wide with horror and lips clamped defiantly shut, she shook her head vigorously from side to side.
‘We’ll see, shall we?’
There was no challenge in his statement, just total, complete conviction—whether this conviction stemmed from a misplaced notion that she was female and therefore weak and malleable, or a belief in his own ability to bend anything or anyone to his will, Rowena didn’t know. She did know a challenge would have been much easier to deal with.
Rowena wanted to put him right, but she felt strangely disinclined to do anything, move, speak, breathe even—perhaps it had something to do with the almost narcotic quality of the combination of his level, deep voice and the sexily slumbrous gleam in his eyes.
‘I did knock, Rowena…’ Her PA’s tentative voice made Rowena start.
‘Yes, Bernice?’ she responded, putting as much clear space rapidly between herself and Quinn as was possible. Her mind wasn’t functioning with its usual clarity, but at least she wasn’t staring up at him like a hypnotised rabbit screaming ‘eat me’ any longer.
This was one of the reasons she hadn’t wanted to see him. He walked in a room and her wits flew out the nearest window, which made no sense! Rowena had experienced sexual attraction before and stayed firmly in charge of her feelings at every level—the person involved only knew about it if she wanted him to. With Quinn she didn’t have that luxury, she was clumsy, inarticulate and painfully needy.
‘There’s a call from your sister and she says it’s urgent…’
Rowena frowned. Holly had taken her new fiancé up to Scotland to show him off to their elderly grandparents who lived in a remote part of the country called Wester Ross.
‘Fine, I’ll take it, Bernice,’ Rowena replied to her normally discreet assistant who was shooting surreptitious looks in Quinn’s direction.
The young woman withdrew, blushing, when Quinn smiled at her.
‘Holly, it’s me…do you mind? This is private!’ she hissed, covering the mouthpiece and glaring across at Quinn.
‘Say hello to Holly for me,’ he requested, unperturbed by her hostility as he strolled to the far end of the room and began to read the titles on the spines of the files that filled the shelves there.
‘What? Yes, it is Quinn. No…yes, he is here. It doesn’t matter, I’ll explain later. What’s wro—?’ Rowena grew silent as her sister broke into impetuous speech the other end of the line.
Rowena had her back turned to him, but Quinn could almost feel her distress as the slim, supple line of her back grew tense. Her next faltering exclamation confirmed his suspicions—Holly didn’t have good news.
‘Oh, God, no!’ Rowena raised her hand to her mouth, compressing the quivering line of her lips—not Gran!
The image of Elspeth Frazer floated before her eyes. Five feet nothing with rosy cheeks, startling blue eyes and snow-white hair, she could have come straight from the glossy illustrations in a book of fairy tales. The illusion of a cosy grandmother was shattered the instant Elspeth opened her mouth. The octogenarian had never suffered fools gladly and, not only did she have a bawdy sense of humour, she possessed a will of iron.
Elspeth had been a consultant paediatrician in the early fifties, when women consultants had been very few and far between. Rowena had left Holly to follow in Gran’s footsteps and become a doctor, but nonetheless Elspeth Frazer had been her own inspiration, the person she thought of when the going got tough. Rowena could never understand how a woman like her grandmother, who had fought so hard to get where she wanted, had turned her back on everything and buried herself in general practice in the back of beyond. She’d eventually asked.
‘Why, I saw your grandfather, my dear, and I loved him.’
Perplexed, a much younger Rowena had asked, ‘Well couldn’t he have come to live in the City?’
‘He could, but he’d have been unhappy.’
‘Well, I’d never do that for a man!’
‘We’ll see…’
Rowena heard the familiar soft accent in her head and her eyes filled with tears. She blinked back the moisture and forced herself to ask the thing she didn’t want to.
‘Is she…? Do they think…? Don’t cry, Holly, and don’t get too technical,’ she pleaded as her doctor sister began to go into details about the suspected stroke that their grandmother had suffered that morning.
She wasn’t aware that Quinn was beside her until she felt the warm imprint of his hand on her shoulder. No matter what the state of their personal relationship, she wasn’t about to reject his support. Rowena was proud, but not stupid—Quinn was the sort of man whom people automatically turned to in a crisis.
She made no objection as he slid a chair under her shaky legs and urged her gently down into it.
She held the receiver a little way from her ear. ‘She’s crying again.’ She gulped, raising tear-filled eyes to his face. ‘Holly never cries,’ she added, her own lower lip quivering madly.
‘Let me have it.’
Rowena relinquished the phone without a second thought. For once she didn’t resent Quinn’s air of calm authority.
‘Hello, Holly, sweetheart, it’s Quinn,’ she heard him say warmly to her sister. ‘Yes, I know, but…is Niall there? Good, put him on. Hi, Niall, it’s Quinn.’
Rowena, her head in her hands, could hear the male rumble as Holly’s fiancé responded at length. Quinn didn’t interrupt him. ‘Yes, I get the picture. It’ll be quicker if we fly up. Can you organise some transport from Inverness? Right, I’ll ring when I’ve got more details.’
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