‘Well, you’ve had your “meeting” with the “stranger”, Mr McBride,’ Harrie told him tauntingly. ‘Although not with the tall, dark female you obviously hoped it would be! You’ve also successfully maligned the reputation of a man you obviously haven’t even met,’ she snapped accusingly. ‘I hope you’re proud of yourself!’ she added disgustedly before striding across the room and closing the door forcefully behind her as she left.
Quinn stared at the closed door slightly dazedly, remembering all too clearly where he’d heard Harrie’s words before. At the fête earlier this afternoon… From the gypsy…
But how on earth—?
‘I hope you’ll excuse my eldest daughter, Quinn,’ Rome told him with a heavy sigh. ‘I’m afraid she’s rather hurt and angry at the moment—mostly with me, I hasten to add!—and that isn’t conducive to her remembering her manners!’
Quinn was still recovering from the shock of realising that the only way that Harrie could possibly have known of his teasing conversation with Gypsy Rosa earlier this afternoon was if she were the fortune-teller herself!
It took several stunned seconds for him to realise exactly what else Rome had just said.
Daughter…?
Harrie was Rome Summer’s daughter?
‘Your eldest daughter…?’ Quinn finally prompted huskily, still blinking dazedly.
It wasn’t very often he was disconcerted, but at the moment it had happened twice within a few seconds of each other. It seemed that not only was Harrie the gypsy from this afternoon’s fête, but she was also Rome’s daughter…?
Rome gave a rueful grimace. ‘Harriet. But we’ve always called her Harrie. I had a feeling earlier when you mentioned my children that you had no idea those daughters were actually twenty-nine, twenty-seven and twenty-five respectively,’ he murmured proudly.
‘Or that Harrie was one of them,’ Quinn confirmed distractedly, still trying to come to terms with the true relationship between Rome and the beautiful Harrie.
Father and daughter. Not lover and mistress. As he had assumed. And as Harrie, from her earlier scornful remark, had obviously known he’d assumed!
Hell!
‘The eldest,’ Rome confirmed again. ‘Although not the most fiery, I can assure you,’ he added with proud affection.
Quinn shook his head, still trying to come to terms with Harrie’s true relationship to Rome. ‘The redhead that’s been bossing me around most of the afternoon wouldn’t happen to be another of them, would she?’ He grimaced in a vain hope that he could be wrong.
Rome laughed softly. ‘That sounds distinctly like Danie. My middle daughter,’ he explained at Quinn’s blank expression. ‘Andie, the youngest, is upstairs in bed with the flu,’ he added with concern.
Although, according to ‘the beautiful Audrey’, Andie was ‘feeling a little better now’, Quinn recalled heavily.
Quinn could never remember feeling quite this disconcerted. Not only had the lawyer Harrie turned out to be a woman, but she was also Rome Summer’s eldest daughter. No wonder she’d looked at the older man slightly askance when he had admitted his daughters had given him his fair share of headaches!
But Harrie wasn’t only female and Rome Summer’s daughter, she was also Gypsy Rosa…!
And she was wrong when she claimed he hadn’t met his ‘tall, dark, beautiful stranger’ Harrie Summer more than fitted that description herself!
She wanted to hit someone! No, not just ‘someone’ her father or Quinn McBride would do just fine. More than fine!
She’d wondered at Rome’s need for her presence at this meeting with Quinn McBride today; she knew that her father had made it an unwritten policy over the years never to conduct business during the weekend, that this was the time he set aside for his family. But when he’d telephoned her yesterday, to make sure she would definitely be here today, she hadn’t questioned the request too deeply, just assumed that he must have had his reasons for wanting her here.
And he’d certainly had those!
Just when and how had he learnt of her relationship with Richard Heaton? That he did know couldn’t be in any doubt after the things he had said to her earlier.
‘What is it, Harrie?’ Audrey prompted concernedly as she came out of the study further down the hallway.
The other woman’s concern wasn’t too difficult to understand, Harrie acknowledged self-disgustedly as she realised she was still standing outside the sitting-room, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.
She drew in a relaxing breath before replying. ‘Just Rome up to his usual games,’ she bit out sharply.
Audrey raised blonde brows at her vehemence. ‘But I thought it was a business meeting?’
Harrie had been only seventeen when Audrey had first begun to work with Rome, nineteen when her mother had died, and so consequently it had been Audrey whom Harriet had turned to when she’d needed to talk over the usual problems teenagers had as they were growing into adulthood.
It was also no secret between the two women that Rome had been bringing home ‘suitable’ young men for his daughters’ perusal for the last five years, in the hope that one of them might eventually settle down and present him with a grandson! ‘Suitable’ to Rome, of course—so far none of those men had proved in the least interesting to the three sisters.
‘Not those sort of games,’ Harrie told the other woman derisively; much as Rome might like to see his daughters settled, even he could never imagine Quinn McBride as a potential son-in-law.
Besides, Harrie was quite capable of picking her own husband, thank you very much. In fact, until a few minutes ago, she had thought she had chosen him…
‘Come along to the study where we won’t be disturbed,’ Audrey invited gently as she read the look of confusion on Harrie’s face. ‘You can tell me all about it,’ she added warmly.
Much as she felt tempted to do exactly that, Harrie knew that she couldn’t. For one thing she had given a promise of confidentiality to her father and Quinn McBride. And for another, the whole thing was too painful at the moment to even think of confiding in someone else, even abstractly, any of the things Quinn McBride had accused Richard of.
Not that she believed them. Not for a minute. But she needed time to gather her own thoughts. And to do that she had to get away from here!
‘Not today, Audrey.’ Harrie reached out and squeezed the other woman’s arm in apology. ‘I’m so angry with Rome at the moment that I don’t even want to run the risk of seeing him again today. Or Quinn McBride,’ she added as she remembered the other man was staying for dinner. ‘I think it best if I keep to my decision to go back to town.’ The sooner the better, as far as she was concerned!
‘You know where I am if you change your mind,’ Audrey told her encouragingly.
Harrie grimaced. ‘Unfortunately, wherever you are, Rome tends to be too!’ As her father’s personal assistant, Audrey tended to travel all over the world with him. It didn’t allow Audrey any personal life of her own, but, as she’d never married, Audrey didn’t seem to mind that. ‘But there is one thing you could possibly help me with…?’ she said slowly, frowning slightly.
Audrey gave her a considering look. ‘And what’s that?’
She moistened dry lips. ‘Has my father ever mentioned a Richard Heaton to you?’ she prompted lightly.
Audrey raised blonde brows. ‘In what connection?’