Back in the Lion's Den
Elizabeth Power
‘… if you think I’d consider making a match with Niall’s brother, then I’m afraid you’re going to have to think again. He’s far too arrogant, overbearing, and too darn cocksure of himself ever to qualify as a contender for my affections, and—’ Sienna broke off, then enquired of her friend, ‘What’s wrong with your mouth?’
When Jodie didn’t answer, however, she went on, ‘He’s too rich, he’s got a freezer cabinet for a heart, and is about as approachable as a turned on water cannon. I wouldn’t sleep with Conan Ryder if he was the last man on … What?’
Jodie’s eyes had come into the equation now. But even as it dawned on Sienna what her neighbour was trying to tell her, too late she felt that prickling awareness she had always felt when Conan Ryder was close, and she caught his deep voice, low in her ear, as he told her, ‘Don’t worry. You won’t have to. We have enough rooms in Provence for the family not to have to share with the guests.’
Those cool words were at variance with the warmth of his breath against her hair—an unintentional caress that sent tingles along her very nerve-endings. Or was it? she wondered, her pulse quickening ridiculously, because she didn’t think he’d miss a single trick to try and unsettle her.
About the Author
ELIZABETH POWER wanted to be a writer from a very early age, but it wasn’t until she was nearly thirty that she took to writing seriously. Writing is now her life. Travelling ranks very highly among her pleasures, and so many places she has visited have been recreated in her books. Living in England’s West Country, Elizabeth likes nothing better than taking walks with her husband along the coast or in the adjoining woods, and enjoying all the wonders that nature has to offer.
You can visit her at www.elizabethpower.net
Recent titles by the same author:
SINS OF THE PAST
FOR REVENGE OR REDEMPTION
Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
Back in
the Lion’s Den
Elizabeth Power
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
TO ALAN
with love always
CHAPTER ONE
HE could hear the music coming from the fitness class before he reached it. A strong pulsing rhythm reverberating down the corridor.
On either side of him, behind glass partitions, enthusiasts were treading rubber and pumping muscle. He knew he cut an incongruous figure in his dark business suit, white shirt and tie, and was aware that two young women playing squash on one of the courts he was passing had stopped their game to watch him.
At six feet three and powerfully built, with the sleek black hair and rugged features of a Celtic heritage, he was used to the attention his presence elicited from the opposite sex. But while he might usually have spared a glance towards an admiring female today Conan Ryder’s mind wasn’t distracted from its purpose.
Ignoring their blatant interest, he strode determinedly on, the green-gold of his eyes remaining focused on the partly open door to the room where the beat was coming from. His broad shoulders were pulled back in a deliberate attempt to stem the adrenalin that was coursing through his body.
No one made him feel like this! The fight for the composure he prized pulled his jaw into a grim cast. Especially not a woman—and particularly not a woman like Sienna Ryder! He had a request to make—that was all. A request she’d probably refuse so that would mean a verbal battle with her to get her to do what he wanted. But he would win in the end. After that it was a matter of making the necessary arrangements and getting out.
‘That’s good, Charlene! Let your hips do the work! That’s lovely! You’re a natural! Let it f-l-o-w …’
He heard her voice above the beat as he pushed open the door with the flat of his hand. Clear. Encouraging. In control.
The lively rhythm was still pounding as he met the class head on and twenty pairs of female eyes turned his way, but his interest lay only with the petite figure of the young woman in a sleeveless red leotard and black leggings who was still directing the class with her back to him.
Her short dark hair was expertly shaped into the nape of her neck, its boyish style only adding to her femininity. Skin lightly tanned, the perfect proportions of her small, slim body were clearly outlined by the clinging clothes, yet there was a remarkably lithe fitness about her that hadn’t been so apparent when she had been married to his brother.
Coming up behind her, he let his gaze sweep over the graceful line of her neck and shoulders to the small butterfly tattoo he recognised just above her right shoulderblade, and felt a tug of unwelcome awareness at the very core of his masculinity. He found himself having to clear his throat before he stooped to make himself heard.
‘I’m sorry to interrupt your workout, but you were proving far too elusive. How does anyone get in touch with you? By carrier pigeon?’ Past hostilities gave a hard edge to the deep resonance of his voice. ‘Or would I have had more luck trying telepathy?’
Shock had registered in her eyes as she’d swung round—big blue eyes that met the green-gold of his now with a spark of contention, acknowledging the coldness in his tones.
‘Hello, Conan.’ Her smile was bright and forced, her small oval face assuming that look of cool detachment he remembered so well. ‘It’s lovely to see you again too.’
Her sarcasm wasn’t lost on him, but then he saw the blood drain from her cheeks as she said starkly, ‘Daisy? Is she all right?’
Her concern for her child was obvious, even if she hadn’t shown the same regard for his brother.
‘How would I know?’ he lobbed back across the fading beat. ‘I haven’t seen her in nearly three years!’ Censure stiffening every inch of his strong, lean body, he watched her dark lashes come down as that moment of panic gave way to undisguised relief as it dawned on her that he couldn’t possibly know anything about the welfare of his niece. ‘I’ve been trying to reach you for days, but your landline’s ex-directory, and each time I’ve called at the house you’ve never been around.’
She looked almost startled. Perhaps she had never expected him to find out where she lived. ‘We’ve been busy.’ It was a flat refusal to enlarge upon anything concerning her private life. ‘Why did you want to see me anyway?’
Tension pulled in his jaw at the rising level of female hormones in the hall. Now that the music had stopped he could feel those twenty pairs of eyes looking him up and down, as though they had never seen a man before in their entire lives.
Impatiently he demanded, ‘Can we talk somewhere else?’
Gesturing for her class to continue as another track started to play, Sienna simply jerked her head towards the open door.
Reaching it first, Conan caught the scent of the freshness of her skin as she stepped past him into the corridor. He noticed the sway of her slim hips as he followed her out, and with another stab of something way down in his loins noticed the shape of her firm buttocks, tantalisingly separated by the deep lines of the leotard, the narrow span of her waist as she went ahead of him with her head high, her back as proud and straight as any ballerina’s.
‘What do you want?’ she challenged, swinging to face him.
Her blood was racing just at the sight of seeing Conan Ryder on her turf. He was as hard and handsome as she remembered him. Business entrepreneur. Billionaire. And her late husband’s half-brother.
He was right, though. It had been three years—or as good as—since she had fled from Surrey to her home town just outside London, escaping his cruel taunts and his accusations with an eighteen month old toddler in tow. Three years since that tragic accident of Niall’s that had left her widowed and her child fatherless.
It was clear from Conan’s disparaging manner that his opinion of her hadn’t changed. Now, alone with him, she felt less like the confident, self-sufficient woman she had become, and more like the emotionally dependent girl who had taken the lash of his tongue with no means of defending herself. Nothing that would explain her actions, why she had lied, her obvious guilt. Not without baring her very soul to him, and there was no way she was ever going to do that.
Closing her mind against the bitter pain that threatened to well up inside of her, she murmured in a voice that was near to cracking, ‘For what reason could you possibly want to see me?’
‘Not you.’ Those incisive words cut across her with the precision of a scythe. ‘Daisy. I’m here to insist you let Daisy come back with me.’
‘What?’ Her stomach muscles tightened at painful echoes of the past. ‘I’d do everything in my power to take Daisy away from you.’ Yet her hackles were rising too, at the sheer arrogance of his statement, making her respond with, ‘Insist? You insist, Conan?’
‘She’s my brother’s child,’ he reminded her harshly. ‘She also has a grandmother she hasn’t seen.’
‘She also has a mother who wasn’t good enough for any of you—remember?’ It was a pointed little cry. Poignant, bitter and accusing.
Conan’s black lashes swept down over the glittering green of his eyes—thick long lashes, she’d always thought, that most women would give their eye teeth to achieve. His face was lean and hard, high cheekbones stark against the proud nostrils that flared momentarily above his angular, darkly shadowed jaw, and the taut line of his wide, uncompromising mouth was compressed.
‘All right,’ he breathed heavily at length. ‘I know we’ve had our differences.’
‘Our differences?’ She almost laughed in his face. ‘Is that what you call them, Conan? Being accused of being an unfit mother and an unfaithful wife?’
His penetrating eyes hardened like chips of green glass, but all he said was, ‘Yes, well …’ It was clear he didn’t want to discuss the accusations he had made. ‘That doesn’t alter the fact that you had no right to deprive Daisy of her family.’
