Neesa Hart - Who Gets To Marry Max?

Chip looked sheepish. “I’m sorry, Sidney. I didn’t know you—”

“It’s all right. He’s heard the name before, I’m certain. But I don’t want him to hear it from us. Mr. Loden is paying every member of this staff extraordinarily well for their service.”

Becky nodded. “I’m getting twice what I did for the last house party I worked.”

Sidney tugged at the points of her jacket. “Most of you are. So in addition to your service, he’s going to get your respect, too. I’d like you to alert the rest of the staff to that. If I hear anything that even hints at disrespect, I won’t hesitate to let someone go.”

Becky and Chip stared at her, astonished. Kelly alone seemed to sense the volatile nature of her mood. “Chip,” she said, with the soft authority Sidney had always admired. “I think now would be a good time for you to find Mr. Loden’s chef and decide how the two of you want to divvy up the kitchen responsibilities. Do you have the punch list I gave you?”

He nodded. Kelly waved him away with a sweep of her hand. “Good. Becky, I’d like you to gather the rest of our staff in about ten minutes so we can brief them.” She scanned the kitchen, then tucked her clipboard under her arm. “We’ve got two hours,” she continued, “and I’m going to make sure the guest rooms are up to spec.”

As Kelly picked up a tray of chocolates, Sidney gave the confections a final, assessing glance. The shaped candies were Sidney’s personal trademark. Individually made, each candy represented a guest’s personal interests. Before a major event, she interviewed her clients to determine how best to serve their guests. The chocolates, which her staff placed on the pillows of the guest room beds or at each place setting for meals, were a special touch her clients usually raved about.

Kelly paused on her way to the door. “Sidney, would you like to instruct the rest of the staff, or shall I?”

Sidney gave her a grateful look. “I’ll do it.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.” At her friend’s dubious look, Sidney laughed. “Don’t worry, I’ve delivered my last avenging angel speech for the day.”

“All right,” Kelly agreed. “I’m going to deliver the chocolates, then.” She inspected the tray. “You know, these look really good, Sid,” she said. “Even if you did make them at three this morning. No one makes them as well as you do.”

Sidney shrugged, unwilling to discuss why she’d been unable to sleep the night before, and had decided to personally make the chocolates—a duty she generally would have delegated. “I enjoy doing it. I hadn’t done them in a while, and I wanted to make sure I hadn’t lost my touch.”

Kelly gave her a shrewd look, but silently hoisted the tray of chocolates to her shoulder. As she strolled past Sidney, she whispered, “Sure you don’t want me to put the Cupid on Max’s pillow, Sid?”

Sidney frowned at her. “Did you listen to a word I just said?”

“Every one of them. That’s why I asked.”

“Kel—”

“Okay, okay. He sure is cute, though.” She sailed out of the kitchen without a backward glance.

Sidney almost laughed out loud. Max Loden was many things. Daunting. Charming. Elegant. Ruthless. Brilliant. Maybe even handsome. But never, ever had anyone described him as cute. Sidney sometimes doubted that Max had even entered the world as a baby. Instead, he seemed to have walked onto the stage of his life full-grown and ready for battle.

When his parents died, leaving a twenty-five-year-old Max full responsibility for his brother, his two sisters and his father’s struggling corporation, Max had taken the reins like a man born to lead. He’d made a lot of money, and a lot of enemies along the way. Sidney’s uncle, Philip Grant, had seen him through all of it. And while the world found Max’s eccentricities, razor-sharp business acumen and incomprehensible ability to take the wildest risk possible and make astounding profits from the venture both infuriating and intimidating, Philip adored him. His adversaries and even his colleagues claimed he had no heart, that he placed profits above people and that he’d step on anyone who got in his way. “Mad Max,” they called him. And as far as everyone could tell, he liked it.

But Sidney had never believed it, for reasons she’d told no one—not even Philip. On a cold rainy evening, years ago, not long after she’d come to live with her uncle, Max Loden had given her a gift so generous, so unthinkably extravagant that she’d tucked it close to her heart and used it whenever her confidence had needed it most.

He would never remember the incident, she was sure. She’d been fifteen. He was a college student bound for glory. Everyone agreed it was his destiny. She’d been afraid of him, and hadn’t known why. In those days, however, it seemed she had feared everyone. Even then people talked about him. He had what Philip called presence. He always seemed to be involved in terribly important, terribly serious business. While his brother and sisters were enjoying the carefree life afforded them by wealthy parents, Max appeared to know, somehow, that his destiny would be different—that, too soon, he would bear responsibilities far too heavy for most men’s shoulders.

Yet on that night, for reasons she might never know, he had stepped off his constantly spinning world to give Sidney’s self-esteem a desperately needed transfusion. And, in that instant, she’d mentally cast aside his critics as shallow fools and envious naysayers. And “Mad Max” had become, forever known to her alone, as “Max the Magnificent.”

