Games People Play Read Online Free

self-portrait with its too-harsh, too-bold lines, each one a possibility that after all these years she still couldn’t see the truth in the mirror.

Chapter Three
    S ydney rested her forehead in her hand and tried not to look at the buttered toast that Hans, the valet, had set in front of her. A storm thundered behind her eyes. When was the last time she’d suffered a hangover?
    Champagne always made her sick, but last night it had been blessedly close at hand. She’d returned to Max’s side, smiling politely, guzzling bubbly and shivering inside, while Azure and Max wound up their cozy conversation. When Azure finally bid good-bye and glided over to rejoin Colm, Sydney watched with narrow interest as the man laid a solicitous hand at the small of his date’s back to escort her out.
Just friends
, he’d claimed, but Azure’s serpentine confidence said Colm was all hers. It didn’t matter. Somehow Sydney knew he would look back at her—something sick and petty in her wanted him to—and in the end he hadn’t disappointed her. He’d cast a humorless glance over his shoulder at Sydney as he ushered Azure toward the exit, and then they were gone. Magical, inhuman creatures, vanished from her sight, and she could breathe again.
    Sydney touched a fingertip to the crust on the toast. It came away glistening with melted butter. Nausea crept around her stomach and her mouth watered. The early sun had shifted enough in the last five minutes to dump its insidious spotlight through the French doors and over her head.
    Across a table big enough to seat ten, Max finally lowered the wall of newspaper and snapped it closed into a neat square. He set it beside his plate, pressed it into a rectangle, and lined it up with his untouched grapefruit spoon.
    “Are you sick?” he asked lightly, his pale hand smoothing the paper over and over in the odd ritual he performed every day.
    She forced herself to take a sip of coffee, the slight tremor of her fingers causing dark liquid to slosh into the saucer. “A little hungover, maybe.”
    He raised his brows. “Do you want Hans to bring you aspirin?”
    “I think I’ve swallowed half the bottle already.” She grimaced. “It’ll pass. I didn’t realize how much champagne I put away last night.”
    He seemed hypnotized by the movement of his own hand as it continued to stroke the folded newspaper. “What would possess you to drink something that always makes you ill?”
    Sydney thought of the handsome man from the reception and a fresh spear of pain pierced her skull. “Nerves, I guess. The show was pretty explicit, even for me.” Such a lie. They both knew she aimed to be as brutal as possible in her depictions of eroticism.
    A hint of surprise crossed Max’s aquiline features, and then his expression eased into concern. “Maybe you need to throw yourself full force into the canvases for the next show. Begin immediately. You seem to need the escape.”
    On the heels of what had happened last night after they got home, anger grabbed her by the throat. “What do you mean?”
    His gray gaze shifted to the sunlit windows. “I don’t know. This drinking champagne thing, for example. And last night after we came home . . .”
    “Yes, Max, that fiasco might just go down in infamy.” She gave a choked laugh and fought a fresh wave of nausea. God, she’d made a fool of herself. On the drive out to the suburbs, sequestered in the back of Max’s limousine, she’d felt strangely awakened, alive, hungry. How long had it been since she’d had sex of any sort? Six months? Seven?
    Max hardly seemed interested anymore, and guilt edged her frustration. She understood he was fragile despite his smooth demeanor, but last night she didn’t want to feel compassion or pity for him. She wanted a lover. Their relationship was tattered and threadbare, but they were still together. She wanted—needed—to be touched, and Max could do that. Despite the distance between them lately, she could