Darcy hated it that he'd seen her hurt. She shrugged. 'It's cool, Max, you don't have to explain anything.'
Even so, the hurt dissipated like a traitorous little fog.
'The problem is,' he went on, as if she hadn't spoken, 'I can't seem to stop myself from touching you.'
She looked up at him, and they stopped moving on the dance floor while everyone kept going around them. Max pressed against the small of her back, moving her closer to his body, where she could feel the distinctive thrust of his arousal.
Now he looked intense. 'This is not usual for me, Darcy.'
She was barely aware of where they were any more, and she whispered, 'You think it's usual for me?'
Max started to move again subtly, ratcheting up the tension between them. Panic flared at the thought of going back to his apartment. 'Max, this isn't... We can't do this. We need to keep this pro-professional.'
Great. She was stuttering now. All she knew was that if Max seduced her she wouldn't have anything left to hold him at bay with. He'd already swept through her life like a wrecking ball.
He arched a wicked brow. 'You know what I think of professionalism? It's overrated.'
And then he kissed her, deeply and explicitly, and Darcy knew she was right to fear him-this. Because she could feel her very cells dissolving, merging into his. She was losing herself.
She pulled back with effort. 'No, Max.'
A faster, more upbeat song was playing now, and she and Max were motionless in the middle of the floor. He grabbed her hand and pulled her from the throng. Her legs were like jelly.
Once away from the dance floor Max stopped and turned to Darcy, running a hand through his hair, an intense look on his face.
'Look, Darcy-' He stopped suddenly as something caught his eye over Darcy's head. He cursed volubly and an infinitely hard expression came over his face.
Darcy frowned and looked behind her to see a stunningly beautiful woman in the far corner of the room. Something pulled at a vague memory. She was wearing a skin-tight black dress that shimmered and clung to her spectacular figure. Dark hair was swept back and up from her high-cheekboned face, and jewels sparkled at her ears and throat.
Darcy's insides cramped a little as she wondered if it was an ex-lover of Max's she'd seen in a magazine.
He was propelling them across the room before she could say anything, and as they got closer she could see that the woman was older than she'd imagined-but incredibly well-preserved.
She was arguing with a tall, handsome man, holding a glass of champagne and gesticulating. The wine was slopping messily onto the ground.
The man looked at Max with visible relief and more than a little irritation. He said curtly, 'I've had enough-you're welcome to her, Roselli.'
The woman whirled around, and just as Darcy noticed with a jolt of shock that she had exactly the same colour eyes as Max he was saying, in a tone tinged with steel, 'Mamma.'
His mother issued a stream of vitriol. Her eyes were unfocused and there was a sheen of perspiration on her face. Her pupils were tiny pinpricks. It was shocking to come face-to-face with Max's mother like this, and it made Darcy's heart clench to think he'd probably only told her half of what she'd been like.
The other man had walked away. Max's mother made as if to go after him but Max let go of Darcy's arm to stop her, taking her glass away and handing it to Darcy. His mother screeched and Darcy could see people looking.
Max had his mother in a firm grip now, and he said to Darcy, 'I'll take her home. If you wait here I'll get my driver to come back for you.'
Darcy was about to agree, but then she said quickly, 'Shouldn't I go with you? It'll look a little odd if I don't.'
Max was clearly reluctant to have Darcy witness this scene-she had a keen sense that he wouldn't allow many, if any people to witness it-but he obviously realised she was right.
'Fine, let's go.'
Staff had ordered Max's car to come round and he got into the back with his mother, who was remonstrating volubly with Max now. Darcy got in the front, her nerves jumping. Max was apparently used to this, and was on his phone making a terse call.
When they pulled up outside an exclusive apartment block in a residential part of Rome a man in a suit was waiting. Max introduced him as Dr. Marconi and he came in with them. Once inside a palatial apartment Max and the doctor and his mother disappeared into one of the rooms, with the door firmly closed behind them.
Darcy waited in the foyer, feeling extremely out of place. Max's mother was shouting now, and crying. Darcy could hear Max's voice, low and firm.
The shouting stopped.
After a long while Max re-emerged and Darcy stood up from where she'd been sitting on a gilt-edged chair.
'How is she?'
Max's hair was dishevelled, as if he'd been running his hands through it, and his bow tie was undone. He looked grim. 'I'm sorry you had to witness that. I would have introduced you, but as you could probably tell her response was unlikely to be coherent.'
'You've dealt with this before...?'
Max smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. 'You could say that. She's a drug addict. And an alcoholic. The man at the party was her latest enabler, but evidently he's had enough. So what'll happen now is she'll enter an exclusive rehab centre, that's got more in common with a five-star resort than a medical facility, and in about a month, when she's detoxed, she'll rise like a phoenix from the ashes and start all over again.'
The other man emerged now, and spoke in low tones to Max before taking his leave after bidding goodnight to Darcy. Max turned to her.
'You should go. My driver is outside. I'm going to wait for a nurse to come and then make sure my mother is settled before I go. I'll see you in the morning.'
Clearly he wanted her to go now. She backed away to the door.
'Goodnight, Max.' She turned back from the door to say impulsively, 'I'm sorry...about your mother. If there's anything I can do...' She trailed off, feeling helpless.
'Thank you,' Max said shortly. 'But it's not your problem. I'll deal with it.'
For a fleeting moment Darcy thought that if this was a real engagement then it would be her problem too. She wondered if a man like Max would ever lean on anyone but himself and felt an almost overwhelming urge to go to him and offer...what?
She left quickly, lest Max see anything of her emotions on her face.
In the car on the way home Darcy had a much keener and bleaker sense of what things must have been like for Max when he'd left Brazil with his mother. The fact that he'd ended up on the streets wasn't so hard to believe now, and the empathy she felt for him was like a heavy weight in her chest.
* * *
A few hours later Max sat back in the chair in his dark living room and relished the burn of the whisky as it slid down his throat. He finally felt the tension in his body easing. He'd left his mother sleeping, with a nurse watching over her.
When he'd seen Elisabetta Roselli across the function room earlier tension had gripped him, just as it always did. It was a reflex born of years of her inconsistant mothering. Never knowing what to expect. And even though he was an adult now, and she couldn't affect his life that way any more, his first reaction had been one of intense fear and anxiety. And he hated it.
Darcy... He could still see her face in his mind's eye when she'd turned back from the door, concerned. The fact that she'd handled seeing his mother in that state impacted on him in some deep place he had no wish to explore.
His brother had not had to suffer dealing with the full vagaries of their mother. Max was used to dealing with it on his own... But for a moment, with Darcy looking back at him, he'd actually wanted to reach out and pull her to him, feel her close, wrapping her arms around him...
A soft noise made Max's head jerk up. Darcy stood silhouetted in the doorway of the living room as if conjured right out of his imagination. She was wearing loose sleep pants and a singlet vest that did little to hide those lush heavy breasts, the tiny waist. Her hair was long and tumbled about her shoulders.
'Sorry, I heard a noise...you're back. Is she...your mother...is she okay?'
Max barely heard Darcy. He was so consumed with the sight of her breasts, recalling with a rush of blood to his groin how they'd felt pressed against him on that dance floor.
Damn it to hell. He didn't want to want her. Especially not when he felt so raw after the incident with his mother. But even from across the room her huge blue eyes seemed to see right through him-into him. Right down to the darkest part of him.
It made something twist inside him. A need to push her away, push her back. Avoid her scrutiny.
'Getting into character as my wife already, Darcy? Careful, now-I might believe you're starting to like me. I guess having an addict for a mother is bound to score some sympathy points...'