shot her a hard look. ‘Just get the damned wine, will you?’
She bit back her own angry retort, knowing by the dangerous glitter in Jordan’s eyes that now was not the time to argue with him on the subject of the pain he was suffering. Or the unsatisfactory method he chose to dull that pain. ‘Would you like red or white?’
‘That all depends what you’re making for dinner.’
She shrugged. ‘I have potatoes and lasagne baking in the oven, and a salad made up and stored in the fridge.’
‘Red, then. Just go, will you, Stephanie?’ he urged fiercely as she still hesitated in the doorway. ‘When you come back I promise to try and do my best to make polite pre-dinner conversation.’ The harshness of his expression softened slightly.
She looked sceptical. ‘About what?’
‘How the hell should I know?’ His snappy impatience wasn’t in the least conducive to polite conversation! ‘It’s been so long since I tried that I think I’ve lost the art of small talk.’
Stephanie wasn’t sure he’d ever had it!
Even as the charming and magnetically handsome Jordan Simpson, he’d been known as a man who didn’t suffer fools gladly—a professional perfectionist, with little patience for actors less inclined to give so completely of themselves.
As Jordan St Claire, a man well away from the public limelight, he didn’t even attempt any of the social niceties, but was either caustic or mocking. That mood depended, Stephanie was fast realising, on the degree of pain he was in at the time. Right now she would say he was in a lot of pain.
‘I’ve never particularly enjoyed the shallowness of small talk, either,’ Stephanie told him.
‘Then I guess we’ll both have to work at it, won’t we?’ Jordan closed his eyes to lay his head back against the chair, his expression harsh and unapproachable.
Or just pained…
Stephanie was becoming more convinced by the moment that his hip and leg were more painful than usual this evening. She could see the effects of that pain in the dark shadows beneath those gold-coloured eyes, and in the way his skin stretched tautly over those high cheekbones and shadowed jaw. No doubt wine helped to numb that pain for a while, but it wouldn’t take it away completely.
Even though she didn’t think drinking wine was the answer, she knew that Jordan accepting some sort of help to manage his pain was better than no help at all. So she turned on her heel and sped off to get some.
‘Here you are.’ Stephanie returned from the kitchen a few minutes later to hand Jordan one of the glasses of red wine she’d brought, and placed the bottle on the table beside him before carrying her own glass across the room and resuming her seat near the warmth of the fire. ‘So, what shall we talk about?’ she prompted after a few minutes of awkward silence.
Jordan had sat up to drink half the glass of Merlot in one swallow, knowing from experience that it would take a few minutes for the alcohol to kick into his system and hopefully numb some of the pain in his hip and leg. ‘Why don’t you start by telling me about your family?’ He refilled his glass as he waited for her to answer.
She raised surprised brows. ‘What do you want to know about them?’
‘You’re really hard work, do you know that?’ he growled.
‘And you aren’t?’
‘You already know about my family,’ Jordan pointed out. ‘Two brothers, both older than me, one by two years, the other by two minutes. End of story.’
‘What about your parents? Are they both still alive?’ Stephanie sipped her own wine more slowly.
‘Just my mother. She lives in Scotland,’ Jordan answered curtly.
Stephanie seemed to expect him to say more on the subject. But Jordan had no intention of saying any more. He wasn’t going to tell her that his mother, the Duchess of Stourbridge, was desperately awaiting the marriage of her eldest son so that she could step back and become simply the Dowager Duchess. That she was impatiently waiting for any of her sons to marry and provide her with the grandchildren she so longed for. As none of those three sons had ever had a permanent woman in his life, let alone thought of marriage, she was in for a very long wait indeed.
So instead Molly doted on her three sons. In fact if she had her way she would be down here right now, fussing over Jordan. Much as he loved and appreciated his mother, that was something he could definitely do without!
‘Your turn,’ he invited Stephanie dryly. ‘Start with your grandparents and work your way down,’ Jordan prompted as she hesitated.
She gave an awkward shrug. ‘I don’t usually discuss my private life with my patients.’
‘I thought we had agreed that I’m not your patient?’
‘Then what am I doing here?’
‘Who the hell knows?’ Jordan heard the aggression in his tone, and regretted it, but the wine was taking longer than usual to numb the pain this evening—to the point that he was gritting his teeth together so tightly he was surprised he could talk at all!
Stephanie gave him a reproving frown. ‘Very well. All four of my grandparents are still alive. As are both my parents. I—’
‘I wasn’t asking for a roll call,’ Jordan sighed. ‘Look, Stephanie, this is how it goes, okay? I ask you a polite question, you give me a pleasant answer. With details. Voilà—small talk.’
Stephanie knew what small talk was. She just didn’t have any patience for it. ‘My paternal grandparents moved to Surrey when my grandfather sold his construction business five years ago. My maternal grandparents live in Oxfordshire—my grandmother is a retired university professor, and simply couldn’t bring herself to move from the city where she had taught for so many years. My mother and father live in Kent and run a garden centre together.’
‘Better.’ Jordan nodded approvingly.
‘I have one sibling. Joey. She—’
‘Joey is a she?’
‘Short for Josephine,’ Stephanie supplied with a smile, relieved to see that some of the pained tension was starting to leave Jordan’s face. ‘But anyone calling her by that name had better be prepared to receive a black eye or worse!’
‘Worse?’
‘She put a frog down the shirt of a boy at school when he dared to tease her by chanting her full name,’ she remembered affectionately.
‘And the black eye?’
‘A man she dated for a while at university.’ Stephanie shrugged. ‘Needless to say they didn’t date again after that.’
‘No, I don’t suppose they did,’ Jordan chuckled softly as he felt his muscles starting to relax from the effects of the wine and the soothing firelight. ‘So how old is Joey and what does she do?’
‘She’s a lawyer.’
