‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Mac demanded frowningly. ‘You’ve been throwing out sarcasm at me all evening, Joel,’ he grunted. ‘And I would like to know just what the hell you’ve been trying to get at!’
‘Would you?’ Joel just sent him one of his sardonic looks. ‘Put a week or so aside some time, and I’ll take great pleasure in telling you.’
Mac stiffened, the frown becoming more pronounced. ‘What the hell’s got into you?’ he demanded bewilderedly. ‘To listen to you, anyone would think I’d offended you in some way!’
You have, Joel wanted to confirm, but at that moment Roberta appeared at the top of the stairs, with her black velvet evening coat draped across her arm, and Joel lost all Mac’s attention when the other man saw her. Those lazy eyes of his darkened dramatically at the enchanting picture she presented as she paused at the top of the stairs when she saw him, then came gliding downwards, eyes cool, face as inscrutable as a face as sensual as hers ever could be.
‘What’s this?’ Mac murmured huskily when she reached them, his expression so tenderly intimate that her senses quivered. ‘Running out on me with my kid brother?’
She glanced at Joel, wishing in some ways that it were Joel she was involved with. But, although both men were good-looking, smooth, sophisticated, Joel’s wood-ash handsomeness had never attracted her.
‘I’m—tired,’ she answered Mac quietly, the well-modulated tone of her voice like rich cream on honey, giving nothing away of the cold, hard sense of death she was experiencing inside right now. ‘It’s been a long day, all told,’ she added rather drily.
‘The man was in his counting-house, counting out his money,’ Joel put in, smiling as always. ‘Here, give me your coat.’ He took the velvet wrap from her before Mac could grab the honours. ‘Take-over deals take it out of one, don’t you agree, Mac?’
Mac leaned back against the rich mahogany newel-post, sensing no threat in the way that Joel was smoothing fine velvet over Roberta’s shoulders. This was his home and here, where Roberta counted for nothing, he saw Joel as his safe substitute.
‘The Brunner deal.’ He nodded. ‘You clinched it today.’ Not a question but a well-informed statement of fact.
‘Not quite,’ Joel denied, then shifted uncomfortably under Mac’s sudden black frown. After all, brother or not, Mac was also his boss. ‘But all bar the shouting,’ he quickly assured him. ‘I fly out to Zurich on Tuesday to tie it all up.’
‘Is Franc Brunner playing footsie with you?’ Mac asked sharply.
Joel just shrugged. ‘He knows he owns the patent to a very lucrative product if placed in the right hands. I can’t blame him for being cagey.’
‘Well, I can,’ Mac argued. ‘He approached us, not the other way around. What stopped him signing the deal today?’
‘The legal bods his end,’ Joel said drily. ‘Finding problems when none is there.’
‘Deliberately stalling, you mean,’ Mac said, and looked grimly thoughtful. ‘Do you want me to get involved?’ he offered.
‘No, I damned well do not!’ Joel indignantly replied. ‘The Brunner thing isn’t your baby, it’s mine! So keep your nose out, big brother!’
‘Whoops.’ Mac grinned. ‘Hit a raw nerve, did I?’
‘I can handle it,’ Joel said gruffly while Roberta looked down at her feet, too aware of why Joel was getting so hot under the collar to want Mac to see it written in her face.
The trouble with Joel was that he was a hands-on engineer at heart. Show him a revolutionary new product and he tended to go a bit overboard with enthusiasm about it. Hence the ‘footsie’, as Mac had put it, that Franc Brunner was playing with him. He saw too much eagerness to possess in Joel’s manner and had been playing on that by pushing Joel for a better deal ever since.
‘Can’t we, Roberta?’
His long fingers were stroking the rolled collar of her coat around her slender throat. But when she didn’t immediately answer, they paused to chuck her gently beneath her chin, demanding her support.
She gave it. ‘No problem,’ she said. ‘Nothing daunts the three musketeers.’
‘Three?’ Mac quizzed.
‘Mitzy,’ Joel explained. ‘Our indispensable third arm.’ He meant their shared secretary, and Mac nodded in recognition.
There was no one else wandering around the hallway, and a short silence fell, broken only by the sound of an old-fashioned waltz seeping out from the huge drawing-room to one side of them.
Mac’s eyes were on Roberta, moving with a lazy warmth over her, though he still made no effort to touch her. ‘I’ll see you Monday, hmm?’ he said. His weekend was fully booked up here in Berkshire, playing host to the dynasty.
Joel felt Roberta stiffen slightly, the tension in her so fierce it was threatening to snap. She did not reply, and Mac took the answer as read, the lazy look dying away.
‘Daddy?’ Lulu appeared at the half-open doorway to the drawing-room, her blue eyes narrowing when she saw Roberta. ‘Hello, Uncle Joel.’ She sent him a beatific smile. ‘Leaving already? That doesn’t say much for my birthday party.’
Joel let go of Roberta to turn and smile at his favourite niece. ‘I must be getting old, pug-face,’ Joel apologised drily, opening his arms as Lulu glided towards him. ‘Can’t seem to burn the candle the way I used to.’