But that was ancient history, he reminded himself with a clench of the jaw. On leaving the courtroom that day he’d slammed the door shut on everything that had happened to him between the death of his parents and turning his life around, and it no longer had the ability to affect him. Nothing on any level other than the purely physical did these days.
By the time he returned to Carla, forms in hand, she’d recovered and was sitting up, looking slightly dishevelled, slightly stunned, yet oddly, mystifyingly...adorable.
‘What happened?’ she asked, her question cutting through his bewilderment, since he’d never found anything adorable, oddly or otherwise, while the huskiness of her voice sent a jolt of awareness through him.
‘You passed out.’
She stared at him. ‘Seriously?’
‘Yes,’ he said curtly in an effort to pull himself together. ‘You went out like a light.’
‘Who does that these days?’
‘You do, evidently. How are you feeling?’
‘A bit odd,’ she said, after thinking about it for a moment, and then added with a grimace, ‘A lot mortified.’
‘Should I call the paramedics?’ he asked, the fact that he was asking a question instead of issuing an order and expecting it to be obeyed a further source of irritation. But if there was one thing he was beginning to realise about Carla, it was that she preferred to make her own decisions and didn’t respond well to being told what to do, however well intentioned.
‘No. I’m fine.’
He looked at her, caught the paleness of her face and the turmoil in the shimmering depths of her eyes, and frowned. ‘You really don’t like police stations, do you?’
‘No,’ she said with a faint shudder.
‘Why not?’
She tensed. ‘Does anyone?’
Well, he certainly didn’t, which would have given them something in common had he ever been remotely interested in seeking such a thing with anyone. ‘What made you faint?’
‘The heat,’ she said, and he might have believed her if she hadn’t bitten her lip and shifted her gaze from his.
‘It’s not that hot.’
‘Jet lag and lack of sleep on top of a stressful week and even more stressful weekend, then,’ she said with a scowl. ‘How would I know?’
Of course she knew. She wasn’t the type to stumble. Or collapse. Besides, he’d felt the tension vibrating off her. He’d caught the turmoil in her expression the second before she’d fallen into his arms. But actually it didn’t matter what he did or didn’t believe. It was none of his business. He didn’t need details. He was just here to facilitate her departure and get his life back. ‘Do you need any help with the forms?’
‘No, thank you.’
In the ten minutes it took her to fill in the details, Rico distracted himself by going through the seventy-five emails that had come in since they’d left the house, deleting or replying with single-minded focus and ruthless efficiency.
One unexpected disadvantage of working on his own with only back office support was that during the fortnight he’d spent in hospital being put back together while dosed up on morphine he’d been unable to operate his phone, let alone engage with the highly complex financial instruments he used to manage his funds. As a result he’d lost millions, which he was still in the process of recuperating.
The markets might be closed today but decisions still had to be made. Strategies had to be clarified. Requests had to be considered and, in the case of the email from one Alex Osborne of Osborne Investigations, who was apparently looking into his and Finn’s biological family and was after details about him that he had either no intention of sharing or else didn’t know, ignored.
Responding to or even engaging with the investigator, however briefly, would not help him in his quest to return his life to normal. It was bad enough that Finn kept popping into his head, triggered by Carla’s revelation last night at dinner about how upset his brother had been by Rico’s departure from his house.
The nonsensical guilt that came with these appearances was not something he appreciated. He doubted he could shed any light on anything anyway. He certainly didn’t need to open the email that had come directly from this new-found brother of his. He wasn’t interested in anything he might have to say. He wasn’t interested in family full stop, and that was where this ended.
‘That’s it,’ said Carla briskly, snapping him out of his dark, rumbling thoughts. ‘I’m done.’
She stood up and swayed and Rico was on his feet in an instant.
‘Steady,’ he said, instinctively putting one hand on her shoulder, which he realised was a mistake the minute he did it. She tensed beneath his touch and her breath caught. Her gaze jerked to his, a flash of heat lighting the emerald-green depths of her eyes, which exploded a reciprocal burst of desire inside him before she shook his hand off at the exact same moment he snatched it away.
‘Sit down,’ he said curtly, resisting the urge to curl his hand into a fist to squeeze out the burn. ‘I’ll take them.’