Samantha frowned. ‘But I thought you said you were brought up in Philadelphia?’
‘Not by her choice but my father’s choice. He was the one with the money and therefore the power—even from the grave.’ Suddenly the cynicism was really pronounced. ‘If my mother wanted to keep her hands on the money then she had to agree to keep me, as his sole beneficiary, where that money was generated.’
‘You didn’t get on with her,’ Samantha murmured softly.
‘You are mistaken,’ he said coldly. ‘I adored her. She and Ra—’
He stopped quite suddenly, snapping his lips together on whatever he had been about to say. Yet another of those strained silences fell round them, making Samantha frown and André look angry.
The ring of the telephone actually startled the pair of them as it pealed out its demand. He snatched it up. ‘What?’ he rapped out, then sat there frowning and listening while Samantha hunted through the conversation, looking for a logical reason for the sudden silence. The books? The mother? The stepfather whose name he didn’t quite finish?
‘Right now, you mean?’ he questioned sharply. ‘Okay, that’s great.’ He stood up. ‘No, now is fine. I’ll have to change into a suit, but set it up and I’ll be there.’
The phone went down.
‘I have to go out,’ he said to Samantha. ‘I’m sorry. Would you mind showing yourself around the house?’
‘Of course not,’ she assured him.
‘Thanks,’ he murmured. ‘I shouldn’t be long.’ He was already striding for the door. ‘Feel free to make yourself at home while I’m gone.’
‘I thought it was my home,’ she whispered into the empty space he had left behind him, and felt slightly offended by the speed with which he had made his escape—almost as if he’d been relieved by the excuse to get away from her for a while.
No, she scolded herself. The man is important. He runs a multinational business. Of course he has to keep his priorities in perspective.
And that was the second lot of toast and coffee he had walked away from this morning, she thought with a rueful smile. Sighing to herself, she picked the tray up again and carried it back to the kitchen, thinking, Now I am even beginning to feel like a wife. Unappreciated and put to one side.
‘I’ve just thought…’ His voice came at her from behind. ‘You will wait here, won’t you? You won’t be tempted to go out, without me to—’
‘Keep an eye on me?’ she finished for him, turning to throw him a fiery glare.
A glare that fizzled out when she saw him standing there in a grey suit, white shirt and blue silk tie. In the space of what felt like only five minutes he had transformed himself from casual man about the house into hard-edged man of the City.
Handsome, sharp. Powerful—sexy…
‘I just don’t think I should be leaving you alone right now,’ he explained.
Samantha frowned. ‘Go to your meeting,’ she told him. ‘I’m not stupid. And I have no intention of doing anything stupid.’
‘And that,’ he drawled sardonically, ‘is most definitely my cue to get out of here before we start yet another row.’
He went to leave; her eyes began to hurt. ‘Was it always like this between us?’ she asked thickly.
‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘We fight as we make love: with no holds barred.’
His beautiful mouth moved on a grimace and Samantha grimaced herself. ‘No wonder our marriage barely lasted a year, then,’ she said. And, seeing his hesitation, his desire to say something in answer to her last comment, Samantha turned her back on him again, with a, ‘See you later,’ gauged to finish the discussion before, as he’d predicted, it developed into something else.
He clearly thought the very same thing, because he left with only a flat, ‘Sure.’
It was a relief to have him gone. A relief to have time to walk through the house without feeling under the constant surveillance of a pair of dark eyes that seemingly expected everything she saw to be the magic k
ey that opened the floodgates to her memory.
The house didn’t do it. Walking from room to room, the only thing she did learn was that his mother had possessed a truly unimpeachable eye for what was the best in good taste and classical styling. One room blended smoothly with another in a flow of pastel shades and exquisite furniture pieces that must have cost the earth.
By the time she arrived back where she’d started from, Samantha had to ask herself why she had been so afraid of coming into this house yesterday. Because, on the whole, she’d found the house an absolute pleasure.
Nothing had hit her as scary, nothing vaguely sinister—if she didn’t count the room upstairs, which had given her a couple of uneasy moments when she’d tried the door only to find it was locked. Or the beautiful walnut roll-top bureau in the sitting room she had caught herself gently stroking as if it was a long-lost friend.