‘I had every right!’ The star-shaped studs in her ears glinted as she brought her head up sharply, colour touching her cheeks at his glaring audacity. A confrontation with him was bad enough, but being so scantily dressed made her feel at even more of a disadvantage—especially since he was so big and so potently male. ‘Niall was all the family she had. Niall and me!’ That wasn’t strictly true, Sienna thought, because there were her parents, although she didn’t see them that often since their move to Spain.
‘Niall was my brother.’
‘Yes, well … a pity you didn’t remember that when he was alive!’
She had hit a raw nerve. She could see it in the way that sensuous mouth of his hardened, and in the way his irises seemed to darken like woodland pools at dusk. Perhaps being reminded of how he, a self-made billionaire, had refused his own brother help when he’d been in desperate financial straits didn’t sit too comfortably on his conscience. With lethal softness, however, he said, ‘You still want to goad me with that?’
Something warned her to be on her guard and not to antagonise him unnecessarily. Even so, the raw pain to which he had subjected her three years ago, with his implacable assumptions and his inexorably cruel accusations, had her uttering tautly, ‘I don’t want to do anything with you, Conan Ryder.’
His gaze grazed over her shoulders, touching briefly on the swell of her small firm breasts. He was unpitying and unscrupulous and she didn’t like him, and yet she felt the sick stirrings of a ridiculous heat lick along her veins.
‘Did I ever ask you to?’ he enquired silkily, the cruel mockery that played around his mouth leaving her in no doubt as to what he meant.
No, he hadn’t, she thought with an inexplicable little tingle along her spine, and she had never thought of him as anything other than her husband’s elder brother. Of course she’d been aware of his countless attributes during those two and a half years she had been married to Niall. What woman wouldn’t have been? she reasoned resentfully. He was good-looking, dynamic, and unbelievably wealthy. He was also a dark and silent entity she’d never quite been able to fathom out, although his ruthlessness and insensitivity had been all too apparent at the end. She would have had to be an android not to have noticed him, at least. But she’d loved Niall. Loved him with a passion that had nearly driven her insane …
‘If I remember correctly,’ he was saying icily now, ‘you were too busy breaking your marriage vows without any help from me—though I doubt it would have taken much more than a snap of my fingers, even with your lover in the picture.’
‘He wasn’t my lover! And you’re still as misguided as you ever were if you think I would ever have thought about setting my sights on a man like you!’ Memories of the last time she had stood and faced him like this clawed at her consciousness, the ugly scene forever etched on her memory. ‘For your information, Conan—’
I loved your brother, she had been about to say, but broke off as the door to her gym class opened, enveloping them in a pounding rhythm.
A young woman came out, her smile for Conan openly inviting before she crossed behind him to the women’s cloakroom, forcing him to move closer to Sienna.
In her tight, revealing clothes she suddenly felt naked beside him, and the air left her lungs so that it felt difficult to breathe.
This close to him she could smell the lemony fragrance of his cologne. It didn’t help either that he was so formally dressed, probably having just come from some high-flying meeting, she guessed grudgingly, where he’d made multi-million-pound decisions that would increase his global fortune tenfold! But his nearness was stifling, and Sienna took a step back—which was so obvious that he couldn’t have failed to realise why.
Apart from the lift of an enquiring eyebrow, however, fortunately he made no comment.
‘My mother needs to see Daisy,’ he stated as the cloakroom door closed quietly behind him. ‘So do I.’ Sombre lines were etched around his mouth and jaw and a deep groove corrugated the healthily tanned skin of his forehead. ‘My mother hasn’t been herself lately …’ He couldn’t bring himself to tell her what was really wrong, how worried he was about Avril Ryder; he wasn’t going to beg. ‘And I feel she would benefit from a visit from her only grandchild. She hasn’t seen her since she was eighteen months old. Neither of us has.’
‘And you think you can just come here and take Daisy away? Just like that? That I’d even allow it?’ Fear rose in her again but she forced it back. ‘She doesn’t know you, Conan.’
‘And whose fault is that?’
‘She doesn’t know you,’ she reiterated, ignoring his censuring demand. ‘Neither of us does.’ Or did, she amended bitterly, reminded of his heartlessness, his lack of compassion—not just towards her, but towards his own brother.
‘I’m the child’s uncle, for Pete’s sake! Not that you’ve ever given her the chance to find out. There have been no photos. No contact. Do you know what that’s been like for Avril? Her grandmother? Don’t you think she’s had enough to contend with in losing Niall—without losing his baby daughter as well when you took her away?’
‘I was driven away,’ she breathed fiercely. ‘And you seem to forget … I lost something too.’ Her eyes were shielded, their lids heavy with the pain of remembering. ‘I lost a husband. And I had to contend with a lot of accusations and blame. Don’t you think I felt bad enough without being made to feel I was responsible for what had happened to him? That I was responsible for his drinking and getting into debt? I knew what you thought of me—both of you. You made it clear often enough that you thought Niall had married beneath him.’
‘I’ve never said that.’
‘You didn’t have to! It was there in every last criticism of everything I said—everything I did. Your mother could scarcely contain her shock at him marrying a barmaid! Albeit a temporary one, until I could get my career on track! But that was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it? You were determined not to like me from the start.’
‘I’m not responsible for my mother. As for me, I only acted on what I observed with my own eyes.’
‘And what was that? Besides my supposed infidelity, that is?’
Condemnation set his features in harsh lines, so that he looked like one of the warring Celts whose blood still pumped through his proud, pulsing veins. ‘You know very well. Niall was weak where money was concerned. He was living above his means and you did nothing but encourage him.’
Because she hadn’t known. Because she’d been too young to recognise the signs: his irritability, his drinking too much, his mood swings.
‘“Bled him dry”,’ she reminded him. ‘That was the phrase I believe you used.’
He didn’t negate or deny it. How could he? Sienna thought grimly. He wasn’t a man to pull his punches, or hide behind lies and subterfuge—as she had—whatever else he might have done.
‘I can’t talk about this now,’ she uttered quickly, hearing the last track on the album she’d selected earlier come to an abrupt end. ‘I’ve got to get back to my class.’ This meeting with Niall’s brother was more traumatic than she’d ever have imagined possible, and it was with aching relief that she pulled herself away.
‘You’ll do as I ask, Sienna.’
She stopped in her tracks, swinging round to face him again, her eyes wide with defiance and disbelief.
‘Oh, will I? And what do you intend to do to try and bully me into it? Concoct some tale about my being an unsuitable mother and get an injunction to try and take Daisy away from me, as you threatened before?’ Beneath her bravado was a sick anxiety that he might try to do just that—somehow use his power and influence to get even with her for how he believed she had treated Niall.
‘I didn’t come here for that.’
‘No. You just want me to hand her over without all the hassle. Well, I’m sorry, Conan, but the answer’s still no. Daisy’s not going anywhere without me, and I’m certainly not putting myself back into the lion’s den, thank you very much!’
‘Oh, I think you will, Sienna.’
‘And what makes you so sure?’
‘Conscience, sweetheart. If you have one.’
Her small chin came up as she said bitterly, ignoring the patronising way in which he had addressed her, ‘Like you, you mean?’
She didn’t wait to catch any sniping response.
Making sure Daisy was asleep, Sienna kissed the little girl’s soft cheek before extinguishing her bedside lamp, unable to resist stroking the silky chestnut hair that curled against the pillow.
Like Niall’s, she thought poignantly, pulling the duvet up over the chubby arm wrapped around her pink hippopotamus. Daisy had inherited her father’s colouring, not hers.
Going back downstairs, she opened the back door to let in a big bouncing bundle of white shaggy fur, filled a bowl with the dog’s supper, and then started the ironing—normal things she did every day, except tonight things felt anything but normal.
Meeting Conan again had opened up all the unhappiness of the past, forcing her to dwell on wounds she’d thought had healed, forcing her to think, to remember.
She had been just twenty when she had met Niall.
With her parents having sold their UK home to live abroad, Sienna had chosen to stay in England on her own. Her parents had always done their own thing. They liked sun, sea and sand, and Sienna had been happy for them, while relishing the prospect of occasional holidays in Spain.
She had been working as a receptionist at her local gym when she had met Niall. He had been a regular member there, and had often come into the bar where she had sometimes helped when it was short-staffed. She had instantly warmed to his wicked sense of humour. He’d been witty and charming, and just a little bit crazy, and she’d been swept off her feet before she had known what hit her.
