It Started With One Night: The Magnate's Mistress / His Bride for One Night / Master of Her Virtue

‘I thought I heard you being sick earlier,’ Joyce said.

‘It’s nothing. Just a tummy bug. Probably the same thing Jen and her kids had. I’m feeling better now.’

‘Are you sure that’s what it is?’ her mother asked, still looking concerned.

‘Well, I don’t think I’m dying of some dreaded disease,’ Tara said. ‘Truly, Mum, you have to stop looking up those health websites on the internet. You’re becoming a hypochondriac.’

‘I meant,’ her mother bit out, ‘do you think you could be pregnant?’

‘Pregnant!’ Tara was totally taken aback. Dear heaven. Mothers! Truly. ‘No, Mum, I am definitely not pregnant.’ She’d had a period during the weeks Max had been away, which meant if she was pregnant, it had been because of an immaculate conception!

Besides, if there was one thing Tara was fanatical about, it was birth control. The last thing she wanted at this time in her life was a baby. Max wasn’t the only one.

When they’d first become lovers, Max had said he’d use condoms. But after one broke one night last year and they’d spent an anxious two weeks, Tara had taken over the job of preventing a pregnancy. She even had her cellphone programmed so that it beeped at the same time every day, a reminder to take her pill. Six pm on the dot. She also kept a spare box of pills in Max’s bathroom, in case she accidentally left hers at home.

Her mother’s tendency to always expect the worst to happen in life had trained Tara to be an expert in preventative action.

‘There is no sure form of contraception,’ Joyce pointed out firmly. ‘Except saying no.’

Tara refrained from telling her mother that saying no to Max would never be on her agenda.

‘I have to get going,’ she said. ‘The next train for the city is due in ten minutes.’

‘When will you be back?’ her mother called after her as she hurried from the kitchen. ‘Or don’t you know?’

It hit home. That last remark. Because Tara didn’t know. She never seemed to know these days. In that, her mother was right. Max came and went like a whirlwind, often without much information or explanation. He expected her to understand how busy he was at the moment. Which she did on the whole. Didn’t she?

‘I’ll let you know, Mum,’ Tara called back as she scooped up her carry-all and swept out the door. ‘Bye.’

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_d9e65c5c-6838-5192-9239-57de0e9008e0)

HER wrist-watch said three-forty as Tara slid Max’s silver Mercedes into an empty parking space, then yanked the car keys out of the ignition. Ten seconds later she was hurrying across the sun-drenched car park, wishing she was wearing her joggers, instead of high-heeled slip-on white sandals. They were sexy shoes but impossible to run in. She’d found that out on the way to the station back at home.

Missing the train had put her in a right quandary.

Did she wait for the next train or catch a taxi?

A taxi from Quakers Hill to the city would cost a bomb.

Unfortunately, Joyce had instilled some of her frugal ways in both her daughters, so whilst Tara could probably have afforded the fare, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Aside from the sheer extravagance, she was saving this year to pay for next year’s uni fees.

She’d momentarily contemplated using the credit card Max had given her, and which she occasionally used for clothes. But only when he was with her, and only when it was for something he insisted she buy, and which she wouldn’t wear during her day-to-day life. Things like evening gowns and outrageously expensive lingerie. Things she kept in Max’s penthouse for her life there.

Till now, she’d never used the card for everyday expenses. When she considered it this time, her mother’s earlier words about her being a kept woman made up her mind for her. Maybe if she’d been still feeling sick, she’d have surrendered to temptation and taken a taxi, but the nausea which had been plaguing her all morning had finally disappeared. So she’d bought herself some food and sat and waited for the next train, and now she was running late.

Tara increased the speed of her stride, her stiletto heels click-clacking faster on the cement path. Her heart started to beat faster as well, a mixture of agitation and anticipation. With a bit of luck, Max’s plane might not have arrived yet. She’d hate him to think she didn’t care enough to be on time. Still, planes rarely seemed to land on schedule. Except when you didn’t want them to, of course.

The contrariness of life.

Once inside the arrivals terminal, Tara swiftly checked the overhead information screens, groaning when she saw that Max’s plane had landed, although only ten minutes earlier. The exit gate assigned was gate B.

