Page 18 of Forbidden Hawaiian Nights
‘Nothing to do here. Way too rainy, way too late and way too dark. My driver is waiting.’
She was being shuffled out of the place, barely concentrating on what she was doing or where they were going.
‘My bike…’
‘Will live to ride another day. Now, run!’
She obeyed instinctively. She was already so wet. The thought of getting any wetter didn’t bear thinking about. She was cold too, her teeth chattering and her clothes clinging to her like cling film.
She literally bolted for the dry sanctuary of the car, and she would have made it as well if the wretched, soggy, uneven ground of a building site hadn’t conspired to bring her crashing to her knees.
She was racing one minute, and the next she was lying in a heap on the ground, and when she hurriedly began to prop herself back up her foot buckled under her and she gave a yelp of pain.
The rain washed over her, sharply pricking her skin, and overhead there was a crack of thunder that made her start.
All of this took place in a matter of seconds—the running, the falling, the roar of thunder and then the horrifying realisation that he was sweeping her off her feet and sprinting to the car. His driver had opened an umbrella, the passenger door was open, then they were both inside the car and the door was slammed shut behind them.
‘Your foot,’ Max said as the car purred away from the site and back out towards the city. ‘How much does it hurt?’
‘It’ll be fine,’ Mia muttered.
‘There’s nothing to be gained by being a martyr. Do I need to take you to hospital? Only you can tell me exactly how bad it is, so don’t lie.’
‘It’s fine.’ She tentatively tried to circle her ankle and winced.
‘Right. We’ll go back to your house and I’ll have a look but, if I’m in any doubt, I’m getting a doctor out.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’
‘I’m not being ridiculous, Mia,’ he said coolly. ‘All precautions will be taken, because the last thing I need is a lawsuit for negligence. So if I think a doctor needs to come out, then out he comes, whether you agree or not.’
‘You think I’d what?’ Mia gaped, momentarily distracted from the pain in her ankle and the way her clothes were becoming glued to her body. ‘Sue you because I was an idiot who fell over?’
Max shrugged. ‘As it happens, I don’t, but who knows?’
‘God, what sort of world do you live in?’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Well, it seems that in your world women are either open to a bit of blackmail or else trying to sue you for something that’s not your fault! In other words, you’re not exactly prepared to give women the benefit of the doubt, are you?’
She looked at him narrowly and was perversely satisfied at the dark flush of colour that delineated his razor-sharp cheekbones. For once, she’d caught him on the back foot, and it felt great.
He looked away, and she wanted to prod at the sore spot she had found, because he got to her and it felt good that she could likewise get to him.
‘When you get to the top of the ladder,’ he said, turning to her, his voice matter-of-fact, borderline indifferent, ‘it pays to put trust at the back of the queue.’
‘You don’t trust anyone?’ Mia asked with disbelief. She might have gone through the misery of a divorce, and she may have built her own ivory tower to protect herself from getting hurt again, but that didn’t mean she didn’t trust people.
Her family…her friends… Her default position wasn’t that she had to be on red-hot alert one hundred percent of the time because everyone was capable of hiding a knife behind their back.
She felt a wave of compassion. He might be as hard as granite, but you didn’t get to a position of such cynicism without your past experiences putting you there.
‘I feel sorry for you, Max,’ she said quietly, and his eyebrows shot up.
‘Should I be touched or irritated?’
‘I expect you’ll be irritated,’ she confirmed. ‘You said that I’m on the lookout for an argument all the time. Well, I’m no different to you, am I? I’m just being honest. It must be a lonely life if you can’t trust anyone at all. You might have all the money in the world but if you’re alone in your glass tower then what’s the point?’
