He wanted a family. Two kids, maybe. Or four. Not three. That left an odd man out. But not right away. He wanted time to enjoy having K to himself.

Kristin reappeared looking so beautiful he wanted her again.

"I'm ready," she said with a smile.

"Me, too," he quipped. "But I think I can control myself till after dinner."

She laughed. And then blushed.

And he knew she wanted him as much as he wanted her. He headed straight for the hotel room door, knowing it would be too easy to get distracted again.

They had a short walk to the spot where Max had managed to find a parking spot for his Porsche. The weather had remained beautiful, sunny and warm, with no sign of the rain that made an umbrella a necessary addition to any outing in London.

The sidewalks were busy, and Max slid an arm around Kristin's waist and pulled her close to rescue her from a mother pushing an old-fashioned baby carriage through the crowd.

"I'm looking forward to catching up with Irina," he said.

"I'm surprised you haven't kept in closer touch with her," Kristin replied as she inched even closer to avoid two small children holding hands on either side of their mother. "It always seemed to me that Irina was more of a mother to you than your own mother while you were on the tour."

"She was," Max said. "I'm not sure why we lost touch. We were talking once a week. Then every couple of weeks. Then once or twice a year. And not at all for the past couple of years." Max shrugged. "My fault, I guess. I suppose I didn't need a mother as much once I got older."

"You always need your mother," Kristin said sharply. "And mothers never stop loving and caring for their children, no matter how grown-up and independent they are."

He laughed at her ferocity on the subject. "I'm not going to argue with you, K." He was reminded that Kristin had been without a mother most of her life. Maybe that was what made her so animated on the subject. "You must admit, my mother-"

"Worries about you," Kristin interjected.

His brows rose to his hairline. "I don't believe what I'm hearing. You really think the Mean Witch cares for me?"

She bit her lip and shot him a guilty look.

Which made him suspicious. He opened the passenger door of his Porsche, waited for her to get in and closed the door behind her, all the while watching her. He got into the car, started the engine and pulled out into traffic before he said, "What makes you think my mother cares for me?"

"All mothers-"

"I thought we'd established that my mother is the exception to the rule," Max said. "Yours, too, for that matter."

"Maybe," Kristin conceded. "But Max, you must admit, she's had a difficult time-"

"Hold up just one minute," Max interrupted. "Now you're on her side? What is this, K?"

She chewed on her fingernail while she stared at him. "I'm wondering if perhaps you've misjudged her, Max."

"She sent me off to boarding school when I turned seven. We barely spoke during the holidays. She never showed up at a single match I played," he said. "Not once during my entire junior tennis career. That doesn't leave me with any warm and fuzzy feelings toward her."

"Maybe she had reasons-"

Max snorted. "Come on, K. You know better than that. You managed to be around for me for three years, despite all the traveling you had to do."

"She didn't have just one child," Kristin pointed out. "She had five. And a husband, who must have wanted some of her time."

Max had never thought of his siblings as taking any of his mother's time, because it didn't seem like she spent any more time with them than she had with him. Maybe he was wrong. And he knew at one time his father had loved his mother. Which would have made quite a few demands on her time.

"Maybe she wasn't able to be there for you because she was sad and unhappy about what was happening between her and your father."

He stared at her incredulously.

Kristin cried, "Watch out!"

A horn blared and he swerved the Porsche back into his lane. "What on earth has gotten into you? I don't believe what I'm hearing."

"I think you should give your mother another chance, Max. That's all."

"Why? What's different now? Has she been in touch with you? Is that what this is all about?"

He watched her face turn pale. Watched her open her mouth to speak and close it again before she finally said, "I talked with my father today on the phone. He's not doing well, Max." Tears brimmed in her eyes and she turned away, sniffing to hold them back. When she turned to look at him again, her eyes were filled with pain. "He said he wants to die."

"I'm sorry, K. I didn't know."

"I want to leave and go home and be with him, but he said he doesn't want me there. He doesn't want to see me. I think maybe I should go anyway."

