The Housekeeper's Invitation to Italy
Autor:in
Cathy Williams
Gelesen
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Kapitel
10
CHAPTER ONE
THE BUILDING WASN’T quite what Sophie had been expecting. Although now that she was standing outside the impressive Georgian edifice she had to concede that she had just rushed to assume the obvious.
Arrogant billionaire...shiny over-the-top offices. The sort of place that announced in no uncertain terms that its occupant was not a man to be messed with because he was bigger, stronger and richer than you.
Buffeted by a brutal winter wind, and noting that it was already dark at a little after five-thirty in the afternoon, she remained hesitantly staring at the building.
It was an impeccably groomed four-storeyed town house, fronted by black railings and a shallow flight of steps that led up to a black door. In all respects it was identical to all the other town houses in this uber-prestigious crescent in the heart of London. From Bentleys to Teslas, every single car parked was high-end. There was a hush about the place which made her think that if she hung around for too long, staring and frowning and dithering, wondering whether she had done the right thing or not, then someone would materialise out of thin air and escort her right back to the busy streets a stone’s throw away. Possibly by the scruff of her neck.
Galvanised by the prospect of that, Sophie hurried across the completely empty road, up the bank of steps, and realised that the gleaming brass knocker was just there for show—because there was a discreet panel of buttons to the side and a speakerphone.
Just for a few seconds, she took time out to contemplate where she was and why.
She’d had a long and uncomfortable journey from raw and wintry Yorkshire down to London—a journey undertaken with the sort of subterfuge she personally loathed, and with an outcome that was far from predictable. She had a message to be relayed under cover of darkness, because Leonard-White had expressly banned her from contacting his son, and what sort of reception was she going to get? Having gone against the wishes of her boss to uneasily follow what her inner voice had told her?
She had no idea, because Alessio Rossi-White, from everything she had seen of him, was a forbidding and terrifyingly remote law unto himself.
Sophie pressed the buzzer, and the nerves which she had been keeping at bay leapt out from their hiding places and her heart began to beat faster. The disembodied voice on the other end was a woman’s, clipped and well-modulated, and it told her that, no, unless an appointment had been made, there was absolutely no chance that she would be allowed in.
‘I’m afraid,’ the woman said, without a trace of regret in her voice, ‘that Mr Rossi-White is only in the city for a few days, and his calendar is far too packed for him to see anyone at all, whatever the circumstances. Of course,’ she added, ‘if you would like to make an appointment...’
‘I’ve spent hours getting here...’
The cut-glass accent dropped a few shades down from cool to positively glacial. ‘Perhaps you should have checked first to find out whether Mr Rossi-White was available? Now, if you don’t mind, I have calls waiting—’
‘I do mind, actually,’ Sophie interjected, before the next sound she heard could be the sound of a disconnected intercom. However unpleasant this task was, she was here for a reason, and she wasn’t going to be deterred by a receptionist, however cut-glass the accent happened to be.
She had dealt with bigger, weightier setbacks in her life than an overprotective receptionist behind a closed door. The bottom line was that she wasn’t leaving until she saw Alessio Rossi-White and told him about his father.
‘I beg your pardon!’
‘This is personal,’ Sophie said shortly, unwilling to divulge anything further to someone whose business it most certainly wasn’t. ‘If you really want to refuse me entry, then be my guest. But I can assure you that there’ll be hell to pay when Alessio finds out that I’ve been turned away.’
She noted the momentary hesitation at the other end of the speakerphone and quietly breathed a sigh of relief. Of course she should have done precisely as the woman advised and alerted Alessio to the fact that she was travelling to London to see him, but it had all been all so hurried and so hush-hush. She’d known he would be in London because, in her typically formal manner, his PA always uploaded his movements to his father’s email on a weekly basis. Just in case. To her knowledge, Leonard had never once used the information to contact his son.
So, yes, she’d known where to pin him down, but still...it had been a time of anxiety, during which she had barely stopped to catch her breath as revelation after revelation had crawled out of the woodwork, sending her into a tailspin. It went so beyond her brief to be here that she seemed to have lost sight of her job title completely—but what else could she do? She was incredibly fond of Leonard, and the thought of the uncertainty and stress he had carried around with him for months...was still carrying...had propelled her into this unfamiliar territory. She was paid way over the odds for her work, and with that, she accepted, came unfamiliar territory—even if this category of ‘unfamiliar’ was something she hadn’t banked on ever having to deal with.
