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‘Business?’ Tania’s porcelain complexion was flushed with an exquisite colour that Honor doubted was embarrassment. ‘What kind of business? Adam—we haven’t had dessert yet and it’s blackberry pie...your favourite! I asked Rhonda to make it specially...’
Adam’s smile positively smouldered as he glanced back over his shoulder. ‘You go ahead. Don’t worry about us. Honor and I will have our dessert in the study...’
CHAPTER SIX
‘I HAVE a proposition for you.’
Honor stared at the man seated behind the heavy walnut desk. He might look perfectly sane, but he obviously wasn’t. First his infuriating act at the dinner-table, and now this!
‘The answer is no,’ she said frigidly, crossing her legs to emphasise the firmness of her refusal. He had made her explain all over again about the misdirected letters while he listened, this time quietly and without expression, giving her hope that he was at last beginning to believe her. Instead he had probably been softening her up for some fresh outrage.
‘You don’t know what it is yet.’
He was rolling an elegant silver pen between strong fingers but his attention was elsewhere. Following his gaze, Honor saw the way that her dress had hiked up her thighs with her movement and she hurriedly uncrossed her legs, her chilly manner melting into flustered embarrassment. The man was a genius at unsettling her.
‘I don’t care what it is. The answer is still no.’
‘Won’t you at least hear me out? Surely you owe me that much.’
She sat straighter in her chair, mastering the quick flare of guilt. She wasn’t going to be taken in by that plaintive air. The last time she had allowed herself to feel sorry for him she had got her drawers rifled.
‘I don’t owe you anything. Least of all consideration of some smutty proposition—’
The pen stopped rolling. ‘What makes you think it’s smutty?’
He sounded so surprised that she nearly blushed. Damn, she had almost given herself away there. When he had looked at her legs he had probably been imagining how much better Helen would have looked with a dress riding up her thighs.
‘The way you carried on just now in the dining-room.’ She used blistering sarcasm to cloak her injured pride. ‘Hardly the perfect method of persuading your mother there’s nothing between us!’
‘Yes, well...I apologise for that,’ he said meekly, meeting her gaze squarely. ‘I guess I got a bit carried away with my desire for revenge. I’m sorry for teasing you.’
The handsome apology took the wind out of her billowing sails and they flapped emptily as she tried to maintain her defensive outrage.
‘A bit carried away? You were practically drowning in your own drool!’
‘How revoltingly descriptive,’ he murmured drily, adding quickly as he saw her bristle, ‘but very apt. You have a very strong attachment to colourful metaphors, don’t you, Honor? You use rather a lot of them in your letters...’
The reminder of all that was between them brought her up short as she tried to remember exactly what revealing metaphors she might have used in the full flood of her creative outpourings. She had never edited her letters the way she edited her professional copy, she had just opened the floodgates of her imagination and let it flow.
‘I knew it was just an act,’ she said, wanting to make it clear that she hadn’t been taken in for one moment by his behaviour in the dining-room; that she hadn’t felt a single frisson of delight when he had touched her, kissed her hand, pressed it to his thigh...
‘Of course you did,’ he soothed. ‘You’re a very shrewd and intelligent woman. Far too intelligent to hold a grudge over a petty act of one-upmanship.’
‘There’s no need to go over the top,’ she told him sourly. ‘What is this proposition of yours, then?’
‘A business one, naturally.’
Naturally. Honor didn’t let her chagrin show.
‘Go on,’ she said, determined to refuse what was probably only a thinly disguised bribe for her to keep her mouth shut.
‘I’m currently trying to sort out the mess my brother’s death created in the family company. Unfortunately, while Zach was a born farmer it seems he wasn’t much of a manager. It’s partly my fault, because after our original expansion we ran things very much in tandem until my wife died. Zach oversaw the agricultural side, I worked the business angle. We all lived here then, so Tania got to play the lady of the manor to the hilt while Mum ran the household and Mary devoted herself to Sara...’
As if sensing Honor’s sharpened interest, Adam rose and turned to the curtained window behind him, his hand going out to draw aside the velvet fabric before dropping back to his side in a gesture of clenched frustration. With a jolt Honor realised that he had probably been warned to stay away from lighted windows. He didn’t turn around as he continued.
‘Mary loved it here, but after her death I felt suffocated by the memories here so Sara and I moved to the city and I concentrated on building up the property-development company that I’d started as a sideline to our main interests. If I’d known Zach was struggling I would have helped but he never indicated that there were any problems or objected to my gradually withdrawing from active involvement in the management. He was my big brother. I’d always respected and admired him. Maybe he didn’t want to jeopardise that, or maybe he didn’t want to burden me with obligations that I’d clearly opted out of...’
Honor was wondering where his confidences were leading. She had the feeling that he was talking more to himself than to her as he sifted through his feelings.
