A Question of Pride Read Online Free PDF

magnificent, his hard, handsome face unfairly alluring. Her heart gave a painful squeeze. Would he always have this kind of effect on her? she wondered. This heady kind of excitement, tinged with the desolation of self-inadequacy?
    'What's the matter, Clea?' he enquired softly, when it seemed like the silence would shatter into a million screams of pain around her.
    She lifted her unhappy gaze to his, to find him studying her with those long, thick lashes of his shrouding his eyes. He wasn't angry, as she'd thought him to be. He actually looked concerned, and for some reason that made her feel more depressed. She had no answer to give him, and her head simply dipped again so that she didn't have to look at him.
    'You look pale and miserable,' he observed gently, when no reply was forthcoming. 'You were strange this morning when I left here, you were the same at work ... and quiet. I know I'm a self-centered swine most of the time,' he added on a heavy sigh, when she still made no sound, 'but I'm not so bad that I couldn't sense a difference in you ... Can't you tell me what's wrong?'
    Clea quivered on an inward sob. He sounded so gentle, and infinitely caring, and she so wanted to throw her arms around him, lose herself in the warm strength of him—take the comfort she knew he was offering her ... She so wanted him to love her!
    Tears stung at her eyes, and she was glad of the long fall of her hair that hid her face from his probing gaze. It was dark in the small hallway; only the spill of light from her bedroom lit their two grim forms.
    'Is it me?' he asked huskily. 'Have I done or said something to upset you? Clea—what is it?' Impatience tinged his voice. He hadn't attempted to touch her. He just stood there—two feet away from her, with those sharp eyes of his pinned on her downturned face, waiting for some explanation for her odd behaviour.
    She was trembling inside; in a moment, she would be trembling on the outside, too. His coming here at this time of night and without her expecting him to, had not given her time to gather herself, but she did so now, heaving in a deep breath and lifting her face to show him a reassuring expression.
    'I'm just very tired, Max,' she told him quietly. 'You've done nothing—nothing at all.' Her voice sounded strange to her own ears: dead—was she dead? No, she was hurting too much inside to be dead. Life didn't give one such easy ways out.
    Max looked grave, his stance full of tension. He was puzzled by her behaviour and feeling vaguely uncomfortable. Max didn't like to feel uncomfortable, he liked everything in his life to run on well oiled wheels.
    'W-we females get like this sometimes, you know,' she offered wryly, her smile deliberately self-mocking. 'It's all in the hormones.'
    'Ah!' He liked that. It was something he could understand. It removed the puzzlement—the discomfort.
    Bitterly, she watched the tension leave him; his expression became easy, relaxing again into its usual lazy arrogance. When he reached out to draw her to him, Clea went willingly. She needed this. He might be offering her comfort for the wrong reasons, but she was feeling weak enough to accept whatever crumbs he wanted to throw her way. She loved him, and she was having his baby, and she was frightened of what the future held for her—a future without Max, without the small amount of affection he deigned to give her.
    'I'm an insensitive cad!' He rebuked himself with enough humour in his tone to make her laugh which, she guessed, was what he intended her to do. His cheek came down to rub gently against hers. He smelled of Dior —that delicious elusive Max smell she associated only with him, because it was the only form of male cologne he ever used. Her arms crept around his lean waist, slender fingers stroking the heated skin beneath his silk shirt. 'I call you up and place you in the damnedest position—then drive around here in a rage, thinking I'm the wounded party because you send me off with a