It was her business. It wasn’t any of his.
‘Frankly, I don’t care what you happen to think. I am going to continue to visit your grandfather and there’s nothing you can do about it!’
Sybella’s soaring moment of satisfaction was short-lived.
‘Mrs Parminter, let me tell you how it’s going to be.’ His voice had dropped to a calm dead certainty. ‘Your visits to the house are over. You are to stay away or there will be consequences. Are we clear?’
‘What consequences?’
‘Legal consequences.’
The colour had gone; not a scrap of it remained in her face.
Nik waited to feel satisfied by that. He didn’t. But he damn well wasn’t taking ultimatums from this woman. Dealing with this had already taken up too much of his valuable time.
‘Listen, I didn’t mean for all this to get so out of hand,’ she began.
‘Are we clear?’ he repeated in the voice he used on mine sites.
She trembled, visibly intimidated for the first time.
Nik could see the struggle in her face and his anger evaporated in a wink.
He’d spent the night with some fairly explicit sexual fantasies about this woman, and this morning he’d learned a lot of things that didn’t make him very happy with her. It wasn’t a particularly good mix.
‘I understand perfectly,’ she said, swallowing hard, making it clear with her eyes she didn’t.
Unlike the last woman throwing ultimatums at him like plates, a Spanish model who had apparently never heard the word no before, Sybella Parminter didn’t really seem to understand the way this was played. If she backed down, he’d give her a break. She wasn’t backing down.
It was disconcerting because he’d just discovered he didn’t like her looking bewildered and upset.
For the second time. Because of him.
He stepped towards her.
‘Mummy!’ A small person flew out of the house and wrapped herself around Sybella’s legs.
Mummy?
Six years widowed. He wasn’t good with kids’ ages but this one fitted the time span. Sybella was immediately scooping her up, the little girl wrapping her arms and legs around her mother like an octopus.
‘This is your daughter?’ he said redundantly.
‘Yes.’ She turned away to go into the house and the child cast a look over her mother’s shoulder at him as if he were an ogre in a fairy tale. She stuck out her tongue.
Nik found himself staring at a blue door shut in his face and with the uneasy suspicion he’d made a mistake.
CHAPTER SIX
SYBELLA DROVE AS fast as she was legally able along the familiar road from Middenwold Town Hall where she worked on Fridays, back into Edbury.
In a panic from work she’d rung and let Mr Voronov know she was coming and that she was bringing the letters.
Beside her on the passenger seat was the box of letters that would clear her name.
She didn’t want to be responsible for a further breach between grandfather and grandson because family was important, but she didn’t see that she had much choice. She couldn’t put her kindly impulses towards Mr Voronov above the risk to her future professional reputation if her activities at Edbury Hall were publicly condemned.
She switched on her hands-free phone device as Meg’s name came up and her sister-in-law’s excitable voice filled the car.
‘I can’t believe you’ve got one in the village!’
Sybella cursed silently. If Meg had heard about it down in Oxford, it must be all over the village.
‘We lay traps and snares and catch them that way,’ she responded drolly, although she was in so much trouble it was no longer funny.
‘What’d you use?’ said Meg wryly. ‘A net?’
‘No, the possibility of a lawsuit.’ Sybella breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth and told herself she shouldn’t drive and panic.
‘I don’t think that’s your main problem. So Nik Voronov actually stepped off his boat and onto dry land.’
‘Boat? What boat?’
‘His billion-foot-long superyacht—all Russian oligarchs have them. They live on them.’
‘Where do you get this from?’
‘I have my sources. I also have other sources. According to the village grapevine, the two of you were throwing some serious sparks last night.’