Chapter Fourteen
They made their way from Orchard Drive across the heath to a little French place Max said he had been to before.
The evening sun was warm, but the wind was cool, and Bo wrapped a cardigan over her T-shirt and jeans, her trainers on her feet.
Max wore a knitted jumper over his chino trousers, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, and they didn’t exchange a word as they walked, keeping a companiable silence.
People passed them, walking dogs or pushing children in strollers, and Bo nodded to them, still too Australian to partake in the London pastime of pretending the city was empty of all other people save for herself.
At one point a large spaniel raced up to her, jumping excitedly at her legs, and she bent to stroke his fur and speak with him.
“You’re so pretty, you’re so sweet,” she baby-talked, before looking up with a smile to search for his owners. She noticed Max staring down at her, looking at her oddly.
“Are you okay?” she asked, still stroking the spaniel’s back, and Max blinked, as though coming back to himself.
“Yes,” he replied, before that odd look came back in his eyes again. “Look, Bo—”
He was cut off by the spaniel’s owner rushing over, apologizing profusely, and Bo stood to speak with them.
When the spaniel and his owner moved on, she looked back to Max, who was still staring at her, though this time there was a slight worry to his eyes.
Oh, she thought, maybe he doesn’t like dogs.
“Sorry,” she offered. “I like dogs. Don’t worry, I’ll wash my hands before we eat.”
Max nodded, but he still looked worried, and Bo decided to leave him to it.
It wasn’t like this was a date or anything.
She’d been on plenty of dates before and knew instinctively that this wasn’t one of them.
There was no holding of hands, no shy smiles, no attempts at awkward conversation.
She was wearing her old cardigan with the pull mark from a bramble bush on the wrist, and Max had on his awful, knitted jumper.
She hadn’t even bothered with a sliver of make-up.
No, this was emphatically not a date. It was more an agreement between two people to eat and talk a little together so they could rampantly shag with less guilt afterwards.
Not that Bo was having a bad time. There was a simple and settled quiet between them as they walked, the sunshine on their backs and the sound of their feet crunching on the summer-dry grass as they made their way to the restaurant. No, she wasn’t having a bad time at all.
Max opened the door for her when they reached Le Bar a Vin, and in perfectly fluent French asked for a table for two.
“You speak French?” Bo asked, amazed.
“Yes. You don’t?"
Bo shrugged. “Never really had the chance to learn. I’m doing French on Duolingo now, but I’m no good at it. I’m not like Lisa. She speaks beautiful French.”
“Lisa?”
“My sister,” she explained. “She lived in Paris for a while.”
Max stared at her. “How does a woman with a name like ‘Jacobien’ have a sister named Lisa?”
Bo smiled. “Same father, different mothers.”
“Ah. Is Lisa older or younger than you?”
“Older, by quite a bit. She’s in her—” Abruptly, Bo stopped, as a thought struck her. “Max, how old you are?”
“Thirty-four. Why? How old are you?”
“Twenty-six.”
“So, you’re just a baby then,” Max teased.
“Twenty-six isn’t a baby.”
“Tell me that again when you hit the other side of thirty.” Max handed her a menu. “It’s in French. Do you want me to translate for you?”
“You can order for me if you like,” Bo replied easily. “I don’t know what’s good.”
“You’ve never eaten French food before?”
“Not really,” Bo confessed. “When I was growing up, my mother was always on a diet, and she considered anything more than a head of lettuce too rich to eat. French food would have sent her over the edge.”
Max laughed. “So, your mother didn’t like to eat?”
“Not unless it was attention being served,” Bo replied, before she gave a self-aware shrug. “She thought food was something other people did. People with no willpower and weak metabolisms.”
“What about your father?”
“He was too scared of my mother to argue.” A fond smile crossed her face. “But I loved him. God, I loved him.”
Max looked up, his teasing expression fading at the tone of her voice.
“He died,” Bo explained. “When I was little.”
“I’m sorry,” Max said, his voice low and sincere.
Bo nodded, blinking down at the menu she wasn’t even really looking at.
“He was clever. Really clever. He ran our family business with my older sister. Publishing. He tried to show me how things worked. I didn’t really get most of it .
. . numbers, contracts, distribution . .
. I was young, and it all just swam around in my head.
