He stopped outside. “I’m not going to come in tonight, but I’ll be by tomorrow morning to talk.”
Romi wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or her dad, but Harry nodded so she figured it was him.
“I’ll look forward to it,” her dad said before stepping inside.
Max nodded, his masculine lips set in a firm line. Then he turned to Romi. “I would like to take you to lunch afterward.”
“Oh, I—”
“The time for running is done, Ramona. We have things we need to discuss.”
She didn’t bother telling him she didn’t like being addressed by her full name. That minor annoyance was nothing compared to the threat of talking. “We did all our discussing a year ago.”
“Circumstances change.”
She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to hold the heat in. “I’m pretty sure ours haven’t.”
“And yet I am requesting your company all the same.” He reached out and tucked her wrap more tightly around her.
“Sounds more like a demand to me.”
He shrugged. “I have been accused.”
“Yeah. That’s believable.”
“Then believe me when I tell you that we have things, important things, we need to discuss.” He brushed the back of his fingers down her cheek.
Romi shivered, but not from the cold this time. “What are they?”
“I’m sure you can guess.”
“Max…” But she didn’t know what she wanted to say, where she wanted this conversation to go.
She’d spent a year doing her best to forget Maxwell Black and it hadn’t worked.
The silence stretched between them before he leaned down and kissed her firmly, but quickly. “Tomorrow, Romi. Block out your afternoon.”
“For lunch?” she asked breathlessly and unable to do a thing about that fact.
“For me.”
“I’m not making any promises, Max.”
“I am, Romi. Both to myself and to you. You will be mine.”
The words should have made her nervous. Should have scared her right of her wits really, but Romi liked them too much. Her secret fantasies all revolved around this man.
She touched her lips, still tingling from the kiss. “Tomorrow.”
Without another word, Max turned and went down the steps with a purposeful stride.
Romi moved restlessly in her bed. She’d left her father sleeping on the sofa in his study, the usual wool throw covering him.
She should be thinking about her best friend and the irrevocable step Maddie had taken in marrying Viktor Beck. Or if not that, Romi should be worrying about the problems with her dad’s company that Jeremy Archer clearly felt worth accosting her father over at his own daughter’s wedding reception.
But all of that bubbled in its own cauldron of stress at the periphery of the thoughts consuming her.
Maxwell Black said she was going to be his.
He knew she wanted a commitment. The hope of a future, not a guarantee, but at least the possibility. Okay probability. But she wasn’t looking for promises as much as the likelihood of them being made down the road.
None of which had he been willing to offer a year ago.
No, he’d presented the possibility of six months to a year of sexual pleasure and intermittent companionship, with the clear and nonnegotiable understanding that they would go their separate ways after a year.
She’d turned him down flat.
And it had not been easy, though she’d tried very hard not to let Max see just how difficult she’d found it to utter that single-syllable word. No.
But her heart had been on the line and she was smart enough to know it.
She hadn’t suddenly gone stupid, so why had she agreed to meet with Max?
Romi didn’t have a reason, at least not a good one.
She still wanted him. She still found him the most intriguing and attractive man she’d ever met.
Maxwell Black was her Kryptonite and that scared the willies out of her.
Some people, after growing up the way she had, watching her dad pine for her dead mother and slowly come apart, would have been determined never to go through that themselves.
Romi had taken the opposite view. She wanted that kind of devotion directed at her. She knew what it was to be loved.
Her dad was flawed. Some might even say weak, but he loved Romi with the best that was in him.
His drinking had taken its toll, but it hadn’t all been bad. Harry Grayson had given his daughter the finest he had to give and she was grateful.
His company might have suffered, but she’d never once doubted her dad’s love.
She was determined that the man she married one day would love her with that same kind of devotion. Hopefully without a past grief to overcome and an addiction to alcohol.
Max’s intensity and dedication to her pleasure had tricked her into thinking once that he might just be that guy.