The Ultimate Surrender

‘Oh, if you’re talking about swimming pools you should see the ones we have at Gifford’s Cay,’ Suzi responded smugly. ‘One of America’s top sports facilities designers designed them for us didn’t he Phil?’

‘I’d love to see the other rooms,’ Phil told Polly pointedly, calmly ignoring Suzi’s boastful remark.

The rooms on the upper floor were all well proportioned and decorated and furnished in keeping with their sloping ceilings and small windows. Polly was rightly proud of the way they had made the most of the house’s design without compromising either on the kind of luxury their guests would expect or its age.

As they inspected the last one, Phil lingered by the window, gazing out of it.

‘Who owns the farmland?’ he asked her conversationally.

‘It belongs to me,’ Marcus informed Phil flatly, and as the two men exchanged a look Polly couldn’t interpret she was conscious of a sharp animosity between them that almost crackled in the still air.

‘Mmm…That was a wonderful evening,’ Briony told Polly happily as she helped her mother put away the last of the special Spode dinner service they had used for their dinner party. The Spode was Polly’s own service—a special treat to herself the previous Christmas.

‘You’ll miss Uncle Marcus when he moves out, won’t you?’

‘No, certainly not,’ Polly denied immediately.

Briony dipped her head, her mouth curling in a small smile. She had told Chris of her hopes. He had cautioned her against interfering but she just knew she was doing the right thing!

‘I’m tired, Briony; I think I’ll go up to bed…’

After she had hugged her mother and kissed her goodnight, Briony wandered round the room for a few seconds and then, as her face split into a wide smile, she punched the air and exclaimed triumphantly, ‘Yes!’

CHAPTER FOUR

‘SO, THE way I see it is that if we put the sitting room between the two bedrooms and each has a connecting door to the sitting room you would have the option of either a double suite, with two double rooms and a sitting room, or a single suite with one double room and a sitting room, plus another double room, and I’ve also got the provisional drawings here for the small conference suite you asked me about.’

‘Polly, if we could possibly have your attention…’

With a small start Polly realised that both the architect and Marcus were waiting for her response.

A little guiltily she looked at the drawings in front of her.

‘Er, yes…those are fine,’ she agreed.

She hadn’t slept at all well for the last three nights—ever since the dinner party, in fact—and for some reason she felt almost permanently on edge during the day even though physically she was so tired. If it hadn’t been for the nervous energy driving her she suspected she would not have stayed awake.

Blinking a little, she forced herself to focus on the drawings. The architect, Neil Harland, had done a very good job for them, Polly recognised. His suggestion was an excellent one but somehow her normal enthusiasm just wasn’t there. Every time she closed her eyes she kept visualising Suzi deriding the hotel, deriding her, it seemed, whilst making no secret of her admiration for Marcus.

The hotel had filled up over the weekend, and because of that Marcus had arranged for them to see Neil at the dower house instead of the hotel, and now, as Neil removed the plans for the rearrangement of Marcus’s rooms to show her his drawings for the proposed conference suite, she was sharply conscious of the fact that this house was alien territory to her; that it belonged to Marcus and that it was going to be his home. His and Suzi’s—or, if not her, another woman like her.

‘You don’t seem very enthusiastic,’ she heard Neil saying wryly.

‘No…Yes…I am…I think you’ve done a wonderful job, Neil,’ Polly assured him immediately.

Mollified, Neil leaned over the plans he had spread out in front of her and Marcus, indicating to them both how the new conference suite could be built onto the existing stable block to make a courtyard effect.

‘It looks wonderful,’ Polly told him. ‘Wonderful but very expensive,’ she added ruefully, giving Marcus an uncertain look before adding, ‘We’d have to take out a bank loan to finance it, and I’m not sure…’

‘We’d need to get the plans passed first,’ Marcus reminded her. ‘We agreed that this was going to be a long-term project when we first discussed it.’

‘I’ve got your plans here for this house, Marcus.’ Neil interrupted the sharply antagonistic silence that ensued.