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‘I’m collecting her from here tonight,’ Mac stated with grim satisfaction, straightening up. ‘And as far as you or any other man is concerned, Roberta is mine, and she stays mine. So keep your roving eye off my woman—my woman!’ he repeated possessively. ‘Got that?’
Got it, Joel thought as he watched Mac slam out of his office without waiting for an answer. He had more than got it.
Slowly he reached out for the int
ernal telephone. ‘In here, please, Roberta,’ he commanded when her rather husky voice answered, then replaced the receiver, a look of grim calculation on his face.
But the expression Roberta saw when she slunk warily into his office a moment later was the usual sardonically mocking one.
‘I’m sorry, Joel,’ she murmured guiltily. ‘He—he sort of coerced the truth out of me.’
‘Sit down,’ he said.
She sat, looking like a whipped dog expecting to be kicked.
‘Did he convince you to go back to him?’ he demanded.
That brought her chin up. ‘No, he did not!’ she declared.
‘That’s not the way Mac tells it,’ Joel remarked drily.
‘Your brother can say what he likes,’ she countered primly. ‘He always has been too stuffed full of self-delusion.’
Joel smiled at that. ‘So, what do you intend to do when he comes for you this afternoon?’ he asked.
She gave a small shrug. ‘I’m not going anywhere with him again,’ she stated firmly.
‘Sure?’
‘Positive,’ she said, and the cool green gaze she levelled on him showed such tough determination that Joel nodded as if she had managed to convince him at last.
‘Then there is no reason why you can’t have dinner with me tonight, is there?’ he offered.
Roberta frowned at him, surprised by the invitation. ‘I don’t need consoling, Joel,’ she told him, adding ruefully, ‘and neither do I need protecting from him.’
No? His mocking look derided her certainty on both counts. But all he said was, ‘Actually, I could do with you along tonight. I’m meeting Lou Sales from Portsmouth—and we both know what that means!’ He sent her a rueful grin.
Lou Sales was an ex-ship engineer who, on retirement from the Navy, had started up his own marine-engineering company with a lot of financial backing from Maclaines. That was not the problem; the problem with Lou Sales was that he could drink any man under the table, and always insisted on trying! Joel wanted her along to keep track of discussions once he himself had gone beyond the point of understanding anything that the wily Lou was trying to get out of him!
‘So, if you’re not seeing Mac tonight,’ Joel concluded casually, ‘you can come and play buffer for me—can’t you?’
He was challenging her resolve. Roberta recognised that and rose haughtily to it. ‘Of course,’ she agreed.
‘Good,’ Joel said, a gleam of something she did not really like entering his light brown eyes before he smoothly hooded it. ‘Finish an hour early this afternoon, then,’ he authorised, and Roberta knew that he was only suggesting it so that she would be away from here before his brother came looking for her. ‘And I’ll pick you up at seven o’clock.’
* * *
Mac arrived at six-thirty, just as Roberta was fresh from her bath, with her hair piled up on top of her head and her lightly perfumed body wrapped in sugar-pink towelling.
Poor Jenny was trying to hold him back at the flat door. He took one look at Roberta and started scowling. ‘Tell her to let me in,’ he commanded tightly.
‘This is my flat, Solomon Maclaine,’ Jenny inserted firmly. ‘And I—’
‘Tell her,’ he growled.
Roberta’s green eyes flickered. He meant business; it was pulsing from every pore in him. ‘It’s all right,’ she said huskily to her friend. ‘Let him come in.’ It was either that or watch him explode on the doorstep, and, for all Jenny’s bravery, Roberta didn’t think her friend was up to a dose of Mac’s real fury.
Glowering at both of them, Jenny reluctantly stepped to one side. Roberta dug her hands into the deep pockets of her wrap and moved into the sitting-room. Mac followed her grimly, pointedly shutting the door in Jenny’s face.
