold back his own climax, but it was like swimming against a riptide. When at last he came, it felt like a lifetime of tension had been magically, gloriously released.

  He wouldn’t have traded that moment for all the hit Hollywood movies in history.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Henry Arkell woke up with the sort of hangover he couldn’t remember having had since his stag weekend in Dublin twelve years ago.

  As soon as he reached consciousness, he got out of bed and staggered into the bathroom, where he spent the first fifteen minutes of his Sunday morning throwing up.

  “Can I get you anything, darling?” shouted Muffy.

  She was sitting up in bed with her Rosamund Pilcher novel and a cup of tea, being distracted by the sound of her poor husband’s retching.

  “Yes. My shotgun,” quipped Henry, who reappeared in the bathroom doorway looking white as a sheet. He’d tried to take some Alka-Seltzer, but was unable to keep it down. There was nothing to do but go back to bed—preferably forever.

  Crawling back under the duvet, he pulled the covers up over his head and groaned. Just then Madeleine came bounding into the room, clutching her Malibu Barbie and demanding to be allowed into her parents’ bed for a snuggle.

  “No!” barked Henry, whose head felt like it was exploding. “Go and watch cartoons, Maddy. Daddy’s not feeling very well.”

  “But I always snuggle on Sundays, don’t I, Mummy?” she protested.

  “You do, darling, yes,” said Muffy, putting down her novel and mug with a sigh and getting up to deal with her daughter. So much for her weekend lie-in. “But Dad’s very tired this morning. Why don’t you come downstairs with me and you can help me make some brekka?”

  “All right,” said Madeleine, pulling off her pajama top and scratching her rounded baby’s tummy absentmindedly. “It’s very smelly in here anyway. Poo-eee!” She pinched her nose in disgust. “Barbie doesn’t like it when it’s smelly.”

  Muffy laughed and shooed her into the children’s bathroom to brush her teeth, before opening all the casement windows to allow the crisp, fresh April air to dispel Henry’s alcohol fumes. Maddy was right, the room smelled like an Irish pub on New Year’s Day.

  She was worried about Henry. He’d gone to London last night for some sort of crisis meeting with Nick Frankl. Evidently, the crisis had been worse than he’d expected, since he’d arrived home at a quarter to five in the morning, in a black cab, smashed out of his mind.

  Muffy had to get up and empty the petty-cash tin from the farm office, as well as her handbag, both swearing tins, and Charlie’s piggybank to pay the cabbie his two-hundred-and-eighty-pound fare, which God knew they could ill afford at the moment, before beginning the arduous task of helping Henry upstairs, out of his suit, and into bed.

  Normally she would have made him sleep on the sofa and spent the next day furiously ignoring him. But he seemed to have been under so much pressure recently, and his moods had gotten darker and darker to the point where she was afraid that any show of anger or rejection from her might push him over the edge into real depression.

  Tying up the belt on her ancient Laura Ashley dressing gown, she went downstairs to start breakfast, knocking on the boys’ door as she went past. “Bertie! Charlie! It’s half past eight,” she shouted wearily. “Up, dressed, teeth.” With three children, a husband in meltdown, and a failing farm to help run, she had long ago abandoned wasting energy on full sentences.

  Downstairs, she began frying up a big pan of bacon, eggs, and tomatoes, while simultaneously sorting through the morning’s post.

  Bills, bills, bills—two brown, three red, a catalog for new milking products that they couldn’t afford, another catalog for clothes—she should be so lucky! Only one blue, handwritten envelope caught her eye. It was addressed to Henry and postmarked from Marbella.

  Who on earth did they know in Marbella?

  Henry lay under the duvet unable to sleep, or even rest. Unfortunately, the toxic amounts of brandy and champagne he’d downed last night had failed to blot out any part of his nightmare meeting with Nick. Apparently, his back tax bill now stood at an incredible two hundred and fifty thousand, not the one hundred and fifty he had originally thought.

  A quarter of a million fucking pounds! And that was just the tax, on top of all his other debts, which, Nick was quick to remind him, now ran into many hundreds of thousands. How was it possible?

  As far as Henry could remember, he spent every other month filling out tax forms for something or other and a steady stream of money made its way out of his poor, depleted account in Bicester into the groaning coffers of the Inland Revenue every year. Nick had spent hours yesterday patiently trying to explain exactly how this latest whopper of a bill added up. But even the words “tax return” caused an impenetrable cloud to form in Henry’s brain, intensified in this case by more than a dozen brandy and champagne chasers as the grim news had started to sink in. He couldn’t for the life of him work out how he’d allowed things to get quite so appallingly bad.

  There was only one salient point that he had understood from last night’s meeting, and it weighed on his chest this morning like ten tons of lead. With the tax and the debts combined, either he got his hands on three quarters of a mil within the next six months, or he would lose Manor Farm. Thanks to an ancient clause in the deeds, he wasn’t able to sell off small sections of the land piece by piece. The house and land must forever remain one property, one unit. Barring a few paintings, it was his only real asset, all that he had to sell—and short of a miracle, he was about to lose it.

