suits when they can look just as good in far cheaper clothes?
But maybe that wasn’t fair. Maybe Peta wasn’t any woman. She’d look great in anything, he thought, as Robert drove them back to Higgins’s office.
The only problem was that she was a bit pale. Her hands were clenched so tightly that he could see the white in her knuckles. But she was still determinedly keeping up conversation as they made their way past Central Park.
‘It’s Central Park I most wanted to see,’ she told him. ‘Ever since I was a little girl I dreamed of riding around Central Park.’
‘You’re a country girl?’
‘I told you—we live on a farm. I milk cows for a living.’
We? Who?
It didn’t matter. Did it?
She was expecting a courteous, impersonal reply. He had to fight to find one. Somehow. ‘So…you live on a farm yet you dream of coming to New York to ride a horse?’
‘It’s a different kind of riding.’ She gave a hesitant smile and he saw that her hands were still clenched. He had to fight back the urge to lift them—to forcibly unclench them. ‘John Lennon loved this park,’ she was saying. ‘Jackie Kennedy loved this park. All these people that I’ve only read about.’
‘You admired Jackie O?’
‘The lady had class.’
‘And John Lennon?’
‘Oooh, those glasses were sexy.’
‘Really?’ he said faintly and was rewarded by a chuckle. Her hands, he noticed with satisfaction, were finally starting to relax. ‘So who else do you think of as sexy?’ he asked. ‘Just John? Paul? George? How about Ringo?’
‘Ringo was sexy,’ she agreed. ‘Really sexy. When I see the old clips I think he’s cuteness personified. But now every time I hear him I think of Thomas the Tank Engine. It’s a bit disconcerting.’
‘I imagine it might be.’
She was so different. How had his day been hijacked? he wondered. How had this happened? Instead of making plans and signing million-dollar deals, he was discussing the sexiness of Thomas the Tank Engine.
And enjoying it.
But then they were pulling up outside the offices where Charles presumably lay waiting, and her hands clenched white again.
‘Don’t sweat it,’ Marcus told her and he surprised himself by placing a hand over her much smaller one. The touch surprised them both. It was as if a frisson of electricity ran between them, warm, intimate and somehow immeasurably comforting. ‘I’m right behind you,’ he heard himself saying. ‘Every step of the way.’
Miss Pritchard—alias Attila the Hun, Charles’s secretary—was her normal appalling self. Peta stepped out of the lift and she saw her coming and sighed. She didn’t even pretend to be courteous.
‘What do you want?’
‘I’m here for my appointment,’ Peta said, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘It was for ten this morning.’
‘Mr Higgins had a moment free at two,’ the woman said, her disdain obvious in her intonation. ‘But you weren’t here. He has no more appointments available until late next week.’
‘Then could you ask Mr Higgins if he’ll make an appointment free for me,’ Marcus said, his lazy drawl making the woman’s face jerk from Peta to the man following behind. The man who, until now, had stood in the background and had not been noticed. Marcus. ‘I believe the lease for this office space is soon up for renegotiation,’ Marcus drawled. ‘As landlord I expect a certain professional standard of my tenants. Peta had an appointment at ten this morning and she’s still waiting. To have disgruntled clients hanging around my office space is not what I wish in my buildings.’
He motioned to a chair. ‘Peta, if you’d like to sit down…’ He gave the secretary a glimmer of a mockery of his smile—the sort of smile that had made many a business opponent come close to bursting a blood vessel in entirely appropriate anxiety. ‘We’ll wait,’ he told the woman. ‘Tell Mr Higgins that we’re here and we’ll wait for as long as it takes.’
Attila’s eyes had been flat and cold before. Now, suddenly, they looked like those of a goldfish. A goldfish that was swimming over an unplugged hole. There were very few people in this city who weren’t aware of Marcus’s power. It was legendary. ‘But…’
‘Just tell him,’ Marcus said wearily. ‘I’d like to get this over quickly. I hope Mr Higgins feels the same.’
It appeared Mr Higgins did. Five minutes later they were ushered apologetically into the great man’s presence.
To say Peta was tense was an understatement. This interview was overwhelmingly important to her, Marcus thought. The look on her face as she walked into Charles’s office said she intended to be calm, practical and efficient.
She obviously hadn’t counted on the store of anger that must have been walled up for so long that the moment she saw her cousin it could do nothing but burst.
Charles was seated behind a vast mahogany desk. Before he could stand, Peta had stalked across and slammed her hands palm downward on the gleaming surface, so hard she made the in-tray jump.
‘You uncaring toad,’ she spat, and Marcus blinked in astonishment. But Peta was obviously past caring.
‘You brought Hattie over here and she came because she thought you loved her. She hoped you loved her. But you didn’t. You abandoned her.’ Peta’s voice was loaded with contempt and with icy rage. ‘She could have died at home. With me. With Harry. With people who loved her. But you told her you wanted her here. You conned her into coming where she knew no one. How could you?’
‘My relationship with my mother has nothing to do with you,’ Charles snapped. The man was in his late thirties, florid, wearing a three-piece suit that was as sleazy as it was expensive, and he was obviously deeply disdainful of the woman before him. ‘I have no idea what you want from me, Peta, or why you’ve bothered with this appointment.’ He cast an uneasy glance at Marcus and then looked back at Peta. It was apparent that Marcus was the only reason he’d agreed to see her—the only reason he didn’t get up now and push her out the door. ‘Or how you’ve dragged Mr Benson into this.’
‘No one drags me anywhere,’ Marcus said softly. He hauled up a chair and sat, with the air of a man who was here for the entertainment.
‘This is family business,’ Charles told him, and Marcus gave him his very nicest smile.
‘Consider me Peta’s family. I’ve just elected myself. Peta, I hate to mention it but I don’t think haranguing Charles on his mistreatment of his mother—justified as it may be—is going to achieve a lot. Let’s just cut to the chase and get out of here. This place makes me nervous.’
Charles flushed. ‘You don’t have to stay.’
‘I’m with the lady. Peta, say what you need to.’
Peta