Her parents had flown over for the wedding, which had been a short civil ceremony after a whirlwind romance. Faith and Barry Swann and Niall’s mother—a barrister’s widow—were poles apart, and while they’d tried to befriend her new mother-in-law it was clear that Avril Ryder hadn’t really warmed towards them. It had also been clear to Sienna from the start that the woman believed she had trapped her youngest son into marriage by getting pregnant, which was something over which Sienna had been silently smug, proving her wrong when Daisy had arrived exactly a year to the day that they had married.
Conan had been at the wedding, interrupting some important business conference he’d been attending in Europe, and the cool touch of his lips on her cheek as he’d wished her well after the ceremony had been as formal as it had been unsettling.
It had been clear, though, that Niall looked up to his brother, and Sienna had understood why. Already approaching his late twenties to his half-brother’s twenty-three, and spearheading a global telecommunications company, Conan Ryder had been a mind-blowing success—dynamic, wealthy and sophisticated. It had been apparent to Sienna from the start who Niall was trying to emulate in the way he spoke, in his image, even in that air of glacial composure that Conan exuded.
Niall had been a top sales executive working at Conan’s head office, though not before pulling himself out of university and destroying his mother’s hopes of him following his late father into the legal profession. Nevertheless, he had been good at his job, and determined that she would reap the benefits—from the clothes he had bought her to every conceivable luxury she had wanted in their modern four bedroom home, a house he had mortgaged only a few miles from his half-brother’s Surrey mansion.
But he’d played as hard as he worked. Often too hard, Sienna remembered painfully, as she ironed the back of one of Daisy’s little blouses for at least the third time. Because it had been that reckless sense of fun and that daredevil attitude towards almost everything that had killed him during those five days in Copenhagen at that stag party that had gone terribly wrong …
Pain and remorse pressed like twin bars against her chest, and she forced herself to breathe deeply to ease the anguish.
While he’d been alive he’d been driven: always trying to compete—almost obsessively so, she reflected—with his elder brother. But Niall hadn’t had Conan’s focus—or his ruthlessness, she thought bitterly. Because when Niall had got into dire financial straits and had asked his brother for help, just a couple of weeks before he’d died, Conan had refused. Niall had been devastated. It was only then that he’d told her how far they had been living above their means and just how much money they owed. She’d been too young and far too naive to realise it!
Both Conan and her mother-in-law had blamed her for her husband’s overspending, and for the worry she had caused, which had led to his drinking and his ultimate accident.
‘It wasn’t my fault!’ she’d shot back at Conan that last day, just a week after Niall’s funeral, hurting, agonised, reproaching herself for going along with everything Niall had expected of her—given her—even when her instincts had told her that he was wrong, or that it seemed he was being far too extravagant. ‘And if you’d helped him when he came to you for help perhaps he wouldn’t have got so drunk as not to know what he was doing!’ she had flung at him bitterly, too overcome by grief to care what she was saying.
She had wanted desperately to cry. To break down. To alleviate the pain pressing like a dead weight against her chest. But standing there in the sumptuous drawing room of Conan Ryder’s Regency home, where she’d come to return the last of Niall’s things, her tears wouldn’t come. She had felt only a numbing emptiness that had given her an air of spurious indifference—which had only cemented her guilt in his brother’s eyes, promoting what he’d decided he already knew: that she’d been cheating on his brother.
‘My brother was in trouble and you weren’t even aware of it—too wrapped up in your spending and your … boyfriend to notice.’
‘Oh, I noticed all right!’ It was a bitter little cry, torn from beneath the veneer of icy detachment she was feeling.
‘And you did nothing to help him.’
‘I was his wife—not his nursemaid!’ She realised how cold and brutal that sounded. She was trying to defend herself and failing miserably, wanting to scream at Niall for leaving her to face his family like this—alone. Hurt, angry, reproaching herself …
‘My mother has expressed concerns that you aren’t mature or responsible enough to look after a child—and quite frankly I agree with her. I want my brother’s offspring to grow up as a Ryder, under this family’s roof. Not in some other man’s home, bearing some other man’s name.’
‘She’ll grow up as I consider fit,’ she assured him, stung by the things her mother-in-law had said. But then Avril Ryder—whom, she noted, hadn’t emerged from her own wing of her eldest son’s exclusive residence—had never made any attempt to conceal her disapproval of her other son’s match. There was no way, though, that Sienna ever intended changing her child’s name—even if she did end up with another man in the far distant future. ‘You’re not her father, Conan,’ she reminded him coolly. ‘Even if you’d like to think you are.’
‘No.’ Derision curved his uncompromising mouth at that. ‘Fortunately I can’t claim to be among those to have had the pleasure.’
Her hand clenched with the almost uncontrollable urge to lash out at him, to feel the sting of her palm as it met the hardness of his cheek which might shake her out of this numbing misery. But she’d decided that enough damage had been done already.
‘I don’t have to stay here and take this from you,’ she responded quietly, hating herself for the tingle of awareness that had run through her at his blatant innuendo a moment ago. ‘But if you’re trying to make me feel cheap, then go ahead. I was never good enough for you, was I? Either of you,’ she’d added accusingly. ‘Is that why Niall made such a mess of things? Because he was made to feel he wasn’t good enough either? Because he felt so overshadowed by his much smarter, richer and generally more favoured elder brother?’
If he’d looked angry before, he’d looked livid then, his proud nostrils flaring, the skin above his upper lip white with rage. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he’d rasped.
‘Don’t I?’ She went on goading him, unable to help herself, needing something—anything—to ease the burden of confusing emotions that were ravaging her. ‘I know you did next to nothing to support him—in anything—and that when he came to you for help you refused him any financial backing! Well, don’t worry! We’ll be leaving tomorrow. You won’t have to put up with me soiling this family’s precious pedigree any more!’
‘You take Daisy away from here and you’ll have me to answer to. Is that clear?’
‘As crystal! What do you propose to do?’ she taunted. ‘Sue for custody?’
‘If it comes to it.’
‘On what grounds?’ she challenged, suddenly wary. ‘That I’m an unfit mother?’ Painfully she remembered the instances that had helped tar her with that particular brush—the circumstances that she couldn’t explain even if she wanted to.
‘If I find you wanting in that regard, I won’t hesitate in applying for Daisy to be made a ward of court, most certainly.’
From anyone else she would have considered it an idle threat. From Conan it merely struck the deepest fear into her heart.
He was rich and powerful enough to make any court take notice of charges he made against her. And though she doubted that the Ryders would ever be allowed full custody of her daughter, she still feared what he might try to do with his staggering influence and his money.
‘Well, perhaps I should marry my boyfriend!’ she threw back desperately, pandering to his previous accusation. ‘And then you wouldn’t be able to do a thing! Stay away from me, Conan!’
She’d stormed out of the house and their lives without another glance back, paying off her debts and setting up home in the little terraced house she’d managed to mortgage with the small amount of capital left over from the sale of the house she had shared with Niall.
But now Conan had turned up again, still as judgmental as ever, and with a lethal maturity only acquired by three more years of honing that indomitable strength of character alongside his superb masculine physique. Of increasing his wealth and power and making himself one of the most talked about entrepreneurs of his generation—both in the playgrounds of the rich and in his corporate life. It amounted to three more years of getting what he wanted. And he wanted Daisy …
When the doorbell rang, she almost dropped the iron.
CHAPTER TWO
SHADOW—so named because of the patch of black fur covering the whole of one side of his head and one floppy ear—was barking frantically at the front door by the time Sienna reached it.
‘Conan!’ She didn’t know why she sounded surprised. She had known he would come.
The dog was leaping excitedly up at him, with no regard for his designer tailoring, while Conan, with a face like granite, stood rigidly impervious, his nostrils flaring and his olive skin infused with something almost akin to anger.
‘I’m sorry. He isn’t usually like this,’ Sienna apologised, rushing forward to grab the dog’s collar. In fact, after bringing the six month old Shadow home from an animal rescue centre two years ago, she had been pleased when her pet had flown through obedience classes with the equivalent of a doggy distinction. Rather grudgingly though she decided that just the mere sight of a man like Conan Ryder was enough to make even a mere animal forget its manners.
‘May I come in?’
With every nerve on alert, still holding the dog’s collar, Sienna backed away to admit him.
Immediately the walls of the narrow passageway seemed to close in on all sides, the space between them shrunk by his imposing physique.
With a tightness in her chest, Sienna took another step back for an entirely different reason, releasing the dog which, after one brave sniff at the man’s black designer shoes, trotted off to the comfort of the living room.
