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Her hands were trembling. She felt almost giddy with anger. ‘I’m not a thief.’
He shrugged. ‘Unlike some people, I prefer to tell and hear the truth.’
‘In that case you’re a bully.’
‘Is that right?’ His shoulders rose and tensed.
‘Yes, it is. Ever since you walked through that door you’ve done nothing but make threats and try to intimidate me.’
A muscle flickered in his cheek, and then slowly he held out his phone.
‘So call the police,’ he said softly. ‘Go on. Call them.’
Her pulse gave a jerk. She had effectively backed herself into a corner, and he knew it. But watching his green eyes gleam triumphantly, his smug assumption that she would back down, flipped a switch inside her head. Stepping forward, she snatched the phone from his hand.
‘Fine. I will,’ she snarled. ‘At least that way I won’t have to spend any more time with you.’
‘Don’t be so bloody childish.’
There was a tension in his voice she hadn’t heard before.
‘I’m not being childish,’ she snapped. ‘You’re going to call them anyhow, so what does it matter?’
Their eyes locked—hers furiously defiant, his cool, opaque, dispassionate—and then her mouth curved scornfully.
‘Oh, I get it. You wanted to do it. So who’s being childish now?’
There was a small, tight silence.
Rollo took a slow, deep breath. His chest felt hot and taut. Her stubbornness was infuriating, and yet part of him couldn’t help admiring her. She was just so determined to keep fighting him—even to the point of making this crazy kamikaze gesture.
Glancing from her face to her tightly curled hands, he sighed. ‘You don’t want to do that, Daisy,’ he said at last.
‘You don’t know what I want. You don’t know anything about me or David.’
He met her gaze. ‘So tell me.’
Daisy stared at him in silence. Why was he offering her a chance to talk now? More than anything she wanted to hurl it back in his face. But already her anger was fading and picturing her brother waiting, wordless with terror downstairs, she took a shallow breath and lowered the phone.
‘Why?’ she said sulkily. ‘So you can use it against him.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘That depends on what you tell me. To date, all I know about your brother—aside from his penchant for expensive watches—is that he works in Acquisition and Development. And he’s tall and twitchy—’
‘He’s not twitchy. He’s just a bit nervous.’ She spoke defensively and instantly wished she hadn’t as he turned his penetrating, unsettling green gaze on her face.
‘Guilty people often are.’
There was no short or easy way to refute that statement, so instead she satisfied herself with giving him an icy glare.
‘He’s not some criminal mastermind. He’s shy, and he finds it difficult to make friends with people.’
‘He might find it easier if he didn’t steal from them,’ he said smoothly.
‘It was a mistake.’ Her voice rose with exasperation.
‘So you keep saying. But a mistake is when you forget to charge your phone. Not when you purposely steal something that doesn’t belong to you. That’s called theft.’
‘Not always.’ She looked him straight in the eye, her shoulders set high and pushed back as though for battle. ‘Sometimes it’s called “charging market rent.”’
