my turning up here like this gave you one hell of a start, didn’t it? My God! You must have thought you had it made. Henry’s heiress, inheriting all this!’ He waved a careless hand towards the ceiling. ‘You’re cool, I’ll give you that. In your place, I’d have thrown you out and asked questions afterwards. But you—you’re cleverer than that, aren’t you? You must have been to hook old Henry in the first place. You realised straight off that my intervention might, just might, upset the applecart, so you’ve decided it might be safer to play both ends against the middle!’
‘No!’ Olivia was indignant, but Alex didn’t believe her.
‘No?’ he mocked. ‘You’re not even the tiniest bit concerned that I might bring this house of cards down about your pretty ears!’
‘No!’
‘No what? No, you’re not concerned, or no, you don’t believe I can do it?’ He took an indolent step towards her, and it was all Olivia could do to remain sitting in her seat under that insolent regard.
‘I mean—no, you couldn’t overset the will,’ she said, through tight lips. ‘It’s tied up too securely for that. Didn’t Adam tell you? He drew it up, on your father’s instructions, of course.’
Alex’s dark eyes narrowed speculatively. ‘Livvy, you know as well as I do that in any civilised society, a man’s heirs are his sons, not his wife.’
‘Henry obviously did not consider he had a son——’
‘A court of law might not agree with you.’
‘I don’t care what a court of law might think.’ Olivia fought to defend herself. ‘The will is watertight, Mr Gantry. Henry was far too astute not to have considered every possibility.’
Alex snorted. ‘What you mean is, you’ve got expensive tastes as well as greedy fingers!’ he snapped. ‘You’re scared to death someone’s going to come along and take a slice of it away from you!’
‘That’s not true!’ Olivia sprang to her feet then, her pulses racing and her breasts heaving beneath the clinging folds of the caftan. ‘How dare you come here and speak to me like this? It’s not my fault that you and your father came to despise one another. That had nothing to do with me. I don’t know why you split up and I don’t care. But you have no right to accuse me of being greedy, when the minute your father’s dead, you come here threatening to contest the will in your own favour!’
She had not meant to say that, but Alex surveyed her evident upheaval with unwilling admiration. ‘So—it has claws, does it?’ he mocked, as she struggled to control herself. ‘And so vehement, too. When it obviously knows nothing about it.’
‘I know enough,’ declared Olivia tensely, not wanting to defend Henry, but unable to defend herself without doing so. ‘I know something must have happened between you and your father to drive him to disown you. But that’s in the past now——’
‘No, it’s not.’ He stared at her contemptuously. ‘You’re here, aren’t you? His grieving young widow! What’s the matter, Livvy? finding it lonely?’
Olivia drew a deep breath. ‘Please don’t call me Livvy.’
‘Why not? Is that what he used to call you?’
‘No. No, your father always called me Olivia.’
‘Okay, so I’ll call you Liv,’ he remarked carelessly. ‘As I’m going to be around for a while, I guess we can dispense with formality. We are—related, after all. Unless,’ his dark eyes were disturbing, ‘unless you’d like me to call you Mother.’
Olivia flushed. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous!’
‘What’s ridiculous? You are my—stepmother, aren’t you?’
Olivia’s nervous tension was expanding not decreasing. This whole conversation was quite ludicrous, and yet it was all happening. ‘I—I don’t think that’s relevant,’ she said now, wishing she smoked so that she had something to do with her hands. They were fluttering about quite distractedly, and she knew he could not be unaware of her state of agitation. ‘You didn’t tell me where you were staying,’ she said now. ‘Do you have a base in London? What arrangements have you made?’
‘None.’ Now it was his turn to offer the negative. ‘I didn’t tell you where I was staying because I didn’t know.’
Olivia’s lips parted. ‘You mean—you came right here from the airport?’
‘Via Cosgrove’s office, yes.’
‘You’ve seen Adam?’
‘Obviously.’
Olivia shook her head. ‘But—how——’
‘I hired a car at the airport,’ he explained carelessly. ‘I knew there was no chance I could get here in time for the funeral—my flight didn’t land until four o’clock. So I made the diversion while I was in Chalcott. It’s only an hour’s drive, after all.’
‘Yes.’ Olivia was thinking hard. ‘So—do you have any immediate plans?’
He studied the glowing tip of his cheroot. ‘You tell me.’
Olivia hesitated. ‘I suppose you need a bed for the night.’
‘Yes.’ He looked at her. ‘Are you going to turn me out?’
Olivia caught her breath. ‘Turn you out?’ she echoed faintly, knowing as she did so that if she intended going through with her intentions, he should stay here. But after the things he had said, she was no longer certain of anything.
‘I seem to remember you saying something about us being civilised,’ he reminded her sarcastically.
‘Yes, that’s true. But——’
‘But what?’
Olivia shook her head. She was getting out of her depth with this man. He was so totally different from what she had imagined, what she had expected. He disturbed her, he was an unpredictable quantity; and whatever she intended to do, she did not want him living in the same house.
‘You said yourself, you—you and your father despised one another,’ she began.
‘No, you said that.’
Olivia pressed her palms together. ‘You didn’t disagree.’
‘All right.’ Alex tossed the remains of his cheroot into the fire behind him. ‘So I didn’t. But Henry’s dead now, as you say, and there’s just you and me, Liv. As Henry’s surviving relatives, don’t you think we should stick together?’
She knew he was baiting her. He didn’t like her, and she was sure she didn’t like him. It was strange how one’s opinion could alter when faced with the realities of a situation. Earlier, she had half sympathised with Alex Gantry. She had been prepared to believe he was the innocent victim of his father’s despotism. Now she was not so sure. Alex Gantry did not strike her as the kind of man who would care twopence for his father’s feelings. He was hard, he was a predator; and no matter
