AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She tried to push past him, but his words stopped her.
‘Listen to me—please. I have something important to tell you.’
‘I don’t want to hear it!’ she cried out in that same high-pitched voice, shaking her head violently.
He ignored her. He had to say this—whether she wanted to hear it or not.
‘There is something you need to know.’
Was that hesitation? Uncertainty.
She stared at him. Her heart was still thumping like a hammer in her chest. He was looking at her with an expression in his face she did not recognise. She could not get her brain into gear because all her senses were firing, overloaded with the closeness of him that was causing her lungs to seize and her breath to come in short pants.
He was speaking and she surfaced, finally hearing his words. She heard them, but could not take them in.
‘Talia—your father is dead.’
* * *
She seemed to sway as the words reached into her consciousness. With an oath, he caught her arms, holding her upright, supporting her weight as faintness swept over her. He gently pushed her back and down, into a chair he yanked off a table, setting it upright for her to sink into on legs that were suddenly cotton wool.
Thee mou, he should have told her more gently. But to see her again, to have her there in front of him... The physical reality of her presence was still impossible to believe. And that was without the changes he could see—her hair scraped back off her face in an untidy ponytail, not a trace of make-up, wearing only a white shirt and a black skirt with an apron around it, the discarded mop behind her.
She was working like a skivvy and his brain struggled to blend this with the spoiled little rich girl image he’d had of her for so long.
‘How...how do you know?’ Her voice was faint, her glistening eyes staring at the floor.
Luke hefted down another chair and sat himself on it. ‘I’ve been searching for him,’ he told her. ‘Him disappearing as he did made it harder for me to complete the finer details of the takeover. And besides that—’ He stopped.
Besides that I had to know what had happened to him...to the man I destroyed.
He took a breath. However bad this news for her, she had to give up on any hopes she might have that her father would come back to rescue her from a life of washing floors.
‘How did he die?’ She was still not looking at him, her voice remote.
‘He...he fell from a hotel balcony in Istanbul.’
Her eyes lifted to stare at him. She had heard the hesitation in his voice.
‘Fell?’ She could feel her jaw tighten, to stop herself shaking.
Luke’s lips pressed together thinly. ‘An accident. That will be what the official report says. And it is best to keep to that.’
Her face contorted. ‘Tell me the truth!’ she demanded. Her eyes were like stones.
He took a heavy breath. If she wanted the grim truth, he would tell her. Why should she not know what her doting father had resorted to?
‘Talia, in order to try and stave off financial ruin your father ended up borrowing money from some very unsavoury characters it was unwise not to repay.’
He didn’t say more. Didn’t need to. Whether Gerald Grantham had jumped or had been pushed, it came to the same thing.
He stood up. ‘I didn’t want you to hear it from the police—or read it in the newspapers first.’
She was looking at him, her expression masked. ‘So you came to tell me in person?’
‘Yes.’ His own expression was as masked as hers, but inside him emotions were engaged in a savage dance.
‘Well, you’ve told me, so now you can go.’ Her voice was as expressionless as her face as she pushed herself to her feet.
