‘I don’t mean to alarm you—’
‘Well, you are, so get to the point,’ he advised tersely.
‘Your mother fainted a little while ago. She seems better now.’
His mother didn’t faint. ‘What does the doctor say?’ Roman asked, settling his loose Italian-designed jacket smoothly across his broad shoulders.
‘She hasn’t seen a doctor.’
Roman picked up on the defensive note that had entered the attractive voice and his brows drew together in a disapproving straight line.
‘Why the hell not?’ he demanded. ‘I need the car,’ he added seamlessly as he turned to his attentively hovering PA, who, like all good assistants, knew when to say nothing. ‘And cancel all my appointments for the rest of the morning, then tell Phil to meet me at the university.’
‘Our flight…?’
‘Cancel.’
‘What if Dr O’Connor is busy—?’
Roman turned his head and looked at her; Alice took the hint.
‘Right, I’ll tell him to drop everything, though that might be hard if he’s in the middle of heart surgery.’
‘He’s a medical man; he doesn’t operate,’ Roman retorted. ‘Just explain to him what’s happened, Alice, and tell him to bring his bag.’#p#????#e#
‘Your mother wouldn’t let me call a doctor or an ambulance.’
Roman turned around as if to face the bleating voice. ‘Let you? She was unconscious,’ he derided scornfully.
‘For less than a minute.’
Roman knew when he heard someone covering their back; there was nothing he despised more. He came down hard on people who preferred to shift the blame because they lacked the guts to carry the can for their own mistakes.
‘Let me tell you, Miss Smith, if my mother suffers a broken fingernail that could have been avoided if you had called for medical assistance I’ll sue the pants off you and your university!’ he promised darkly before cutting her off.
His PA was unable to remain silent. ‘Really, you can be so mean!’
‘What is this? Sisterly solidarity?’
‘I don’t think you realise how much you terrify people,’ she reproved, shaking her head.
‘No, Alice, I know exactly how much I terrify people.’ He gave a white wolfish smile. ‘It’s the secret behind my success.’
‘Nonsense,’ returned Alice. ‘The secret of your success is you live for your work and don’t have a life,’ she observed disapprovingly. ‘You lack balance.’
‘A little more terror, Alice, and a little less lip would be appreciated,’ Roman drawled.
‘That poor girl is probably crying her eyes out.’
‘Pardon me but I don’t empathise with incompetence, especially when that incompetence puts my family in danger,’ he explained grimly.
Contrary to Alice’s prediction, the ‘poor girl’ in question was neither terrified nor crying. She was walking down a university corridor where people who would normally have called out a cheery greeting took one look at her usually sunny face and changed their minds.
Others stared curiously when she walked past practising out loud—the acoustics were excellent—one of the cutting home truths she would like to deliver personally to Mr Roman O’Hagan.
‘Get to the point,’ he’d said. What did he think she’d been trying to do while he’d been cracking jokes at her expense?
Of course she should have called for an ambulance, she knew that—did he think she didn’t know that?
David Anderson, the university’s vice-chancellor, looked incredibly relieved as she walked through the door.
‘I thought you were only going to be a second, Scarlet?’ he said, drawing her a little to one side and out of earshot of the pale-faced woman sitting in the chair.
‘How is she?’ Scarlet asked, responding to his hand signals to keep her voice low.
‘Better than she was, I think. She wants me to ask her driver to bring her car around.’
‘I wouldn’t bother, David; her son is on his way over,’ she revealed casually.
On the whole, and considering how stressed David was already, Scarlet didn’t see much point explaining that the millionaire property developer in question was in a very vengeful and litigious mood.
Obviously threats were part and parcel of Roman O’Hagan’s modus operandi. Scarlet knew the type; she had suffered in silence at the hands of bullies during a lot of her school years. Years of unhappiness that she could have been spared if she had realised earlier that all you had to do with a bully was show them you weren’t scared—even if you were!