White Heat Read Online Free PDF Page B

street. “Where did those men inside park their cars? More important, where did they take the intruder?”
    “Somewhere they don’t have visiting hours.” His tone was ironic. His irony pissed her off. Her attraction to this man was as irrational as it was irritating. Emily dragged in a shaky breath. After four months, her Maserati still had that new car smell. Unfortunately, it was obliterated with the achingly familiar scent of him instead.
    She loved how he smelled. Fresh air with a hint of laundry soap underscored with a tang of clean, male sweat. Why the combination made her pulse race and her mouth go dry was illogical. Franco always smelled of expensive Bulgari Blu, but his cologne never made her pulse race or her heart do flip-flops.
    Because she was the round hole she was trying to fit Franco’s square peg into. The analogy almost made her smile. Almost. Seeing Max again made her realize what a horrible mistake it would be to take Franco with her to Seattle, no matter how much she wished a relationship with Franco could work. Seeing Max again squashed those thoughts flat. On the other hand, spending time with Franco away from his rather demanding family might be just what their relationship needed. Just because Max was here again didn’t mean her entire life had to change.
    She resented him just for being, and dismissed her thoughts as mere chemistry. She’d get over it. Her irritation with him would soon dispel those pesky chemicals once and for all.
She had even less in common with Max Aries than she did with Franco. She should just stick to painting and start collecting cats.
    She assured herself that her stomach was doing somersaults because of recent events, but her rational mind knew that wasn’t the only reason she felt off center. Where had he gone when he’d left? Where had he gone? And what had he done? She wondered about the scar she’d kissed on his left hip. She no longer believed his story of a childhood bicycle accident. Not after she’d seen him in action an hour ago.
    The man was a fighter. He had other scars, too. All of which he’d explained away easily and with humor that reminded her about all the things his father had – reluctantly — told her after Max had left without a word. Now they made her wonder, too, if he was more of a liar than she’d first thought.
    Daniel had been right.
    She remembered the feel of his hot skin against her lips, and the way he seemed to know her body better than she did. She didn’t want to remember. But she did. He’d left her without a word. No call. No e-mail. Not even a bloody fax to explain his sudden disappearance.
    She’d felt foolish for feeling as though her heart had been ripped out after only a few days of knowing him. It defied logic. For months after he’d gone, she’d ached for him.
    “You met him through your mother, right?”
    Either Max had a short memory, or he hadn’t really been as attentive as she’d thought at the time the two of them had met. The only thing they’d had to talk about in the first hour of meeting was his father. After the first hour they hadn’t done a lot of talking. She rolled her head and opened her eyes. “Him who?”
    “Daniel.”
    “You should have asked him that yourself.” She resented the hell out of Max for ignoring his father over the years. Another straw on the pyre of her emotions about him.
    “You’re here.”
    Only because she didn’t have the energy to be anywhere else right now. “He attended a fashion show in Milan,” she repeated what she’d told him when they’d first met last year. “My mother was one of the models. I was eleven.” Even at that age she’d known, and had been in awe of, the great Daniel Aries. He was a legend in the art world. “One thing led to another, and by the end of the week he agreed to mentor me.” Years later she suspected that Daniel and her mother had had a hot and steamy affair that lasted a year or more, but all she cared about was that she