Her mouth dry, Sienna demanded, ‘What’s this all about, Conan? Because if it’s about Daisy you’ve had a wasted journey. I thought I made my position clear this afternoon.’
For a split second something flared in his eyes. Anger? Retaliation? She wasn’t sure. But with that strong self-command she had always envied about him he brought it under control, only the muscle that pulled in his darkly shadowed jaw disclosing any other sign of emotion.
‘We parted on a rather bad note today. I thought it only right to try and rectify that.’
Oh, did you?
His dark head tilted towards the door at the end of the passageway, his meaning obvious, while an arresting movement of his devastating mouth caused a peculiar flutter in the pit of her stomach.
Conan Ryder being hostile was something she could deal with. Conan being charming was far more dangerous to her equilibrium.
‘You’d better come through.’ She wondered if he had detected that nervous note in her voice, and as she went ahead of him along the passageway could almost feel his eyes boring through her tight black T-shirt and jeans.
Too aware of him as she led him into her tiny sitting room, she sensed his brooding gaze moving critically over its rather jaded décor. ‘Sit down.’ She looked around the cramped little room in dismay. ‘If you can find a space.’ She darted to remove the pile of ironing from her one easy chair, dragging toys and a jigsaw puzzle box off the worn, rather lumpy-looking settee beside it.
Ignoring her, he was looking around at the rather shabby and tired-looking furnishings, the few sparse pieces of furniture that made up a wooden table and chairs, a rather stressed bookcase, a modest hi-fi system and her television.
‘Is this how you’re living?’ Censure marked the hard lines of his face.
Eyeing him resentfully, with a pile of freshly ironed garments supported on her hip, Sienna snapped, ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Conan’s mouth pulled down hard on one side. ‘A bit of a change, isn’t it, from what you were used to?’
‘At least it’s all paid for!’ It was an anguished throwback to the girl who had blindly accepted every luxury without question—only to find herself plunged into widowhood with nothing but loneliness, a precious little toddler and a whole heap of debt.
‘With what?’ Derision laced Conan’s voice as he sliced another detrimental glance around the sad little living space, finishing up on Shadow who was gazing up at him from his shabbily cushioned basket with suspicious eyes. ‘You can scarcely earn much from that menial job you do at that gym.’
‘And what’s it to you?’ She hadn’t meant to snap. He’d come to try and patch things up, after all. But his criticism of her home and his disparaging reference to what she did when she had trained so hard—worked so hard—to keep a roof over her and Daisy’s head was proving more than she could take.
‘Everything—if I think my niece is being deprived of the most essential necessities when she could be benefiting from the help that her mother is too proud—or to selfish—even to consider.’
Sienna’s hackles rose—not least because she was sometimes worried that her daughter was missing out on some of the things her little friends obviously enjoyed. Like bouncy castles on her birthday and pretty clothes; like the reliability of a car that wasn’t breaking down every five minutes. Like a father who hadn’t died and left her …
Regret mingled with anger—the anger she often reproached herself for feeling towards Niall and the way he had died when it had all been so avoidable. So pointless …
‘Proud and selfish you might think me,’ she quoted, pulling herself up to her full five feet four inches to face Niall’s brother with a display of composure she was far from feeling, ‘and perhaps I am. But as far as what I said to you three years ago, when you very kindly condescended to offer us financial assistance goes …’ Her voice dripped pure venom. ‘I don’t retract a single word.’
The animosity she felt towards him lay thickly on the air between them. Conan felt it like a live thing, along with the silent, anguished accusation that rose like a torturing spectre from the darkest recesses of his mind.
You didn’t want to help us when Niall was alive! We can do without any help from you now!
Heavily, with some private emotion seeming to stretch the skin taut across his prominent cheekbones, he pointed out, ‘Even if Daisy suffers because of it?’
‘She won’t,’ Sienna returned, with more conviction than she was feeling, glancing down at Shadow, who was making rather indelicate grunting noises as he delved violently into his fur.
‘Then at least allow her to see her grandmother.’ His denigrating glance towards the basket told her he probably didn’t approve of her dog either. ‘You have a duty, Sienna. To Niall’s family as well as your own.’
‘Duty?’ She almost laughed in his face. What right had he to talk about duty when he had never really cared about his half-brother? When he had turned his back on him when Niall had needed him most? ‘He never asked you for anything,’ she accused bitterly, wanting to drive away memories that were too painful to remember. ‘When he did …’ She had to swallow to continue. ‘He looked up to you and he needed you. He was desperate,’ she muttered, ‘and you just weren’t there for him.’
‘And you think I killed him? Drove him to drink so much that he overbalanced on that bridge when he took up his friends’ ridiculous challenge to walk along that wall? Isn’t that what you said?’
There was raw emotion in his voice—in the perfect structure of his hard-hewn features. Had he loved his brother after all? Despite everything? Or was it just a pricking of his conscience that was responsible for the darkening of his amazing eyes.
‘I didn’t know what I was saying.’ Vainly she strove to redress the situation, to justify what she had thoughtlessly flung at him because of his accusations. If he’d loved Niall half as much as she had they would have lain heavily—would still lie heavily—on his conscience. ‘As I said earlier—I’d just lost my husband.’
‘And I’d lost a brother.’
She was right. Her words had left an indelible mark on him. She could see it—hear it in the dark resonant depths of his voice.
For a moment they faced each other like warring combatants—Sienna with her cheeks flushed, eyes glittering defensively, Conan’s olive features tinged with angry colour.
He was every bit the Celt, Sienna decided distractedly, from his thick black hair to his strong, proud Gaelic bone structure. In his pride and in his daunting self-sufficiency. In that unmistakable air of command that surrounded him, which made him lead where other men could merely follow. Both brothers had been handsome men. Niall had had the cheek and the charm of his mother’s Celtic bloodline, but it was Conan who bore his Irish ancestry like a blazing flag.
‘My mother’s unwell,’ he stated, quietly and succinctly. ‘She’s very unwell.’ In fact the doctors had told him that Avril Ryder didn’t seem to have the will to recover. The dark fringes of his lashes came down to veil his eyes. ‘I’ve brought her to stay with me in France.’ He owned a spectacular villa these days on the Côte d’Azur, Sienna remembered from an article she had read about him. ‘She needs cheering up, and I know her greatest wish is to see her only grandchild. You will come with Daisy, of course—I wouldn’t expect anything else—and with the holidays coming up, I’ll expect you to stay for the summer.’
A strong refusal sprang to Sienna’s lips—but she couldn’t express it. If the Ryders—Conan especially—only wanted to salve their consciences by making up for lost time with Daisy, that was one thing. They could go whistle for all she cared. But from the look on his face as he’d told her about his mother things sounded pretty serious. What if this was the last chance Daisy might have of seeing her grandmother? Sienna found herself considering reluctantly. Wouldn’t she be doing her daughter a grave injustice by refusing to let her go? And if Avril Ryder was that sick …
The holidays were coming up, as he had said and her regular classes were coming to an end. She found herself assessing the matter before she had fully realised it. She did have individual training sessions to honour. Also, she couldn’t afford to take that much time off without it eating severely into her already frugal budget. But if she did give in and condescend to grant his wishes, she’d be darned if she’d let Daisy go anywhere—or stay anywhere—without her!
‘I—I can’t take that much time off,’ she found herself eventually admitting hesitantly. Though her ethics might be forcing her to do what anyone with half a conscience would do, she didn’t want to suffer the indignity of Niall’s brother guessing just how little money she had, or just how hard she was struggling to make ends meet. ‘I would if I could, but I can’t.’
Conan’s eyes moved reflectively over her pleasingly toned and agile figure.
Of course, he thought, with an introspective smile touching the firm line of his mouth. He’d guessed she could use her job as an excuse. But women like her could be bought—for a price. Hadn’t he seen evidence of it in the luxuries she had demanded from her husband? In the clothes and the designer jewellery? In the fast car she’d been happy to buy out of his limited funds before she’d found herself more interesting fish to fry?
‘Wives don’t come cheap, bruv … as you’ve yet to find out.’ Across the years he heard his late brother’s almost bragging statement after he’d warned Niall about his spending, and remembered, some time later, accusing Sienna of taking his brother for every penny she could get.
‘I will pay you what you earn—I’ll triple it,’ he assured her coldly. The reminder of the type of woman she was had turned his heart to stone.
Now, why didn’t that offer surprise her? she thought grimly.
