‘It is open,’ she declared.
The glance he threw her actually made her skin flinch. ‘No, it isn’t,’ he said, and threw her completely by walking away from her.
Watching him go, she felt a moment of sheer terror. No! she wanted to cry out. Don’t walk away! Don’t give up on me now, when I need you to justify your part in everything!
He stopped. She held her breath. Had she actually shouted those words out? Turning, he flicked her a lean look that told her nothing. ‘Are you coming?’
Her heart clattered into action, relief swimming about her head while another part of her wanted to remain aloof and defiant. ‘I—yes,’ she said, and stepped away from the maître d’ station. He turned his back and started walking again. She started to follow, acutely aware that, somehow, somewhere, control had shifted from her to André.
‘Wh-where are we going?’ Weakly she tried to grab it back again.
She hadn’t got it, she realised as soon as he answered. ‘Somewhere less…emotive to finish this conversation.’ He supplied, as if throwing down a gauntlet.
But there was no such place inside this building. The moment they stepped into her father’s old office, André realised his mistake, seeing the change come over her face. Maybe he shouldn’t be doing this now, he pondered grimly as he watched the memories close around her. Maybe he should wait, give her the time and the space she wanted to recover properly, before they dug into the real issues clamouring around both of them.
Damn it, he cursed silently. How could she start to recover without the full truth to help it to happen? Turning angrily away from his moment of uncertainty, he walked over to the place where anyone who had known the late Thomas Bressingham would also know he kept his private store of spirits. It was too early for whisky; André realised that. But right now he needed something.
‘Has this room been touched at all?’
Her voice sounded thick with unshed tears. Grimacing, André added an extra tot to the glass. ‘Other than being brought up to Health and Safety standards, no,’ he replied, failing to add that it had been his strict instruction that nothing in this room must be touched unless it was absolutely necessary.
Strangely, though, he hadn’t issued that instruction out of consideration for Samantha’s feelings. He had done it for his own. He might possess a long string of premier-class hotels, but even to him the Bressingham was special… Just as Thomas Bressingham had been a special kind of man. This overcrowded, very male-orientated, private office held in its very walls some part of what had made his father-in-law special. He could never put his finger on exactly what that was, but he could always feel it when he stepped in here.
A little as his very tactile wife was feeling it now, he likened when he turned with his glass to find her wandering about the room, gently touching things with the caressing hand of a lifelong lover.
But then, she belonged in here too. A Bressingham. The last in a long line of Bressinghams.
‘Let’s talk about your father,’ he said.
A light came on in her eyes then was instantly doused again. ‘He loved this place.’ She sighed out tragically.
Grimacing at the claim, André mentally took a deep breath—and went for broke. ‘But he loved you one hell of a lot more, cara…’
If he’d put a whip to her hide Samantha could not have been more offended. ‘Because he was prepared to buy me the man I loved by giving this place to him?’ she suggested painfully.
That was it. He might as well have said it. Samantha watched him put down his glass and close the gap between them with a swiftness that sent the breath deep into her lungs. Hands gripped her shoulders, heat speared through her body, catching fire…catching fire as it always did when he touched her. His eyes glittered down on her like black storms of biting fury and, with a small shake, he compelled her to listen and believe what he was about to say to her.
She wanted to refute it, even before she’d heard it; she knew she desperately; desperately needed to refute what was coming. When he opened his mouth to speak she almost, almost flattened her own against it just to stop him from speaking.
Then he began, his voice hard-edged with honesty. ‘Your father did not give me this place to buy me, Samantha,’ he told her very precisely. ‘He gave it to me because he was broke.’
Full stop. No elaboration. His eyes said, Believe it. His silence said, Accept it.
‘No.’ she choked the denial of both.
‘Yes,’ he insisted, not angrily but so calmly that she knew it was the truth. ‘He knew he was sick. He knew he was broke, and he knew that Health and Safety were threatening to close him down if he didn’t spend millions bringing the hotel up to modern standards. So who better to pay the price than the very wealthy, very besotted future son-in-law?’
The cynicism was back. Shocked horror contracted her pupils until there was nothing left but dark green circles of truth. ‘You think I set you up!’ She gasped.
He released a hard la
ugh. ‘I am not that short on self-esteem,’ he returned then let go of her and turned to walk back to his drink.
But his hand was shaking as he lifted the glass to his lips. ‘I don’t believe you.’ She charged him. ‘It’s the reason why you didn’t trust me… Why you could believe Raoul’s version of what happened that night instead of mine!’
‘Let’s stick to one problem before we starting dealing with another,’ he clipped.
‘If you drink one more sip of that whisky, André, you will have to suffer me driving you home!’