‘That wasn’t all, though, was it?’ came the hard, sardonic rejoinder. As if he needed there to be more.
She lifted her eyebrows. ‘Because you want there to be? Something that justifies your beliefs?’
He didn’t rise to her bait, merely levelled his incisive gaze on her and waited until it wore her down, leaving her no choice but to respond.
‘Yes; she also asked if I had any updates.’
And then that mocking smile appeared. It was full-bodied, labelling her ten kinds of a fool for believing that the warmth and affection she’d treasured for years had been genuine. That the surrogate mother—who’d kept her aloft when she’d thought she would drown in her father’s cruelty and disregard, both before and after his diagnosis—was not who Vayle believed her to be.
That his smile was devastatingly gorgeous shouldn’t have factored in at all. And yet her runaway heartbeat howled and said otherwise—that her inability to look away from his magnificent face or to control the sizzling heat rising within her was a big problem. Huge. Because she intensely disliked the narrative Nelios was attempting to force her to face.Andhe warped her brain with this chemistry between them that she couldn’t deny.
Tossing her napkin on the table, she snatched up her phone and marched into the living room. There she stopped and spun round…to catch his fiery gaze on her backside.
Her heated demand dried up.What the hell had she been about to say?So she stood there, caught in that insane vortex of awareness as he slowly rose and sauntered towards her. A clutch of words peppered her sluggish brain as she tried to stop staring at his raw, masculine body. ‘Where do you want me?’ she blurted.
His stride hitched a tiny fraction, and he inhaled sharply. ‘What?’
Oh, yes. She truly wished for a lethal lightning bolt instantly to destroy her.
‘For your interrogation. Where should I…can I…sit?’ she amended.
‘Dangling you from the ceiling by your fingernails so soon after dinner is too tedious, so by all means, yes, sit down, Vayle.’ He gestured at the nearest group of sofas.
She chose the furthest sofa, ignoring the twitch of mockery on his face as he sat at the other end, suavely crossing one leg over the other.
The butler approached and Nelios turned to her. ‘Night cap?’
She started to shake her head, then at the last moment she nodded. ‘Please.’ Glancing at the butler, she smiled. ‘Surprise me.’ She’d learned very early that hospitality staff loved demonstrating their skills and, from the butler’s pleased nod, she’d guessed right.
He returned minutes later with an amber-coloured drink for Nelios and a bright-yellow drink for her. He hovered as she took a sip, blinked and took a larger sip.
‘This is lovely; thank you so much.’
His broader smile warmed her like the clementine-based alcoholic drink in her hand.
‘If you’re quite done?’ Nelios drawled.
She eyed him as the butler left. ‘Clearly you don’t believe that when you make people feel valued they repay you in ways you might not expect.’
He set his glass on his raised knee. ‘Another lesson from…those people?’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact.’
He looked poleaxed for a flash, then openly sceptical. ‘Next you’re going to tell me they hung the moon,’ he drawled in a voice coated with acid.
‘I’m not going to volunteer anything you don’t emphatically ask for, because I’ll be wasting my breath. So…’ she took another sip of her drink then cradled her glass in her palm ‘…fire away.’
CHAPTER FOUR
IT WAS ALMOSTlaughable how unequivocal she was in her beliefs. How intransigently she clung to her well-disguised monsters.
Almost.
As Nelios examined this strange woman—who should’ve been easy enough to dismiss but somehow clung burr-like in his head—he wondered why he was even bothering. Clearly, she’d been brainwashed to slavishly fall for the lines she’d been fed. A coating of sugar disguised the poison pill.
He’d read the thorough report his well-paid sources had provided on the history of Vayle Hotel and its owner. He knew George Lancaster had been a living nightmare: a minor aristocrat clinging doggedly to what remained of a family estate he’d whittled away through careless dealings, and an arrogant refusal to seek help with a condition that could’ve been managed with a little care and attention.
Equally careless was the child he’d dragged into the middle of his tumultuous, woefully mismanaged life. For a while, Vayle’s mother had helped, but she’d died too soon, leaving her child in the clutches of yet another monster.