‘That’s very generous of you.’ Sienna gave him a bright, unfaltering smile. ‘But can you safeguard my position until I come back?’
‘If I have to.’
Of course. The Conan Ryders of this world could get anything they wanted. They snapped their fingers and lesser mortals jumped to do their bidding. How stupid of her even to ask!
‘I take it, then, that that’s a yes?’ he pressed.
She didn’t answer, deciding to wait to tell him that if she did agree to what he wanted she had no intention of taking a penny of his precious money. Why spoil his mean and miserable opinion of her? she thought, following his gaze to where it was resting on Shadow, who was making violent sucking noises now as he burrowed with increasing ferocity into his fur.
‘Does that dog of yours have a problem with ticks?’
‘No, he doesn’t!’ What was the emotion that was turning down the corners of his superbly masculine mouth? she wondered. Disapproval? Dislike? And why was she even looking at his mouth? she thought, annoyed with herself. Let alone considering it superb?
Refraining from telling him that Shadow’s problem sprang from rolling on a chocolate wrapper while on his walk this evening, much to the surprise and angry retaliation of a few disgruntled wasps, she enquired breezily, ‘Don’t you like dogs?’
A broad shoulder lifted beneath the tailored jacket. ‘I can take them or leave them. Let’s just say I wouldn’t choose to share my home with one.’
Well, tough! Sienna thought, but said brightly, and with some relish, ‘That’s all right, then. Because if you want to take Daisy and me away with you for the summer I’m afraid you’re going to have to take us all.’
‘I thought you said Conan never had much time for his brother?’ Faith Swann commented when Sienna rang her parents to tell them where she would be going and why. ‘That he was positively heartless towards him, and that Avril Ryder was always making you feel inferior and criticising the way you were bringing up my granddaughter?’ Faith was fiercely protective of those she loved, and was constantly trying to persuade Sienna to bring Daisy to join her and her husband in Spain.
‘He was—and she was,’ Sienna averred, and though she hated having to acknowledge it she said, sighing, ‘But they’re Daisy’s family too. And no matter how they treated me, or Niall, as his mother’s not well I have to go.’
‘I expect he can be quite persuasive,’ her mother was remarking distractedly about her late son-in-law’s brother. ‘I only saw him in the flesh that once …’ She meant at the wedding. ‘But I saw a picture of him recently in one of our English newspapers,’ Faith continued. ‘He’s quite a looker, isn’t he? Not so obviously handsome as Niall was, but the more moody and magnificent type that a lot of women go for. At least he looked moody in that photograph,’ she added with a little chuckle. ‘Probably because he was caught hurrying from the executive lounge of some airport with his latest adoring companion. You know that chat show hostess? Petra Somebody-or-other?’
‘Petra Flax,’ Sienna supplied, not unfamiliar with the raven-haired beauty whose twice-weekly programme was a little too gossipy for her own taste.
‘Just wait until I tell the regulars and our friends at the golf club that my daughter’s hobnobbing with the likes of Conan Ryder.’
‘Mum!’ Sienna burst out, cringing at her mother’s penchant for dropping names—the more influential the better. ‘I’d appreciate it if you didn’t.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Faith remonstrated, having clearly lapped up the news that Sienna was going to be in the bosom of her late husband’s family. ‘I’m proud that my daughter had the good sense to marry a man with such illustrious connections. So should you be.’
‘Yes, Mum.’ Sienna sighed resignedly, reminded of how much her mother enjoyed basking in other people’s reflected glory, and remembering that it was those very traits of Faith Swann’s that had gone a long way to letting Sienna and her family down with Avril Ryder and her friends on that one inauspicious occasion when their families had met.
‘Don’t take any notice of your mother. She means well,’ Barry Swann placated, when he came on the line to talk to his daughter. ‘I know you’ve always liked to play things close to your chest, but just remember we’re here, love, if you need us. For anything at all.’
Strangely, that simple token of kindness from her father produced a welling of emotion in Sienna.
She’d never worried her parents with the reason for her estrangement from Niall’s family, or with the extent of Conan’s accusations—that he’d not only as good as accused her of being a gold-digger, but also of cheating on his brother. If she had, her father would have come over here to sort him out, she thought sadly, yet with a wry grimace, because she didn’t give much for the chances of anyone who tried locking horns with Conan Ryder.
And anyway, what could she tell them? That Conan was right? That the morning he’d come looking for her to tell her that her husband had died he’d discovered she’d spent the night in another man’s flat.
She shuddered at the prospect of all the hurt and anger that would follow if she did disclose the truth to them. She couldn’t.
Wouldn’t! she vowed grittily, aching under the weight of it.
‘Thanks, Dad,’ she murmured gratefully, and rang off.
‘So who’s this guy you’re going to be spending the summer with?’ Jodie Fisher asked as Sienna, returning from some last minute shopping before Conan arrived to pick them up, joined her on her porch after locking up her clapped out little red saloon.
‘He’s my brother-in-law—and I’m not spending the summer with him, as such,’ she corrected, keen to dispel any hopes her neighbour—a wild-haired blonde, who was noticeably pregnant and the mother of a four-year old—might be harbouring about her having designs on any man … least of all Conan Ryder. ‘Well I am, but not in the way you think. My mother-in-law’s sick,’ she outlined, feeling a nagging unease about how the woman would receive her. She didn’t elaborate to Jodie. Although Jodie was a good friend, often looking after Daisy at a moment’s notice—as she had done today—Sienna hadn’t confided to her exactly what the situation was with her late husband’s family. Such things were private. She had simply told Jodie that they lived miles away and she didn’t see them very often.
‘You wouldn’t be lying to me now, would you?’ Jodie’s attention was caught by something over Sienna’s shoulder. ‘Great Jumping Jacks! Wowee! Is that a BMW? Or is that a BMW? Is that him? No, don’t tell me! Let me guess! He’s pulling in here. It’s him! What I wouldn’t give for a brother-in-law who looked like that!’
Jodie was clearly knocked sideways. But why the man made every woman who cast eyes on him want to swoon at his feet was beyond her, Sienna though grudgingly, with a careless glance over her shoulder. Yet the dark magnetism of the man behind the wheel of the graphite grey monster that had just pulled up in front of her own pathetic little excuse for a car caused a peculiar fluttering way down in her stomach.
‘It isn’t what you think, Jodie,’ Sienna told her when her friend continued to stand there agog. ‘You’ve got a one-track mind where anyone who isn’t hitched and as happy as you are—i.e. single and content—is concerned.’
‘Don’t give me that!’ Jodie pooh-poohed, sending her a sceptical glance. ‘You’re too young to settle for contentment, and you can’t hang on to the past for ever.’
‘Well, perhaps content’s the wrong word, but I’m adjusting to my life,’ she admitted, only just stopping short of telling Jodie that the last thing she wanted was another man in her life. ‘So if you’re thinking I’d consider making a match with Niall’s brother, then I’m afraid you’re going to have to think again. He’s far too arrogant, overbearing and too darn cocksure of himself ever to qualify as a contender for my affections, and—’ She broke off, enquiring of her friend, ‘What’s wrong with your mouth?
Jodie was pulling faces, Sienna decided, as Shadow would have done, if he’d been able to, the day he’d rolled on that wasp-infested chocolate wrapper. When Jodie didn’t answer, however, she went on, ‘He’s too rich, he’s got a freezer cabinet for a heart and is about as approachable as a turned on water cannon. I wouldn’t sleep with Conan Ryder if he was the last man on—What?’
Jodie’s eyes had come into the equation now. But even as it dawned on Sienna what her neighbour was trying to tell her, too late she felt that prickling awareness she always felt when Conan Ryder was close, and caught his deep voice, low in her ear, as he told her, ‘Don’t worry. You won’t have to. We have enough rooms in Provence for the family not to have to share with the guests.’
Those cool words were at variance with the warmth of his breath against her hair—an unintentional caress that sent tingles along her very nerve-endings. Or was it so unintentional? she wondered, her pulse quickening ridiculously. Because she didn’t think he’d miss a single trick to try and unsettle her.
Impelled by good manners to introduce him to Jodie, she tried to shake off the devastating effects of Conan’s nearness. But before she could find her voice Jodie was shooting out a hand for him to take.
‘I’m Jodie Fisher,’ she pre-empted, smiling broadly at the dynamic-looking man whose bronzed chest oozed virility through a fine and fitted short-sleeved cream shirt, and whose long legs were encased in dark tailored trousers. Her cheeks were unusually flushed. Even being happily married and pregnant didn’t stop a woman trying to get herself noticed by him, Sienna thought despairingly.
