‘Six o’clock,’ he clipped out, arrogantly cutting across any protest she had been about to make before he slammed out of the room.
Roberta stood staring at the closed door, bubbling with anger and frustration, wondering just how he had managed to turn the whole thing round to suit himself like that.
Easy, a small voice taunted in her head. You made it easy for him by falling so easily into his arms!
‘Damn,’ she exploded softly, then heard another door beyond her own slam shut, and cursed again.
Joel’s office door. True to his word, Mac had gone to take the rest of his anger out on Joel. Guiltily aware that she had well and truly dropped Joel in it with her stupid tongue, she dropped heavily back into her chair, wondering grimly if she would still have a job by the end of this horrible morning.
CHAPTER THREE
JOEL was waiting for him when Mac strode into his office.
‘Loyal brother you are,’ he barked.
‘Loyal lover are you,’ Joel returned the insult. ‘I wouldn’t subject my worst enemy to what you subjected Roberta to on Friday night, and that’s the truth,’ he said, then lazed back in his chair to watch curiously as two strips of guilty colour washed across Mac’s high cheekbones.
‘Roberta can fight her own battles without your needing to play the shining knight!’ he muttered.
‘Turned my PA to pulp, have we?’ Joel mocked that argument. Roberta could no more fight Mac and win than she could win against a head-on collision with a double-decker bus. ‘So now you thought you’d try pulverising me. Well, sorry, big brother, but I refuse to play. You’re a fool, if you want to hear the truth—which I don’t for one minute think you do. Roberta is one in a million, and you’ve let her slip right through your selfish fingers because you care more for keeping the damned peace on the home front than you care for her.’
‘Don’t sermonise over me,’ Mac grated. ‘Not after the way you’ve played me for a fool all weekend. How many times did I call you up?’
‘Oh, about ten,’ Joel answered carelessly. ‘Pity you didn’t stop phoning and start driving, isn’t it? You might just have caught her between moves then. Ah...’ he breathed as Mac stiffened. ‘So Roberta pointed out the same error, did she? You’ve got to give it to that girl—’ he smiled ‘—she’s honest to the last full-stop.’
‘I had other commitments this weekend,’ Mac defended himself gruffly. ‘She knew that, and if she cared she would have understood.’
‘Like you understood how humiliating it was for her to be palmed off on your kid brother at your daughter’s birthday party?’
‘Oh, go to hell, Joel,’ Mac sighed, running a hand around the back of his neck then throwing himself into a chair. ‘You know how sensitive Lulu is about me and her mother. It was her night; I had to put her feelings first.’
‘Then why invite Roberta at all?’
‘Why did she have to accept?’ Mac shot back, and Joel sucked in a short breath, the handsome lines of his face hardening as he stared at his brother.
‘You bastard,’ he breathed. ‘You were covering yourself! Playing a let’s-keep-everyone-happy game so that Solomon Maclaine could feel comfortable with his conscience! My God,’ he muttered as he threw himself forward in his chair and glared at Mac, ‘you really are a selfish swine, aren’t you?’
‘You knew the score when you agreed to take her as your partner,’ Mac derided Joel’s derision.
‘I did that for Roberta’s sake, not yours,’ he made acidly clear. ‘I warned her not to go. I said it wasn’t worth the pain our lot would put her through. But do you know what she said?’ he offered tightly. ‘She said, “This time, Joel, he’ll show them. If he cares for me at all, he’ll show them.” God—!’ He threw himself back in his chair, heaving in an unsteady breath of air as Mac squirmed a little. ‘No chance, poor kid!’ he sighed. ‘While she looks at you with hope in her eyes all you see is what a good lay she is in bed! And that just about says it all, doesn’t it, Mac?’ he concluded harshly.
‘You wouldn’t say no to her if she was available,’ Mac jeered, coming back fighting because Joel had hit more than a couple of very raw spots in his conscience.
Joel eyed him curiously. ‘But she is available now, isn’t she?’
‘Taken a fancy to my leavings, Joel?’ Mac threw back nastily.
‘Why not?’ Joel countered, a strange, whimsical look crossing his face. ‘We’ve shared almost everything else most of our lives. Why not the odd lover or two?’
Suddenly Mac was on his feet and leaning across the desk, one long finger stabbing threateningly into Joel’s watchful face. ‘If I find you’ve made a single pass at her, Joel, so help me, I’ll kill you—got that?’
Joel’s eyes narrowed suddenly. ‘Is that a challenge, Mac?’ he enquired softly.
‘That was no challenge,’ Mac harshly denied. ‘It was a clear-cut threat! Make one move on Bunny and you’ll regret it!’ he warned, too angry to notice the way he had used his very private pet name for Roberta.
Hard-as-glass silver eyes held curiously assessing brown ones and, for the first time ever, the two brothers looked at each other in mutual hostility.
‘I don’t think that’s your prerogative any more,’ Joel said quietly. ‘Roberta has finished with you, remember? Unless, of course, you’ve managed to bully her into going back to you?’