For a second there was complete silence, even from his PA. Then Luke spoke.
‘Leave us.’
But it was his PA he addressed. Not the woman who had forced herself into his office.
Not Talia.
* * *
Blankness filled Talia’s mind, wiping out every turbid emotion that had been raging inside her head since she had left Marbella that morning. With Maria’s help she’d got her wildly sobbing mother to bed and summoned her doctor. He’d prescribed a sedative, then taken Talia aside. He’d told her with a frown that such upset was not good for his patient, known to him already for her nervous attacks and for her weakened heart.
Talia had been appalled by the latter—her mother had never told her. The doctor had also made it clear to her that he blamed the slimming pills she took constantly. They’d put a strain on her heart—now exacerbated by her hysterical collapse.
‘She must have complete rest and quiet—and no further upset!’ the doctor had told Talia sternly. ‘Or the consequences could be most dangerous to her! Her heart cannot take any more stress of this nature!’
Talia had shown him out, his words mocking her with a cruelty that she could scarcely bear. No further upset...
She’d felt a beading of hysteria herself—they were about to be evicted from the last place that Talia had so desperately hoped might be salvaged from the debacle of her father’s ruin and disappearance. How could she possibly avoid further upset?
Throughout the sleepless night that had followed, during which she had tossed and turned, her hands clenching convulsively as she’d gazed tensely at the darkened ceiling, it had become clear that only one option was left to her.
Before she’d told her mother, her bleak plan had been to use the fast-dwindling amount of money she’d secretly squirrelled away to rent a tiny flat, somewhere in a cheap part of the costas, and then get the first job she could find to bring in a salary, however meagre. Her mother would be appalled, but what else could she do?
But if she insisted on that now, after the doctor’s grim warnings, she would be risking her mother’s life by forcing her to leave the villa and abandoning all hope.
By morning, dull-eyed and heavy-hearted, and filled with a kind of numb, dreadful resignation, Talia had come to the only conclusion she could. After her bleak exchanges with the lawyers in London, when they’d told her she and her mother were penniless and homeless, she had finally tracked down the headquarters of the mysterious LX Holdings. A morning flight had brought her here.
And now, paralysed by shock and disbelief, she was standing in the doorway of the huge office she had forced her way into in sheer desperation.
It could not be—it could not be...
Luke? But how—? Why—?
Shocked words fell from her frozen lips. ‘I don’t understand—’
With a curt gesture he dismissed his PA who backed away, closing the door as she left. She saw him step towards her. Heard him speak.
‘Talia...’
There was a hoarseness in his voice but his face was closed, filled with tension.
‘Why did you come here? How?’ The questions shot from him like bullets.
Talia felt her face work, but speaking was almost impossible. Two absolutely conflicting realities echoed in her head. Then slowly, as the hideous truth dawned on her, she made the connection—forced herself to make it.
‘It can’t be—you can’t be...’ Her voice was faint. Her face convulsed again. ‘You can’t be LX Holdings—’
She saw Luke’s brows snap together, as if what she’d said made no sense. His mouth twisted. ‘How did you find me?’ he said. He looked at her. ‘How did you know?’ he demanded. He had said nothing of his identity to her that fateful night—no more had she told him hers. So how...?
‘They...they told me. Your lawyers in London. When they spoke to me.’
Her voice was staccato, shock thinning her words. He was still staring back at her as if what she’d said made no sense at all. Her face worked again.
‘I’m Natasha Grantham,’ she said.
CHAPTER THREE