‘I’m taking you back to the house because there are things in my diary I need to go over with you.’
‘The house?’ His house? Magenta swallowed, wondering exactly where he lived. Before she knew it she was blurting out, ‘Over my dead body.’
‘You’re my PA. You do as I instruct. Or weren’t you aware that that was one of the conditions of your employment?’
His sarcasm rankled, but Magenta bit her tongue to stop humiliating herself still further. Whatever they had been, she thought, he was now her boss and she was just his employee. There was no getting away from the fact.
‘Aye aye, sir,’ she snapped, still riled by how he had automatically assumed that she had let her mother—of all people!—raise Theo while she...what? Pursued a glamorous career? Or did he imagine she’d whiled away her time in some rich man’s paradise?
She knew he already had a low opinion of her. What she couldn’t take was him—or anyone—thinking that she was an uncaring mother as well.
Her pride kept her from telling him how wrong he was, and why she hadn’t been able to look after her own baby—share in his upbringing—for the first few months of his life. If he wanted to think the worst about her, then let him, she decided resignedly. He didn’t know anything about her—least of all that Theo was his. That same surfacing fear reinforced her decision not to take a chance on telling him. If he wanted to hurt her, for whatever reason he was harbouring in his mind, then that would give him all the ammunition he needed. And if his derogatory comments today about Theo’s care were anything to go by, she had no doubt he would do everything in his power to take her son away from her.
* * *
The gates through which the car had swung revealed a mansion of breath-catching style. A modern white house in Georgian design, with clean lines and perfect symmetry, its wide arched doorway was centre-set within an abundance of long, multi-paned windows, and its drive gave on to manicured lawns and grounds that meandered away to the woods. Magenta even glimpsed a tennis court towards one side of the house.
‘This is...yours?’ She knew she sounded awestruck, but she couldn’t help it. She had already realised he’d become rich. The company and the car had told her that much. But she hadn’t fully realised until now just how rich he was.
‘Not bad for a lad who was never going to amount to anything, mmm?’
Was that what she had said? Knowing herself as she did, she couldn’t believe she ever could have, but from the way he had said it, and that self-satisfied look on his face as he came around the bonnet to where she stood, dumbfounded by his beautiful house, she obviously must have.
‘And you’re obviously enjoying rubbing it in.’ If it was true, then it would be no more than she deserved, Magenta accepted, wondering just how long he intended to make her eat humble pie.
‘Come on.’
His arm was fleeting across her shoulders, but surprisingly Magenta felt the loss of it with a keenness that made her almost ache as he brought her across the pale shingle of the drive. As she walked with him her senses were awakening to the familiarity of his stride, the way his body moved beside hers, the intonations of his voice, and she felt herself responding to them with an ease that was as stimulating as it was scary.
He opened the impressive front door and let her into his home. It was a house filled with light and space, exclusive furnishings and fine art. In the wide reception hall and in the sumptuously furnished drawing room into which he showed her fine silverware on polished surfaces threw back reflections of the sunny morning through the floor-to-ceiling windows. A display of old-fashioned amber roses graced a crystal vase in the centre of a Regency table, their scent so sweet it seemed to permeate every inch of air space in the luxurious room.
‘They’re my favourite flowers.’
Images rushed up in her, so vivid she had to grasp the tall back of one of the richly upholstered chairs to try and steady herself. Each deep breath she took was filling her lungs with the heady, evocative perfume... Andreas giving her roses...amber roses from his grandmother’s flowerbed...
She glanced up and saw him watching her. His eyes were smouldering with a dark intensity that had her looking quickly away, her gaze skittering over a couple of original-looking oil paintings on the wall to the huge windows and the breathtaking view of the eternal grounds beyond.
‘Feel free to look around.’ Some deep and private emotion seemed to colour his voice. ‘I know you’re longing to. ‘
But not as much as he was enjoying being able to show her!
‘Bastard!’ She didn’t know why the invective escaped her, except that it spilled from a well of pent-up frustration with his attitude, from remembering so much and then hitting a blank wall whenever she tried to push her thoughts too far.