Rafael found the surprise value of that comeback highly entertaining. ‘I’m afraid I don’t do partnerships,’ he confessed huskily.
‘Oh, yes, you do. Read the small print,’ Harriet advised him briskly, determined to make the best of the situation. ‘Furthermore, as you are listed as the CEO of Flynn Enterprises, I will deal with you and only you. No lesser individuals, please. In the meantime, I’ve been thinking out of the box, and I believe that with give and take—’
‘I’m not a good candidate for that approach either.’
‘With give and take, something can be done about that ugly view you dislike,’ Harriet informed him. ‘Has anyone ever told you that you have a very negative outlook?’
His brilliant eyes glittered with reluctant appreciation. ‘No, you’re the first.’
‘Believe me, this can work. I know it can work. It may not be what either of us would have chosen—’
‘As my partner, you’ll have to dine with me,’ Rafael commented, with a single-minded purpose that had nothing whatsoever to do with business.
‘I doubt that I’ll have the time. As I can’t afford to employ a groom now, I’ll be much too busy mucking out and feeding the horses and drumming up new trade. Let me know when you can fit in a business meeting to discuss the yard.’
Harriet concluded the call with an unanticipated stab of satisfaction. Dine with him? He had to be joking! By the time he had finished rubber-stamping every minor decision she had to make she expected him to be heartily tired of being her partner and much more amenable to the value of sane and sensible compromise.
The next morning she visited her mother at her exclusive hotel. Clad in an exquisite suit that shrieked Parisian chic, Eva kissed her daughter on each cheek and then curled her impossibly slender fine-boned figure delicately back onto a sofa opposite. Although Eva was several inches taller, Harriet always felt like a total clodhopper beside her. She also wondered how Joseph Tolly could possibly have believed he saw a resemblance between them. The two women might share the same hair colour, but her parent’s perfect features were so beautiful that even in her forties she still attracted a good deal of admiring attention.
‘I have a wonderful surprise for you,’ Eva announced brightly. ‘As you must know, Gustav has some very useful contacts in the business world. A friend of his is opening an advertising agency in Paris, and all you have to do is call this number and arrange an interview.’
The older woman settled a business card down on the coffee table with a positive flourish.
‘But I’m not looking for another job.’ Harriet studied her mother in polite bewilderment. ‘Of course I’m very grateful that your husband would go to the trouble of making enquiries on my behalf—’
‘Gustav was delighted to be able to help. I don’t think you have any idea how much concern you’ve been causing us all,’ Eva countered, with a hint of censure in her light voice.
Harriet coloured and decided not to enquire into exactly who was included in the umbrella term of ‘us’. ‘Well, I certainly didn’t mean to do that. A job in Paris too…my word, that would have done wonders for my schoolgirl French!’
Eva would have frowned had her forehead not been a wrinkle-free zone thanks to the Botox injections she swore by. ‘The office will be bilingual. I’ll be very disappointed if you don’t give this opportunity serious consideration. You must get your life back on track.’
Harriet’s discomfiture increased. It was most unlike her mother to interfere in her daughter’s life to such an extent, and that troubled her. She linked her hands together and then glanced across the table with concerned but level blue eyes. ‘Right now I feel my life is very much on track. I do appreciate what you’ve tried to do for me, but I could find another position in advertising if I wanted one. To be honest, I much prefer working with horses—’
‘But you’re throwing your life away,’ Eva condemned thinly. ‘Ballyflynn is at the end of the world! You’ll never make your fortune there—’
‘I’m not expecting to. Why are you still so upset about this?’ Finally, Harriet asked that thorny question—for, even though the fact had not been openly acknowledged, she was painfully aware that her move to Ireland had thoroughly annoyed her volatile parent.
‘I’m not upset.’ But Eva could not hide the angry resentment in her accusing stare. ‘But do tell me what Ballyflynn could possibly have to offer you.’
‘A chance to live in the country and work with horses…and a sense of family connection—’
‘What?’ Eva snapped in scornful interruption. ‘With a father you don’t even know and should be glad not to know?’
A deathly silence fell. Harriet had lost colour at the rare reference to a man whom Eva preferred to pretend had not existed. Her heart was thumping very hard. ‘Actually, I wasn’t referring to my father. I was referring to Kathleen Gallagher and to the fact that you grew up just outside the village. Why do you say that I should be glad not to know my father?’
Her expression irritable, Eva evaded her daughter’s keen scrutiny. ‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You did.’ A stricken look in her gaze, Harriet asked in a taut undertone, ‘Were you attacked? Am I the result of an assault? Date-rape? If that’s why you won’t tell me who my father is, I really would prefer to know.’
Eva raised a disdainful brow, her nose wrinkling with distaste at those suggestions. ‘Of course I wasn’t attacked.’
Harriet was very much relieved by that admission. On more than one occasion she had secretly wondered if Eva’s determination to remain silent could be her way of concealing some deeply unpleasant truth. At the same time she had been equally aware that her mother tended to ignore or deny anything that made her feel uncomfortable. For that reason Alice and Luke’s affair had never been discussed by mother and daughter. ‘Then please tell me who my father is.’
Eva dealt her a furious look of reproach. ‘Why do you keep on dragging this up when you know I’ll refuse to discuss it? That’s my right. I’m protecting my privacy. Believe me, it really doesn’t matter who your father was.’
‘I’m sorry to be so persistent. I don’t want to upset you. But knowing who my father is does matter to me. All I want is a name,’ Harriet confessed heavily. ‘It means a lot to me, or I wouldn’t raise a subject that I know you dislike. I would even be grateful if you could bring yourself to the point of giving me some idea of what happened back then, so that I could know something about my own history.’
Eva rolled her blue eyes heavenward. ‘Why do you always spoil things, Harriet?’ she condemned in a huffy tone. ‘I invited you here because I thought I could talk some sense into you and do you a favour. Thanks to Gustav you have the chance of a terrific new job and the opportunity to make a fresh start in Paris.’