‘The pleasure’s all mine, Jodie.’ His manner was charm personified. Never once in all the time she had known him had he smiled at her like that—with such sincere warmth—Sienna realised, annoyed with herself for even thinking it, and telling herself she hardly cared.
‘Well, I’ll be getting back to my hovel …’ Still beaming, Jodie gestured towards the immaculately painted house next door for Conan’s benefit. It made Sienna’s look rather tired and dull in comparison. ‘Daisy’s in the garden with Shadow,’ she told Sienna. ‘Have a lovely time, won’t you?’ From the look she angled towards Conan as she was going out of the gate it was obvious what she meant.
‘You’d better come in.’ Alone with him, Sienna was determined not to let it bother her. ‘We’re nearly ready.’
Daisy was standing mixing play dough on a low table as they came out through the little galley kitchen, chattering happily to her pink hippopotamus, seated on a tiny chair, and the dog, which was stretched out with its head raised, listening interestedly to every word of the childish patter.
‘You’ve got no qualms about leaving a four-year-old with that animal?’ Conan’s disapproval was obvious.
‘No. Why should I have?’ Sienna shot back at him over her shoulder. ‘Shadow would protect her rather than cause her any harm. “That animal”—as you call him—is as gentle as a lamb!’
Peeved by his attitude, which even now questioned her suitability as a mother, she had to bite back the desire to tell him to mind his own business as she plastered on a smile and called out to Daisy, ‘Come here, poppet! There’s somebody I want you to meet.’
Grabbing her hippopotamus, the little girl ran up to them.
‘Do you remember … Mr Ryder?’ Sienna queried after some hesitation. For some reason Uncle Conan didn’t spring easily to her lips—which was crazy, she realised, because that was who he was.
The little girl gazed coyly up at him, her hazel eyes studying him with a seriousness way beyond her years. Eventually she asked, ‘Are you my daddy?’ and something squeezed painfully around Sienna’s heart.
Daisy had never known Niall—not properly anyway. And she certainly couldn’t remember him. So wasn’t it an obvious mistake for her to imagine that Conan might be her father?
Dropping to his haunches, Conan gazed—transfixed—at the little girl who was studying him so intently, and something ripped through him, taking his breath away.
It was Niall at four years old! Niall with his shock of bright hair and his sturdy little body and his frowning bewilderment at the world as he’d looked to him—his older brother—for answers …
The feeling in his chest was almost suffocating. Somehow, though, he recovered himself enough to respond to her question about being her father. ‘No, Daisy, I’m not,’ he murmured huskily.
Had she imagined that crack in his voice? Sienna wondered, noticing how long and tanned and utterly masculine his hands were as they clasped the tiny arms, although he stopped short of actually catching Daisy to him. But she was his late brother’s child, and for the first time it struck Sienna just how much pain the separation between her and Niall’s family might have caused them—all of them. It was something far too uncomfortable to dwell on.
‘This is Daddy’s brother. Your Uncle Conan. Do you remember me telling you about the little holiday we’re going on today?’ Daisy’s shining curls caught the sunlight as she nodded zealously. ‘He’s come to take us back with him to see your grandmother.’
Daisy looked quickly across at the dog, which hadn’t come running up to this disapproving stranger as he had the last time, but was keeping at a very safe distance today. ‘And Shadow?’
‘And Shadow,’ Sienna echoed firmly, with a challenging lift of her chin towards Niall’s brother. So he didn’t like her dog? Well, too bad! Perhaps if she was lucky she could get Shadow to slobber all over him and shed hairs over the back seat of his stupendously expensive car!
‘What about Hippo? Can I take him too?’
‘Of course you can,’ Sienna said warmly. Slicing a glance down at Conan’s gleaming black hair, she wondered what he was thinking when his interest shifted from his niece to the rather worn and faded toy she was clutching.
Had he remembered he had bought it, for Daisy’s first birthday? she wondered. And that with it he had brought a remarkably expensive bottle of champagne? A gift for her and Niall because it was their second wedding anniversary. Niall had telephoned only minutes before and apologised for not being able to get home early as promised for Daisy’s birthday, without a word about their own celebration. She recalled feeling stupidly hurt, thinking how strange it was that Conan had remembered when his brother hadn’t. But then Niall had had a lot on his mind, had been working hard for his little family. And he’d fallen over himself with remorse when he had come home just after midnight and seen the bottle of champagne that Conan had left. He’d made it up to her the next day with chocolates and flowers, promising never—ever—to forget again …
Battling with the turmoil of emotions going on inside her, she saw Conan’s mouth compress in brief recognition of the gift he had given his niece. But then his hands dropped away from the little girl and, getting to his feet again, towering above them both, he said with a coldness that seemed to leave him untouched, ‘Well? Are we ready to go?’
CHAPTER THREE
FROM luxury saloon to private jet, to the equally luxurious chauffeur-driven car that had been waiting for them at the airport, the journey to Provence had been as smooth and as hassle-free as only the journeys of men as mega-rich as Conan Ryder could be. A discreet cabin crew had catered for their every need while Conan worked on his laptop in a separate compartment of the plane, keeping Sienna topped up with refreshments and occupying Daisy with games and the odd edible treat. Even Shadow had slept most of the way, in the large, comfortable carrier provided for the purpose, oblivious to the fact that he was being whisked thousands of feet up over a glittering body of water, and down across vast swathes of unfenced and sunlit fields.
Now, with the concrete and the crowds of the bustling mainland coast behind them, they were travelling across wild and isolated land jutting out into a sparkling sea.
It was another world, Sienna thought, gazing at the tall pine trees that defined the landscape and concealed exclusive walled mansions from prying eyes. A world far removed from the one she knew. A billionaire’s retreat.
As the car slowed to pass through electrically operated gates into the lush, meandering grounds of Conan’s hideaway, Sienna gulped back a gasp. What she was looking at was no less than magnificent. A huge white modern terracotta-roofed villa built on various levels, with a profusion of flower draped balconies, balustrades and floor to ceiling windows enjoying dramatic views of the rocky coast above which they were perched, of looming mountains and a breath-catching expanse of azure water.
Conan was sitting in the front of the car, conversing with his driver in amazingly fluent French, and had said very little to her since leaving the airport.
Viewing his dark and striking profile with the same mixture of wonder and appreciation with which she would view a classical marble statue as he turned and laughed at something the chauffeur had said, she resolved never to let him see just how overwhelmed she was by his wealth and his dauntingly impressive house—or by him!
Sitting immediately behind him, however, little Daisy had no such qualms.
As the car drew to a standstill at the end of the long drive, she exclaimed excitedly, ‘Is this where we’re going to live?’
‘Yes, Daisy.’ Conan’s voice was decisive, causing Sienna to look at him quickly with a little trickle of unease.
‘For ever and ever?’
Ignoring her mother’s questioning glare—deliberately, Sienna felt—Conan laughed rather menacingly, she thought. ‘I think even you would tire of such delightful surroundings eventually.’
‘No, I wouldn’t,’ the little girl lobbed back, certain of it. And if that conversation wasn’t enough to unsettle Sienna, then her daughter’s continuing enthusiasm made sure of it as Daisy asked her uncle, ‘Are you going to live with us too?’
Trying to reject the unwelcome connotations inspired by that innocent enough question, as Conan’s glance sliced across hers with something mocking in those green-gold eyes, she uttered quickly for his as well as her daughter’s benefit, ‘It’s just a holiday, Daisy. Just for a few weeks. That’s all.’
Something firmed the hard line of that sculpted masculine mouth, but the arrival of a couple of male members of staff to deal with their bags and let a grateful Shadow out of the back of the car precluded whatever he had been about to say.
Out of the car before Conan could come round to assist her, Sienna moved to catch Daisy’s hand to stop her running on ahead. Or perhaps, subconsciously, she needed the little girl’s support as much as her daughter usually needed hers, Sienna thought self-deprecatingly, nervous at suddenly finding herself on this unfamiliar, unfriendly, exclusively Ryder territory.
Surprisingly, though, Daisy made a small protest and tugged away from her, causing something not unlike resentment to rush up inside Sienna as the little girl ran over to grasp Conan’s hand.
This unexpected action caught Conan totally unawares. With a sharp intake of breath that caused his chest to rise beneath the tailored shirt and his wide shoulders to stiffen, he glanced down at the little face beaming up at him, a blend of surprise and resistance coursing through his long, lean body.
