LITMIR.BIZ

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do marriage and kids, they hadn’t been in his plans. Still weren’t. And till that moment he hadn’t thought they’d been in hers.

      So he’d broken it off with her. On the spot. It was the only honest thing to do. And he’d thought she’d taken it well. There had been no drama. She’d calmly agreed with him that they clearly had different needs from a relationship, and walked away without so much as a backward glance.

      He hadn’t heard from her or of her in the three and a half years since then. Till these opinion pieces and her supposed factual, objective articles. So now he was thinking maybe she hadn’t taken it well. Maybe she had merely bided her time till the opportunity to strike back arose.

      The ten-minute coastal drive gave Max time to calm down so that by the time he reached her place—an older Spanish-style home set several blocks back from the beach—he was only annoyed instead of furious.

      She was nothing he couldn’t deal with.

      And, if he was honest, he was just a little curious, too. They’d had some good times. Had she changed in the intervening years? Were her eyes as green as he remembered?

      He strode the path to her door, knocked firmly and waited, standing where she’d have a clear view of him through the glass bordering the door. He could just make out the beat of the rock music she used to enjoy and had a flash of memory, of Gillian swaying and sashaying around her L.A. apartment. The music stopped.

      Beyond a row of orange flowering bushes, a blue hatchback with tinted windows sat in the driveway. Max paused before knocking again. She used to drive a sporty, two-door soft top.

      Had she married, as she’d been so clearly keen to do? The thought gave him pause. The fact that she hadn’t changed her name didn’t mean she hadn’t gotten her wish. The hatchback had a definite family-car aura to it.

      It didn’t matter. The only thing that concerned him was the paper he held and the inflammatory words she was writing in it. As he lifted his hand to knock again, the door swung open halfway.

      For a moment, as they looked at each other, the world stopped. For just that moment, he forgot why he was here. Sunlight caught her chestnut-brown hair, brought a luminescence to her creamy skin. She was so hauntingly familiar, and yet, not.

      “Max?” She blinked, regrouped. “What are you doing here?” Her words, the shock and the underlying reluctance in them, got the world spinning nicely again. He hadn’t expected or wanted warmth, but he also hadn’t expected fear, and that was definitely what he saw in her wide, green eyes and heard in the catch in her throaty voice. She didn’t want him here.

      “We need to talk.”

      “If you want to talk to me, phone.” She swung the door.

      Max put his hand and foot out to halt its momentum. “You’ll see me now. I tried phoning last week, remember? That didn’t work. This is what you get when you don’t answer my calls.”

      “I was going to call you Monday. We can make an appointment. I’ll see you during normal working hours.”

      Her eyes were just as green as he remembered. It was the emotion he read in them now that was different. Perhaps the defensiveness was caused by conscience about the things she was writing. “And since when have you kept normal working hours?”

      “Since …” A look he couldn’t interpret stole over her face. “Since I realized that work isn’t the be-all and end-all of everything. Which means that, unlike yours, my weekends are sacred. I like to relax, to devote my time to … other things. It most definitely means that you’re not a welcome intrusion.”

      Max stayed precisely where he was. He remembered her as being direct but beneath this morning’s directness he couldn’t help but feel that she was hedging. She was on the defensive. Which worked for him. “You’re not the only one who values their weekends,” he said, “so let me come in, we’ll talk, straighten a few things out and then I’ll leave. But until we’ve talked, I’m not going anywhere.”

      Gillian glanced at the slim watch encircling her wrist then over her shoulder as though deciding. “Five minutes, Max. That’s all I can give you.” She stepped back from the door, opened it just wide enough for him to enter.

      It was a decision that pleased him. “Five minutes is all we’ll need. So long as you see reason.” He stepped inside, got his first proper look at her. A white tank top clung gently to the curve of her breasts. The press of her nipples against the soft fabric advertised the fact that she wore no bra, diminishing the available oxygen in the room and threatening to distract him absolutely. For the first time Max reconsidered the wisdom of catching her unawares, first thing in the morning, in her home.

      Drawstring yoga pants rode low on the flare of her hips. Her pale feet were bare. He was guessing she wasn’t long out of bed. And he was not going to follow that train of thought any further, because combining the words Gillian and bed even if only in his mind would almost certainly derail his thought process.

      Though still slender, she was maybe a little curvier than he remembered. There was a new softness to her body that was most definitely missing from the guarded expression on her face.

      She bit her lip, something he’d only ever seen her do when she was nervous, then gestured to a room just off the entranceway. She stood blocking any view he might have had of any of the rest of her house while he stepped into the formal living room she’d indicated. How did she manage to look so unyielding and yet so tempting?

      A sofa and two comfortable-looking floral armchairs surrounded a coffee table that was bare except for a flowering peace lily. The curtained window overlooked a private, palm-filled garden.

      “Sit down.” She pointed to one of the armchairs. “I’ll be back in a moment.” She headed for the door.

      “One thing.”

      She hesitated.

      “Are you married?” He hadn’t meant that to be the first question he asked her.

      “No.”

      He shouldn’t feel relief, he had no right, and he was no hypocrite. Not normally. Business. This was purely business. That was all there would ever be between them.

      She left the room and Max had to drag his gaze from the sway of her hips in the soft draping fabric and turn back to the living room. The door shut with a firm click behind her.

      He looked about the room that seemed both a little old-fashioned and far too tidy, in an almost sterile way. The Gillian he remembered used to have half-read newspapers, magazines and books stacked and stashed around any and all of her living spaces.

      Seemed she’d changed. Or that this was what his grandmother used to refer to as her company room. It certainly wasn’t where the music he’d heard or the scent of coffee he’d caught as he’d stepped into the house had been coming from.

      He placed his copy of the Seaside Gazette on the coffee table so that her opinion piece was uppermost, reminding him to refocus on his sole reason for being here. Not to speculate on Gillian’s life.

      True to her word she was back in just a few moments, once again shutting the door carefully behind her. The soft tank top and yoga pants had been replaced by hip-hugging, multipocketed cargo pants and an olive-green T-shirt. Thankfully, for the sake of his focus, it seemed she wore a bra beneath the T-shirt. She’d pulled her lush hair back into a high ponytail.

      She looked like the heroine from one of the computer games they used to play—ready for combat.

      The subtle charge of anticipation swept through him. “This morning’s opinion piece.” That was why he was here. Not to find out if she was married or how she’d been doing in the past three and half years, or … if she wanted to go out to dinner tonight. There was, after all, more than one way to skin a cat.

      No. Not going there again. Max pulled himself up short.

      Her kick-ass demeanor

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