'No!' Her skin crawled as she realised what he intended to do.
He smiled cruelly. 'Lost your taste for being touched? If you prefer, you can wait for Teresa . . . explain to her how you smudged her good works.'
Sarah submitted frozenly as he tilted her chin to the light and skilfully re-coloured her bloodless lips. She could see the faint beading of sweat on his upper lip, but his hand performed its task without a tremor. He was inhuman. How could he do it. . . while she stood there beaten, humiliated . . . she remembered her wrap and scrabbled blindly for the gaping edges.
'Thanks for letting me test the merchandise.' He threw the lipstick back on to the table. 'But I think you've overestimated its value. You ought to consider the strategic advantages of withholding your assets.'
Sarah didn't have the strength to fight back, she leaned her head tiredly against the wall and stayed unmoving until she heard him leave.
She collapsed at last on to the chair, blinking fiercely. It would take ages to repair the damage if she cried, and he would know the reason for the delay. She would not give him such a complete triumph.
She hated him. He was arrogant and crude and so wrong. She wasn't promiscuous . . . she didn't think ... at least, only with him. But why? Was it only because he had been the first to tap the deep well of her suppressed sexuality? She could see, from the bleak vantage point of a new physical maturity, that Simon had never done more than skim the surface of her passions. He had been too selfishly concerned with his own needs to be able to fully satisfy hers. Max, on the other hand, confident of his prowess, had been willing to wait on her, taking as much pleasure in discovering what pleased her as in fulfilling his own desires ... in fact they had seemed inseparable.
Sarah buried her face in her hands and groaned. Her hands felt icy, her body numb. That was twice in two days Max had brought her to the pitch of desire then abandoned her, though this second time was by far the worst. She shouldn't have tried to fight him, he could always annihilate her physically and verbally. She couldn't even feel angry at him, though she had every reason to be . . . just this terrible numbness.
It was pride alone that saw her through the nightmare session that followed. Pride made her smile, and sparkle and project by order of the shadowy figure beyond the half-circle of bright lights, when inside she felt shrivelled and old.
Afterwards, in the semblance of normality, she allowed herself to be bullied into going to lunch with Tom, though the thought of food was nauseating. They went to a tiny coffee bar not far from the office, one they had been to several times before, situated below street level, down a narrow flight of stairs.
Playing with her salad Sarah let Tom's ramblings about the new contract with Rags' printer, the busy London schedule he would be returning to at the end of the week, and other inconsequentials flow soothingly around her. Suddenly, out of the blue, he said something that riveted her attention.
'Max came under duress? What kind of duress?' It was no use telling herself she wasn't interested.
'He only agreed to come out to New Zealand in exchange for certain . . . ah . . . concessions in the boardroom,' Tom explained, seemingly absorbed in the disposition of tea-leaves in the bottom of his cup. 'Sir Richard insisted that he take a break from his rigorous routine, but Max would have none of that, so Rags & Riches was a compromise on both sides.' Tom paused maddeningly. He was being uncharacteristically indiscreet and Sarah prayed he wasn't going to realise it now and clam up. If she had been thinking more clearly she might have wondered about his sudden desire to impart gratuitous information on a hitherto avoided subject.
'Max resigned himself, if only because he knew it was basically his own fault. When he came out of hospital after his accident he was ordered to convalesce for at least a month. Instead he put himself under psychological pressure to perform, and at a level which exceeded even his pre-accident optimum.'
He lost interest in reading tea-leaves and watched Sarah as she grappled with the one fact that she had plucked out of his statement. He had told her—but she hadn't believed—those scars hadn't looked so awful. . .
'Accident?' came out shrill and cracked.
Blue, blue eyes, calm and unfathomable as the sea, looked into hers. 'It was played down at the time: these things can and do upset the balance of the market. Last April Max crashed his plane on a flight from Paris to London. Nearly killed himself—'
Somebody was operating a drill in her head. The bright red-flocked wallpaper of the coffee bar sprang at her, sharp, vivid, threatening suffocation, and the warm, spicy coffee-laden air grew strong and bitter in her nostrils, a sour bitterness that also flooded the back of her throat.
'I'm sorry, love, but at least it was quick. They said he would have been killed on impact. . .' Roy's caring voice floated through her chaotic mind. Killed? Had Max been killed? Her whole body was one silent, suffering, scream.
No. Nearly. That's what Tom had said. Nearly. A year ago she hadn't even been aware of Max's existence, let alone . . . The world began to revolve slowly around her, then faster, and cold sweat broke out on her forehead as she groped for meaning. She laid her head in her arms on the table, waiting for the turbulence to subside, hoping she wasn't going to disgrace herself by being sick. If he had died, she would never have met him. Never have fought those exhilarating battles; and won, and lost, and hated, and loved. And loved.
The numbness of the past hour dissolved as a wave of terrible futility washed over her, flooding her with exquisite pain. She loved him! That was why she lit up like a torch whenever he touched her, that was why his indifference, his rejection had been so utterly devastating. She loved him. In spite of herself, in spite of him . . . the man who never used the word love, except in the physical sense. God, it was almost funny!
'Sarah, are you all right?' A voice penetrated the fog.
She lifted her head. 'Yes. Yes. I just felt a bit odd there for a moment.' An odd kind of love, indeed.
'Sure? You're very pale?'
She nodded, though it hurt. Everything hurt.
'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you.' The round face was gentle, understanding. Appallingly so.
'I . . . that's how my husband died, you see. In a plane crash. It was a shock,' she improvised, a transparent half-truth.
'I know, Julie told me,' he said, unembarrassed, and she was aware that she hadn't fooled him one bit. Was he offering his shoulder to cry on? What had prompted him to draw his bow at the venture? 'A shock for Max, too. People tend to think of Max as being invulnerable—I think he had even come to believe it himself. He lost something in that crash, an ability to enjoy. I think he might have found it again, here.'
Sarah looked at him, pain in her heart—for herselfand for Max. Perhaps that explained his savagery. She had taunted with weakness and that barb must have sunk far deeper than those he had hooked into her flesh, for she knew their falsity. She shook her head wearily, not
really knowing why. If Tom was implying that Max had found it with her. . . but there was no reason for him to think that. Max must flirt with hundreds of women. The pain intensified—she was one of hundreds. No, not even that now!