Amy didn’t mind the clean-up post service; she found it kind of relaxing. Sleeping straight after a tough service when her adrenaline was still high was hard, though a dinner party of thirty, no matter how indifferent to food artistry the host was, was not what she would class as tough.
She was cleaning the seals on the last fridge, an area too often missed, when she heard the door swing open.
‘I’ll be with you now,’ she tossed out, assuming it was someone assigned to showing her to her room.
‘Why are you cleaning? There are staff—’
Her stomach fluttering, she spun around so fast she almost lost her balance. She did lose a couple of hairgrips that fell with a gentle clatter onto the floor, and she immediately dropped to her knees and chased them, sticking them haphazardly back into her hair as she straightened up.
‘What are you doing here?’ She addressed the accusing question to the sinfully beautiful man dressed in a dinner jacket, his tie hanging loose, his broad shoulders propped against the wall as he stood there watching her.
His entire attitude seemed languid but his eyes were very alert and, now that she looked into them, she read annoyance and something else that she hastily skipped over in the ink-dark depths.
‘More like, what are you doing here?’ He noted the faint purple smudges beneath her eyes again and felt his aggravation rise. It was as if she was trying to make him feel guilty, but she wouldn’t succeed, he decided, nursing his resentment. ‘I brought you here for a tour of the kitchens, not to—’
Nostrils flared, she sucked in a deep breath. ‘You brought me here to watch me become overwhelmed, maybe cry a few tears. Or were you expecting me to seek a strong masculine shoulder to weep on?’
Her eyes went of their own volition to the area under discussion just as his broad, muscle-packed shoulders left the wall and his physical presence became even more dominating.
‘Sorry to disappoint,’ she sneered. ‘But you’ll have to do better than that. I have worked in kitchens a hell of a lot tougher than this one.’
‘I thought you were self-taught?’
The mockery in his voice was something she had heard before. ‘I had no formal training, yes. My training was all hands-on. I learnt on the job and worked my way up.’
‘I’m surprised Daddy allowed you to get your hands dirty.’
She laughed. ‘Oh, he was about as contemptuous about me doingmenialwork as you.’
Outrage at being compared with George Sinclair flashed in his dark eyes. ‘I have never termed any job as menial.’
His outraged stance was not exactly screaming equality and another time she might have laughed in his face, but she settled for saying, ‘You don’t need to, Leo, you have perfected the sneer.’
She might have been imagining it, but she thought her mocking admiration drew a low growl from him.
‘Dio!’ he cursed, seething through gritted teeth. As much as he would have liked to react to the provocative glitter in her golden-brown eyes, he refused. ‘So there is something you care enough about to disobey your father.’ Annoyed that she had pushed him into a retort that had revealed an open wound he would not own even to himself, he closed his eyes.
They stayed closed long enough to miss her flinch and the blood draining from her face.
‘I was only nineteen, Leo.’But I’m not now. This was what he wanted—to get under her skin. Why let him see that he had succeeded?
‘I am sorry if I hurt you back then.’
The sincerity shining in her face only fed his anger. Did she really think saying sorry made a difference now? Her attitude only hardened his resolve to see this thing through.
‘It’s ancient history.’ He produced a dismissive shrug, comfortable with the lie that came easily. ‘But I don’t want to see you weep.’ In his head, there was a line between retribution and bullying, and making a woman cry crossed that line—anywoman, he emphasised for his own benefit.
Amy’s response to the admission which seemed dragged out of him was a cynical little smile. ‘But it would be a bonus?’
His tense jaw tightened another painful notch, her reaction making the guilt he had been fighting off throughout the evening with each successive course delivered to the appreciative diners even more irrational.
Her ability to play on his emotions was a weakness he had to acknowledge in order to guard against it.
‘I’m sure you’ve found enough sympathy and a few protective shoulders to cry on over the years.’
She arched a brow. ‘For the record, I do not gently crumble and cry out for strong masculine shoulders or even weak ones.’ She narrowed her eyes to show her self-reliance, which was real.
If it hadn’t been, she wouldn’t be here today, it was that simple. She pushed away all the painful memories she had built a protective mental wall around—watching her mother fighting for her life, losing first Leo and then the baby Amy hadn’t even known she’d conceived, her mother’s death and then shortly afterwards her father’s shameful conviction.
