fingers together, dragged his eyes away from the document, and looked her over. ‘And a little word of advice here—if you want someone to give you a donation, the very last thing you should do is connive your way into their offices and try to catch them off guard. People generally don’t care for the element of deviousness involved.’
Jessica found that she was leaning forward in her chair.
‘I am not here in connection with a request for money, Mr Newman.’
His eyebrows flew up at that. ‘Then why are you here?’ Mild curiosity there, she saw. He probably thought that she would get back to the subject of money in a while, after a few byroads to try and divert his attention. A naturally suspicious mind.
‘I’m here about your son.’
That worked. It wiped all expression off his face. It was as though shutters had suddenly been pulled down over his eyes.
‘And you are…?’
‘Jessica Hirst.’
He frowned. ‘Well, Mrs Hirst…’
‘Miss.’
‘Well, Miss Hirst, whatever you want to discuss can be discussed on the school premises. If you’d care to see one of my secretaries, she’ll fix you an appointment. Frankly, I do think that it’s a bit unorthodox to barge your way into my offices.’ His frown deepened. ‘Why did you involve yourself in a ruse to get this address? Surely it’s on the school file?’
‘Most probably,’ Jessica said calmly. ‘But, since I’m not a teacher at your son’s school, that wouldn’t have done me much good, would it?’
‘Then who the heck are you?’
Your son is a corrupting influence on my daughter.
Your son is leading my daughter astray.
I’m here to ask you to keep your wretched son away from my daughter.
‘My daughter is Lucy Hirst. Perhaps your son Mark has mentioned her to you?’
‘What the hell has he gone and done?’ His voice was as hard as steel. ‘No, Miss Hirst,’ he said heavily, ‘Mark hasn’t said anything to me about your daughter. At least, not that I can recall.’ He raked his fingers through his hair and looked at her without flinching.
‘Nothing at all?’ This time it was her turn to frown, and to wonder whether she hadn’t read the signs all the wrong way. Perhaps his name hadn’t been dropped into conversations as regularly as she had thought. Maybe she had been mistaken, and the boy was only some kind of acquaintance. Perhaps Lucy’s change of attitude had nothing to do with any malign influence at all, and was simply a matter of hormones and puberty kicking in later than she had expected. She had no experience of these things. She could hardly recall her own growing pains, although there had been no room in her disintegrating family life for growing pains to have much space.
‘As I said—not that I recall,’ he said with a hint of impatience.
‘Lucy’s mentioned him off and on for months…’
‘Well, if you tell me that my son knows your daughter, Miss Hirst, then I’ll take your word for it,’ he said, by way of response to that remark, and Jessica, who had been lost in her own thoughts, trying to work out whether she had made an utter fool of herself in storming into this man’s office full of accusations and demands for a solution, looked fully at him now.
‘Are you telling me that you wouldn’t know whether your son was seeing my daughter because you don’t communicate with him?’
She sounded like a lawyer, she realised. Working alongside them must have rubbed off on her in more ways than one.
‘Listen to me, Miss Hirst, if you think—’
The telephone buzzed, and he picked up the receiver and informed his secretary that no further calls were to be put through.
‘Look,’ he said, standing up, ‘this isn’t the right place to have this kind of…conversation. Ellie’s not going to be able to keep all my callers at bay.’
He was very tall, and without the desk acting as a shield his presence was even more overwhelming. She discovered that she was watching him, taking in the lean muscularity of his build, the casual air of self-assurance.
‘I’ll get my chauffeur to take us to the Savoy. We can discuss this there over a cup of coffee and rather more privacy. But I warn you now that my time is limited.’
Jessica nodded. She had planned on taking full control of the proceedings, as she had been taking full control of everything from as far back as she could remember.
Now she felt as though the rug had been pulled from under her feet, but with such dexterity that she was left feeling not unbalanced by the manoeuvre—more disconcerted by the speed.
‘Coming?’ he asked from the door, and she nodded again and stood up.
CHAPTER TWO
WHAT did he mean that his time was limited? Did that imply just right now, or could she read that as a general statement? She should have picked him up on that! Why on earth hadn’t she? Didn’t he see that this was just the problem? Limited time equalled maladjusted son, who was leading her precious daughter astray!
Jessica felt as though she was losing any advantage she might have had over the proceedings.
Ever since she had stepped into the man’s oversized office she had found herself confronted with someone who, even momentarily disconcerted, as he had been, was so accustomed to taking charge of things that he had automatically taken control of the situation. Leaving her utterly lost for words.
And now here she was, with a low table separating them and extravagantly laid out with pots of percolated coffee, cups and saucers and a plateful of extraordinarily mouth-watering little bites.
‘So,’ he said, crossing his legs and looking at her, ‘why have you seen fit to storm into my office and confront me? You might as well tell me right now what my son has been up to. If it’s what I think it is, then I’m sure we can settle on some sort of amicable arrangement.’
The wintry grey eyes revealed nothing. There was absolutely nothing about him that encouraged her to relax in any way at all, and she had to resist the impulse not to give in to an embarrassing display of nervous mannerisms. Her self-confidence had ebbed enough as it was, and she was determined that he did not become aware of that.
‘Why do you think I came to see you, Mr Newman?’ she asked, throwing the question back at him.
‘I have neither the time nor the inclination for games, Miss Hirst. I assumed that you were going to tell me precisely that. Wasn’t that your reason for barging unannounced into my office?’ She stared at him without flinching, and eventually he asked, impatiently, ‘Has my son got your daughter into any sort of trouble? Is that it?’
Jessica didn’t answer. She decided that the best course of action was to get him to plough his way through this one instead of encouraging her to do all the talking. If a solution was to be engineered, it would have to be a two-way
