‘Marriage?’ Roberta laughed, a short, huffing laugh that showed her utter derision of the word. ‘I would truly have to be the empty-headed bimbo you like to
believe I am to want to marry into a family like yours. No, Lulu.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t want marriage from your father. I don’t want anything from him—not any more,’ she added bleakly. ‘You see, I want the man I marry to be strong. I want him to love me above all others. And your father can never be either of those things while he’s still so irremovably tied to your leading-reins.’
‘Bitch!’ Lulu spat out viciously.
But all Roberta did was smile. ‘Well, at least that’s one up on being a bimbo, isn’t it?’ she drawled, and calmly walked out of the room.
‘Wow!’ Mitzy drawled as Roberta walked past her, having obviously listened in on the whole thing.
‘Shut up!’ she clipped, and shut herself in her own office, walked around her desk and sat down determinedly to hand-write her second letter of resignation in a week.
Only this one she meant to make Mac accept, she thought grimly.
‘Joel took Lulu home,’ Mitzy informed her, sidling warily into the office several minutes later. ‘He said to tell you that he wasn’t coming back until Mac had been and gone, the coward.’
Mac? Roberta frowned. Did that mean Mac was back in London?
‘Arrived this lunchtime,’ Mitzy said, as if she could read Roberta’s thoughts. ‘I had lunch with his secretary,’ she explained her source of information. ‘She said he was going straight home to sleep off the jet-lag.’
Roberta felt a swift sting of alarm shoot down her spine. She hadn’t given a thought to what Mac’s reaction was going to be when he found out she had attacked his daughter.
But she did now, so she was more or less ready for him when he came through the door just an hour later.
‘Who the hell do you think you are,’ he grated, ‘speaking to my daughter like that?’
She looked up at him, was surprised to see that he looked less than neat in creased suit trousers, no jacket or tie, and his white shirt wrenched open at the throat by what looked like very impatient fingers. He looked pale and tired too, the classic symptoms of jet-lag.
‘Well?’ he bit out, when she didn’t instantly jump to her own defence.
‘Are you referring to the few home-truths I felt it was time she listened to?’ she asked coolly, and watched with detached interest as the lid flew right off his temper.
‘You crazy, vindictive bitch!’ he rasped. ‘This was your way of paying her back for lying about you to me, wasn’t it?’
‘No,’ she denied the accusation, sounding as calm as still waters while he was stirring up a storm. ‘It was my way of paying her back for daring to insult me once too often,’ she amended.
‘That’s all?’ he bit out, coming to lean threateningly on her desk. ‘You spit a load of abuse at her and reduce her to a shivering heap of tears because she insulted you? She’s only a child, dammit! A poor, mixed-up child!’
‘Child?’ Roberta made a sound of disgust. ‘Oh, do open your eyes, Mac! She is an eighteen-year-old teenager who has an unhealthy obsession about her father!’
‘Why, you—!’ His hand snaked out, fingers curling tightly around the back of her neck to lift her to her feet. Thunder roared in the air around him, his eyes silver-bright, burning into hers. ‘How dare you suggest anything so vile?’
‘Take your hand off me before I shout for Mitzy to call security,’ she warned.
For an answer the fingers tightened their hold. ‘You mean as I should do for the way you attacked the chairman’s daughter?’
‘Oh, pulling rank again, are we?’ she scoffed at that remark. ‘Well, you just try it, Mac,’ she challenged, holding back the urge to wince at his hurtful grip. ‘And even though you’re their revered employer they would laugh in your face once they’d heard the full story. Which I would be only too happy to tell them,’ she warned, then asked softly, ‘Are you man enough to listen to it, Mac? Or has Lulu got you too tied up in knots with her own twisted version?’
His angry eyes flashed, and Roberta held her breath, waiting tensely to see which way he would jump. He wanted to murder her; she could see it boiling in his eyes. But underneath—deep down beneath—Mac had to know that she would not have done anything to Lulu without extreme provocation.
He let go, turning his back on her as Roberta dropped weakly back into her chair. She was trembling so badly that even her heart felt as if it was shaking, and she lifted a hand up to rub her neck, her own tension as much as his grip making it ache.
‘Talk,’ he commanded gruffly, and went to stand over by the window. Roberta followed him with her eyes, almost letting herself feel sorry for him, he looked so utterly fed up. But she stiffened her spine. She was sick and tired of being the kicking-board both for him and his possessive family. And, whether or not he believed her after this, at least she would have got a whole lot of simmering resentment off her chest.
‘All right,’ she said, sitting back in her chair, ‘where would you like me to begin? With the first time I ever met Lulu as your lover and she warned me then that I wouldn’t last a month if she had anything to do with it? Or,’ she continued as he swung around to frown at her, ‘shall we just jump forward to her recent birthday party, when she took great pleasure in stalking me around the room, explaining to anyone who would listen—within my hearing, of course—just who I was. “Daddy’s current bimbo”.’ Her mouth thinned with distaste on the words. ‘Or,’ she went on, ignoring his narrowing stare, ‘shall we remove to the little scene at the hospital, when she tried—very hard—to convince me that you still slept with Delia when you got the chance?’
Mac went pale and turned away from her again. The fact that he wasn’t jumping all over her for being a liar eased some of the tension out of her as she continued quietly, ‘Don’t think I’m putting the blame entirely on to Lulu. She had a lot of encouragement, after all, from both you and Delia. You both put on such a convincing show, you see.’ She sighed. ‘It’s no wonder Lulu waits with bated breath for the day when you suddenly see sense and remarry her mother.’ In profile, she saw his bitter grimace, and knew he was accepting what she was saying. ‘Delia, on the other hand, I’m not so sure about,’ she went on. ‘I think she plays the game in a similar way to you. But I could be wrong, and maybe she too is simply waiting in the wings for you to turn back to her. I don’t know.’
Mac sighed, running his hand around the back of his neck before he dropped it again and came over to throw himself into the chair across the desk from her.