Whatever, it was not going to be long enough. Just seeing the little girl lying there had told Mia that Suzanna needed her to be closer to her!
It was the long vacation from school at the moment, which meant Suzanna would have to go back to her father’s house when she was eventually discharged from hospital. The child couldn’t cope with Jack Frazier on her own. She never had been able to. He only had to look at her to petrify her.
Cissy had told her during that hurried phone call today that her father had accused Suzanna of fabricating the pain in her side. He’d called it attention-seeking, and had told her that if she expected to get Mia back by playing on his sympathy then she was in for a disappointment because Mia was never coming back so she may as well get used to it.
Oh, God. How could one human being be so cruel to another? What had made Jack Frazier the cold hearted monster he was?
Her hand came up to rub at her eyes, where the ache behind them was beginning to drag at what was left of her severely depleted stamina.
Beside her, Alex moved. She went still, her nerve-ends beginning to sing beneath the surface of her skin because she had a horrible feeling he was going to reach out and touch her. If he did touch her, she was going to fall apart completely.
Then the car stopped and, bringing her hand away from her wary eyes, she found that his attention was fixed outside the car and not on her at all.
Which was a levelling experience, she discovered as she watched him open his door and climb out, impatiently waving the chauffeur away so he could come around the car and open Mia’s door himself.
‘You are almost dead on your feet,’ he muttered, watching her sway slightly as she joined him on the pavement.
‘I just need a good night’s sleep,’ she replied.
‘What you need,’ he grunted, as he helped her up the steps of a very exclusive white-painted town-house she presumed must be his home when he was in London, ‘is to be yourself occasionally, and not all these other personalities you conjure up, depending on who it is you are having to deal with!’
‘Oh, very cryptic,’ she mocked.
‘Not cryptic—tragic,’ he corrected grimly. ‘A good psychoanalyst could make a life study out of you,’ he muttered, stabbing an angry finger at the front doorbell. ‘Today alone I have met the vixen, the ruthless negotiator, the loving mother and the cynic,’ he said, with tight-lipped sarcasm. ‘As the old saying goes, would the real woman please stand and reveal herself?’
‘Not for you she won’t,’ she tossed back frostily.
‘Oh, I’ve already met her,’ he insisted tightly. ‘In her bed, in the darkness. And she is quite the most fascinating one of all, I assure you.’
‘You’re mistaken,’ Mia replied. ‘That was the whore you met there—Why are you ringing this bell, instead of using a key to get in the house?’ she asked frowningly.
‘Because—obviously—the house does not belong to me,’ he replied sardonically.
The front door swung open, and she was suddenly faced with exactly whose house this was.
Oh, hell! she thought wearily. What now? Why this? What was it supposed to mean?
It was Alex’s younger brother, Leon.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘AH,’ LEON smiled politely enough. ‘So you are here at last. We were beginning to give up on you.’
But Mia could see by the way his eyes barely touched her that he was no happier to see her standing on his doorstep than she was to be here. He obviously still resented her intrusion into Alex’s life, and was not going to bother to hide it.
‘Come on in,’ he said.
Her shoulders drooped wearily, the long, long day spent enduring all the other stresses leaving her with nothing with which to fight this next ordeal.
An arm came warmly about her shoulders, and for once she huddled gratefully into it, going into retreat because it was the only thing she could do as Alex propelled her into a warmly lit hallway then paused to murmur something to his brother in his own language.
She didn’t know what he’d said—didn’t want to know—but
she sensed the hint of a warning beneath the casual tone and the arm around her shoulders tightened briefly, as if to offer support.
With what she suspected was a forced lightness, Alex enquired rather drily, ‘Where’s the wicked witch?’
‘I heard that,’ a sharp female voice responded.