Surely he could not be through Customs yet, she told herself as she hurried once more, her progress slightly hampered by having to dodge groups of people. Gate B, typically, was down the other end of the building.

Most of the men she swept past turned for a second glance, but Tara was used to that. Blondes surely did get more than their fair share of male attention, especially tall, pretty ones with long, flowing hair and even longer legs.

Tara also conceded that her new white hipsters were on the eye-poppingly tight side today. She’d been doing some comfort eating lately and had put on a couple of pounds since she’d bought them at a summer sale a fortnight ago. It was as well they were made of stretch material. Still, lord knew what the view of her was like from behind. Pretty in-your-face, no doubt.

Her braless state might have stopped traffic as well, if she’d been wearing a T-shirt or a singlet top.

Thankfully, she wasn’t wearing either. The pink shirt she’d chosen that day did a fair job of hiding her unfettered breasts.

In her everyday life, Tara always wore a bra. But Max liked her braless. Or so he’d said one night, soon after they’d starting seeing each other. And, being anxious to please him, she’d started leaving off her bra whenever she was with him.

But as time had gone by, she’d become aware of the type of stares she’d received from other men when Max had taken her out in public.

And she hadn’t liked it.

Nowadays, when she was with Max, she still left her bra off, but compromised by never wearing anything too revealing. She chose evening gowns with heavily beaded bodices, or solid linings. For dressy day wear, she stuck to dresses and covering jackets. For casual wear, she wore shirts and blouses rather than tight or clingy tops. Tara liked the idea of keeping her bared breasts for her lover only.

Her nipples tightened further at the mere thought of Max touching them.

She would have to wait for that pleasure, however, till they were alone in Max’s hotel suite. Although Max seemed to like her displaying her feminine curves in public, he was not a man to make love anywhere but in total privacy. And that included kissing.

The first time he’d come home after being away, she’d thrown her arms around him in public and given him a big kiss. His expression when she finally let him come up for air had been one of agitation, and distaste. He’d explained to her later that he found it embarrassing, and could she please refrain from turning him on to that degree when he could not do anything about it?

He had added later that he was more than happy for her to be as provocative and as assertive as she liked in private. But once stung by what she’d seen as a rejection of her overtures—and affection—Tara now never made the first move where lovemaking was concerned. She always left it up to Max.

Not that she ever had to wait long. Behind closed doors, Max’s coolly controlled façade soon dropped away to reveal a hot-blooded and often insatiable lover. His visits home might have become shorter and less frequent over the last few months—as Tara’s mother had observed—but whilst he was here in Sydney, he was all Tara’s. They spent most of Max’s visits in bed.

Her mother would see this as conclusive evidence that she was just a sex object to Max. A kept woman. In other words, a mistress.

But her mother was not there when Max took her in his arms. She didn’t see the look in his eyes; didn’t feel the tenderness in his touch; or the uncontrollable trembling which racked his body whenever he made love to her.

Max loved her. Tara was sure of it.

His not wanting to marry her at this time in his life was a matter of timing, not lack of love. Max had never said that marriage was never on his agenda.

And as she’d told her mother, she was in no hurry to get married, anyway. What she was in a hurry for was to get to gate B, collect Max and take him back to the Regency Royale Hotel, post-haste.

Fate must have been on her side, for no sooner had she ground to a breathless halt not far from gate B than Max emerged through the customs exit, striding purposefully down the ramp, carrying his laptop in one hand and wheeling a black carry-on suitcase in the other.

Tara supposed he didn’t look all that much different from dozens of other well-dressed businessmen there at the airport that day. Perhaps taller than most. More broad-shouldered. And more handsome.

But just the sight of him did things to her that she could never explain to her mother. She came alive as she was never alive when she wasn’t with him. Her brain bubbled with joy and the blood fizzed in her veins.

Tara conceded not every twenty-four-year-old girl’s heart would flutter madly at Max’s more conservative brand of handsome, or his very conservative mode of dressing. Tara rarely saw him in anything but a suit. Today’s was charcoal-grey. Single-breasted, combined with a crisp white shirt and a striped blue tie.

All very understated.