She blanched, her eyes widening for just a fraction of a second before she pulled a smooth veneer into place.
‘If you want to know about Izzy then you’ll have to ask her mother. As you aren’t a direct family member, it isn’t my place to tell you.’
Was she playing a game? He couldn’t tell.
‘Tell me, do you always faint like that?’
Two high spots of colour suffused her cheeks. ‘Of course not.’
‘Then perhaps you’d like to explain what this morning’s little episode was all about.’
For a moment he thought she looked panicked.
‘That was a one-off.’
‘Is that so?’
‘It is.’
He arched his eyebrows. ‘And why do you think this “one-off” episode happened?’
She shook her head back, straightening her shoulders. It shocked Malachi to realise that he knew her well enough to know it was a stalling tactic.
Or, more pertinently, it should have shocked him.
‘I don’t know,’ she asserted. ‘Like you said, I probably hadn’t eaten properly, so I was running on empty. I didn’t have a proper breakfast and it’s been a long shift.’
He didn’t know whether to be impressed or insulted that she lied so easily. Straight to his face. And then, without warning, anger surged through him—whether at the way she wanted to exclude him or at the fact she thought he was that blind, he couldn’t be sure—but he quashed it, quickly and effectively.
Never let anyone see they can get to you.
Another life lesson he’d been forced to learn from an early age.
So this was the game she wished to play?
Well, he was just going to have to find a way to play against her.
Not here, not now. Not with Izzy injured in that room
. Her mother and sister would need his support more than ever right now. They had no one else, which was what made the centre so vital.
Right now he was here for Michelle and her daughters. Saskia and her lies would have to wait.
But if that was her game, then fine; he would play her at it and he would win. He just needed to take a step back and regroup so he could work out his next move.
CHAPTER THREE
‘THIS PLACE IS STUNNING...’ Anouk breathed as she took in the huge sandstone arches reaching up as though in exultation to a breathtaking stone-carved vaulted ceiling.
‘Isn’t it?’ Saskia demurred, following her friend’s gaze, trying to quell the kaleidoscope of butterflies which seemed to have taken up residence in her stomach ever since Anouk had told her she had two tickets to a gala evening and asked Saskia to join her.
A gala evening for a local young carers’ charity.
Saskia had known instantly whose charity it was. Anouk had mentioned something about Sol giving them to her, and something about a patient... Izzy? To her shame, Saskia hadn’t really been listening—she’d been too caught up in her own head.
Tickets to a charity event for Care to Play. As though fate itself was intervening.
Saskia hadn’t even asked how her friend had got the tickets, or why. She just knew that Malachi would be there and that this was her chance to do what she should have done two months ago. She had to tell him about the baby. Whatever he chose to do after that was his business.