his head in curt refusal of the offer. ‘I’ll take it just as it comes from the pot this time of night. I need the caffeine,’ he added ruefully.
He didn’t look as if he ‘needed’ anything; he was as alert and steely-eyed as if he had recently awoken from a long refreshing sleep. Whereas she felt exhausted, certainly far from her sparkling best. Which was a mistake on her part; she had a feeling it never paid to be less than at one’s best when up against this man. And at the moment, because he deliberately made himself such an enigma, she did feel they were antagonists.
‘Your young man did bring you all the way home this time, then?’
Sophie drew her breath in sharply at the sharp edge to the question, sure in that moment that he had deliberately attempted to put her at her ease before by seeming to fall in with her wish to be the polite strangers they would have been if it hadn’t been for that incident beside the road earlier. Now he was letting her know, with one sharp parry, that he had no intention of forgetting the incident, no matter what impression he might have given to the contrary in front of her aunt.
Sophie handed him his cup of coffee with a hand that shook slightly. Maybe it was as well she wasn’t going to work for him after all. She liked to relax, enjoy herself where she worked, and this man’s presence here would make that impossible for her.
‘As you can see,’ she nodded abruptly. ‘I–thank you for not telling my aunt about that earlier,’ she added stiffly, having dropped down into the chair opposite his across the desk.
He made no attempt to drink the coffee she had given him, putting the cup down on the desktop, his eyes narrowed to steely slits now as his gaze levelled on Sophie. ‘I didn’t do that to save you any embarrassment,’ he told her harshly, ‘but because I believed it might have upset your aunt to know about the ridiculous situation you had got yourself into. She seems very fond of you…’
Although he couldn’t for the life of him understand why, when she was so obviously unworthy of the affection, his tone seemed to imply!
But she had been proved correct in her earlier belief that he hadn’t been interested in protecting her by not telling her aunt they had already met, and under what circumstances.
‘Look on the bright side,’ Sophie returned. ‘If I hadn’t kept Aunt Millie up waiting to let me in because I didn’t have a key, she wouldn’t have been up and about to make your coffee and sandwich!’
His mouth thinned, his eyes ice-cold. ‘I’m more than capable of getting my own coffee and sandwich,’ he rasped harshly.
Sophie would hazard a guess at his being more than capable of doing most things for himself! She really shouldn’t have let herself be goaded into giving that insolent reply. And she wouldn’t have done if he weren’t so–so damned superior, looking down that arrogant nose of his at her as if she were some unusual type of specimen that he wanted to push and poke around until he discovered what made her function the way that she did–and then dispose of her! Or maybe she was just being over-sensitive; after all, he did have a certain right to be judgemental about her behaviour…
‘Or you could have made it for me,’ he continued challengingly before she could make a reply. ‘When you finally got in!’
She winced at the disapproving anger in his voice. He sounded like a stern father reprimanding a wayward child, although anyone less like her own wonderful, indulgent father she couldn’t imagine–and she doubted Maximilian Grant would welcome the idea of her as his child any more favourably! Maybe prospective employer reprimanding a less than suitable candidate for employment was more like it, after all. And the longer they talked, the more she realised how true that probably was; she didn’t ‘suit’ Maximilian Grant at all!
She moistened her lips nervously. ‘You——’
‘Sorry I took so long with your sandwich, Mr Grant.’ Her aunt chose that moment to bustle into the room after the briefest of knocks to alert them to her presence, smiling at the two of them brightly as she came in, seeming unaware of the tension that fairly crackled in the room between her employer and her niece. At least, to Sophie it did! ‘I made you some fresh mayonnaise to go with it,’ Aunt Millie beamed with satisfaction.
‘You shouldn’t have gone to all that trouble, Mrs Craine.’ Maximilian Grant relaxed enough to smile up at Sophie’s aunt, although Sophie could see the angry glitter directed at her still in his ice-blue eyes. She had seen a photograph of an iceberg once that had the palest of blue coloration to it; this man’s eyes reminded her of that iceberg. ‘You really must go to bed now, Mrs Craine.’ His smile took some of the order out of the sharpness of his words as he spoke to her aunt again, but it was no less an instruction he expected her to obey, for all that.
Even so, Sophie knew it was an order her aunt would have to disobey; there was no way Aunt Millie would just meekly go off to bed now, without learning exactly how Sophie had got on in her interview with Maximilian Grant. That was something she wasn’t alone in!
‘Sophie and I can clear away here when we’re finished,’ Maximilian Grant added–as if he was well aware of his housekeeper’s reluctance.
‘Very well,’ Aunt Millie replied stiffly, making her exit, dignified displeasure down each rigid inch of her spine.
Sophie winced, knowing that look only too well. Not that it appeared to be bothering Maximilian Grant as he looked across the desk at Sophie with raised brows. And why should it bother him? The most Aunt Millie could do to him was serve him up an inedible meal, and as her aunt was very proud of her cooking, that wasn’t very likely! Sophie wished she could be let off as lightly…
‘You were saying…?’ Maximilian Grant prompted drily, as if he knew exactly what thoughts were going through her mind.
What had she been saying? Oh, yes… ‘I just wanted to explain about what happened earlier this evening–but I realise now there isn’t a lot of point to that, is there?’ She sighed wearily at the knowledge that it was probably far too late to redeem herself in his eyes.
Would it do any good, she wondered, if she were to tell this man that it hadn’t been the defending of her honour that had resulted in her ordering Brian to stop the car and let her out, but of his, Maximilian Grant’s?
WELL, not his honour, exactly, but something he valued far more highly: his privacy!
She had been pleased to see Brian earlier when he had joined her and Ally for a drink, had thought him still attractive to her now adult eyes, had been pleased to accept the lift back to Henley Hall he’d offered her once he had realised she was going to leave to catch the last bus back, had even been considering accepting his invitation if he should ask to see her again, for an evening out alone this time. What she had unfortunately forgotten was that Brian now worked for the biggest local newspaper in the area. And what she had learnt during that drive back was that Brian had ambitions to move on from that provincial newspaper to the brighter lights of Fleet Street–or wherever the big national newspapers were located nowadays–and he had the idea of using an exposé of Maximilian Grant’s private life to do it, with Sophie as his informant.
At this moment in time, apart from the fact that Maximilian Grant had a sixteen-year-old daughter with a week’s half-term holiday to be filled, she knew little or nothing of the man’s private life. But, even if she had, she