‘And to what do I owe this pleasure?’ he asked the little girl.
Suddenly not sure of what to make of this tall, inflexible stranger, Daisy lost her courage, letting go of his hand. It still didn’t deter her from skipping along beside him, or from shrugging off her mother’s hand as it shot out to restrain her.
‘Get used to it, Sienna,’ Conan advised, quietly so that none of the others could hear. ‘You’ve had her to yourself long enough, and now you’re going to have to accept that she has other family she needs to get to know and spend time with. And if you can manage to curb your tongue with my mother while you’re here you’ll be doing us all a favour. As I’ve already explained, she’s very unwell.’
Peeved by his smug and condescending attitude, itching to remind him that it was she who had been on the receiving end of Avril Ryder’s disdain and disparaging remarks in the past, Sienna decided it wouldn’t help to promote good relations between them and considered it best to remain silent.
Ignoring him, she called to Shadow, who was already sniffing his way round one of the marble pillars at the top of the steps, and was relieved when the dog bounded down to her at once.
There was solace to be found in ruffling his fur, Sienna decided, speaking soothingly to the animal as she attached a lead to his red tartan collar.
A member of staff took the dog as soon as they entered the house, and Sienna had the disconcerting feeling that she was relinquishing all her power to Conan Ryder.
‘Don’t worry. He’ll be adequately catered for,’ he assured her evenly, wise to her silent objection.
‘But will he be cared for?’ Sienna argued in protest. ‘He was ill treated before he was rescued and needs special handling. He likes tea, and the odd bowl of tomato soup, and he always sleeps on my bed because he doesn’t like being left in the dark.’
‘Give me strength …’ Those dark fringed eyes rolled skyward. ‘He’s a dog,’ Conan reminded her, sounding exasperated.
So are you. She mouthed it at him with a scowl, across Daisy’s bouncing curls, not wanting anyone else to witness what she knew was a very childish retaliation. But Conan Ryder was as hard and impervious to human frailty as his brother had always led her to believe he was—as she had witnessed herself in his treatment of his younger sibling. So what chance did a mere animal have against so much indifference and superiority?
A young maid called Claudette showed her and Daisy to their rooms on the first floor. Each had its own luxurious bathroom, and both bedrooms reflected more of what Sienna had seen so far of the villa’s décor. Light, airy and spacious, with tasteful and predominantly white furniture, Daisy’s room was smaller, and had touches of pink in its floral bedspread and at the windows. Sienna couldn’t help thinking it had been chosen especially for her. The room was also just a step away from Sienna’s across the wide landing.
Conan was waiting for them in the marble-floored hall when they came back downstairs a short time later, and Daisy ran to him at once, just as she had outside.
For a moment, with that determined little hand clutching his, Conan felt the same surge of resistance as he had experienced before—like a barrier slamming down on his emotions. But the little girl was giggling up at him, as though defying him to try and frighten her off again, and, yielding a little, he allowed her merely a glimmer of a smile before casting an inscrutable glance towards Sienna.
Was that triumph in his eyes? she wondered. Because while he seemed not to overly welcome his niece’s attention, she felt that after what he had said outside he was putting up with it simply to needle her.
His scrutiny, though, was causing her pulses to leap-frog.
Now, tingling from the way his gaze ran over her freshly brushed hair and the golden slope of her shoulders beneath her sundress, Sienna stepped out of the beautiful house onto a sun terrace above a garden that tumbled down to the rocky shoreline and the restless sea.
Avril Ryder was propped up on a recliner in the canopied shade of the terrace, a flower-draped pergola behind her filling the air with some exotic scent. A creamy throw over her legs, she looked thinner, Sienna decided, her hair greyer than she remembered beneath a wide-brimmed floppy hat.
‘Oh, there you are!’ Her smile for Conan faded as her gaze shifted to Sienna, her eyes keenly assessing behind tinted lenses. Without a word to her former daughter-in-law, however, she turned her attention to Daisy, still clutching the man’s hand. ‘At last!’ The transformation in the woman’s face was like the sun coming out after a long hard winter. Her smile was warm and genuine, lending a glimmer of life to the otherwise waxen face. ‘Come here, child. Let me see you.’
Daisy ran to her without hesitation and let the painfully thin arms engulf her. Too thin, Sienna decided, silently shocked at Niall’s mother’s appearance. No wonder Conan was worried about her, she thought, aware now that he must be far more concerned than he was letting on.
Impassively, however, she murmured, ‘This is your grandmother, Daisy.’
Looking up at the pale and weary-looking face, Daisy giggled and asked, ‘Why are you wearing that funny hat?’
Sienna bit the inside of her lip, expecting the pale lips to tighten as she had seen them do so often in the past. But instead they were curving in a soft smile. ‘To keep the sun off my head. It doesn’t look all that pretty, does it? But it does its job.’
Sienna watched Daisy digest this for a moment. ‘Are you really going to be my grandmother?’ she enquired. ‘I’ve always wanted two. My friend Zoe has two. Are you going to take me to the beach like my Aunty Nanny?’
Sienna could have sworn there were tears in the shaded eyes that had suddenly turned her way.
‘It’s what she calls Mum,’ she explained simply with a little shrug. At forty-eight, Faith Swann considered herself far too young to be called a grandmother.
‘And you, Sienna …?’ A bony hand was stroking the soft tumble of Daisy’s curls, those tired eyes continually returning to the child’s face as though they couldn’t get enough of what they were seeing. A shaft of pain sliced viciously through Sienna as she wondered if her mother-in-law had noticed Daisy’s likeness to her lost son. ‘How have you been?’
Sienna’s response was tentative. ‘I’m fine.’ This was hardly the same woman who had made her constantly aware that she wasn’t good enough for Niall—who had ultimately blamed her for what had happened to her younger son.
‘I think we should leave them for a little while, don’t you?’ Sienna stiffened at the firm, masculine hand around her elbow, and caught Conan’s reprimand, low and lethally soft against her ear.
‘You can’t possibly object?’
She couldn’t tell him that her reluctance sprang from spending any more time than she had to alone with him.
‘No,’ she said tensely. ‘I don’t object.’
‘Good.’ The eyes that roamed speculatively across her face told her that the small inflexion in her voice hadn’t escaped him. He gestured for her to precede him through the pergola along the pale stonework of a shrub-bordered, sun-baked path.
‘I didn’t realise your mother was so … unwell,’ she said hesitantly, concerned. ‘Unwell’ seemed far too moderate a word to describe Avril Ryder’s appearance. ‘Is she going to be all right?’
‘I sincerely hope so.’ The skin was drawn tightly over Conan’s hard-boned cheeks and Sienna realised he was far more worried than he was letting on.
‘Perhaps having Daisy here will help?’ she offered, feeling that same tug of remorse over having denied Niall’s family the right to see his daughter.
‘Yes.’ The single syllable seemed dragged through Conan’s clenched teeth. It was clear he was thinking along the same lines, she thought, feeling chastened. ‘And you, Sienna. What have you been doing for the past three years?’
A slim shoulder lifted slightly beneath her floral print sundress—a cool blend of white and soft blues and greens, teamed that morning with a green lacy cropped bolero, which she had discarded as soon as they had stepped off the plane.
‘This and that. Training for my diplomas and the rest of my gym qualifications. Visiting Mum and Dad.’
‘In Spain.’
It wasn’t a question, she was quick to realise. He had obviously been informed. It was just another black mark against her in the Ryder family’s eyes, she’d always felt. That she was the daughter of a mere carpenter, who had sold up everything he had to go and run a wine bar for British ex-patriots with his wife on the Costa del Sol!
‘And what about the man whose flat you were sharing the night your husband died?’ His tone had turned as hard as the earth they were skirting on either side of the path, where an endless profusion of white roses made her almost heady with their fragrance. ‘How long did he stay in the picture?’
‘I’d rather not discuss it, if you don’t mind,’ she responded, turning away.
Her profile, he noticed, was proud and challenging, yet insufferably alluring. He felt that stirring in his blood, that primal desire he had always recognised for his late brother’s wife, and always violently rejected with every bone in his body.
‘I bet you wouldn’t!’
Sienna’s expression as she looked his way again was almost careless, her pink creamy lips set in a sexy pout. He had the almost unbearable urge to crush them beneath his, to feel her body stir as his was stirring—and the evidence would be apparent if he carried on thinking like this! he thought censoriously.
