“It feels like the right time. Tell me why you can’t have kids.”
He simply wasn’t going to let up. She recited the line like she’d practiced. “My internal female workings are all screwed up.”
Silence a moment, then, just when she thought deafness had settled in, his voice beat against her eardrums. “Why don’t you ask Angela why she can’t have kids?”
“How do you know she can’t?”
“Ask her. Maybe that’s another way the two of you are sisters.”
Chapter Fifteen
Max wouldn’t ask Angela whether she could have kids. Of course, she wouldn’t. It wasn’t her business. And she didn’t want to know if Cameron was right, if Angela was as barren as Max herself.
At nine o’clock, Angela waited for her at a table along the back wall of the Embassy’s hotel bar. She glanced at her slim watch. “You’re late.”
Max put her hand on the back of the chair opposite Angela. “You’re putting on an act for your potential clients. This’ll be the first time the person you were waiting for actually showed up.”
Angela smiled that perfect white smile. Her hair fell loosely around her shoulders, extra curl in it over the afternoon’s style. The sapphire bracelet still graced her wrist, while the Ann Taylor suit she’d bought that afternoon fit snugly with no blouse beneath the jacket. The V-neck plunged. A small cross on a thin gold chain nestled between her breasts. An odd effect that, virginity and brazenness rolled into one, sort of like Max’s pleated skirt and spiked heels.
“You’ve been watching me, haven’t you, Max?”
Max pulled the chair around next to Angela, then sat so they were both facing the dance floor. “A writer has to observe.”
Angela pushed a glass of white zin Max’s way. Obviously she’d been watching Max, too, knew her choice of wine. Max eyed the amber liquid in Angela’s glass.
She’d already been caught. What did it matter now? “I can’t stand it any more. What are you drinking?”
Angela smiled, held her glass next to the candle, observing the sparkle. “Cakebread Chardonnay.”
Max’s mouth watered, not that she really liked chardonnay. Perhaps it was the name, which sounded expensive and extravagant.
“I like to try something new, experiment when I’m here.”
Max arched a brow. “And impress your audience?”
Angela swirled the liquid, her lips curving with a soft smile. “Exactly.” She looked at Max abruptly, then dropped her gaze to Max’s house white zin. “That’s what you always have to do.”
Max didn’t have to ask the price, she knew she didn’t have the money to blow, not after what she’d spent that afternoon.
“Here, taste it.” Angela held the glass out. Max recoiled.
“Do it.” Max barely heard the words, merely saw them shaped on Angela’s lips. “Men are watching. They’re gonna love us sharing.”
Max swallowed the lump in her throat, then took the proffered glass and added her own lipstick stain to the opposite edge. She barely tasted the wine, let it slide down her throat, relishing the clean, dry burst of it in her mouth only after it was gone.
“Good, huh?” Angela murmured.
Max could only nod, then glance around the room. Eyes, so many male eyes. She couldn’t say why she’d suddenly become so enamored with being watched. She only knew it shot a sharp, almost painful thrill straight to her clitoris. A flush rose to her cheeks. “I want to know the particulars of your business.”
Knowing full well that Max wanted far more than she’d even admit to herself, Angela smiled wryly, and indulged Max’s question. “Well, the routine works. They wait, they watch, then when they think I’ve been stood up, they come sniffing around.”
“But how do you broach the money topic?” Max leaned forward, chin on her hand, feeling safe on firmer ground. This time she was going to ask her own questions and start pulling Angela out.
“I tell them I’m a working girl, and my so-called date petered out, so to speak.” She winked. “You’d be surprised how many of them get it right away. Makes you wonder how many times they’ve played the sex-for-hire scenario.”
Seated at twelve o’clock high, the dark-haired Greek God watched as Angela sipped her wine, his gaze traveling from her lips to her throat, finally diving into her cleavage.
What the hell was he doing here for the third night in a row?
Was he following Angela? Did Angela know him? Only one way to find out.
“Who’s your quarry for tonight?”
Elbows on the table, Angela clasped her hands and took a deep breath. A smile lifting the corners of her mouth, eyelids at half-mast, lips red and pouty, she surveyed her kingdom.
“How about that dark cutie by the dance floor?” Max said.