Before we could sit at our table, Max's cell phone buzzed with an incoming call. Shooting me an inscrutable look, he checked the screen and then grimaced faintly. "This is important, I need to take it. Go ahead and order for us both, I'll be just a moment." He brushed past me toward the door, that deep raspy baritone already rumbling in curt efficiency as he took the call.

I watched him go with a small niggling sense of displacement. Was this Max's way of pumping the brakes after our escalating tango of provocation had grown too heated even for his lofty standards?

The server returned before I could speculate much further, politely inquiring if I'd like to be seated. Pasting on my best neutral smile, I agreed and followed her to a quiet corner table for two. But rather than open the menu, I found myself unable to tear my gaze away from the bistro's entrance where Max still stood, powerful shoulders tense as he rapidly fired off clipped replies.

I had just resolved to order us both a glass of the cabernet to start when Max finally ended his call and turned on his heel to rejoin me. One look at the taut lines of displeasure etching his striking features, and I could feel the evening's previously banked tensions rapidly escalating once more - albeit, in an entirely different direction this time.

"I'm afraid I have an urgent situation that requires my immediate attention back at the office," Max bit out in obvious frustration as he reclaimed his seat across from me. His piercing green eyes searched my face intently, as if gauging my reaction to this abrupt change in plans.

Sudden understanding washed over me as I studied the taut aggravation emanating from his chiseled angles and rigid stance. Max was calling it off - our dinner, the whole rising swell of temptation we'd been needling each other with in a heated tango of escalating dares.

A reckless sort of determination quickly took root. If this was Max's way of trying to regain control of the situation by abruptly cooling everything off between us, then I wasn't going out like some chastened schoolgirl.

Channeling my best aura of unruffled nonchalance, I slowly leaned back in my chair and fixed him with a pointed look. "Well, that's a shame about dinner then," I murmured, letting just a whisper of challenge lace my tone. "I was so looking forward to savoring your...firm leadership this evening."

Max's razor sharp gaze locked onto me with searing intensity, but I simply held that heated emerald stare with a saucy little smirk. He might be the one opting to douse these smoldering flames between us for now...but I was damn sure going to get in the last deliciously provocative licks first.

One rock-solid thigh shifted infinitesimally beneath the linen tablecloth as Max's powerful frame seemed to subtly tense. But he uttered not a single word, suzying me with that increasingly turbulent emerald regard in silence. The air suddenly felt thick, overwarm - my entire body sparking with heated awareness in the wake of our protracted staring contest.

It was like the atmosphere itself had become a living, panting creature holding its collective breath in anticipation of what Max would do next. Just when I thought the taut silence would finally shatter into shards with the weight of our clash of wills, Max abruptly straightened in his chair.

Reaching into the inner pocket of his suit jacket, he retrieved his wallet and removed a crisp bill to toss onto the table, all without breaking that heated staring contest. "Another time, then," was all he muttered in that sinfully deep rasp.

Then, without another word, Max rose fluidly to his feet and brushed past me once more, that subtle whirlpool of expensive cologne and pure masculine potency swirling in his wake. I watched him go through the bistro doors, feeling strangely bereft despite having been the victorious instigator in our little game of provocative one-upmanship.

The server returned before I could ponder that odd displacement further, politely inquiring if everything was all right. Realizing I was still gawping distractedly at the closed doors where Max had exited, I quickly turned my attention back to her with an airy smile.

"Yes, everything's just peachy," I assured her sweetly, allowing just a hint of wry triumph to lace my tone. "Although I do seem to have found myself suddenly rethinking my appetite this evening..."

Chuckling at the server's perplexed look, I smoothed my skirt, fighting the warmth stirred by Max's lingering cologne - that sinful sandalwood musk like an erotic caress. As I left the bistro, the cool air did little to douse the feverish desire triggered by that stormy, chiseled glare of masculine aggression he'd thrown my way.

One part of me reveled in recklessly fanning those raging flames, but the wiser half knew we'd reached a brink. Max had made the prudent choice to slam on the brakes before we immolated our careers, reputations, Pemberton Financial itself in that cataclysmic inferno of unbridled passion.

By the time I reached home, my determined strides had helped douse those flames into a manageable smolder. Yes, the chemistry arcing between us could power a nation, with Max at the helm promising rapturous carnality to ruin me for mere mortals. But at what cost?

Harassment complaints, corporate scandals, and public embarrassments were a likely path if we indulged. Especially now, with the paparazzi slowly backing away—only occasionally did one of those creeps still follow me, hoping for a snap of me and Max in a torrid romance. The last thing I needed was to give them more fuel for their salacious stories.