He never made me feel stupid about it though.
He never made me feel stupid about anything.
He just wanted to show me the work he loved. ”
There was silence for a moment, before Max said quietly, “You’re like him, you know.”
Bo laughed under her breath. “Me? No. I’m not. I’m not clever, Max. I’m just, well, this.” She gestured to her face.
“What? Beautiful?” Max finished for her. He shook his head, almost vehemently. “You are clever, Bo. You’re smart, and observant, and far more perceptive than most people I know.”
Bo stared at him. “You don’t know me well enough to say that.”
“Maybe I don’t. But I know it anyway.”
For a heartbeat, Bo couldn’t think of a single thing to say back, and in her silence, Max sat back. “So, tell me: which part of my soul would you like tonight, Bo?”
Bo gave him a look. “I don’t really want your soul.”
“In exchange for a night with you, I’d give it,” Max returned easily, and Bo flushed red.
“Where did you get such a way with words?” she asked him, and he raised an eyebrow at her.
“Says the woman who not half an hour ago compared my penis to Chekhov’s gun.”
If anything, Bo reddened further.
“Admit it: that was a reference that could only be made by a writer or a woman with an English literature degree,” Max carried on. “You just told me your family work in publishing, so I’m guessing both could be true.”
Bo shifted. “Neither are true. I’m just the daughter of a man who worked in publishing. I listened.”
Surprisingly, Max smiled. “Good. My university girlfriend was an English major, and there’s only so many Austen and Bronte references my mind can take.”
“You went to university?” Bo asked. “After Eton?”
“Oxford,” Max confirmed.
“Were you a music major?”
“Surprisingly, no. Politics, philosophy and economics. Oh, don’t get me wrong, my music background was probably the reason I got into Oxford in the first place, and I did play piano for their orchestra and sinfonietta.
” Max swallowed. “It was, uh, Geoffrey who suggested I study politics, philosophy and economics. It was the degree he did.”
“Oh.” Bo also swallowed. “Umm, you were still speaking to Geoffrey then?”
“He paid for my education,” Max replied, and even though it wasn’t an answer to the question she had asked, Bo knew it was all he was prepared to say. He cleared his throat. “So, where did you go to university?”
“Sydney,” Bo replied automatically, before she shrugged. “But I, umm, didn’t finish.”
Max’s face went still. “Why not?”
Bo felt a dart of embarrassment. Her lack of education bothered her more than she liked to admit.
“Well, umm, I was never really that academic in the first place, and Lisa — my sister — she helped me get my place at Sydney. She went there, and so did my brother, and my father. I was terrible at it though. Couldn’t settle.
Couldn’t keep to deadlines. Anyway, an opportunity came up here in London, and my mother convinced me I should take it.
So, I packed in my studies, packed up my bag and left. ”
Max looked stunned. “You don’t have a degree?”
“No.”
For a moment, Max seemed to think, and while Bo couldn’t be certain, she thought she saw a flicker of judgement written across his face. “What on earth did you give your education up for?” he finally asked. “The opportunity you spoke of? What was it?”
“An agent wanted to sign me. Modelling and acting. My mother told me I’d be a fool to turn down such a chance.”
Max looked away from her and towards his hands, which he tapped restlessly on the table. “You’re an actress?”
“Not really.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, I haven’t had an acting job in months. Sometimes I get an audition or two, but no work. That’s how I ended up with Geoffrey. I was desperate for extra money. I think Geoffrey took pity on me. He used to come into Ida’s all the time to buy flowers, and we struck up a kind of friendship.”
“Ida?”
“Oh. Ida Dynowsiak. She owns the floristry shop I work at. That’s what I do most of the time. Floristry.”
Max gazed at her for a moment, before calling a nearby waiter over and ordering them both a glass of wine. When he returned with two glasses of white, Max nudged one towards her, staring at her with naked and open interest.
“I’ve seen you in the garden, so floristry I understand. But I would never in a million years have thought you were an actress,” he remarked. “You’re a terrible liar, you blush at the smallest of things and you’re charmingly without pretence.”
“I’m not an actress,” Bo clarified. “I’m an out-of-work actress.”
“All the same.” Max shook his head. “I’m genuinely stunned.”
