a few weeks ago, in his head, Isobel had been a witch and a hellion with barbs for teeth. Now, on the back of one small comment she was the young and vulnerable creature he had dragged by the scruff of her beautiful neck out of sensual heaven into the hell of Athenian society.
On a thick oath he stood up again, paced around his desk. What was going on here? he asked himself. What was the matter with him? Did he have to come over all macho and feel suddenly protective because there was a chance that the Isobel he would meet tomorrow was going to be a shadow of the one he once knew?
A wheelchair.
Another oath escaped him. The phone on his desk began to ring. It was Diantha, gently reminding him that his mother would prefer him not to be late for dinner tonight. The tension eased out of his shoulders, her soft, slightly amused tone showing sympathy with his present plight where his mother was concerned. By the time the conversation ended he was feeling better—much more like his gritty, calm self.
Yes, he confirmed. Diantha was good for him. She refocused his mind on those things that should matter, like the meeting he should be attending right now.
‘You’re asking for trouble dressed like that,’ Silvia Cunningham announced in her usual blunt manner.
Isobel took a step back to view herself in the mirror. ‘Why, what’s wrong with it?’ All she saw was a perfectly acceptable brown tailored suit with a skirt that lightly hugged her hips and thighs to finish at a respectable length just below her slender knees. The plain-cut zip-up jacket stopped at her waist and beneath it she wore a staunchly conventional button-through cream blouse. Her hair was neat, caught up in a twist and held in place by a tortoiseshell comb. She was wearing an unremarkable flesh-coloured lipstick, a light dusting of eye-shadow and some black mascara, but that was all.
In fact she could not look more conservative if she tried to be, she informed that hint of a defiant glint she could see burning in her green eyes.
‘What’s wrong with that suit is that it’s an outright provocation,’ her mother said. ‘The wretched man never could keep his hands off you at the worst of times. What do you think he’s going to want to do when you turn up wearing a suit with a definite slink about it?’
‘I can’t help my figure!’ Isobel flashed back defensively. ‘It’s the one you gave to me, along with the hair and the eyes.’
‘And the temper,’ Silvia nodded. ‘And the wilful desire to let him see what it is he’s passing up.’
‘Passing up?’ Those green eyes flashed. ‘Do I have to remind you that I was the one who left him three years ago?’
‘And he was the one who did not bother to come and drag you back again.’
Rub it in, why don’t you? Isobel thought. ‘I haven’t got time for this,’ she said and began searching for her handbag. ‘I have a meeting to go to.’
‘You shouldn’t be going to this meeting at all!’
‘Please don’t start again.’ Isobel sighed. They had already been through this a hundred times.
‘I agree that it is time to end your marriage, Isobel,’ her mother persisted none the less, ‘and I am even prepared to admit that the letter from Leandros’s lawyer brought the best news I’d heard in two long years!’
Looking at the way her mother was struggling to stand with the aid of her walking frame, Isobel understood where she was coming from when she said that.
‘But I still think you should have conducted this business through a third party,’ she continued, ‘and, looking at the way you’ve dressed yourself up, I am now absolutely positive that coming face to face with him is a mistake!’
‘Sit down—please,’ Isobel begged. ‘Your arms are shaking. You know what they said about overdoing it.’
‘I will sit when you stop being so pig-stubborn about this!’
A grin suddenly flashed across Isobel’s face. ‘Pot calling the kettle black,’ she said.
Her mother’s mouth twitched. If Isobel ever wanted to know where she got her stubbornness from then she only had to look at Silvia Cunningham. The hair, the eyes, even her strength of will came from this very determined woman. Though all of those features in her mother had taken a severe battering over the last two years since a dreadful car accident. Silvia was recovering slowly, but the damage to her spine had been devastating. Fortunately—and her mother was one for counting her blessings—her mind was still as bright as a polished button and unwaveringly determined to get her full mobility back.
But Sylvia had a tendency to overdo it. Only a few weeks ago she had taken a bad fall. She hadn’t broken anything but she’d bruised herself and severely shaken her confidence. It had also shaken Isobel’s confidence about leaving her alone throughout the day while she was at work. Then Leandros’s letter had arrived to make life even more complicated. It had been easier to just bring Silvia with her than to leave her behind then worry sick for every minute she was away from her.
On a tut of impatience Isobel went to catch up the nearest chair and settled it behind her mother’s legs. Silvia lowered herself into it without protest, which said a lot about how difficult she’d been finding it to stand. But that was her mother, Isobel thought as she bent to kiss her smooth cheek. She was a fighter. The fact that she was still of this world and able to hold her own in an argument was proof of it.
‘Look,’ Isobel said, coming down to her mother’s level and moving the walking frame out of the way so that she could claim her hands. ‘All right, I confess that I’ve dressed like this for a reason. But it has nothing to do with trying to make Leandros regret this divorce.’ It went much deeper than that, and her darkened eyes showed it. ‘He did nothing but criticise my taste in clothes. When he did, I was just too stubborn to make even one small concession to his opinion of what his wife should look like, wear or behave.’
‘Quite right too.’ Her beautiful, loyal mother nodded. ‘Pretentious oaf.’
‘Well, I mean to show him that when I have the freedom to choose what the heck I want to wear, then I can be as conventional as anyone.’
A pair of shrewd old eyes looked into their younger matching pair, and saw cracks a mile wide in those excuses just waiting for her daughter to fall right in.
A knock sounded at the door. It would be Lester Miles, Isobel’s lawyer. With a hurried smile, Isobel got up to leave. But her mother refused to let go of her hand.
‘Don’t let him hurt you again,’ she murmured urgently.
Isobel’s sudden flash of annoyance took Silvia by surprise. ‘Whatever else Leandros did to me, he never set out to hurt me, Mother.’ Mother said it all. For Silvia was Mum or sweetheart, but only ever Mother when she was out of line. ‘We were in love, but were wrong for each other. Learning to accept that was painful for us both.’
Silvia held her tongue in check and accepted a second kiss on her cheek while Isobel wondered what the heck she was doing defending a man whose treatment of her had been so indefensible!
What was the matter with her? Was it nerves? Was she more stressed about this meeting than she was prepared to admit? Hurt her? What else could Leandros do that could hurt her more than he’d already done three years ago?
