smartly in her one and only suit. She wanted to look as businesslike as possible. It was dark blue—a skirt and short jacket with a matching cream silk shirt. She wore sheer stockings and high heels and had tied her unruly hair back in a severe bun. She wanted to feel armoured against Caleb’s scathing looks and condemnation. Even if she was shaking like a leaf on the inside.
The spring air was deceptively mild, yet she shivered. At reception they directed her up to the top floor, which Caleb had taken over in its entirety for his sole use. Her stomach churned as she ascended in the lift, the thought of seeing him face to face again more daunting than she had thought possible.
Any illusion of ease in getting to see him was swiftly dashed on her arrival on to the opulently designed floor. A veritable bulldog of a secretary was guarding the main foyer and looked Maggie up and down when she requested to see Caleb.
‘Do you have an appointment?’
‘Well…not exactly, but when he hears who it is he might have a couple of minutes to spare. I won’t take up much of his time.’
‘I’ll let him know, but he has meetings back to back all day. You might be waiting for some time.’
‘That’s fine.’ She’d wait until midnight if she had to. She made a quick call on her mobile to a friend of her mother’s in the village, asking her to look in and make sure she was okay. With that done, she settled in for the wait.
Some eight hours later Maggie had run the gamut of emotions: irritation, boredom, anger, despair, disbelief and now she was just exhausted. Her suit was crumpled, her shoes were off and her hair was unravelling. Any make-up that had been there had long slid off. She hadn’t left for anything except a crucial toilet visit in case she missed him. All day long men in suits had come and gone. She’d seen lunch being delivered and then taken away again, prompting her own stomach to rumble. The first secretary had been and gone and had been replaced by another similarly bad-tempered one.
Caleb’s door opened again and Maggie resigned herself to seeing yet more faceless suits departing and thought dimly that the man’s stamina was unbelievable. She didn’t register for a minute that it was Caleb himself walking out, his tall, powerful build unmistakable. When her sluggish brain finally clicked into gear, she jumped up, her body protesting at the sudden movement after sitting for so long. He was striding towards the lift, not looking left or right; he hadn’t even seen her as she was partially tucked away behind a plant.
‘Caleb…’ she cursed her impulse to call him by his first name ‘…Mr Cameron—wait!’
He had just pressed the button for the lift and turned around slowly, his brows snapping together when he saw her. Maggie forced herself to stand tall, only realising then that she was in stockinged feet, her shoes abandoned somewhere near the chair. She hitched up her chin.
‘Mr Cameron, I’ve been waiting all day to see you. I know you’re busy, but I’d appreciate just a few minutes of your time.’
‘Ivy told me you were here earlier, but she knew I was tied up all day.’
‘I insisted on staying…I hoped you might have a window somewhere…’
‘Well, as you can see, I didn’t. And now, if you’ll excuse me…Call tomorrow and maybe there will be a free appointment.’
He couldn’t leave. Maggie stood, open-mouthed. She’d been waiting for hours without food or water to see him. The look on his face said he couldn’t have cared less if she’d been bleeding and begging at his feet. He turned away dismissively.
She looked at his broad back, the doors of the lift opening silently; she had to stop him. She ran forward and put her hands in to stop the closing doors, looking up into his forbiddingly expressionless face.
‘Please, Mr Cameron, I’m begging you to just listen to what I have to say for five minutes. I’ve been waiting here since half ten this morning. I know that’s my own fault, but I have to talk to you.’
He stood back against the wall of the lift, casually looking Maggie up and down as if he were used to women flinging themselves in his path. Which he more than likely was, she thought bitterly. He regarded her for a long moment. She fought against squirming under his look.
‘Very well. Five minutes.’
‘Thank you,’ Maggie let out on a sigh of relief.
He stepped back out of the lift and, with a flick of his hand, instructed the gaping secretary to go for the night. Without looking back to see if Maggie was following, he went into his office. She found her shoes and scrambled to put them on and follow him in before he changed his mind.
When she walked in warily he was pouring himself a shot of some dark liquid and sat down at his desk, one large hand clamped around the glass. Maggie stood nervously, taking in the dominantly masculine aura of the room. One low lamp cast a pool of light. The shadows in the room made him look even darker than he normally did, which, she remembered, came from his Brazilian mother. His father was the quintessential Englishman and the two sides—one tempestuous and passionate, the other sophisticated—proved to be a heady combination. As Maggie remembered all too well.
‘Well?’ he asked softly, with more than a hint of steel in his tone.
She took a deep breath. ‘It’s about our house.’
‘You mean my house.’
She nodded slightly, feeling a surge of anger at his proprietary arrogance. ‘That house belonged to my father…my birth father,’ she qualified. ‘It’s always been my mother’s, the one thing that Tom didn’t own.’
‘And…?’ he asked in a bored tone, vaguely remembering a plain, nervous woman who had hovered around the edges of the meetings in Holland’s house.
Maggie moved closer behind the chair opposite his, her hands curling unconsciously around the top, knuckles white. ‘Tom made her sign the house over to him. It’s always been in her name. I…I don’t know how he managed it; she always vowed she’d never—’ Maggie stopped herself. He didn’t need to know the gory details. ‘By taking the house, the only person you’re punishing is my mother, and she’s got nothing to do with what happened…She’s suffered enough—’
‘As the wife of a multi-millionaire?’ he sneered, his lip curling in disbelief. ‘You must be joking if you expect me to believe that. You just want to salvage something and you’ve concocted some lame sob story—’
‘It’s not!’ Maggie said fiercely. ‘Please. You have to believe me.’
‘Believe you?’ He stood up and advanced around the desk to her side. She stood rooted to the spot. ‘You don’t have a truthful bone in your body…Tell me, how many other men have you teased for Tom Holland in the last few months…Ten? Twenty? Or maybe you gave them the delectable fruits of your body that you denied me?’
His crude words shocked her into action, wide green eyes stared up and, without thinking about what she was doing, somehow she had moved closer and her hand lifted up, trembling, but before it could reach its target, her wrist was caught. She abhorred violence and yet, here she was, about to strike him.
‘Now, now…Sheath your claws, you little cat. I don’t think you really want to do that, do you?’
With the shock