‘I’ll see what I can do. Might I have your name?’
‘Sophie Court.’
Would he even recognise the name?
‘You can tell him that I work for his father.’
‘Please hold the line.’
It took Alessio a couple of seconds to register the name, but it fell into place as soon as he was told that the woman was his father’s nurse/companion.
Or maybe it was companion/nurse. It was a distinction that had never really been clarified.
His father had had a stroke two years ago—or, as he had impatiently brushed it off as, ‘A silly health scare...nothing to worry about...no need to tramp all the way to Yorkshire... I might be old but I’m not completely decrepit yet... But did he really need someone to look after him on a daily basis?
The last time Alessio had visited—which had been months previously—the old man had seemed his usual self. Scowling...impatient...and disinclined to do or say anything that went beyond the absolute minimum on the politeness scale. There had certainly been no touching confidences of any kind—not that there ever was. When it came to their quarterly duty visits, punctuated with dry, superficial telephone exchanges, he and his father had cornered the market.
Alessio had long given up debating the normality of this situation. It was what it was. If his was a life of hard edges, a place where regret and nostalgia no longer existed, then it was because bitter experience had shaped him, and he had grown to see those hard edges as symbols of an inner strength that had made him the hugely successful and powerful man he was.
Sophie Court... He’d forgotten the woman even existed. She had certainly never been in evidence on the last few occasions he had visited his father’s estate.
But here she was, and she couldn’t have come at a worse time, because his inbox was overburdened with things waiting to be addressed. Several meetings were banked up, and he had an overseas conference call in under an hour with three CEOs in three different time zones.
Whatever she had come to say, she would have to say it quickly, succinctly, and without any embellishments.
Time, after all, was money.
In truth, he couldn’t begin to think what might require a visit from the woman, and he buzzed her up and settled back in his chair, fully prepared to dispatch her if she didn’t cut to the chase in time for him to complete what remained of his already long day on schedule.
She wasn’t kept waiting. For that, Sophie was relieved. Because the less time she had to think about what she had to say, the less leeway it gave her nerves to spiral away in the wrong direction.
The truth was that she could handle pretty much whatever life chose to throw at her. She was twenty-nine years old now, and from the age of fifteen, when her father had died, she had been the one to pick up the pieces, in charge of the household, with all her youthful dreams snatched away by grim, unforgiving reality.
A kid sister, five years younger, to be protected... A mother who had retreated into her own depressed world, barely able to function and certainly not able to keep things together, to be supported... And a scattering of relatives who had clucked with sympathy whilst shutting all their doors when it came to actually helping out on any kind of practical level.
Money had been scarce, and she’d had to learn fast how to run a household efficiently, with minimum resources, and how to claim what benefits could be claimed just so that they could all survive.
She had studied hard, made sure Addy kept her head down, and nursed her mother through months and years of bewildered misery. If lessons had been learnt the biggest, for Sophie, had been to avoid the recklessness of becoming so dependent on one person that your world fell apart when that person was removed from it.
Her mother had loved too much. That would never be Sophie’s downfall.
Her years at school had been a grinding mix of studying hard and working at whatever after-school jobs she could pick up so that there was a little extra cash coming in. There had been a mortgage to maintain, bills to be paid, and the juggling act involved to keep all the balls in the air had made her grow up at the speed of light. There had been no time to enjoy her adolescence. Too much had been going on.
Her dream of becoming a doctor had bitten the dust but, that said, she had found joy in the nursing career she had fallen back on, and even more in working for Leonard. Because hers was far more than a simple nursing job, and it paid so well that for the first time in her life she was able to save a bit, whilst helping out her mother and her sister.
Life had been tough, but she had handled it.
Alessio Rossi-White, though...
No, he was an entity she couldn’t handle. He did something to her—made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end and sent her nervous system into disturbing freefall. She had met him only a handful of times since she had started working for his father two years ago, and she had known instantly that she would always make sure that her days off coincided with his visits.
