at him. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she prompted softly.
His mouth twisted. ‘Your mother’s life, over the last thirty-five years, makes interesting reading,’ he told her challengingly, dark brows raised.
Silke frowned down at him—before glancing across the desk at the brown envelope he had put down so pointedly on his arrival. He suddenly took on the appearance of a cobra about to strike!
She couldn’t believe it. This man, this—this... Words failed her as to describing exactly what he was. How dared he have her mother’s past investigated? Because Silke knew, with sickening clarity, that was exactly what Lyon had done, that this was the reason for his silence of the last three days.
‘You’re despicable!’ she finally told him disgustedly. ‘Absolutely beneath contempt!’
She could imagine all too clearly how that report on her mother would read, knew how her mother’s life would sound written down in black and white, the flitting from job to job, country to country, the finally settling down for two years with Silke’s father, seeming barely to give birth to Silke before she was off again, this time dragging her child around with her. There had been relationships with men before Silke was born, other relationships in the years that followed her birth. Once she was old enough to understand, her mother had been completely honest with her about those, and, loving her as she did, Silke had accepted her mother’s life.
But baldly written down on paper, without her mother’s emotions to back it up, it would all look very irresponsible, probably promiscuous too. Which, looking at Lyon’s contemptuous expression, was exactly what it looked like to him. Damn the man!
‘Henry has a right to know about the woman he says he wants to marry,’ Lyon told her tightly in answer to her accusation.
Silke glared at him, angry on her mother’s behalf. ‘Anything your uncle wants to know about my mother, she will tell him.’
‘Will she?’
Silke bristled even more at Lyon’s sceptical tone. ‘Yes!’ In fact, she was sure her mother and Henry had done little else but talk the last three days, that and arrange a special licence so that they could be married as soon as the other arrangements could be made. Which this man probably knew nothing about. And which Silke, after what he had just said about her mother, had no intention of telling him, either! ‘Tell me, Lyon, what’s happened in your life to make you so damned cynical?’ she challenged.
God, she was more than a little cynical herself after James had let her down so badly, but that didn’t stop her feeling happy for her mother and Henry—it just meant she had no intention of ever falling in love again herself!
Lyon stiffened at the familiarity of the question. ‘We weren’t discussing me—’
‘Oh, but I think we were.’ Silke shook her head, her hair a silver-blonde frame to gamin features. ‘It seems to me that it’s your own experiences with relationships that is making you judge the past situation between Henry and my mother; that you—’
‘Don’t try any of your amateur psychology on me, Silke,’ Lyon scorned harshly. ‘The Winter-Buchanan money has always been the draw—’
‘My mother gave all that up once,’ she pointed out softly, looking at him searchingly; was it possible this man had been through a similar experience to her own, that he had also been let down in love? But she didn’t want to have anything in common with Lyon! Certainly didn’t want to find they had an affinity because of past hurts. Considering the physical reaction there seemed to be between them—no matter how much they both wished it weren’t there!—that could be dangerous, very dangerous...
Lyon shrugged now. ‘She was young at the time, didn’t realise quite what she was giving up. Besides, when it came down to it, she obviously didn’t want the responsibility of someone else’s brat!’ His mouth twisted with distaste. ‘I doubt taking on someone else’s baby with the wedding-ring was the lifestyle she had in mind at all!’
Silke frowned. ‘Is that really what you think happened?’
‘Don’t be so bloody naïve, Silke; of course that’s what happened!’ he scorned.
She shook her head again. ‘That explanation doesn’t make sense either, Lyon; with all that Winter-Buchanan money at her disposal my mother wouldn’t have had to have anything to do with you herself if she didn’t want to. She could have paid people to do that!’
‘Henry wouldn’t have allowed that—’
‘Henry did it!’ she reasoned forcefully, clearly remembering the conversation between the two men on that first day. And Lyon might not like her ‘amateur psychology’, but it was becoming more and more obvious, despite Henry’s efforts—and that damned Winter-Buchanan money!—that Lyon had always had a very lonely life.
‘Because he had no choice,’ Lyon bit out harshly now, eyes glittering dangerously. ‘He was a man on his own, with a business to run—’
‘If you know that, why do you give him such a hard time over your childhood?’ she prompted softly. Her own childhood hadn’t exactly been ‘normal’ either, and her experience with James hadn’t been fun, but she was sure she didn’t have the same cynical approach to life Lyon did. Did she...?
He stood up forcefully, glaring down at her, a nerve pulsing in one tightly clenched cheek. ‘Silke, I don’t discuss my personal affairs with anyone like this,’ he finally ground out dismissively.
Maybe that was his problem. When James had walked out on her she hadn’t hidden herself away and licked her wounds, had talked and talked and talked, mainly to her mother, until she had talked a lot of the pain and disillusionment away. None of the talking had really changed the situation; James had still betrayed her in the worst possible way, the wedding-dress hanging in her bedroom seeming to mock her until she had got rid of it, but at least she hadn’t kept all the bitterness inside her, destroying her. As it was, this man...
‘Maybe you should try it some time, Lyon,’ she said lightly.
Dark brows rose over scornful eyes. ‘With you?’
She looked shocked, moving away from him to sit back in her chair behind the desk, as far away from Lyon as she possibly could be. No, not with her! This man disturbed her enough already, had broken down certain of her defences she would rather have remained intact. She didn’t want to know the man behind the hard façade, felt far safer telling herself that there wasn’t one, that this hard, cynical man was all there was.
‘Certainly not,’ she snapped defensively. ‘As you so rightly guessed, my mother is at the clinic with Henry. Go and do your worst with the information you have on her. I can guarantee it won’t make any difference to either of them,’ she added confidently.
Lyon shook his head. ‘There are no guarantees in this world, Silke,’ he rasped abruptly.
She had thought her relationship with James the sort that would last a lifetime—and look how badly that had turned out! If James hadn’t run off in the way that he had, they would have been married almost a year by now, a year she had believed would be filled with the happiness of setting up home together, of discovering all those things about each other that it wasn’t possible to know until you actually lived with someone. And instead—
‘But you look as if you already know that,’