When Philip Grant recovered from the flu, Max decided two hours later, he would kill him. He stood in his study where he scanned the assembled guests on his terrace. The only light in this third-story room he used as a refuge came from the festive lanterns and mini-lights Sidney’s staff had strung through the trees. Dark clouds blotted out the crescent moon.

Which, he thought in a burst of grim humor, seemed wildly appropriate. The clouds of his temper had begun gathering earlier that day. His mood had rapidly progressed from foul to rotten. Greg, who had trouble committing to wearing the same tie all day, was predictably balking at the idea of betrothing himself to Lauren Fitzwater. Never mind that Greg had made certain promises—promises that Lauren had every reason to believe would lead to marriage. Greg was experiencing a very predictable bout of jitters. Max had been prepared for that. Max liked to think he was prepared for just about everything.

He had assured Greg, and meant it, that Lauren was the best thing in his life. Max’s desire to see Greg settled went far beyond the simplicity of a multimillion dollar corporate takeover.

Everyone needed stability.

Max should know. He’d spent his whole life without any. Stability, he’d learned, was the remedy for loneliness. So he’d strengthened his brother’s resolve, and considered it all part of a day’s work.

And while Greg’s burst of misgivings had proved mildly irritating, the beginning of his descent into hell hadn’t happened until later. His gaze narrowed and found Alice Northrup-Bowles downing a glass of champagne as she flirted with Max’s senior vice president. Damn the shrew. Her presence alone was enough to rattle him.

And then there was Sidney Grant. Sidney with her wise, intelligent eyes and that cocky little smile that made him want to kiss it right off her full mouth. What the hell was Philip thinking?

The old man was too shrewd, Max realized, not to know that his employer’s interest in his niece ran deeper than common courtesy. While Max had never told Philip the story, the evening years ago when he’d discovered Sidney in his parents’ library had left an indelible mark on him. He didn’t know why, and had long since given up trying to figure it out. He’d found her holding a dust rag in one hand, weeping over the broken remains of a porcelain figurine. She’d looked so desolate. Something in the bend of her shoulders, her tear-filled eyes, had struck a note in Max that had never stopped ringing.

The encounter hadn’t lasted long. Less than five minutes as he recalled, but he’d walked into that room, with no earthly idea why he felt moved to comfort her. And in the end, she’d comforted him. She’d told him how her twice-divorced mother had remarried again, had decided that Sidney’s presence in her home would make it too difficult for her new stepchildren to accept her as their mother. Philip asked his younger sister to send Sidney to him. Sidney’s mother had needed little prompting. She’d put her fifteen-year-old daughter on a bus the following afternoon.

Max remembered his sense of horror as her story unfolded. Even his parents, who had always remained slightly detached from their children’s activities, wouldn’t have contemplated anything so unspeakable. Sidney had mopped her eyes as she’d told him the tale, then apologized for burdening him with it. She’d started crying, she’d said, and that was how she’d broken the figurine. She was on her way to find her uncle Philip to report the incident.

Max had shaken his head, handed her his handkerchief, and assured her he’d handle everything. She needn’t worry about the broken figure. “I’ll take care of it,” he’d told her. At her wide-eyed look, he’d explained, “That’s what I do.”

Sidney had looked at him with that expressive gaze and said, “You always take care of everyone, don’t you?” At his startled look, she’d managed a slight chuckle that had seared its way through his nervous system. “Uncle Philip told me.”

He vaguely remembered coughing. “I see.”

Sidney tilted her head to one side. “So if you take care of everyone else, who takes care of you?” He’d stared at her, stunned. At his silence, Sidney had looked at him with that probing look that reminded him so much of her uncle. “Everyone needs someone to take care of them,” she’d whispered. “Even you.”

Her declaration had zeroed in on the secret part of himself he kept firmly hidden in a vault of self-control. Sidney’s softly uttered words had thrown open the curtains of his heart and sent light streaming through the window of his soul. He’d had to struggle to restore the internal security system that kept his emotions firmly in their fortress.

Without allowing himself to consider the reasons, Max had changed his plans that night, and taken his date shopping at Tiffany’s so he could replace the figurine. The incident with Sidney had rattled him more than he’d thought it should. He still wasn’t precisely sure why she’d managed to get to him like that, but he knew that in the handful of times he’d seen her thereafter, he’d felt inexplicably connected to her—as if something mysterious and irrevocable had bonded them together.

He’d made a point, over the next few years, to follow Sidney ’s life through Philip’s reports. With a few phone calls, he’d ensured she had the scholarship money she needed to attend college. She’d graduated summa cum laude, and he’d had nothing at all to do with that. He’d roundly cursed the philandering, weak-spined bastard she’d married soon thereafter, and silently cheered the guts it had taken for her to divorce him. Carter Silas had done a tap dance on Sidney’s confidence that would have unraveled most people, but Sidney had impressed the hell out of Max with the courage she’d shown in standing up to him.

Later, he’d learned, she hadn’t even begun to impress him. Though Sidney knew nothing of Max’s interest, he’d made it his business—compelled at first by the surge of protectiveness he’d felt when he first met her, and later by an odd fascination with wanting to know what she’d accomplish next.