  How the hell was he going to tell Muffy?

  As if reading his mind, his wife appeared in the doorway, looking as youthful and kind and beautiful as ever, bearing a tray of freshly made bacon sandwiches, a pot of Earl Grey tea, and an already wilting bunch of daisies and buttercups in a wineglass.

  “The flowers are from Maddy,” she said, setting his breakfast down on the bedside table. “She’s making you a get-well-soon card downstairs.” She plumped up the pillows behind him and Henry made an effort to sit up without expelling the entire contents of his stomach.

  “Thanks,” he said weakly. “Let’s hope I do. Get well soon, I mean.” He took a tentative sip of the tea. “Not sure if I can manag
e the bacon,” he said ruefully, “it smells fantastic though.”

  “Try,” said Muffy, “it might help. Oh, this came for you.” She reached into her dressing-gown pocket and produced the blue envelope.

  Henry took it but looked as puzzled as she was. “Marbella? I wonder who on earth that can be from?” He ripped open the envelope with a butter-smeared knife and pulled out a two-page handwritten note. “Fuck me,” he said, looking at the signature first. “It’s from Ellis.”

  “Who?” said Muffy, taking a bite of his sandwich. She was supposed to be on a diet, but it seemed a shame to let it go to waste.

  “Your admirer, remember? Gary Ellis?” said Henry, who was reading the letter intently, although the words were still spinning before his eyes. “He’s making me an offer. I think. Wants to fly me out to Spain to discuss it.”

  “What sort of offer?” asked Muffy warily. She had never forgotten the slimy way the developer had tried to paw her at Caroline’s dinner party all those years ago. She didn’t trust Gary Ellis as far as she could spit. The man was a vulture.

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure,” said Henry, somewhat shiftily, stuffing the letter hastily into his pajama pocket. He didn’t want to worry Muffy with any of this yet, not until he’d figured out exactly what he was going to do. In fact, Ellis had been deliberately vague in his choice of words, expressing little more than a renewed interest in Henry’s land. Perhaps word of his debts had started to get out? thought Henry in horror. Nick wouldn’t have said anything, but these things always seemed to find their way to the ears of sharks like Ellis. A few days ago, Henry wouldn’t even have entertained the idea of selling up, let alone to some smarmy developer. But all of a sudden his options were looking mighty slim. He’d be a fool not to at least hear what the man had to say. “Maybe I should fly out there and find out?”

  “Don’t be silly.” Muff laughed, polishing off the last of the sandwich and taking a long gulp of her own tea. “What can he possibly have to offer us? All he’s interested in is the farm, and we would never sell that to anyone. Oooo”—she raised her eyebrow playfully—“or d’you think he wants to pay a million dollars to sleep with me, like in that film with Demi Moore?”

  “Don’t talk rubbish,” snapped Henry. She looked hurt, and he felt winded by guilt, like he’d just been kicked in the stomach. He knew he ought to tell her, come clean about the debts. But when? How? She had trusted him to provide for her and he had let her down, let everyone down horribly. It was all his fault. He’d have to find a way to fly out to Spain and see Ellis without her knowing.

  “Sorry,” he said, forcing a smile. “It’s just this bloody hangover. You’re right, it’s a silly idea. Forget about it.”

  “Right then,” said Muff. “Well, I’d better get Charlie ready for riding. You stay here and rest and I’ll come up and check on you in a couple of hours, okay?”

  “Okay. Muffy?” He reached for her hand and grabbed it as she got up to go. “You do know I love you, don’t you?”

  She frowned, puzzled, and bent down to kiss him on the lips. “’Course I do,” she said. “What a funny question.”

  Back in California, blissfully ignorant of his brother’s problems, Max lay back on Zuma Beach with Siena in his arms. The sun was shining, the surf was absolutely perfect, and the most beautiful girl in the world was curled up and sleeping peacefully on his chest. Life really didn’t get much better than this.

  It was just over a month since the two of them had gotten together, and they had yet to spend a night apart. Max had worried that living at the beach house together might get too claustrophobic, especially at such an early stage in the relationship. But their days were always so hectic and full—Siena’s with filming in Venice, and his with rehearsals for a new play he was directing downtown—that they actually found they were glad of each other’s company in the evenings. It helped that the atmosphere at home had improved beyond all recognition since Siena had stopped focusing all her emotional attention on Hunter, and since Max had ceased to be the enemy. She still felt some residual jealousy and resentment toward Tiffany, but her anxiety on that front had eased considerably, and her general behavior had improved vastly as a result.

  This weekend Hunter and Tiffany were in Colorado, visiting Tiffany’s family, so Max and Siena had the whole house to themselves. Having made love in every room, and outside under the cypress tree, and contorted themselves into every possible sexual position, they decided they needed a change of scene and had driven down to Malibu for lunch and a much needed nap on the beach.