He was cold, arrogant and dismissive. He came for the barest minimum of time and always, always managed to give the impression that he had better things to do. On every level, he was the most objectionable man she had ever met in her life. She didn’t think he had addressed her directly once, on any of the occasions when they had met, and with his father he was cool, guarded, and so chillingly formal that he made her shiver. From opposite ends of the table they would sit and exchange information with such a lack of warmth that it was little wonder his father had absolutely prohibited her from telling his son about his ongoing problems.
She had taken matters into her own hands because she had seen no choice, but even so, she still wondered whether she was doing the right thing.
Standing outside the pristine Georgian town house had been sufficiently daunting, but inside it was even more so. Pale marble and burnished wood were complemented by a discreet scattering of exotic plants in strategic places. The desk behind which sat the woman whose mission had been to get rid of her was a masterpiece of dull chrome and highly glossed very smooth wood, and the paintings on the walls were all abstracts which looked as expensive as everything else.
There were no raised voices from above...no sounds of ringing phones and no clattering of urgent footsteps. If vast wealth could have a sound, then this soft hush was it.
Sophie was tempted to turn tail and flee, but instead she smiled politely at the immaculately groomed thirty-something blonde before briefly taking a seat by the window.
So this was what money looked like, she thought. His Leonard’s estate was huge and sprawling and grand, but inside it had remained unchanged over the years, with dated furnishings and an air of fast-fading elegance. It was a once-grand house quietly collecting dust from the lack of money being spent on it. This space, though...
She knew that it was just one of Alessio’s offices and the smallest, specifically used by his massively profitable elitist hedge fund team. His other huge offices were in Rome, Lisbon and Zurich, and from there the many tentacles of all his other concerns were managed.
She was channelled into a glass elevator which whizzed her up three floors to the top and disgorged her into an area that looked more like an office, insofar as there were desks separated by wood and glass partitions, and people sitting behind those desks surrounded by screens and working with the sort of quiet, frowning concentration that seemed to indicate huge sums of money being handled.
They barely glanced at her as she walked past them.
At the very end of the open-plan space were a handful of private offices, and Alessio’s was right at the end. Only when she was standing outside, hand poised to knock on the streamlined highly polished walnut door which was slightly ajar, did she feel that flutter of butterflies in her tummy once again, and this time it had nothing to do with the conversation waiting to be had. This time it had to do with the fact of seeing him.
It had been a while. She revived all the reasons why she disliked the man, but her stomach clenched as she was called in to an outer office by his PA, who was expecting her. She was relieved of her coat and scarf and woolly hat, and was aware of murmured pleasantries, but all she could focus on was the solid door dividing this outer office from Alessio’s inner sanctum.
Did the smartly dressed PA even know who she was? Her manner was crisp, but uber polite, and Sophie assumed that, given the reach of Alessio’s power, if he’d allowed her entry within his hallowed walls, then that was sufficient to ensure all due respect from every single one of his employees, whether they knew who she was or not.
He owned them all, didn’t he? From what Sophie had glimpsed of the man in the past, his attitude was that of someone who owned everyone around him and really didn’t mind them knowing.
She breathed in deeply, waiting for the imposing door in front of which she was standing to be opened, her heart beating in her chest like a sledgehammer as her head was suddenly filled with visions of the man she was about to confront.
Tall...olive-skinned...with raven-dark hair and even darker eyes. He was the embodiment of physical perfection, as beautiful and as cold as any marble statue ever sculpted. Every line of his half-Italian ancestry was imprinted in the aggressive, sinful perfection of his features.
Sophie had seen pictures of Isabella Rossi, his mother, who had died many years previously, and had been rendered speechless by her outrageous sultry beauty, every gene of which she had passed down to Alessio, her only child.
Everything single thing around her...the streamlined dove-grey furniture...the pale silk rug on the blonde wooden floor...the cream leather sofa tucked against the wall...faded away as that connecting door was gently pushed open and there he was, sprawled behind a desk the size of a single bed, hands folded behind his head, waiting.
There was only mild curiosity on his face as he looked at Sophie, who stood, hovering, in the centre of his massive office as the door behind her was closed.
The woman specialised in the art of fading into the background, Alessio mused. Grey trousers, grey jumper, a long dark cardigan and an over-the-shoulder bag that might have held the kitchen sink. She had short-cropped fair hair and brown eyes, and in defiance of nearly every woman he had ever met seemed to have only a passing acquaintance with make-up. And yet there was still something about her that defied the faded image she seemed intent on conveying.
