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But she knew what he wanted even before he could open his beautiful curving mouth to reply.
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head as if that would somehow make her voice stop shaking. ‘No,’ she repeated. ‘Archie is my nephew—’
‘And my brother.’
Suddenly it felt as if everything was moving very slowly, so that his words seemed to take ages to reach her. Panic clawed at her, anger flaring up from nowhere, as it had started to do ever since Della’s death.
Her eyes locked with his. ‘I am my nephew’s guardian.’
His eyes stayed steady on hers. ‘Temporary guardian.’
Charlie Law stared at the woman sitting opposite him.
His words were inflammatory. Intentionally so.
He knew he had no legal rights over Archie. Not yet anyway.
This was just a shot across the bows. He’d wanted to see how she reacted, and now he knew.
She looked not just stunned, but devastated.
Had he been a different man he might actually have felt sorry for her. But pity was not an emotion he indulged. With pity came weakness, and he didn’t allow weakness in himself or tolerate it in others.
He stared at her steadily, ignoring the beat of desire pulsing through his blood.
His father was an enormously wealthy man who owned many fabulous works of art. A large number of them were paintings and sculptures of beautiful women.
But none of those women came close to Dora Thorn.
With pale skin the colour of ivory, tousled blonde hair and smudged grey eyes, she looked like a Botticelli Venus.
His jaw tightened. That was where the resemblance ended though.
He glanced down at the folder that Peter Muir had handed him. Beneath it, in a separate file, was a report compiled by his security team here in London. The contents of that report had been neither revelatory nor significant. They had simply served to confirm his suspicions.
Dora Thorn might be beautiful and desirable, but she was also flaky, undisciplined and without the means to raise his half-brother appropriately.
Great social life, though, he thought coldly. She flitted between several sets of friends, and London seemed to be populated with young men whose hearts she had broken.
Clearly, though, she thought she was worthy of more than some calf-faced student. No doubt she thought she would find richer pickings among the gamblers at Blakely’s.
Gritting his teeth, he let his eyes flicker over her beautiful face, then drop to the curve of her hips.
He could forgive her some things—that pencil skirt and blouse made her look as if she was dressing up in someone else’s clothes—but blood was an indelible marker of character.
He had worked with her sister, talked to her, trusted her, and she had been a liar. Though no actual lies had been told, she had been living a lie...sneaking around with his father—his married father.
Dora might not look like her, but it was what lay beneath the skin that mattered more than shared features.
On paper, she spelt trouble.
In the flesh—
His brain froze on the word, and his eyes were drawn inexorably to the glimpse of pale skin where her grey silk blouse had parted. He gritted his teeth. She was trouble with a capital T, and then some.
Three nights ago he’d gone to the casino where she worked. He’d told himself that he was simply scoping out the opposition. London was a ‘possible’ on his list of locations for expanding the Lao empire, and Blakely’s was a small, but profitable casino.