By the time I reached my apartment, I had regained my equilibrium enough to douse those lingering flames of reckless temptation back into a manageable smolder. Stripping off my professional attire, I opted for silken pajamas and a cup of chamomile tea as I booted up my laptop to attend to some overdue work emails.

No, I decided with a resigned sigh. As thrilling and intoxicating as the temptation might blaze, the smarter path for self-preservation ultimately involved maintaining the boundaries of our current relationship.

The next morning saw me striding into the office seemingly refreshed and brimming with my usual spirited energy. Bidding cheery greetings to the staff as I made my way to my corner suite, I felt buoyed in my resolve to tackle the day with my customary competent poise.

All those sparking tendrils of unsettled longing invoked by Max's virile presence were efficiently shuttered into an iron box labeled Max-imally Restricted Area Do Not Enter. I was a consummate professional and modern woman of substance, and something as silly as unresolved sexual tension with a colleague – my boss, no less – was certainly not going to dictate the tenor of my days.

Or so I thought, until my heel struck that all-too-familiar puddle glistening on the marble floor just outside Max's corner office suite.

Halting abruptly, I peered down in confusion, only to feel my heart plummet straight into my rhinestone-studded flats. There, rippling subtly with every shifting breath from the building's air circulation system, was a small but unmistakable pool from the obscenely opulent scotch decanter Max favored for obligatory post-meeting tipples.

Sweet Jesus, please don't let this day devolve into a farcical rerun of The OTHER Time, I pleaded silently to whatever benevolent exhausted assistant's deities might be listening. Because there was only so much mortifying humiliation a girl could withstand before resorting to gritting her teeth and chucking every last scrap of propriety straight into the proverbial toilet.

Squaring my shoulders, I ruthlessly tamped down that rising dread and adopted my best intrepid explorer's mien. If this scotch-puddle incident was some sort of hung-over senior staff prank, then so be it. I would simply navigate my way across said moat with all the unflappable dignity and grace I could muster.

Chin raised defiantly, I extended one leg to cautiously dip the pointed toe of my shoe into the shallow amber liquid, only to instantly recoil with a muffled exclamation of dismay. That wasn't scotch - this was sticky, resinous varnish, the kind used in hardwood floor refinishing!

At that inopportune moment, the sound of Max's office door being wrenched open coincided with me losing my tentative balance in a blind flail of surprise. The rasping baritone of his deep voice calling out to me as I pinwheeled my arms in a desperate bid for stability against the onslaught of wicked laws of physics.

"Bennett? I heard a noise, is everything - whoa!"

The warning shout had barely cleared Max's lips before I felt the slick soles of both pumps completely surrender any final purchase on the glossy marble underfoot. A squeal of dismay built in my throat as I executed a full pratfall straight into the puddle, skinny limbs flailing uncontrollably as I crashed to the unforgiving floor in a sodden, undignified heap.

For one elongated, mortifying heartbeat, I simply lay there stunned amid the wreckage, every fiber of my being wishing a sinkhole would miraculously open and swallow me whole. Either that, or for one of those freak skylight implosions to let the sweet release of falling debris put me out of my awkward misery.

But when no deus ex machina deliverance proved forthcoming, I was forced to reckon with the reality of somehow extracting my poor, disgraced self from this cosmically comedic scene with a scrap of tattered dignity still intact.

"Good morning to you too, Max," I groaned miserably, resigned to my fate as I shoved my dripping hair out of my eyes. Ruefully surveying the sleek patent leather of one pump now sticking straight up in the air like the solitary remnant of a luckless Wicked Witch, I added caustically, "Though I sure as hell hope this varnish was a few shades darker than that scotch-puddle fiasco."

Because if this day was destined to spiral straight down the crapper from here, I at least wanted to get some small dash of amusement out of mentally imaging Max's glorious, perpetually unflappable mien painted in my own lurid, Emerald City-esque hues.

Deep baritone full on laughter sounded from directly overhead, and suddenly Max's broad, immaculately clad form was looming over me, one large tanned hand extended in a mock gentlemanly flourish.

"Indeed, and a lovely varnish it is too," he drawled, that handsome face starkly unruffled by the whole surreal scene before him. "I simply felt inspired this morning to class up my moldy office floors for your arrival."

Despite my best concerted efforts to remain a scowling, rain-soaked virago, I could feel the corners of my mouth already twitching with the onset of a reluctant smile.

Leave it to Max to handle the situation with such preternatural, sphinxlike poise. Any other arrogant CEO would be two shades past puce at having their exorbitantly-compensated personal assistant up-ended in a gawking puddle of polyurethane varnish - but my unshakable Max simply played along with an infuriatingly gracious, zero-fucks-given lilt.