Max pulled the Porsche to the curb in the shade of an oak and turned off the ignition. He turned to her and said, "What can I do to help?"

She sniffed and said, "Just listening is a help."

There wasn't room in the Porsche to pull her into his lap, so he settled an arm around her shoulder and pulled her toward him and kissed her gently on each cheek, catching a teardrop with the second kiss. "Take it easy, baby. Let me see what I can do about getting him flown here."

"He's in rehab."

"There are rehab facilities here. Let me do this for you, please. I need you here for this assignment." He made his plea professional, rather than personal, because he wasn't sure she was ready to hear how much he wanted her to stay in London for the rest of her life. Getting her father here would be a step in the right direction.

"All right, Max. I'll pay you back. I promise."

"When we get to the restaurant, I'll make a few phone calls. We should have your dad here before we play our exhibition match. If he's up to it, maybe he'll want to come."

She brightened and said, "What a good idea! That'll give him something to work toward over the next couple of weeks. Thank you, Max. You don't know how much this means to me."

He felt his throat swell with emotion. Pleasing her, making her happy, made him feel ten feet tall. Bloody hell. He had it bad. If only he could be sure she shared his feelings, he'd ask her to marry him tonight.

"K..."

"What is it, Max?"

"Nothing. We're here. We can talk about it later tonight."

17.

Kristin wondered if she'd made a mistake accepting Max's offer to bring her father to London. But she'd been terribly worried when she'd talked to Harry. Surprisingly, the duchess had made the same offer earlier in the day. Which was what had motivated her to speak so kindly of the Mean Witch to Max.

Flick had phoned Kristin, crying because her grandfather didn't want her to call anymore. The duchess had suggested bringing Harry to London so Flick could be closer to him.

"It might keep your father-and Felicity-from feeling so low if she can visit with him every day," the duchess had said.

Kristin hadn't accepted Bella's offer because she didn't want to be indebted to the woman any more than she already was. But she'd been tempted. During her visits with Flick every afternoon, Kristin had been coincidentally getting to know Bella better. The more she knew about Flick's grandmother, the more she liked her. And the more she believed Bella only had Max's best interests at heart in her effort to get the two of them together.

Which was why, every time she'd had sex with Max over the past week-and they'd had a great deal of sex- Kristin had felt guilty. She had an ulterior motive in attaching Max's affection that he knew nothing about. It was uncomfortable to remember that she'd bargained with the duchess to spend time with Max in exchange for a few baubles.

Kristin laughed inwardly. The Blackthorne Rubies were hardly baubles. They were priceless gems. And they represented lifelong security for her and her daughter.

Unfortunately, as Max was getting physically attached to her, she'd been getting emotionally attached to him. She'd started wondering what it might be like to say yes if he actually did propose. Before she could possibly say yes, there were things she would have to confess that weren't going to present her in a very good light.

Her dilemma was twofold. First, how could she explain her agreement with his mother to play the exhibition match in order to spend more time with him? Second, how could she justify keeping his daughter a secret from him?

The first deception was certain to make him angry. The second might cause him to walk away from her-and try to take Flick with him. Kristin had been progressively torn between feelings of utter joy at the possibility of a life with Max and utter despair that her situation was hopeless.

She didn't want to hurt or humiliate Max with the knowledge that she'd been willing to do whatever was necessary to earn the Blackthorne Rubies. And she felt sick in the pit of her stomach every time she imagined how duped and defrauded Max would feel when he learned he had a nine-year-old daughter.

But if they were going to have any hope of a future together, she was going to have to tell him everything. She dreaded seeing the look on his face when he learned that the goddess he adored had very human feet of clay.

Kristin realized she'd been lost in thought during the entire walk from the spot where Max had parked his Porsche to the Indian restaurant where they were meeting Irina and Steffan.

"Hello, beautiful," Steffan said, standing up from his seat at a table for four to kiss her on both cheeks. He caught Max's hand and bumped shoulders. "Good to see you, Max."

Kristin leaned over to kiss Irina on both cheeks before sitting in the chair across from Steffan. Max also kissed Irina before taking the chair across from the older woman.

