“Max?” Bo felt a tremor of concern.
She felt him take a deep breath behind her. “I guess I try and lose myself in other things.”
Her brow furrowed in confusion. “Other things? Like what other—?” She stopped, realization suddenly running through her.
He means sex. He plays piano for the Berlin Philharmonic and then goes home and has sex.
“Oh,” she said, at a loss of what else to do or say. Max said nothing, but his hands remained unmoving, his chest rising and falling against her back as he took even and measured breaths. The nearness of him was nearly overwhelming, and Bo felt that clench of need run through her once more. Unhelpfully, her mind conjured up an image of Max from earlier that evening, his work at the piano done, his skin flushed and neck sweaty. It didn’t take much to add herself to that image; all too well, Bo could picture herself sliding naked into Max’s lap, kissing his full lips and letting him lose himself in her.
Get it together,she warned herself.Remember your professional boundaries. He’s not even your type. This is crazy.
Still, she couldn’t help but turn her head towards Max’s. He was looking down at her, and though his eyes were unreadable, she knew — she just knew — he’d pictured the same thing. The space between them became negligible as she leaned towards him and he leaned towards her, and Bo readied herself to be kissed.
More than kissed, if she was honest. Bo wanted his lips on hers, but she also wanted his hands on her body too. In fact, she was fully prepared to let him fuck her right here on his piano, eighty-five thousand pounds be damned.
After all, he said it was insured.
Just as Max leaned down again though, so that Bo could feel the warmth of his breath on her mouth, the doorbell sounded. The jingling bell cut into the tense atmosphere between them, and Max pulled back as though she’d slapped him.
“That’s the food,” he said, and his voice was abruptly courteous. “Shall I just go and . . . ?”
“Oh, yes, please do,” Bo replied, her voice also abruptly and absurdly polite. She watched Max go with an ache of disappointment, and she ran a hand over her hair, trying to pull herself together.
Oh, God, I want him. He’s not even my type and I want him.
“Fuck,” Bo swore, shaking her head. “I’m screwed.”
Chapter Eight
Desperate for someone to talk some sense into her, Bo tried contacting Willa the next day, but she was on location for the movie she was currently filming and so Bo’s frantic calls kept going through to her voicemail.
“If you don’t call me back in the next twelve hours, I’m going to fuck Mr Two out of Ten again,” Bo warned. “This is a best friend SOS, Wills. Like, my Titanic is about to hit his iceberg, he’s Amelia Earhart about to fly into my Bermuda Triangle, he’s the asp to my Cleopatra . . . you have to call me back and stop this from happening. I can’t maintain professional boundaries with this guy, I just can’t. Call me back, call me back, call me back.”
There was only one thing for it. Until she got through to Willa and had someone speak some sense into her, until her fevered thoughts were back on the straight and narrow —professional boundaries for our happily complicated arrangement —she would have to avoid Max. Yes, that was perfect. She would avoid him and his hands and that look in his eyes and by default avoid the raging lust she currently had for him. At least she had an audition at 11 a.m. to keep her mind and body busy, Bo thought. Not that she really wanted to go. She knew acting wasn’t where her heart lay, knew she was a sub-par actress at best, but all the same, until her money from her inheritance was in the bank, she couldn’t afford to turn any potential work down. Her mother had contacted her that week looking for a little ‘cash injection’ until her next payday, and Bo, guilt-stricken as usual, hadn’t had the heart to say no. So, even though her heart wasn’t in it, to the audition she would go. She probably should have prepared more than she had; probably should have looked at the script the night before the audition instead of skimming over it on the Tube ride there, but she hadn’t found the time. She’d been too busy nearly kissing Maxon his piano and then awkwardly eating Indian food with him. Too busy putting her vibrator to good use once alone in her summer house. Too busy calling Willa with desperate pleas to save her from herself.
When she came out of the audition — an audition which emphatically did not go well — there was a missed call on her phone. It wasn’t from Willa though.
No, it was from her sister.
With a sigh, Bo called Lisa back. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Lisa, because she did. Bo adored her older half-sister with all her heart. It was simply that Lisa Armstrong, successful, intelligent and efficient to the point of being insufferable, picked at the holes in Bo’s lightweight lies about her apparently happy and thriving life in London until even Bo wasn’t sure what was truth and what wasn’t. Lisa was too good a journalist, Bo often thought. So good that even her younger siblings weren’t immune to her sharp investigative skills.
“Hey,” Bo said when Lisa immediately answered her call, stepping into a nearby park to sit on a bench in the sunshine. “Are you okay?”
“Busy, but yes, I’m good,” Lisa replied. “I was just calling to check on you. I haven’t heard from you in a couple of weeks.”
Bo frowned. She should have messaged Lisa back after getting her last WhatsApp, instead of leaving her on read.
“Sorry, I’ve been busy.” Bo chewed on her nail. “Auditions. You know how it is.”
“No, I don’t actually.” Lisa sounded impatient. “Did you get any of them?”
Bo took a deep breath. “No. One of them I came close though. Really close.”
“Close doesn’t pay the bills, Bo.”
“No, but my work at Ida’s does, and my work for Geoffrey does too.”
“Geoffrey? Didn’t he die?” Lisa asked, and Bo could hear the confusion in her voice.
