Max parked his Audi outside Chloe’s terrace house at Centennial Park and wished once again she was still living with him at Vaucluse. He’d liked having her on hand, liked the sense of going home to her. He knew it was important to her to be independent of him, knew he should be pleased about it for her sake, but it didn’t please him.
It pleased him even less when he went inside and listened to her account of Laura Farrell’s visit and the outcome of it with Chloe involving herself with Tony Lipton again. It was pointless telling her she shouldn’t have given any money to Laura. The baby was the big issue with Chloe. Max suspected it was always going to be a big issue-one that would inevitably separate them if he didn’t rethink his life.
‘Anyhow, I told my lawyer I wanted urgent action on this and he’s set up a meeting with Tony in his office tomorrow,’ she finished with a grimace of distaste. ‘It’s going to be horrid but I can’t just forget it, Max.’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘It will play on your mind until it’s settled. But don’t assume Laura told you the truth, Chloe. There’s something very fishy about her story.’
Like a lot of emotional pressure for the big handout-a very clever piece of manipulation that Chloe might have fallen for a few months ago, the kind of manipulation Laura would undoubtedly have seen used on Chloe by both Stephanie Rollins and Tony.
She laughed. ‘Luther didn’t like the smell of it, either.’
Max smiled. ‘I made a good choice, getting him for you. Worth his weight in gold.’
‘Absolutely!’ She wound her arms around his neck, her lovely face tilted up to his, eyes shining pleasure in his gift. ‘You have a happy knack of getting everything right, Max.’
He slid his arms around her waist, drawing her closer. ‘Would you like me to go with you tomorrow? Help sort things out with Tony?’
‘No. This is something I should do myself.’ Her mouth curled into an ironic smile. ‘I can’t expect you to protect me forever.’
The urge to do precisely that was very strong. Max found it difficult to back off from it. Probably his intense dislike of her ex-husband was driving it. He didn’t want Chloe meeting with the slime. Yet the encounter with Laura Farrell had definitely demonstrated she could no longer be influenced into doing anything she didn’t feel was right. She was no-one’s fool anymore, and he had no right to fray her confidence in handling a situation which she saw as her business.
‘Besides, I should be perfectly safe in my lawyer’s office,’ she insisted.
‘True,’ he conceded. ‘I’m worried about when you leave it. If Tony turns nasty…’ No mental strength could fight superior physical strength. Chloe needed him to protect her.
She frowned, fretting over the very real possibility that Tony could try physical force on her until a solution struck. ‘I know. I’ll call Gerry Anderson, ask him to take me to the lawyer’s office and bring me home. Gerry’s a very good security guard.’
An independent solution.
Little by little she was separating herself from him.
Soon she wouldn’t need him at all, although wanting him was still strong. He made sure it would stay strong, pouring every bit of his sexual expertise into their love-making later in the evening. Afterwards she cuddled up to him with a satisfied sigh and murmured, ‘You know, Max, I’m not with you because I want to feather my nest with your billions. You don’t think that, do you?’
‘No, I don’t. Never would with you, Chloe.’
She snuggled down contentedly, accepting his word without question.
/> Max knew he couldn’t buy her.
Wouldn’t want to, either.
Her heart and mind were now geared to making the choices that felt right to her-running her own race.
To keep her he had to make himself her choice.
The hell of it was he wanted her to share everything with him, wanted to share everything with her. Running his own race into the future looked very empty without her at his side. Even Hill House felt empty without her there to come home to.
Max had never thought of his life as dark. A deep sense of purpose had driven it forward from nothing to everything he wanted. But Chloe lit him up inside with her lovely, shining, artless personality and all he had valued in the past-the brilliance of his achievements-lost its gloss compared to what she made him feel.
The plain truth was he didn’t have everything he wanted.
Chloe was slipping away from him and he wanted more of her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DESPITE Chloe’s determination to set things right, she felt very nervous about the confrontation with Tony. He was sure to be angry and spiteful, and although their respective lawyers would be at the meeting-hopefully keeping the situation calm and orderly-having to face her husband again was not a pleasant prospect.
‘I can feel your tension, Miss Rollins,’ Gerry Anderson remarked caringly as they set out on the drive into the city. ‘Want to spell out the problem so I’ll know what to watch out for?’