"You should never have stopped playing tennis," Irina chided Max. "You're so good at it."

Kristin was starting to feel miffed that she hadn't been included in the compliment when Irina turned to her and said, "You have immense talent, Kristin, but not Max's love of the game."

Which was an assessment so close to the truth it was scary. "I suppose it's a good thing I quit," Kristin said with a smile.

"And too bad Max did," Irina said, reaching out to pat his hand, which lay on the table.

"What are we drinking?" Max asked, catching and squeezing her hand before releasing it.

Kristin had known Max liked Irina. She hadn't realized how much affection he felt for the older woman. It was clear Irina returned the feeling. She glanced at Steffan, wondering whether he'd ever been jealous of Max's place in his mother's heart. But Steffan's dark eyes were stone walls that kept emotions in and strangers out.

"I've ordered a bottle of cabernet," Steffan said. "Is that all right with everyone?"

Kristin nodded, although she needed something stronger. She had a lot of decisions to make. When to tell Max. What to tell Max. How to tell Max all the secrets she'd been keeping from him.

She was quiet through most of dinner, letting Max and Irina and Steffan reminisce. Which might have been why she noticed the number of times Irina made an uncomplimentary comment about the United States. She never went so far as to mention President Taylor. But not once during all the dates she'd had during the previous week had Kristin heard such anti-American sentiments.

When she looked at Max, he seemed oblivious. In fact, he was leaning his chin on his hand, listening raptly to Irina.

Kristin surreptitiously watched Steffan, wondering if he shared his mother's dislike of America. Steffan caught her looking at him and raised a brow. When she flushed, embarrassed at even considering Max's childhood friend as an assassin, he winked. She was more than willing to let him think her interest in him was personal.

But Max was not.

"That's my friend you're flirting with, Casanova," Max said, his voice like steel. "Leave her alone."

Steffan held both hands up like a man under arrest and said, "Sorry, old man. No harm, no foul."

Kristin didn't know whether to feel flattered by Max's protectiveness or insulted by it. She didn't belong to him. They'd merely been having sex-granted, a lot of really great sex-for a single week. Now that she thought about it, she was startled to realize that no words of love-or even affection-had been spoken between them.

It might be worth spending a little more time with Steffan to see whether he had feelings about America similar to his mother's. Unfortunately, she didn't have time to clear her brilliant plan with Max.

"Not so fast, Max," she said. She met his gaze and tried to tell him with a look that she had something besides a romantic interest in Steffan. But apparently Max couldn't see anything through the haze of green coloring his view. "You don't own me," she said at last.

"Well, well," Steffan said with a grin. "How about a nightcap, little lady?"

"K and I have plans later," Max said.

"I'd rather take a ride with Steffan," Kristin said. She watched Max squeeze his table napkin in his fist. She figured he was imagining it was Steffan's throat.

"Whatever you say, Princess," Max said through tight jaws.

"How about it, Irina? Want to go get a nightcap with Steffan and K?"

"You aren't invited, Max," Kristin said, staring him down.

"You heard her, Max," Steffan said, grinning broadly. "You had your chance, old man. Now it's my turn."

Kristin shuddered inwardly at the thought of what she might have to do to keep Steffan at arm's length. But if she could get confirmation of Steffan and Irina's attitude-positive or negative-toward America, it would be worth it.

"I'd love another cup of tea, Max," Irina said in an attempt to soothe the savage beast.

Kristin could see Max would rather pour the boiling brew over Steffan's head than drink it, but he said, "Of course."

"Shall we go?" Kristin said to Steffan as she stood.

"I'll see you later," Max muttered to her under his breath.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Max," she said firmly. She had no intention of having an argument with him later tonight at her hotel, when she'd be tired and perhaps have a drink or two in her. She could clear up any misunderstanding tomorrow morning on the tennis court. This trip wasn't just about the two of them. Max would forgive her when he realized she was just doing her job.

Without a second look, she turned her back on him and walked away.