LITMIR.BIZ

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      Zoe sat quickly, her breath all gone again, and watched as he seated himself and beckoned a waiter. And that initial show of courtesy wasn’t in evidence as he ordered for both of them—bottled mineral water and a plain green salad as it turned out—when for all he knew she might have craved a large gin and a thick rare steak!

      Not that she did, of course, it was the principle that counted. But she hadn’t come here for the food, she reminded herself, and, looking at things from his viewpoint, he wouldn’t consider the type of female he believed her to be deserved much in the way of polite behaviour.

      So now was the time, before they got into business discussions, to put him straight. She opened her mouth to do just that but he cut across her, his dispassionate tone more chilling than it had any right to be.

      ‘Before I approach your superiors I think it’s only fair to tell you that I intend to have you taken off the Wright and Grantham account.’

      ‘You can’t mean that!’ Her head felt as if it were about to spin off her shoulders and the fork she’d been holding fell from her fingers and she didn’t even notice. Her career prospects with Halraike Hopkins would bite the dust and she would be suspect from here on in. Influential clients didn’t make such requests without good reason.

      ‘I don’t say things I don’t mean.’

      To give him his due, he remained silent while the watchful waiter removed the fallen fork and replaced it with another and then he explained, with the softness of a cobra striking.

      ‘But I prefer to look a person in the eye instead of pushing the knife in between the shoulder-blades. Hence this meeting.’

      ‘Oh, but you can’t!’ Zoe insisted frantically, sliding down in her seat a little because one glance from those coldly, quellingly authoritative grey eyes would have stopped a manic axe-murderer in his tracks.

      But he merely contradicted, ‘I can. And I will.’ He began eating his salad with no sign of enjoyment, as if it was every responsible person’s duty to fuel the body so that it could function properly, no more than that.

      Zoe couldn’t even look at hers and stared at him, knowing she just had to look stupid but unable to do anything about it as he expounded, ‘Your morals, or lack of them, are your business, of course. I don’t presume to judge—’

      ‘You don’t! You, you—’ she spluttered, the blistering words that would put him right on that score crowding on the edge of her tongue.

      But he silenced her with another killingly quelling look and cut in quietly, ‘Normally, no. But what I witnessed late on Friday night, coupled with the fact that you admit you have no idea who the father of your children is—plus the way you appear to live—adds up to the unpleasant truth that your integrity has to be in question. No, hear me out—’ He sliced through her hiss of outrage, his voice like ice-edged steel. ‘Wright and Grantham’s accounts contain certain sensitive information.’ He laid down his cutlery and leaned back in his chair, long fingers absently curved around his glass of iced water. ‘Our research funding, for example. Which new and possibly revolutionary drugs are being given priority by our research department. All useful information to rival companies. Added to which, you have a useful pusher to hand. The reporter—I thought I recognised him and subsequent checking proved me right—the guy who was so anxious to get everyone in bed. All in the same bed? Or hasn’t the depravity gone that far yet?’ One dark, well-defined brow rose in a query that was entirely without humour. ‘Be that as it may, the information in the wrong hands—his hands and, by implication, yours—could do Wright and Grantham a whole load of no good at all.’

      ‘But I wouldn’t!’ Zoe exploded, all thoughts of telling him she wasn’t the sleazy tramp of his imaginings melting away in the fiery fury of hearing her professional integrity called into question.

      Infuriatingly, he shrugged, wide shoulders moving just slightly beneath that smooth, expensive suiting. ‘Perhaps, perhaps not. Who’s to tell? However——’ he dropped his napkin on the table, making it clear the unpleasant interview was at an end ‘—I am not prepared to take the chance.’

      Her brain was reeling. She felt as if she’d just gone ten rounds with a prize fighter. Punch drunk. But she had to pull herself together before he paid the bill and left her staring into a plate of salad and an impoverished future.

      Trying to pretend that her face wasn’t scarlet with temper, she pushed out her pointy chin and, unaware of the threatening, deep green glitter of her narrowed eyes, told him, ‘Before you shoot your mouth off one more time, you can at least give me the chance to explain.’ And, ignoring the shutters of boredom that came down over his fascinating eyes, she spelled out the events which had led to her being tipped out of that car, ending with, ‘And Rickie and Robin are my nephews. Petra, my sister, is away on a walking holiday in Greece with friends. Dad and I had to practically twist her arm to make her go. She’s been working flat-out to get her Open University degree and she needed the break before taking up her job with a literary agency based in Bromley. And, before you start accusing me of lying, no, we don’t know who the father is.’ Realising that her normally cool, restrained voice had risen to fishwife levels, she took a deep breath and allowed her eyes to leave his, staring instead at the bread roll she’d put on her side plate and hadn’t touched.

      She began to rip it to shreds.

      ‘Four years ago, when Petra was eighteen,’ she explained more calmly, ‘she worked as a receptionist in a small hotel near Orpington. Just temporarily, until she took her place at university. Dad’s always insisted that we both cram in as much education as possible—he was a teacher.’

      For the first time, a tiny smile played round the edges of her mouth, and then she, in turn, shrugged. ‘She was looking forward to it, to getting her degree and making a career—with books—in publishing or with an agency. Then she met someone. He swept her off her feet, as the saying goes.’ She gave him another shrug, a look that said she didn’t believe in that sort of thing herself, and ploughed straight on. ‘I was studying hard for my finals at that time, at university myself, so I didn’t know what was going on. But Dad knew something was up. Petra stopped going home, and when she did put in an appearance she acted strangely. Then the truth came out. She was pregnant. The creep had talked about marriage, talked about undying love—and she had believed him.’ Unconsciously, her voice hardened. ‘When he learned she was pregnant, instead of naming the day he told her he was already married with three children. She never saw him again.’

      ‘And she didn’t say who he was?’ Cade asked, his dry tone telling her he had difficulty believing any of this.

      And Zoe came back firmly, ‘No. After she broke the news she refused to talk about him. She probably could have traced him and demanded some kind of financial support but she obviously wanted to forget him, put it all behind her. And Dad and I supported her in that.’

      ‘I would imagine the advent of twins made forgetting him a touch difficult.’ An unforgivable trace of humour quirked his long mouth, drawing her startled attention to all that latent sensuality.

      She would have liked to hit him but controlled herself and said primly, ‘None of us has ever looked on the boys as belonging to anyone but our family. We all love them devotedly. Dad helps Petra look after them during the week while I go down to the cottage at weekends to do my bit and give Dad a breathing space. Nobody resents them; we love them to pieces.’

      ‘You haven’t once mentioned your mother in all of this.’ The new, lighter tone of query in his voice, the careful way he was watching her, gave her hope that he was beginning to believe her at last.

      So the relief of that gentled her tone as she told him softly, ‘Mum died fourteen years ago. Dad brought us up.’

      He had devoted his life to his daughters because with the death of his wife there had been nothing else to live for. And although she could understand such depth of devotion she couldn’t condone it. If he had been able to find a new love and marry again—without feeling he was betraying everything he and Mum had been to each other—then

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