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‘We can leave dessert if you want.’ As she nodded, he reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. ‘I want to give you this. It’s not urgent, but I’d like you to take a look at it when you’ve got a moment.’
She stared dazedly at the envelope. ‘What is it?’
His eyes were a chilling, glacial blue. ‘It’s a letter from my lawyers—a kind of synopsis of my future relationship with Sóley.’
Her lungs felt as though they were on fire. Slowly she gazed across the room, seeing the soft lighting and glowing log fire as though for the first time.
She was such an idiot. All that talk about her seeing beneath the surface and here she was, oblivious to what was going on in front of her nose.
Her hands clenched around the stem of the glass. He’d even told her his plans.
‘I’m going to do whatever it takes to make you trust me.’
And, like all successful businessmen, he’d identified her weak spot and then used the most effective weapon he had to exploit it and so achieve his goal. It just so happened that they were one and the same thing. Himself.
She felt numb. She had let her guard down, and all the time he’d been cold-bloodedly pursuing his own agenda. He might have talked about support, but he wanted control.
She thought back to when he’d showed her Sóley’s bedroom. Distracted by the sight of her own artwork, she’d missed the bigger picture.
The beautifully decorated room had been a message, spelling out the future—a future in which her daughter would be picked up by a chauffeur-driven car and taken by private jet to spend time with her father. Trips that would not include her.
Her heart contracted. Why did this keep happening? She had gone to meet her father and found she was superfluous. And now, having introduced her daughter to Ragnar, he was trying to push her out of Sóley’s life.
Her heart began to beat hard and high beneath her ribs.
Well, he could think again.
Plucking the envelope from his hand, she stood up. ‘I’ll pass it on to my own lawyer.’
She was bluffing, of course. She didn’t have a lawyer. But she wanted him to feel what she was feeling—to experience, if only for a moment, the same flicker of panic and powerlessness.
Watching his face darken, she turned and walked swiftly out of the room, trying to stifle the jerky rhythm of her heart, wishing that she could walk out of his life as easily.
CHAPTER FIVE
WATCHING LOTTIE STALK out of the room, Ragnar felt as though his head was going to explode. Had that just happened? He couldn’t quite believe that it had, but then it was all a completely new experience for him.
Not someone flouncing off like a diva. That had been practically a daily occurrence during his childhood. Only back then, and even more so now, he had never been a participant in the drama.
Although with Lottie he kept getting sucked in and dragged centre stage.
And now she’d walked off in the middle of everything, leaving him mouthing his lines into thin air.
A part of him was desperate to go after her and demand that she act like the grown-up he and their daughter needed her to be—but what would be the point if he didn’t know what he was going to say? And he didn’t.
What was more, he had no idea how an evening which had started so promisingly had ended with her turning on him like a scalded cat.
Leaning back in his chair, he rubbed his hand over his face. Her reaction made no sense.
Earlier, outside their daughter’s bedroom, when they’d talked about the future, he’d made it clear that he wanted to be honest with her and she’d seemed completely on board. In fact it had been the first time since their lives had reconnected that the conversation had felt ordinary and less like the verbal equivalent of a boxing match.
Agreed, his timing with the letter could have been better, but he had thought that she’d actually started to relax a little over dinner.
He glanced across to her empty chair. He had liked it that she had started to relax, for it had reminded him of the evening when they’d first met.
His pulse quickened.
It was strange. In real terms they had spent such a short time together—so short, in fact, that it could be comfortably counted in hours. And yet the memory of it had been imprinted in his head, so that it already felt as if he’d known her a lifetime.
