and pulling her against him. The muscles in his jaw tensed and he gritted his teeth.
‘Only the weak and the incompetent resort to threats. I’m merely making conversation.’ He looked straight into her flushed face. ‘You remember conversation, don’t you, Margot? It’s the thing you used to interrupt by dragging me to bed.’
Margot stared at him, her body pulsing with equal parts longing and loathing. If only she could throw his words back in his face. But it was true. Her desire for him had been frantic and inexorable.
She lifted her chin. So what if it had? Enjoying sex wasn’t a crime. And it certainly wasn’t sneaky or dishonest—like, say, deliberately setting out to seduce someone for their money.
Eyes narrowing, she yanked out one of the chairs with uncharacteristic roughness and sat down on it. Pulling her bag closer, she reached inside.
Max watched in silence as she pulled out a fountain pen and a leather-bound case. Ignoring him, she flipped it open and began writing with swift, sure strokes. Then, laying the pen down, she tore the paper she’d been writing on free and pushed it across the table towards him.
It was a cheque.
A cheque!
His breathing jerked and his jaw felt suddenly as though it was hewn from basalt. He didn’t move, didn’t even lower his gaze, just kept his eyes locked on her face as with effort he held on to the fast-fraying threads of his temper.
‘What’s that?’ he asked softly.
Her mouth thinned. ‘I don’t know how your mind works, Max, and I don’t want to, but I know why you’re here. It’s the same reason you were here ten years ago. Money.’ Margot gestured towards the cheque. ‘So why don’t you just take it and go?’
He was watching her thoughtfully, his expression somewhere between incredulous and mocking. But there was a tension in him that hadn’t been there before.
‘That’s amazing,’ he said finally. ‘I didn’t know people actually did this kind of thing in real life. I thought it was just in films—’
‘If only this was a film,’ she said coldly. ‘Then I could just leave you on the cutting room floor.’
Max gazed across the room, anger shrinking his focus so that all he could see was the small rectangular piece of paper lying on the tabletop. Of course it would come down to money. That was all their relationship had ever been about. Or, more precisely, his complete and utter lack of it.
Margot was a Duvernay, and Duvernays didn’t marry poor outsiders. His breath seemed to harden in his lungs. Not even when they had claimed them as family, welcomed them into their home and their lives.
Briefly he let the pain and anger of his memories seep through his veins. Officially he might have been just on the payroll, but for nearly three years he had been treated like a member of the clan—and, stupid idiot that he was, he had actually come to believe in the fiction that although blood made you related, it was loyalty that made you family.
Later, when his perception hadn’t been blunted by desire and emotion, it had been easy to see that any invitation into the inner sanctum had been on their terms, and it had never extended to marrying the daughter of the house.
Only by then he had lost his job, his home and his pride. He had been left penniless and powerless.
But times had changed. Leaning back, he smiled coldly. ‘It’s not enough.’
Margot clenched her jaw, her brown eyes glowing with anger like peat on a fire. ‘Oh, believe me, it is.’
Even if she had written a row of zeros it would be more than he deserved. He had already cost her enough—no, too much—in pain and regret.
‘So take it and go.’
He shifted in his seat, and she felt another stab of anger that he should be able to do this to her. That after everything he’d already taken he could just swan back into her life, into her boardroom, and demand more.
Controlling her emotions, she closed her chequebook with exaggerated care and looked up at him. ‘Why are you here, Max?’
He shrugged. ‘Isn’t that obvious? I’m a shareholder and a director now, so I thought we should talk.’
‘You could have just telephoned,’ she snapped.
‘What?’ His mouth curved up at one corner. ‘And miss all the fun.’ He let his eyes home in on the pulse beating at the base of her throat. ‘Besides, I wanted to choose my office.’
She watched almost hypnotised as he gestured lazily around the room. ‘Pick out a desk...wallpaper maybe...’
Folding her arms to stop her hands shaking, she glowered at him. The shock of everything—her father’s phone message, Max buying the shares, his sudden and unwelcome reappearance in her life—was suddenly too much to endure a moment longer.
‘Just stop it, okay? Stop it. This is insane. You can’t seriously expect to work here. Or want to.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Is there a problem?’
She looked at him in disbelief. ‘Yes, of course there’s a problem. You and me...our history—’
Breaking off, she fought to control the sudden jab of pain at the memory of just how cruelly one-sided that history had been.
‘I don’t care how many shares you buy, you are not stepping foot in this boardroom again. So how much is it?’ She forced a business-like tone into her voice. ‘How much do you want?’
She waited for his reply but it didn’t come. And then, as the silence seemed to stretch beyond all normal limits, she felt her spine stiffen with horror as slowly he shook his head.
‘I don’t want and I certainly don’t need your money.’
Watching the doubt and confusion in her eyes, he felt suddenly immensely satisfied. Buying the shares had been an act of insanity on so many levels, but now, having Margot in front of him, knowing that his mere presence had dragged her here, it all felt worth it.
Colour was spreading slowly over her cheeks.
‘Take the cheque or don’t—I don’t care.’ She lifted her chin. ‘But either way this conversation is over. And now I suggest you leave before I have you removed—’
‘That’s not going to happen.’ His voice sounded normal—pleasant, even—but she felt a shiver of apprehension, for there was a strand of steel running through every syllable that matched the combative glint in his eyes.
‘I’m not just the hired help now, baby. I’m CEO of a global wine business. More importantly, as of today, I’m a bona fide director of this company.’
He paused, and she felt as if the air was being sucked out of the room as he let his gaze linger on her face. Pulse racing, she realised that only a very foolish woman would underestimate a man like Max Montigny.
‘Your company.’
He lounged back, and suddenly her heart was thumping against her ribs.
‘Although that may be about to change.’
‘What do you mean?’ Her voice was like a whisper. She cleared her throat. ‘What are you talking about?’
He shrugged. ‘Right now you might live in the big chateau, have a private jet and a chauffeur-driven limousine, but I’ve seen your accounts.’
She frowned, started to object, but he simply smiled and she fell silent, for there was something knowing in the gaze that was making her skin start to prickle with fear and apprehension.
‘Your father showed them to me. And they make pretty bleak reading. Desperate, in fact. Oh, it all looks good on the outside, but you’re haemorrhaging money.’
Margot