had walked out of her life...
He grimaced ruefully at her evasion. ‘A mere child,’ he ground out disgustedly. ‘The sacrificial lamb!’ He shook his head. ‘I hate to tell you this, Lilli, but your efforts—enjoyable as they were!—were completely wasted.’ His gaze hardened. ‘If my own sister’s pleadings failed to move me, you can be assured that a night of pleasure in your arms would have had even less effect!’
Lilli looked at him with haughty disdain. ‘I don’t have the least idea what you’re talking about,’ she snapped.
‘No?’ he queried sceptically.
‘No,’ she echoed tartly. ‘I don’t even know what you’re doing here today. We were at a party, we decided to spend the night together—and that should have been the end of it. You came here, I didn’t come to you,’ she reminded him coldly.
‘Actually, Lilli,’ he drawled softly, ‘I came to see your father, not you.’
Her head went back in astonishment. ‘My father...?’ she repeated in a puzzled voice.
Patrick nodded abruptly. ‘Unfortunately, I was informed he isn’t in,’ he said grimly.
‘So you asked to see me instead?’ she realised incredulously.
‘Correct,’ he affirmed, with a slight inclination of his head. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Lilli,’ he added.
She swallowed hard, quickly reassessing the situation. ‘And just why did you want to see my father?’
Patrick looked at her with narrowed eyes. ‘I’m sure you already know the answer to that question.’
‘Because he’s having a relationship with your sister?’ Lilli scorned. ‘It must keep you very busy if you pay personal calls on all her lovers in this way!’
Anger flared briefly in the grey depths of his eyes, and then they became glacially enigmatic, that gaze sweeping over her with deliberate assessment. ‘I’m sure you keep your father just as busy,’ he drawled.
After her comment about Geraldine, she had probably deserved that remark. Unfortunately, both this man and his sister brought out the worst in her; she wasn’t usually a bitchy person. But then, this whole situation was unusual!
‘Perhaps he’s paying a similar call on you at this very moment?’ Lilli returned.
‘I very much doubt it.’ Patrick gave a smile. ‘It hasn’t been my impression, so far in our acquaintance, that your father has ever deliberately gone out of his way to meet me!’
Her eyes widened. ‘The two of you have met?’ If they had, her father hadn’t mentioned that particular fact earlier!
‘Several times,’ Patrick confirmed enigmatically.
Exactly how long had her father been involved with Geraldine? Lilli had assumed it was a very recent thing, but if the two men had met ‘several times’...
‘Perhaps you could pass on a message to him that we will be meeting again, too. Very soon,’ Patrick added grimly, walking to the door.
Lilli watched him frowningly. ‘You’re leaving...?’ She hadn’t meant her voice to sound wistful at all—and yet somehow it did. In the fifteen minutes Patrick had been here he had made insulting comments to her, enigmatic remarks about her father—but he hadn’t really said anything. She wasn’t really sure what she had expected him to say... But the two of them had spent the night together, and—
He turned at the door, dark brows raised questioningly. ‘Do we have anything else to say to each other?’ he questioned in a bored voice.
No, of course they didn’t. They had had nothing to say to each other from the beginning. It was just that—
‘Ten, Lilli,’ he drawled softly. ‘You were a ten,’ he explained dryly as she gave him a puzzled look.
He laughed huskily as his meaning became clear and her cheeks suffused with heated colour.
She hadn’t wanted to know—hadn’t asked—
‘I’ll let myself out, Lilli,’ he volunteered, and did so, the door closing softly behind him.
Which was just as well—because Lilli had been rooted to the spot after that last statement.
Ten...
And she didn’t remember a single moment of it...
CHAPTER THREE
‘I WANT to know exactly what is going on, Daddy,’ Lilli told him firmly, having waited in the sitting-room for two hours before he came home, fortified by the tray of tea things Emily had brought in to her. After Patrick Devlin’s departure, Lilli had felt in need of something, and whisky, at that hour of the day, had been out of the question. Although the man was enough to drive anyone to drink!
She had heard her father enter the house, accosting him in the hallway as he walked towards the wide staircase.
He turned at the sound of her voice, his expression grim. ‘I was left in no doubt by you earlier that you didn’t want to hear anything more about Geraldine.’
‘I still don’t,’ Lilli told him impatiently. ‘Her brother, however, is a different matter!’
‘Patrick?’ her father replied.
Her mouth twisted. ‘Unless she has another brother—yes!’
Her father stiffened, striding forcefully across the hallway to join her as she went into the sitting-room, closing the door firmly behind him. ‘What about him?’ he said warily.
She gave an impatient sigh. ‘That’s what I just asked you!’
‘You spent the night with him, Lilli,’ her father reminded her. ‘I would have thought you would know all there is to know about the man! We none of us have defences in bed. Or so I’m told...’
She bit back the reply she would have liked to make; that sort of conversation would take them absolutely nowhere, as it had this morning. ‘I’m not talking about the man’s prowess—or otherwise!—in the bedroom,’ she snapped. ‘He said the two of you know each other.’
‘Did he?’ her father returned with studied indifference.
‘Daddy!’ She glared at her father’s back as he stood looking out of the window now—very much as Patrick had done earlier. He was trying to give the impression that the subject of the other man bored him, and yet, somehow, she knew that it didn’t...
He sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I just didn’t realise the two of you had spent part of your night together discussing me—’
‘We didn’t,’ Lilli cut in. ‘He was here earlier.’
Her father froze, slowly turning to face her. ‘Devlin came
