“My name?” She dropped her hands to the back of the chair. Her nod was terse. “It’s Chloe. Chloe Ansell-Johns.”
CHAPTER TWO
“I’m sorry,” his voice sounded strained to his own ears. “You mean to tell me you’re married to …”
“William Ansell-Johns,” she murmured in agreement. “Yes. That William Ansell-Johns. The guy who owns all the sports teams.”
The moment seared into his consciousness. His ears were ringing and he felt as though something sharp had jabbed into his gut. The man responsible for killing his sister had married this woman. This beautiful, demure, terrified blonde.
“I’m sorry.” He shook his head in the hope he could clear some of the cobwebs away. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
Her mouth was set in a grim line. “He’s disgustingly rich. The whole family is. They’ve money to burn, and I … don’t.”
He tried to compose his features, but his mind was reeling. “How long have you been married?”
“Five years.”
He wanted to scream obscenities into his plush office. He wanted to punch something – hard – until it broke. He wanted to hurl objects against the wall, for the sheer satisfaction of releasing his pent-up anger.
But he didn’t.
He crossed back to the buffet. His hands were slightly uneven. He reached for one of the Danishes and put it on a plate. He was not hungry, but he needed a beat out of time to regroup.
If this woman had been married to William for five years, then he’d cheated on her. With his sister. Whom he got pregnant.
“What did you say your daughter’s name is?” He was shocked by how casual he sounded. Even his smile was benevolence itself, when inside, he was being churned by a passionate sense of outrage.
“Ellie.” She folded her arms across her chest. Her eyes were an incredible shade of blue. A mix of sky and ocean, they were purely elemental. “She’s two.”
He nodded, careful not to betray a hint of his feelings in his face. He carried the plate across and put it on the table. “A nice name. Is it short for anything?”
She was distracted. She viewed this line of discussion as irrelevant chit chat. A preamble to the main subject. “Eleanor. She’s Eleanor.”
He pretended to scan his notepad and then lifted his steady, dark eyes to her face. “I see. Quite old fashioned, isn’t it.” It couldn’t be a coincidence. That his sister’s lover had a daughter named Eleanor … it was a revolting insult. An outrage. And though it wasn’t Chloe’s fault, his anger had a wide-spray nozzle. He couldn’t contain it to William alone. They were all complicit in the tragic turn of events.
“Yes.” Her smile was tight. She was becoming impatient. “The name was the only interest my husband took in the pregnancy. He wanted it to be Eleanor for a girl.” She closed her eyes on a soft sigh. “I liked it. I started to think of her as Ellie from that moment on, and by the time she was born, it had stuck.”
His anger was consuming him from the inside out. Not slowly, like a worm; it was a flame, burning wildly throughout his soul. The earth wasn’t simply spinning; it was hurtling through space, and he was bound to it by the gravity of shock. He walked to the windows and stared out at Manhattan. Beyond the complex entanglement of concrete, steel and glass, he could see the green tips of Lady Liberty’s hat. The sun was blazing in the sky, casting her in gold; it was a ball of lava almost as hot as his temper.
“In any event, Mr Douglas, I know my husband is going to be out for blood.”
Her husband.
An image of William Ansell-Johns came to him easily. His preppy face, permanently tanned, with bright blonde hair and the kind of good looks that might have seen him cast in a commercial for Ralph Lauren. The attraction had been easy enough to understand. Like him, Eleanor had grown up as one of the only financially stretched families in a town given over entirely to decadence and luxury. Being made to feel that she belonged by someone like William had been completely alluring. In the end, it had proven impossible to resist.
Had she known about the baby? And if so, why hadn’t she told him?
“Mar. Douglas?” She moved so quietly across the room that he didn’t realise she had come to stand behind him until she put a hand on his shoulder. “Is everything okay?”
His eyes were pulled downwards, and now, he looked at her properly. Beyond his first impression of her as a beautiful, slightly chaotic woman, he saw something else. A woman William Ansell-Johns had married. A woman he’d loved, and possessed. A woman he possibly still loved. A woman he certainly didn’t want to lose.
And Hendrix knew then, that he would take her from him. Hendrix Forrester, who had never found it difficult to have whichever woman he desired, would make it his mission to seduce William Ansell-Johns’s wife. And when the time was right, he’d relish revealing the facts to the man who’d killed his sister.
“You’re miles away,” her smile was kind. She wasn’t accusing him, nor was she upset by his distraction. Despite her own perturbation, she had set it aside to enquire after him.
She was kind. He filed that information away. He smiled at her, and he felt the immediate change in her. If he was seeing her in a new light, she was looking at him differently too. She dropped her hand quickly, as though his skin had burned her, then cleared her throat.
“Why do you suppose your husband will oppose the divorce?”