to believe. Michael calls our mother every week. He would have talked about you a lot sooner.’
‘I said that I’ve known him for a couple of years, and I have. We’ve been friends for a while.’ Abby could feel herself slipping into dangerous territory. She knew where he was going. Thinking about it, she had seen the drift of his suspicious little mind the minute she had clapped eyes on him and she couldn’t afford to antagonise him into digging any deeper. She had to convince him that everything was precisely as it seemed and getting under his skin was not the right way to set about the task.
She turned to face him and smiled. Warmly, she hoped. ‘We clicked straight away. Michael’s got all the qualities I admire in a man. He’s kind and thoughtful and modest. You would think that in his line of work those are exactly the qualities that would let him down, but all his staff adore him and so do I.’
‘And how did you two meet?’ He could hear the sincerity in her voice but he couldn’t abandon the suspicion that it was all a little too good to be true. People were never straightforward towards each other when it came to dealing with vast sums of money.
‘I worked for him,’ Abby said simply. ‘I was the accounts manager for his restaurants when they opened up. At first there was just me and a secretary, but as they’ve become more and more successful the team has grown. Now, there are ten of us and we work flat out. You’ve never been to Brighton to see Michael, have you?’
‘It is easier for my brother to travel to London to see me, usually for lunch, although lately we have not met as often as we might have hoped. We both have busy schedules.’
‘His restaurants are super,’ Abby enthused, eager to elaborate on a safe topic. ‘One is a pub-style restaurant. Lovely cosy place but with superb French food, and the other’s fancier, although the menu is really quite simple. We’ve found that most people don’t actually want to go out and be faced with a choice of weird things. They like their food to be tasty and fairly straightforward, so we do fantastic sausages and garlic mash, and slow-cooked shin of beef and other dishes along those lines. It’s very popular. In fact, at the moment there’s a two month waiting list for tables at both restaurants.’
‘What a charming eulogy to my brother’s culinary ventures,’ Theo drawled. ‘I’m sure he would have found such enthusiasm very inspiring when he was first starting out.’
Abby tried not to show her intense dislike for the man sprawled in the chair next to her. Every inch of him spoke of arrogance. She had the unnerving sensation that he was circling her, taking his time, trying to find the chink in her storylines that would validate his low opinion.
‘I hope so,’ Abby said equably. ‘It’s a tough business starting out on your own. Other people’s support can be invaluable.’
‘And is this when my brother began appreciating your invaluable contribution to his life?’
‘Oh, I wasn’t the only one who had confidence in his success.’
But I bet you were the only one who had the added advantage of some seriously persuasive feminine wiles, Theo thought. Abigail Clinton might not have the immediate, obvious sex appeal of the full-busted hourglass centrefold, but he had to admit that there was something alluring about her.
‘You should get your swimsuit,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘The pool is lovely. Always at its best when no one else is in it.’
‘I haven’t brought one.’
‘You haven’t brought one?’
Abby blushed and looked away. ‘I…I’m not that confident when it comes to swimming,’ she confessed grudgingly. ‘I did think about bringing one so that I could tan on a beach some time, but then I changed my mind.’
For the first time hostility and apprehension gave way to simple embarrassment and she felt her skin begin to tingle uncomfortably under his piercing black stare.
‘It’s not that unusual,’ she snapped, scowling. ‘Lots of people can’t swim.’ She turned a deeper shade of pink as a slow smile of amusement curved his lips. ‘It’s all right for you—’ Abby flung herself into the ensuing silence, redolent with his silent laughter at her expense ‘—you grew up surrounded by swimming pools and sea! Some of us didn’t!’
Theo was intrigued. He had wanted valuable information, information he could use to build up his case against her so that he could prevent a travesty of a marriage taking place, but this useless snippet was curiously engaging.
‘I didn’t think that you needed to be surrounded by swimming pools and sea in order to learn to swim,’ he said, staring at her flushed face. ‘I thought schools in England offered swimming lessons as part of the curriculum.’
‘They probably do!’ It was out before she had time to think. It wouldn’t take a genius to work out the next logical question to her outburst and she waited in gloomy silence for the inevitable.
‘You mean you didn’t go to school in England? Did you grow up in Australia? Is that why your parents returned there?’
Abby looked at him with a hunted expression. ‘No, I didn’t grow up in Australia. I had an unusual upbringing,’ she eventually muttered.
‘How unusual?’ He sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and continued to look at her with what she thought was an unhealthy level of interest.
Couldn’t the man see that she was uncomfortable? Yes, she thought waspishly, of course he could, which would be no reason for him to back away from the subject. Well this, at least, was no great secret, was it?
‘My parents were…a bit unorthodox. They travelled a lot.’
‘You mean they were gypsies?’
‘Of course they weren’t gypsies! Not that I have anything against gypsies, as it happens! But do I look like a gypsy to you? Do I? With this hair?’ She yanked off the hat and extended one long handful of her amazing hair towards him. Theo realised that he was thoroughly enjoying this surreal turn in the conversation. He took the proffered hair and made a show of examining it carefully.
‘Could be dyed,’ was his comment as she snatched it out of his fingers.
‘I’ve never dyed my hair in my life.’
‘So explain.’
‘Okay. If you really must know, my parents were…were…sort of…hippyish.’ There. It was out. She waited for the roar of laughter and the immediate attack. Instead he was looking at her with real interest. ‘They didn’t believe in material possessions or settling down. When I was older, Mum told me that life was one long adventure and what was adventurous about settling down with a mortgage and a job at the bank? So they travelled. Course, I did go to school but never anywhere for very long, not long enough to…’
‘Take swimming lessons? Make friends?’
‘Of course I made friends! Lots of them over the years.’ But they had come and gone and her parents had never understood that whilst they saw that ever-changing parade of people entering and leaving her life as exciting, she found it very hard to deal with. She had never really even had the opportunity to have boyfriends in the normal way. What would have been the point? They would have been short-lived anyway. Which, with the benefit of hindsight, had made her a walking target
