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“Yes, really. And it’s not too late. If you like, I could put you in touch with a good solicitor.”
“No,” she said, pulling a face and shaking her head. “No, it’s too late for that. Besides, Dad warned me never to take anyone to court. He said the only ones who got rich from suing people were the lawyers.”
Richard had to smile. That opinion was widely held by lots of people, but not true in the circles he moved in.
“That depends on the lawyer,” he said, “but it’s your call.”
She sighed. “If only Dad had changed his will and left me a controlling percentage of the business. I know that’s what he intended to do. But, of course, he wasn’t expecting to have a stroke at fifty-five, no more than my mother expected to be knocked down by a bus at twenty-five.”
“You seem to have had some rotten luck in life, Holly.”
“Things haven’t been all that easy lately,” she admitted.
“Why don’t you tell your stepmother and stepsister to go to hell?”
“Trust me. I intend to one day. When the time is right. My plan is to stay on where I am till I’ve found a new job and a new place to live. That way I can go on living in the flat above the shop for nothing, and save some more money. I think I should keep my big mouth shut till I’m ready to move out, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t. I think you should tell them both exactly what you think of them right now,” he ground out. “Along with your bastard of an ex-boyfriend!”
How he would have liked the opportunity to tell Joanna what he thought of her! Instead, he’d had to grieve for her with all that bitterness building up within him. Bitterness and bewilderment. Her betrayal still ate away at him, whenever he thought about it. Why had she been unfaithful to him? He’d thought she loved him. She’d said she did. And acted as though she did.
But she couldn’t have. Which meant she must have married him for his money. And the prestige of being Mrs Richard Crawford. She’d certainly loved their multimillion-dollar home at Palm Beach, and the wardrobe of designer clothes she’d constantly added to. Joanna had always claimed you could never wear the same dress twice when mixing with the high echelons of Sydney society. Not a weekend had gone by that they weren’t going to some fancy dinner party, or gallery opening, or the races. Or all three.
Richard hadn’t been enamoured with that life, but he would have done anything to make her happy. Love really did make a man blind. Women too, he supposed. Clearly, Holly hadn’t been able to see her ex-boyfriend’s true nature. Reading between the lines, it was obvious that this Dave had thought Holly owned the flower shop, and had dropped her when he’d discovered it was the stepmother—hence the stepsister—who’d inherited everything.
“That’s all very well for you to say, Richard,” Holly pointed out, an indignant colour creeping into her cheeks. “You have a great job, according to your mother, and a great place to live, no doubt. You’d never have to live in a crummy bedsit, which is what I’d be relegated to if I shouted my mouth off prematurely. Connie would have me tossed out in the street.”
Richard almost offered her free room and board at his penthouse right then and there. His room, preferably.
For a few perverse seconds, he indulged in the erotic fantasy of taking Holly back home with him tonight, of his taking off all her clothes and taking her to bed for the rest of the weekend.
But that was all it was. A fantasy.
He could see she wasn’t the kind of girl who jumped into bed with men at the drop of a hat. Easy women, Richard realised, behaved very differently from Holly. They flirted, for starters. Fluttered their eyelashes and stroked male egos with constant verbal flattery. Joanna had been brilliant at that, always telling him what an incredible lover he was.
How many other men, he thought bitterly, had she said the same thing to?
Richard wondered if Holly was still in love with that bastard who’d dumped her for her stepsister. Love didn’t die just because someone had done you wrong. Richard knew that for a fact.
Still, he was now convinced that romantic love was not the best foundation for choosing a wife. Besides being based on emotion, it was a poor judge of character.
Joanna’s true character remained a mystery to him, whereas he already knew Holly to be sweet and soft, without a greedy bone in her body.
She was also wonderfully vulnerable right now.
A quotation of Shakespeare’s popped into his mind.
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
