“Thank you,” Adriana returned snidely. “It’s always interesting to meet the wife.”
“MRS. GOODMAN has said all she wishes to say to me, Mr. Delahunty.”
Adriana’s light, almost flippant tone made Keir grit his teeth against an unwise snap. It would be unprofessional to reveal the strong antipathy he felt, knowing as he did that it was aroused by his sympathy for Rowena. He had no right to any personal involvement with this affair. It behove him to maintain some objectivity.
He unhitched himself from the edge of his secretary’s desk in deliberate slow motion. The report he’d been trying to read was still in his hands, and he used it as a point of dismissal. “Thank you for your cooperation, Adriana.”
“My pleasure.”
“To give pain?” The biting, judgmental words were out before he could monitor them. At least he had the satisfaction of wiping the smug look off her face.
“I didn’t ask for this meeting, Mr. Delahunty,” she coolly reminded him.
“A matter of opinion, Adriana. It’s my experience that changing people’s lives incites retaliation, even when the change is innocently caused.”
Rowena’s parents had taught him that. Not that this self-obsessed woman would care what damage she wreaked in going after what she wanted. They were empty words to her.
“I don’t want more company time wasted on gossip, Adriana,” he went on, chilling her out of any further comment. “I’d advise you to keep your meeting with Mrs. Goodman entirely private. Do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly, Mr. Delahunty. I appreciate your tact.”
He nodded.
She left.
He turned to his homely, middle-aged secretary. “Same for you, Fay. No talk about this.”
“Locked box,” she replied, giving him her owl look.
The tense muscles in his face relaxed into a smile. He liked Fay Pendleton. She not only delivered everything he asked of her with a minimum of fuss and maximum efficiency, her wonderfully expressive face and dry sense of humour always amused him. As did her hair, which was burgundy with wide, blonde streaks at the moment. Every three months she experimented with a new colour combination. Grey, she had declared, was too dull for her.
“I’ll check this later,” he said, dropping the report she had prepared for him on her desk. “Would you make some coffee, Fay, and bring it in with the sandwiches as soon as they’re delivered?”
“Will do.”
He wasn’t about to let Rowena go without any sustenance. She had probably been too wrought up to eat breakfast, and Adriana had undoubtedly gone for the kill. Rowena would be in no fit state to drive. She shouldn’t be alone, either.
Keir reached the office door in a few quick strides. He didn’t know if Rowena would welcome his company or not. He remembered the polite barrier she had maintained between them at last year’s staff Christmas party. He had felt then that she wanted no part of him, and he had reluctantly respected her wishes. It was probably only the shattering effect of knowing her marriage was on the rocks that had allowed the old sense of familiarity to break through this morning. He hoped…
Well, he could only try.
As he entered the office and closed the door quietly behind him, he was intensely aware of the need to tread very carefully. Rowena had come to do what she could to save her marriage. She wanted—loved—Phil Goodman. She was not looking for another man in her life, certainly not in any close capacity.
She sat with her elbows on the table, her head in her hands, fingers pressed tightly to her temples. Pain, defeat…and there was nothing he could do about either. It flitted through his mind that Brett would have pummelled Phil Goodman, inflicting hurt for hurt to his little sister. Keir knew it would do no good in these circumstances, yet he found himself empathising with the urge to do violence. Rowena deserved to be valued. To be cast aside for a woman like Adriana Leigh…
Keir took a deep breath, unclenched his hands and headed down the room to offer what comfort he could. Maybe she would accept a shoulder to cry on. Maybe she would let him drive her home. Maybe there would come some time in the future when she could view him as a friend again. More than a friend.
He was acutely conscious of the hole in his life, the emptiness that no one had been able to fill since Rowena and Brett had been lost to him. A bond of long sharing and understanding had been broken, and the years since had only hammered home how precious and rare it had been. It was impossible to get Brett back, but Rowena…
Dared he lift her from that chair and enfold her in his arms?
She looked up.
Her beautiful green eyes were awash with tears.
There was no decision-making.
He simply did it.
IT HAPPENED so fast, Rowena was scooped from the chair and wrapped in Keir Delahunty’s embrace before she could even begin to think it was wrong to have such intimate contact with him. Then the impact of his body against hers threw her into confusion.
She wasn’t used to being held closely by any man but Phil. It had been so long since Keir had made love to her, yet she was instantly reminded of how it had felt with him. It made her acutely aware of both her sexuality and his.
Images of their youthful nakedness flashed into her mind. Her breasts, pressed flat to his broad chest, started prickling with disturbing sensitivity. Her thighs trembled with the shock of recognising the virile strength of his. Her back burned under the cocooning warmth of his arms. All normal thought processes were paralysed by sensations she was utterly powerless to stop.
One hand slid up to her neck, his fingers splaying through her hair as he gently pressed her head onto his shoulder. Her heart seemed to pound in her ears. The scent of some tangy aftershave lotion assaulted her nostrils. Her stomach contracted in sheer panic at the memories evoked.
“You don’t have to fight the tears, Rowena,” Keir murmured, his cheek resting against her head. “You can let out the grief with me. Just as you would with Brett if he were here.”
Guilt that she no longer had a big brother? Sympathy for her pain? The tears were gone, shocked back to the well of despair that Keir’s action had suddenly submerged. She shouldn’t be feeling other things, but she was. And it was wrong. Terribly wrong!
Her mind shifted from one turmoil to another. Was Keir remembering other times when he’d held her, not as a surrogate brother but as a man who wanted her, needed her to be a woman with him?
She was not seventeen any more. She was well and truly a woman, an experienced woman who was in a highly vulnerable state, with her marriage on the rocks and her husband in love—or lust—with someone else. Did Keir think that made her available to him?
Why hadn’t he married? What kind of man was he now? She didn’t know. The meeting with Adriana had left her feeling she was a naive fool who didn’t know anything!
It was as though all the foundations of her life had been ripped away. Was Keir a steady rock that she could cling to? Confide in? Or was there danger in trusting him, danger in trusting anybody?
His cheek moved, rubbing over her hair.