He continued to stare at her in silence, vaguely trying to work out what it was about her that didn’t conform to the uninspired standard she clearly wanted to set, before abruptly sitting forward, slapping the desk with both hands and nodding to the wide black leather chair in front of it.
‘No need to stand by the door as if waiting for divine inspiration, Miss Court. Have a seat and tell me what you’re doing here. Tea? Coffee? Something a bit more spirited?’
He glanced at his watch before rising to his feet and strolling towards the window to briefly peer outside at bleak, grey, wintry London, before spinning round to face her. He perched against the window ledge and shoved his hands in the pockets of his trousers, while she slid into the chair opposite his desk and tucked her hair neatly behind her ears.
‘No, thanks.’
‘Well...? I would while away some more time on pleasantries, but I’m afraid I have a lot to do...’
‘Maybe I’ll have a cup of coffee after all,’ Sophie said. ‘It’s been a long trip getting here.’
She realised that she actually needed a few pleasantries before launching into what she had to say. She needed to swim in the shallows for a bit before diving into the deep end.
She looked around her, taking in her surroundings. The building might be Georgian, but it had been refurbished to a dizzyingly modern standard, with muted colours and pale chairs and cream wooden shutters at the windows.
‘I didn’t expect you to work in a place like this,’ she heard herself say, and blushed when he raised his eyebrows in question and he lazily strolled back towards his desk. He sat, pushing the chair at an angle so that he could tilt it back, his long legs stretched to the side and crossed at the ankles. A dangerous predator at rest.
‘A place like what?’
Sophie shrugged and steeled herself to meet the jet-black eyes lazily pinned to her face. ‘I suppose I expected something more modern. Glass and steel.’
Hard edges for a hard man.
‘This part of my business portfolio deals exclusively with hedge funds. My clients enjoy privacy, and that’s exactly what they get in this postcode. I’m surprised to see you here, Sophie, but I can only assume that this has something to do with my father?’
His eyes didn’t leave her face for a single second as he buzzed through to his PA and asked for a pot of coffee.
‘Or are you here for some other reason?’
‘No.’
What other reason could she possibly have had for visiting this guy?
‘I am here about your dad... I wish I could put this another way, but Leonard had another stroke a couple of weeks ago,’ she said bluntly.
She noted the way he suddenly stilled, the way his eyes narrowed and the guarded mantle that dropped over him like a powerful protective shield.
‘That’s impossible.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I would have known.’
Coffee was brought in, but Sophie barely noticed because she was riveted by his dark, dark eyes, which were now as hard and as cold as the frozen wastes of Siberia.
She knew so much about this man—largely through all the articles his father had tucked away about him over the years, and from the pages of the memoirs he faithfully dictated every evening, just before his dinner was served. Whether she liked it or not, she knew where he worked, and what he did, and all about the fortune he had single-handedly amassed from the springboard of his mother’s inheritance, bequeathed to him when she’d died many years previously.
She knew that he was some kind of financial genius. She also knew that he was a guy who played as hard as he worked. She had seen the carefully cut-out glossy pictures of him captured by paparazzi, with a series of gorgeous tiny little blondes on his arm, usually smiling and gazing up at him with adoring eyes. She knew that none of them ever stayed the course.
Now, she shivered and wondered what it was that drew all those women to him. Surely, however rich and beautiful the man was, no one could ever really be attracted to someone as chillingly cold as he was? Money talked, but surely it didn’t talk that much?
Looking at him now, mesmerised against her will, Sophie tried and failed to imagine him laughing or crying or showing any emotion. Certainly, on the few occasions when she’d seen him with his father, none had been in evidence.
She thought of Leonard and those meticulously and lovingly collected articles about his son and she hardened inside—because Alessio had certainly never repaid his father’s devotion with any show of affection...none that she’d ever witnessed at any rate.
‘How?’ she asked flatly. ‘How would you have known when you never visit?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
This was the first time Sophie had ever really spoken to Alessio, aside from polite utterances in the company of his father, after which she had faded away into the role of practically invisible carer, there to do a job and not contribute to the conversation. Now she felt as though there was a dam inside her, waiting to burst.
