But those looks were nothing compared to the expression on her face when he was shown through to her office.
"Your ten o'clock is here, Mrs Palmer." The fresh-faced secretary who'd made his appointment showed him directly into her domain.
"My ten … " Irene rose from her chair. "You! Call security, Anna. This man should not be here."
"I think you'll find you do want to see me, Irene."
Josh slid the typewritten letter and cheque from his pocket and opened it out on the desk in front of her. He could almost have felt sorry for her as the colour drained from her face and she slumped back into her chair.
"Mrs Palmer? Do you still want me to call security?"
The younger woman sounded scared. Josh was prepared to lay money on the fact that probably no one had ever seen Irene Palmer at a disadvantage before.
"No, not any more," Irene rasped through lips that had turned slightly blue around the edges. "Please close the door on your way out."
As soon as the door shut behind her assistant, Irene appeared to summon courage from somewhere. Josh had to admit to a grudging admiration. Not many people could recover from a shock like the one she'd just received with such aplomb. Even seated she managed to convey that she was looking down her nose at him. That he was nothing more than a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of her heel.
"So you're her son," she finally said, almost to herself. "Now it all makes sense."
Without waiting for her invitation, which he doubted would be forthcoming anyway, he settled his frame in one of the button-back leather chairs that faced her desk. "Just what did you say to my mother to make her leave?"
"What makes you think I said anything?"
"Don't patronise me, Irene. We both know it wasn't Bruce who sent her away. That's your signature on that cheque."
Irene seemed to shrivel a little under his stare.
"It was pathetically easy, you know. Mind you, so was she."
Josh clenched his jaw against the fury her deliberate insult roused inside him. He took strength in the secure knowledge that her words were a lie. His mother had never been easy. She'd been a devoted mother and she'd been a lady. And if she'd ever craved male companionship after her affair with Bruce, she quelled that craving, putting Josh's needs ahead of her own every day of his life.
When he didn't visibly react to her comment, Irene continued.
"Bruce and I had difficulty starting a family. After ten years, we'd all but given up hope-the failure created a distance between us. In many ways it was a relief when he turned to her for comfort, and I was always grateful for his discretion. He knew if a scent of his relationship with her leaked out how destructive it would have been to me. No one else ever knew.
"When I unexpectedly became pregnant I knew I had to fight to keep him and I was determined to win. I hadn't strived to build all of this," she gestured across her office with her hand, "with my husband to see it all crumble for the sake of Bruce's little fling with his secretary.
"I knew my pregnancy gave me the ammunition to get Bruce to give her up, until I noticed something else. Your mother made all her own clothes and it didn't take an expert eye to see that she'd begun to slowly let the seams out on her dresses, or to recognise the fragility in her face. I stared at the same weakness in myself every morning."
"So you confronted her."
"Yes, I confronted her. You think I was going to let her destroy what Bruce and I had created for our own children? Bruce is the type of man who would have stood by her; he would have given her child-you-everything our own boys deserved. There was no way I would allow my children's birthright to be diluted by her bastard."
Irene shoved her chair back from her desk and began to pace.
"I knew she couldn't have told him about her pregnancy yet, or Bruce would have made a move by then to leave me, and I wasn't about to be upstaged. So I went to see her in that revolting boardinghouse where she lived and told her it was over. That Bruce had confessed his affair to me but that he no longer loved her."
Irene laughed then, a brittle sound that grated on Josh's ears.
"I told her Bruce wanted her to leave Auckland. She refused, telling me she knew Bruce loved her. Loved her! But I convinced her in the end. I gave her the letter and the cheque and told her to use it to get rid of the baby she was carrying. That night I went home and I told Bruce I was pregnant. He was overjoyed, and the rest, as they say, is history. Oh, he tried to find her, to let her down gently, I suppose, but she was already gone. Well and truly gone, and good riddance."
No wonder his mother had never cashed that cheque. It had been blood money. Money for the sole purpose of taking a life that had been conceived in love. That Bruce had loved Suzanne he had absolutely no doubt. He'd read the letters. He'd seen the fear in Irene's eyes. It was a fear that still ruled her.
Josh's hands curled into knotted fists as he sat and listened to Irene's invective. The woman was poison. She'd played with lives, moving them around as if they were no more than pieces on a chessboard.
"You sent that letter to me when my mother died, when I tried to let Bruce know."
"Of course I did. I'd protected my family for more than eighteen years from that woman. Do you really think I was going to be less vigilant after all that time?"
"He had a right to know she'd gone. He had a right to know me."
"My husband will never acknowledge you as his son," she stated, her voice as frigid as the Great Southern Ocean.
"That doesn't matter to me anymore, Irene, because, you see, even though you thought you'd done everything right to protect your precious family, you-and only you-have sown the seeds of the destruction of what you tried hardest to save."
"How dare you! You're the one. You're the mastermind behind it all. You even used that poor girl to further your maniacal scheme."
"If, by poor girl, you're talking about Callie, then maybe you should ask yourself why you groomed her for so many years and then let her take the blame when everything turned upside down. What kind of person scouts for the vulnerable the way you did with her, and then lets her believe she belongs-that she has a place in your world? Then, when it no longer suits you, you cast her adrift as if she has no value to you anymore. Is that how you measure everyone in your life? By what they can do for you?"
Josh closed his eyes a moment to compose himself. To draw on every last ounce of control he had left. "I feel sorry for you, Irene, because when all is said and done you had to cheat and lie to get what you have today-your husband, your business, your entire world. All of it based on lies. You say you've done it to protect your family, but you only did what you did out of fear. Fear of rejection, fear of failure. And when the truth comes out, who will stand in your corner then?"
Twin spots of colour stood stark on Irene's cheeks, but he could see the fear that now reflected in her eyes. Could see that she feared him and the threat he was to the very fabric of her world.
"You're threatening me with the media? I'll have an injunction slapped on you so fast you won't know what gagged you. You will not spoil my plan. Palmer Enterprises will recover from your attempt to destabilise us, and when Bruce and I move to Guildara, he'll be the jewel in their diplomatic crown because I protected him from you."
"No. I'm not going to the media. Not any more. Nor am I going to systematically take Palmer Enterprises apart piece by piece. You're simply not worth the effort. Besides, I think my father and my half brother deserve better than that. But what you decide to do next will be the key to what makes or breaks Palmers and your dreams for the future. And if your entire world falls apart, you will know that you were the only one who could have done anything about it. See how you like playing God with that truth."
How he made it out the office and down in the elevator to the entrance to the building he didn't know, but the moment he stepped free of the Palmer Enterprises building he knew a freedom he had never experienced before.
Freedom tinged with grief for the ill-fated love affair his parents had shared. For so many years he'd believed his father had been a man to be vilified. Some all-powerful being that had held Josh's fate, and the eventual fate of his mother, in his hands. Yet all along he'd been a victim of his world. A man who'd been too late-and yes, maybe even too weak-to act when love had been his for the taking.