I’ll go and get some tea, shall I?’ Beth said to nobody in particular before she disappeared.
Subtle as a sledgehammer, thought Hope, left with a strained smile on her face. ‘Perhaps you’d better tell me what’s brought you here.’ Since it wasn’t the charm of my personality, she added silently. She avoided the armchair—once she got down there it was difficult to get back up. Instead she sat in a oak ladder-backed chair with a sagging rush seat.
‘The fact that I’m perfectly ready to accept responsibility was meant to facilitate a speedy conclusion to this affair. However, your legal people appear to take that as a sign of weakness.’ He began to pace the room. He moved softly for a big man. His anger was evident in the rigidity of his straight spine. ‘The demands they’re making now are absurd by anyone’s reckoning. This last fax I got…’ he began, his voice like subdued thunder.
He abruptly pulled a rumpled sheet of paper from his pocket and crushed it in one strong hand, before flinging it savagely onto the floor. ‘You’ve picked on the wrong man if you want a fight, Hope. I won’t be manipulated. I’ll accept responsibility, but I won’t lie down for anyone to walk over me.’
‘Alex,’ she said quietly, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ There was no mistaking the menace he was emanating, but the cause was a total mystery to her. Anger began to supplant her confusion. She’d done nothing to deserve being on the receiving end of his threats.
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