She had survived years of having to make herself heard by people in positions of authority, which, in the beginning, as a shy, gawky teenager, had been alien to her. Her sister had always been the bubbly, outgoing one, who captured attention because she was so small and pretty, with her blonde hair and baby blue eyes. But circumstances had foisted a personality upon Sophie that had become ingrained. She had learned to stick up for herself and to have a voice, and she saw no reason why she shouldn’t exercise that voice now. Because after all Alessio, for all his money and power, wasn’t the one who paid her salary, was he?
She uneasily wondered how many more pay-cheques would be coming her way, all things considered, and then decided that that was all the more reason to tell this arrogant, odious guy exactly what she thought.
If she’d read him correctly, then he was the sort of man rarely confronted by people who spoke their mind.
‘The last time you came to see your father was over five months ago.’
‘Do I detect a note of criticism in your voice, Miss Court?’
‘I think it’s amazing that you seem surprised by what I’ve come to say. I think it’s even more amazing that you actually expect to be in the loop when it comes to your father’s day-to-day life when you’re hardly around.’
‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this!’
‘I’m only being honest.’
‘And remind me when I asked for your honesty?’ he gritted in a voice that could freeze water, as he stared at her with grim disbelief. ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever heard you mutter more than two words at a stretch, and yet you’ve suddenly decided to show up here uninvited and give me the benefit of your opinions.’
Sophie flushed and met his coldly discouraging gaze head-on and with silence.
‘So,’ he continued icily, ‘returning to the matter at hand. My father’s had another stroke. When exactly did this happen, and why is this the first time I’m hearing about it?’
His dark eyes were boring into her and they never left her face—even when the door was gently opened and his PA reminded him that he was due somewhere in under half an hour as she depositing a coffee pot on his desk. He dismissed her with a couple of words and a wave of his hand, and informed her that he was not to be disturbed until he said otherwise.
He clicked his tongue impatiently when Sophie didn’t immediately fill in the silence and answer his questions.
‘You have a duty of care to my father,’ he informed her acidly, ‘and part of that duty entails informing me of all matters pertaining to his health.’
‘He forbade me from doing so,’ Sophie returned bluntly, and then felt awful at the sight of the dark flush that spread across his sharp cheekbones.
She’d toughened up over the years because she’d had to, but since when had she lost the ability to empathise? Alessio might rub her the wrong way, and he might have little or no time for his father, but was it really in her remit to pass judgement on anyone? To be needlessly forthright? She’d struck a nerve, and if she could have swallowed those words back then she would have.
She might have needed strength to deal with what Fate had thrown at her, but she had also needed patience, understanding and love, and she’d always had those in abundance.
Those were the very qualities that had seen her look out for her younger sister, support her in her endeavours to become an actress, even though, personally, Sophie could not have thought of a less sensible road to travel down. They were also the qualities that had guided her through her darkest moments, when her mother had been a lost soul, unable to cope after her husband’s sudden death.
Both were settled now, but being tough had only been part of the answer when it had come to handling their adversities, so where had her sense of sympathy gone?
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘Because it’s not true?’
‘It was a tactless way of putting it and I can see that I’ve hurt you.’
Alessio stiffened. Hurt? He was incapable of being hurt. He had been hurt in the past—hurt by the death of his beloved mother, hurt by the indifference of his father towards him in the aftermath of that death. Dealing with those past hurts had toughened him...made him impregnable. His lips thinned in affront that the woman sitting opposite him might actually think herself capable of hurting him by anything she said.
He felt as though he might be seeing Sophie Court for the very first time, because on those other occasions she had been as quiet as a mouse, head bowed, voice subdued when he’d addressed her, with none of the fire on display now.
For the first time in a long time, he was discovering what it felt like to be in the presence of the unexpected. She might be dressed like a maiden aunt, but she certainly wasn’t behaving like one, and he narrowed his eyes and looked at her...really looked at her.
Tall, slender, she had skin as pale as alabaster and a wary expression in her brown eyes that spoke of a contained personality.
Why was she so contained? And how was it that someone still in her twenties was willing to take on the full-time role of looking after an old, cantankerous man?
A sudden wave of curiosity threatened to steal a march, and he brought it firmly back to heel.
‘Don’t worry about my feelings, Miss Court,’ he said with exaggerated politeness. ‘I’ve always found that I’m perfectly capable of handling them myself. So my father would rather I did not know of his stroke? He’s proud and likes to think he’s infallible. Sadly, he’s not. What has his consultant said?’
