“I mean, I haven’t had an acting job in months. Sometimes I get an audition or two, but no work. That’s how I ended up with Geoffrey. I was desperate for extra money. I think Geoffrey took pity on me. He used to come into Ida’s all the time to buy flowers, and we struck up a kind of friendship.”
“Ida?”
“Oh. Ida Dynowsiak. She owns the floristry shop I work at. That’s what I do most of the time. Floristry.”
Max gazed at her for a moment, before calling a nearby waiter over and ordering them both a glass of wine. When he returned with two glasses of white, Max nudged one towards her, staring at her with naked and open interest.
“I’ve seen you in the garden, so floristry I understand. But I would never in a million years have thought you were an actress,” he remarked. “You’re a terrible liar, you blush at the smallest of things and you’re charmingly without pretence.”
“I’m not an actress,” Bo clarified. “I’m anout-of-workactress.”
“All the same.” Max shook his head. “I’m genuinely stunned.”
“You’ve never, umm . . .” Bo trailed off. She’d been going to say, ‘You’ve never dated an actress before’, but then, she and Max weren’t dating, were they? They were just having sex. It was an arrangement, and nothing more.
“Never what?”
“Known any actresses before?” she finished, a little lamely, but Max seemed to read her meaning.
“No,” he told her. “I don’t come across them much. Not in my field.”
“You said you had a girlfriend though?”
“An ex-girlfriend,” Max reminded her. “Raphaella. She’s a financial analyst for Deutsche Bank.”
A financial analyst. Bo chewed on her lip, suddenly feeling very small and out of place. Max had been to Eton and Oxford. Max was a classical pianist for the Berliner Philharmoniker. Max was well-bred and well-educated, and no doubt only dated well-bred and well-educated women.
It’s a good thing you aren’t dating him then, isn’t it?she asked herself, with a small sting of bitterness.It’s a good thing I’m just convenient, and that this thing between us, whatever it is, is only casual.She stared into her wine glass, frowning slightly, and Max must have noticed, because he reached over to take her hand.
“Bo,” he said suddenly, her name soft on his lips. “Bo, Raphaella and I . . . we broke up before you and I ever . . . last summer, I mean. Raphaella and I broke up before I met you. I’m not the kind of man to cheat. That’s not me.”
“Oh.” She exhaled slightly, unsure whether to be relieved or disappointed that Max had misread the reason for her sudden unhappiness.
“My father was a cheat,” Max continued, and there was a new sharpness to his tone. “He cheated on his wife. Cheated on my mother. I’m not like him. I’ll never be like him. You don’t have to worry . . . while you and I are—”
“Having sex,” Bo interjected for him, but he shook his head.
“I was going to say ‘together’. While you and I are together, there won’t be anyone else.”
Bo was silent for a moment. Once again, a feeling of warm affection towards Max was sliding down her spine, and it hit her, like a ton of bricks, that what she’d said to Willa the other day had been true: shelikedMax. She really, really liked him.
“You aren’t seeing anyone else?” she asked him quietly, and he shook his head.
“No.”
A small smile began to build within Bo, and she sipped at her wine, suddenly feeling happier. Maybe thiswasa date. Maybe this wasn’t going to be just an arrangement after all.
“I don’t cheat, I told you,” Max carried on. “So, up until the moment Geoffrey’s house is sold and I go back to Berlin, you’ll be my only sexual partner. I promise.”
The smile and happiness that had been building within Bo instantly dissipated, and she felt inexplicably crushed. The wine in her mouth suddenly tasted bitter, and she swallowed it and her disappointment down quickly before Max could see it. God, she was such an idiot. Such an utter, utter idiot.
“Okay,” she said. “Umm, thanks for telling me.”
“Fidelity is important to me,” Max said. “I won’t be my father.”
“Your father?” Bo asked, abruptly desperate to change the topic. “So, was your father Geoffrey’s brother then? Geoffrey never mentioned any family to me but you, so I’ve been trying to work it out.”
Max’s face paled. “No. No, my father wasn’t Geoffrey’s brother.”
