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‘How about we go back to the moment you walked in? I can supply character references if you like?’
His sarcasm and the gentle mocking smile that played across his carved lips made her skin heat. ‘I was surprised. I didn’t know my grandfather had visitors. There were no names in the book when I signed in.’
An unconvincing look of dismay spread across his face and his smile came with attractive crinkles that fanned out from his spectacular eyes, eyes that held no humour or warmth, just a soul-dissecting intensity.
‘Oh, dear, have I broken the rules?’
Oh, yeah, and you’re really going to lose sleep over that, aren’t you?she thought, allowing her gaze to travel upwards from his feet to the top of his attractively ruffled dark head.
‘They are quite strict here at the Merlin,’ she retorted primly. ‘People staying here are very vulnerable.’
Soren watched as she planted a protective hand on the back of her grandfather’s chair and thought,Sure, vulnerable like a wolf.
‘And yet your journalist slipped in...?’
Unable to contradict this observation—she had sent an email to the management that said as much—she kept her lips clamped tight.
‘Odd name that for a...place.’ He looked around the room that, despite the half-panelled walls and the antique furniture, still held the clinical paraphernalia of a hospital, including a mobile oxygen tank. He had to admit the window dressing was convincing.
‘Place?’
His mobile eyebrows twitched into a straight line above his hawkish nose. ‘Like this.’
‘Merlin was the original owner’s stage name. Back in the Edwardian era he was a magician, quite famous, he owned several hundred acres, although now there is just the house and gardens.’ She had reached the point where she knew she sounded like a guidebook when she felt her grandfather’s hand go limp in her own.
She glanced down and saw that he had fallen asleep, his head to one side.
Her throat ached with emotion and sadness as she pulled her hand free. He looked so vulnerable it was hard to imagine he had until recently been a person with the sort of presence that could fill an auditorium—she had seen it happen and been proud when the people sitting there had been inspired by one of his lectures. She lifted a hand to her mouth to hide the quiver she had no control over.
‘So how long has he been here?’
Her head lifted and she found he was watching her with a disturbing intensity. ‘Six months. Sorry if I sounded, as if... The staff caught a journalist in here last week.’ Her anger sparked green flame in her eyes at the memory. ‘People are... He’d hate anyone to see him like this and, actually, no one does,’ she said, unable to keep the bitterness from creeping into her voice.
‘Your grandfather is not allowed visitors?’
‘He’s allowed but...he had visitors before his condition deteriorated...’
He watched as she lifted a hand and, under the cover of brushing strands of hair from her brow, took the moments it required to steady her voice, which was flat and expressionless as she delivered the bleak addition.
‘He doesn’t recognise people nowadays.’
If this was an act on her part, it was good, Soren admitted, watching the muscles in her slender throat contract as she blinked to clear her tear-misted eyes and lifted her chin, unwilling to own the emotional vulnerability she was vibrating.
Soren weighed the possibilities. Itcouldbe that she was not privy to her grandfather’s act...? That would, he mused, watching as the emotions she was struggling to suppress played across the surface of her face, explain her seemingly genuine reaction.
It would require an utterly heartless bastard to put his only blood relative through that sort of hell, but that was not an issue for a man like Tor.
‘I imagine that dementia scares people, embarrasses them...maybe it makes them conscious of how fragile life is?’ Soren knew all about the fragility of life.
He stood, head tilted a little to one side, his stance relaxed as, with hands thrust deep into the pockets of his tailored trousers, he watched his words flash shocked recognition in her eyes before she slowly nodded.
Her wariness remained but she no longer looked likely to clobber him with the nearest blunt object as she turned her gaze to the chair and its occupant.
There was a gentle snore and Tor had slumped lower in the armchair... It was a sight that would have wrenched the hardest of hearts, but Soren had no doubt that this was part of the act—the authenticity helped by a physical frailness. But then everyone got older.
Including him. He doubted he bore any resemblance to the seventeen-year-old who had walked into the barn that day and seen... He had no idea how long he had stood guard over his father’s lifeless body before a neighbour had found him.
‘It does scare them... People who last year worked closely with my grandfather...’ Something about his presence and his vague explanation for it still seemed not right to her.
