Happy Mother's Day! - By Sharon Kendrick Page 0,158

just little old her.

As he drew her into his home, she shot one last look to the front driveway to find Rufus and the safety of his limousine heading back out the distant guarded gates.

‘Siena,’ Max drawled, his broad American accent evident even in that one word. ‘Glad you could come.’

‘No worries, Max,’ she said, doing her best to act cooler than she felt.

‘And do call me Max,’ he said.

Siena groaned under her breath, counted to ten in her head in an attempt to control her breathing and yelled at herself mentally to just relax!

He pointed the way through his massive marble-floored foyer to the back of his house where a huge crystal blue pool lay shimmering in the golden afternoon sun.

She had a good look at the man behind the name. He was handsome. Tall, imposing, dripping in money. But, for all that, he had nothing on the understated magnetism of James Dillon.

Focus!

So you like James, she said to herself. So you have a little crush on the guy. Okay, so it’s more than a crush. The way he looks at you makes your poor little heart flutter. You’ve admitted it. Good for you; now shelve it.

Max led the way to a couple of deep-set white cane chairs beneath a wide baby-blue umbrella. The view to one side was all golf course and, to the other, ocean as far as the eye could see.

‘So, Siena,’ he drawled when they sat, ‘I would think that, considering the world class rumour mill working at MaxAir, you have some idea why I have asked you to meet me here today.’

Siena nodded, but she kept her mouth shut. Though rumours did tend to be true, she had no intention of putting her foot in her mouth any more that day than necessary.

Max’s wide mouth broke into a blindingly white smile. ‘Fabulous, so this will be a quick meeting. Siena, I have been more than pleased with the result of our recent teaser campaign featuring your face in billboards across Australia. It seems yours is a face that gives consumers confidence.’

Oh, God here it was—he was about to ask her to stay!

But what would she say if Max offered her the permanent job as face of MaxAir? Would she beg him for Rome? If he said no, would she quit?

She suddenly had no idea.

But she did know that something in her felt changed, and she did know that, no matter what Max offered her, she would not go back to the regular old routes that a few days before had been fine. A few days ago they had been ample. They had been great. They had been enough.

But now she wanted … more.

Siena’s fingernails dug into her hot palms as she watched and waited. Her heart thundered in her chest.

‘You may have heard that our Rome/Paris run,’ Max continued, ‘the leg that MaxAir began with ten years ago, the run of my heart, has been taking a beating from some of the other bigger carriers over the past year. As such I want you there. I want an injection of delightful Australian youth. I want you to turn Rome on its head.’

Siena waited for the other shoe to drop, the shoe that was all about promotions and Cairns and staying put, when a waiter in a white suit appeared from nowhere with a fresh Martini for him and a pitcher of ice-cold lemon-flavoured water and a tumbler for her.

‘I will be basing you out of Rome,’ he said after the waiter disappeared as quietly as he had arrived, ‘putting you up in your own apartment. I like my Rome girls to be fresh so you need not work more than three days out of seven and two months out of three. I look after my Rome girls, Siena, so if you thought you were flying high now, you have no idea what you are in for.’

Her thundering heart dropped to her stomach, creating a hollow ache deep behind her ribs.

Rome. After all her worrying and concern and soul-searching, Max was actually giving her Rome—her dream, the pinnacle, the position that would prove to all and sundry that she had really made it.

‘Why me?’ she asked, suddenly unable to stop herself from looking as stunned as she felt.

Max smiled at her ingenuous question, though it never quite reached his eyes.

‘In all of our market research, you were consistently the number one most recognised face of all the boys and girls we have used over the