He decided to refrain from telling her that not only should she have immediately told him what had happened, but should also have ensured that he was kept in the loop by his father’s consultant.
‘Well?’ he prompted, when he was greeted with silence.
He felt the stirrings of disquiet. So much water had flowed under that bridge, so many doors had been shut over the years, and yet the thought of losing his father was oddly unsettling. Was it because there had been so many issues that had never been addressed by either of them?
His heart picked up pace and he suddenly sprang to his feet to pace the room, walking jerkily to the window and staring out at the private circular courtyard, which was lit enough for him to make out the exquisite landscaping, the hedges and overhanging trees, the vague shapes of the benches where his employees could choose to relax whenever they wanted.
‘Is he in a critical condition?’ Alessio demanded, raking his fingers through his hair as he spun round to face her.
‘He was in hospital for two nights. He’s back home now.’
Alessio breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Then why this reticence on the subject? You should know that the last time my father had a stroke he waved aside my offers to go to Glenn House, so he has form when it comes to making sure his pride takes precedence over everything.’
Looking at him, Sophie was startled at the bitterness that had crept into his voice. Was he even aware of it?
‘The consultant said that the stroke was very likely caused by stress.’
‘What has my father got to be stressed about?’ Alessio asked, his voice genuinely puzzled.
‘He’s been having financial worries.’
‘I would know if that were true. We don’t talk a great deal, but we do cover the financial markets. He would have said something. No. You must be mistaken.’ He sighed. ‘This is not the right place to be having a conversation of this nature.’
‘It doesn’t matter where we are,’ Sophie told him. ‘I’ll just say what I’ve come to say and then I’ll leave.’
‘It’s nearly six-thirty. Have you eaten today at all? What time did you leave Harrogate?’
He was talking and walking, and Sophie watched in consternation as he began putting on his jacket and then opened a concealed door that faded into the polished walnut panels to extract a coat.
‘I know a wine bar not a million miles away. We can go there. I think I might need a drink for this particular conversation.’
‘What about your work? Your meetings?’
Did she want to carry on chatting in a wine bar? She was uncomfortable with the idea of that. Maybe even a little panicked, although she wasn’t entirely sure why.
She could understand why he might find it constricting to have an intensely personal conversation with interruptions from his PA and his computer reminding him that there was still work to be done, even though in most normal offices the stampede for the exit would have already begun. It was late, and yet there were no signs that anyone was getting ready to leave. She figured that making money didn’t keep nine-to-five hours. A bit like nursing.
‘I’m the boss,’ he said neutrally, coming to stand directly in front of her, his towering six-foot-three swamping her senses and bringing her out in a fine nervous perspiration. ‘The buck stops with me. If I want to cancel meetings, I can do it. The position of tycoon,’ he said, with wry self-mockery, ‘comes with little perks like that.’
Just like that, Sophie felt her breath leave her in a whoosh and she glanced away quickly, although she could feel the heat in her face as he continued to look at her for a few more seconds before moving away.
She stood up, but her mind was all over the place as she reached for her bag. She’d come with a prepared speech, and all she could think was that she’d somehow been swept away on an unexpected riptide that had not at all been part of her plan.
In no corner of her mind had she anticipated being ushered into a chauffeur-driven Bentley, staring out from behind privacy glass at pedestrians scurrying across packed pavements, and then being swept into a wine bar that was the last word in understated monochrome luxury, with black leather sofas and stark wooden floors and concrete effect walls.
For the whole of the trip Alessio had been on his phone, sometimes switching languages, making sure that his work was covered in his unplanned absence from the office.
It had been a relief, because it had given her time to get her scattered thoughts in order and to remind herself that this was, in essence, a business conversation. Nothing she couldn’t handle.
You can do this, and before you know it, it’ll be another day...
It was the mantra she had repeated to herself so many times through the years, as her adolescence had slipped away between her fingers, lost in the business of growing up too fast.
She repeated it now, as she perched on the edge of the plush leather sofa, but even so she still tensed when he leaned towards her from his chair opposite, dwarfing the thin glass table separating them, and said in a low, driven undertone, ‘So, Miss Court, here we are. Time to talk to me about everything that’s been going on with my father. You have my undivided attention...’