“You’ve never, umm . . .” Bo trailed off. She’d been going to say, ‘You’ve never dated an actress before’, but then, she and Max weren’t dating, were they? They were just having sex. It was an arrangement, and nothing more.
“Never what?”
“Known any actresses before?” she finished, a little lamely, but Max seemed to read her meaning.
“No,” he told her. “I don’t come across them much. Not in my field.”
“You said you had a girlfriend though?”
“An ex-girlfriend,” Max reminded her. “Raphaella. She’s a financial analyst for Deutsche Bank.”
A financial analyst. Bo chewed on her lip, suddenly feeling very small and out of place. Max had been to Eton and Oxford. Max was a classical pianist for the Berliner Philharmoniker. Max was well-bred and well-educated, and no doubt only dated well-bred and well-educated women.
It’s a good thing you aren’t dating him then, isn’t it?
she asked herself, with a small sting of bitterness.
It’s a good thing I’m just convenient, and that this thing between us, whatever it is, is only casual.
She stared into her wine glass, frowning slightly, and Max must have noticed, because he reached over to take her hand.
“Bo,” he said suddenly, her name soft on his lips. “Bo, Raphaella and I . . . we broke up before you and I ever . . . last summer, I mean. Raphaella and I broke up before I met you. I’m not the kind of man to cheat. That’s not me.”
“Oh.” She exhaled slightly, unsure whether to be relieved or disappointed that Max had misread the reason for her sudden unhappiness.
“My father was a cheat,” Max continued, and there was a new sharpness to his tone. “He cheated on his wife. Cheated on my mother. I’m not like him. I’ll never be like him. You don’t have to worry . . . while you and I are—”
“Having sex,” Bo interjected for him, but he shook his head.
“I was going to say ‘together’. While you and I are together, there won’t be anyone else.”
Bo was silent for a moment. Once again, a feeling of warm affection towards Max was sliding down her spine, and it hit her, like a ton of bricks, that what she’d said to Willa the other day had been true: she liked Max. She really, really liked him.
“You aren’t seeing anyone else?” she asked him quietly, and he shook his head.
“No.”
A small smile began to build within Bo, and she sipped at her wine, suddenly feeling happier. Maybe this was a date. Maybe this wasn’t going to be just an arrangement after all.
“I don’t cheat, I told you,” Max carried on. “So, up until the moment Geoffrey’s house is sold and I go back to Berlin, you’ll be my only sexual partner. I promise.”
The smile and happiness that had been building within Bo instantly dissipated, and she felt inexplicably crushed. The wine in her mouth suddenly tasted bitter, and she swallowed it and her disappointment down quickly before Max could see it. God, she was such an idiot. Such an utter, utter idiot.
“Okay,” she said. “Umm, thanks for telling me.”
“Fidelity is important to me,” Max said. “I won’t be my father.”
“Your father?” Bo asked, abruptly desperate to change the topic. “So, was your father Geoffrey’s brother then? Geoffrey never mentioned any family to me but you, so I’ve been trying to work it out.”
Max’s face paled. “No. No, my father wasn’t Geoffrey’s brother.”
Bo nodded. “Okay, so your father was married to Geoffrey’s sister?”
“No,” Max replied tightly. “My father wasn’t married to Geoffrey’s sister. Geoffrey didn’t have a sister. Or a brother. Or any family, really.”
Bo recalled Lisa saying something similar. In fact, the only family Lisa had been able to find for Geoffrey’s obituary had been his ex-wife. She stared at Max for a moment, utterly confused.
“I don’t understand. You’re Geoffrey’s nephew. How can you be Geoffrey’s nephew if he didn’t have any siblings?”
“Because I’m not really his nephew,” Max explained, and his fingers, those long and strong fingers that Bo loved, were wrapped so tightly around the stem of his wine glass it was a wonder he hadn’t snapped it in two.
“How can you not be his nephew?” Bo asked. “He told me you were.”
“Geoffrey said lots of things.”
“But he . . . he left you his house in his will. He paid for your education.” Bo frowned again. She couldn’t claim to have the most functional family on the block, what with her father’s three marriages, but all the same, she knew who was related to who and how.
“He did. But Bo, Geoffrey didn’t do those things because he was my uncle.” Max took a large sip of wine. “No. Geoffrey did them because he was my father.”