She gave a little shrug, nonchalant and dismissive, as though her actions in the past were of no consequence whatsoever. That action caused the strap of her dress suddenly to slip off her shoulder. Its bareness was provocative, like pale silk begging for his touch.
Sienna reached for the fallen strap, sucking in her breath as Conan did the same, getting to it before she could and slipping it back on her shoulder.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured, breathless from the shocking electrical impulses zinging through her at the merest touch of his hand.
‘When did you have that done?’ He meant her tattoo, and his voice was cool, composed, holding none of the turmoil that was going on inside her.
‘On my eighteenth birthday.’
Something tugged at his mouth. ‘Before you knew better.’
She ignored that statement, because that’s what it was. Her tattoo was just another thing he didn’t like about her, she realised, telling herself quite adamantly that she didn’t care.
‘Daisy has a lot of energy,’ she expressed, wanting to get away from him and his flower-filled garden, finding both disturbing with her troubling awareness of his far too unsettling proximity. ‘Do you think that leaving her with Avril for too long is a good idea?’
They had stopped on the path. ‘For my mother’s welfare?’ From beneath his dark lashes he regarded her with a contemplative amusement. ‘Or for yours, Sienna?’
Her throat going dry, she swallowed. Goodness! The man was perceptive!
‘Why should I be concerned for my welfare?’ she bluffed, her heart rate quickening, pretending not to understand as she sent a glance seawards to where a flotilla of sailboats sported their jaunty colours as they skirted the peninsula.
‘Why are you always so jittery when you’re alone with me?’
‘I’m not jittery.’ Who was she kidding? ‘Why should it make me jittery being alone with you?’
‘You tell me.’
The warmth of the sun on her skin was a sensuality she could well have done without, and the hum of Mediterranean insects only emphasised the pregnant silence between them.
‘Is it because I’m the only one who knows your secret, Sienna?’
She looked at him quickly, her eyes hooded and wary. ‘My secret?’
Her tone, Conan noted, was tinged with alarm. What else had she been hiding for those two and a half years she’d been married to his brother?
‘The only one who knows the kind of girl you really are,’ he elaborated.
‘You think you know. Knew,’ she corrected emphatically.
He laughed softly. ‘Whose so-called “shopping trips” to London and all those wanderings around museums were just a smokescreen for an illicit affair.’
About to deny it strongly, she felt the significance of what he’d meant when he said he was the only one who knew suddenly dawn on her, so that unthinkingly she asked, ‘You didn’t tell your mother about your suspicions?’ She found that amazing. ‘You surprise me, Conan.’ She would have thought he wouldn’t miss a chance to tell Avril exactly what he believed he’d discovered.
‘And break her heart more than it was broken already to find that her son’s wife was cheating on him? Don’t you think she was devastated enough?’
Emotionlessly, because she would never give Niall’s brother the satisfaction of knowing how much she had been through herself, she uttered, ‘Your discretion becomes you.’
‘Which is more than could be said for your morals.’
‘Yes, well …’ Heated colour crept across her cheeks. ‘That was what you wanted to believe. You wouldn’t listen to anything I said when I tried to explain.’
‘That you and this Timothy Leicester were just good friends?’ He laughed again, more harshly this time. ‘It’s a worn-out cliché.’
‘No, we were more—much more than that, Conan.’ Her gaze glanced across his, hard and defiant. She recognised from the rigidity of his jaw the danger that lay in provoking him, and yet it was a danger unlike any she had known before …
It would be sheer folly to antagonise him, or to deliberately fuel his hostility towards her, and so she burst out truthfully, ‘I was never unfaithful to Niall. I loved him!’ It was wrung from the anguished depths of her heart.
‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t wholly acknowledge the authenticity of that statement. After all, we both know your capacity for telling lies.’ They were walking again, and with a courtesy that was incongruous with the harshness of his words he stopped to lift a low branch of oleander that was growing over the path, its stems heavy with pink blossoms, their sultry scent impinging on the air.
Sienna moved under it and felt her hair lightly brush his arm. The contact was unwelcome, unwanted and electrifying.
‘Which brings me to the other reason.’
‘Other reason?’ She dragged her gaze from the blue water of a pool she had spotted on another level of the garden, glancing warily up at him as he let the branch go and fell into step beside her. ‘For what?’
‘For why you’ve always made every excuse under the sun to limit the time you spend alone with me.’
Had she? She hadn’t been conscious of it.
Heart beating erratically, she responded, ‘Simple. I just don’t like your company.’
‘That goes without saying. But it isn’t just my company that disturbs you, is it, Sienna?’
What was it then? she wondered, glancing out at the last of the sailboats that were still within her vision on the sparkling water. Because she wasn’t sure. Even when she’d been married to his brother Conan had disturbed her beyond belief. It was that raw animal energy that positively crackled from him that she found so unsettling, even without the dark enigma of his character, or the penetrating green-gold of eyes that seemed to strip her of her every secret—along with her floundering self-confidence—on those few occasions that she had come in contact with him. Eyes that assessed, judged and unhinged her so much that she was always glad to escape.
His ability to unsettle her, she realised despairingly, had only intensified with the years. But now, striving for equanimity, she murmured, ‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Don’t you?’ His smile was feral. ‘Oh, I think you do.’
She wasn’t sure when they had stopped walking, but now she felt the snare of those glacial green-gold eyes holding her as though in an invisible trap.
‘I’m talking about sex, Sienna.’
With her heart suddenly hammering against her ribcage, she echoed, ‘Sex?’ She uttered a brittle little laugh. ‘With you?’ Her mouth contorted at the concept of such an idea, masking the furore of wild sensations going on inside her.
Conan’s lips moved wryly, mocking, unperturbed. ‘Well, I wouldn’t have put it quite so graphically as that,’ he stated, watching the colour rise in her cheeks and seeming to relish every ounce of her discomfiture. ‘I was talking chemistry—unlikely though I know that seems. But then since when did physical attraction ever have anything to do with liking the object of one’s attraction, or even respecting them for that matter? And I know your respect for me is about as low on the scale of one to a thousand as mine is for you.’
‘That makes it all right, then, doesn’t it?’ she snapped. ‘I often get my kicks out of shacking up with men I can’t stand the sight of!’
‘Or with those who keep you in enough luxury to buy your affection until you find more interesting diversions elsewhere.’
‘Like I did with Niall, I suppose?’ she jibed.
‘You might think it’s something to hold up as a trophy, Sienna, but I don’t. My brother was besotted with you.’
‘Yes,’ she acknowledged, closing her eyes, clenching her teeth against the well of emotion that threatened to engulf her, the unshed tears that were locked inside her and seemed doomed never to know the mercy of release.
Niall had been besotted. Adoring. Almost obsessive in his love for her, so that sometimes she’d felt stifled by the possessiveness that had sprung from his insecurities. She’d been someone to flaunt. To show off. To place on a pedestal so high that sometimes she’d been frightened of toppling off. And sometimes she’d felt—to use Conan’s own words—like a trophy, a feather in Niall’s cap to parade over the man he’d most wanted to impress: his richer, harder-headed and far more successful older brother.
As he watched the emotions that chased across her face, a groove deepened between Conan’s thick eyebrows. Was she telling him the truth? Had she ever really loved his brother? Was that what was tormenting her? Plain and simple guilt? Or was it something else altogether?
‘Remorse, Sienna?’ He reached out and slid a hand around the nape of her neck. He heard her breath catch, felt her body stiffen, the pulse beneath his fingers beating a frenzied rhythm.
‘What are you hoping?’ To her own ears she sounded afraid, and her breathlessness was betraying to him that it was herself she was afraid of, the sensations that were ripping through her just from the touch of those cool fingers on her heated skin. ‘That I’ll fall for you so you can dump me? Because that’s about as likely as one of our spacecraft finding life on Mars tomorrow night!’
Way off in the distance the buzz of a speedboat encroached on the peaceful garden. Closer to hand, a gentle breeze played among the spiky leaves of the oleander tree.
‘I’ve always lived by the premise that’s anything’s likely.’ A complacent smile touched his lips. ‘And we both know you weren’t impervious to me even with two other lovers in the picture—don’t we, Sienna?’
Fear clouded her eyes. ‘You read it all wrong!’
‘Did I?’
He was referring to the firm’s dinner-dance that she had attended with Niall. Niall had been drinking with clients at the bar, trying to tie down a deal. Conan had come over to the table where she had been sitting alone and asked her to dance—just out of courtesy, she’d guessed.
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