  Gently, Max rolled Siena off his chest and laid her down on her back in the sand. She started to stir and open her eyes, screwing up her face against the glare of the afternoon sun.

  “Wakey, wakey,” he said, straddling her so the dark shadow of his body fell across her face.

  Siena looked up and saw him kneeling above her, with his beautiful brown chest and shoulders, and his lovely kind smile beaming down at her from beneath a wall of straw-blond hair. She loved the size and strength of him, the fact that his hands were bigger than her head and that he could lift her up and down with one arm as if she were made of paper. Next to some of the other, super-slim models, she had always felt rather womanly and solid. Max made her feel fragile and delicate, like a priceless china doll. It was a good feeling.

  “How long was I asleep?” she murmured, reaching up to run her fingers drowsily through his chest hair.

  “Only twenty minutes.” He bent down and kissed her. Her lips still tasted of salt water from her earlier dip in the ocean. “I’m really thirsty though. Think I need a Coke. Wanna come with me?”

  Siena shook her head. Zuma Café was only a couple of hundred yards away, but she felt so warm and comfortable just lying there on the sand, listening to the soporific swooshing of the waves, she couldn’t face moving an inch.

  “You could bring me a Diet Coke, though?” she smiled up at him imploringly.

  “What’s the magic word?” he teased her, slowly outlining her nipple with one finger through the stretchy orange fabric of her bikini.

  Siena watched him do it and gave a sigh of longing. She loved it when he touched her there. “Please,” she whispered, lifting her leg so that her thigh brushed against his already stiffening cock.

  “Okay, okay, I’m going.” Max jumped to his feet. A few more seconds of this and he wouldn’t be able to walk anywhere. “One Diet Coke coming up, Your Highness. Don’t you go anywhere now.”

  Siena rolled over onto her stomach and let out a purr of pure pleasure. “No danger of that,” she murmured.

  The café, as always on a weekend, was crowded. Hard-core surfers with dreadlocked hair and deep year-round tans mingled with the rich kids from Beverly Hills, whose Mercedes and BMW convertibles were parked in gleaming black and silver rows along the beach road behind them.

  Max joined the drinks-only line behind two preppy-looking guys in their mid-thirties—agents, probably, judging by their neon-white dentistry, Armani bathing suits and jackets, and heavily manicured nails. One of them was reading from a copy of Variety, where there was a big piece about Dierk Muller’s films, including a paragraph about The Prodigal Daughter, accompanied by a picture of Siena from one of her Maginelle advertisements.

  “You seen this?” said the one holding the paper to his friend.

  “The McMahon girl?” said the other one. “Sure. I’m not usually into models. Too skinny. But that kid has a booty to die for.”

  They both chuckled. Max felt his stomach turning to lead and his heart tightening.

  “D’you think she can act?” asked the first guy, who was still leering at the picture of Siena draped provocatively over a semi-naked black male model.

  “I doubt it,” said his friend. “I know a guy who’s fucked her though.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Sure. You know Glen Bodie, the producer? According to him . . . well, let’s just say she’s not completely without talent.”

&nbs
p; They both started to laugh until, without warning, Max grabbed them from behind by the collars, one in each hand, and started dragging them outside into the parking lot.

  “Jeez, guy, what’s your fucking problem?” yelled the first guy, who had dropped his paper in the scuffle and was desperately trying to turn himself around to take a swing at his mystery attacker.

  As soon as they were through the door, Max hurled both of them down onto the tarmac with all the ease of a WWE wrestler.

  “You’re my problem, asshole,” he said. “How dare you talk about Siena like that? You don’t know the first thing about her. Where do you get off spreading it around that she’s slept with some fucking moronic friend of yours?”

  “What’s it to you, buddy?” challenged the second guy, who had gotten to his feet and was mentally calculating his chances of walking away with both arms and legs if he gave Max the punch he deserved.

  “She’s a friend of mine,” said Max defensively. “I won’t have her disrespected.”

  “Oh yeah? Well I don’t know how good of a friend you are, man. But I’m telling you, she slept with Bodie. That’s a fact, whether you wanna believe it or not.”

  Max lunged toward him again, but a couple of surf dudes who’d been watching the drama grabbed him and dragged him away.

  “Leave it, man,” said one of them, a friendly-looking giant of a teenager who was even bigger than Max and clearly wasn’t going to take no for an answer. “Let it go.”

  “And stay the fuck away from me or I’ll sue you for assault, you motherfucking psycho!” called the first agent, who was still sitting ignominiously on the ground, rubbing his leg, but had grown quite brave now that the danger had passed.

  Shaking from head to toe, Max threw off the surfers angrily and started staggering back across the beach. He could see Siena, still lying facedown on the white sand, her beautifully curved buttocks rising like two round scoops of ice cream, already tanned to a perfect shade of café au lait.