Nathan Mallory stared at her long and hard then, and she could not help but wonder if he suspected she was giving him the same run-around that her father seemed to be giving him.
But, deciding to give her the benefit of the doubt, ‘I’ll wait,’ he clipped. ‘That cheque is my last remaining option.’
And Phelix knew then from the set of this man’s jaw that, in order to save his firm for him and his father, Nathan Mallory was having to bite on a very unpleasant bullet. Having completed his side of the bargain, he now had to wait for the man who had offered him the deal to complete his part. Yet Phelix just knew, as she looked numbly into Nathan Mallory’s stern grey eyes, that everything in him was urging him to leave. That if there was any other way he would have taken it. She felt humiliated, but that must be nothing to what this proud man must be feeling. And yet for his business, for his father, it was, as he said, his last remaining option.
‘D-does your father know about today?’ she asked tentatively.
‘I thought I’d prefer to have that cheque in my hand before I told him.’
That made her feel worse. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘I truly am.’
He looked at her again, and his expression softened slightly. ‘I know,’ he replied.
And the next two hours had ticked by with still no sign of her father.
‘Will you excuse me?’ she said at one point, and went to her father’s study to make a call to her father’s PA. But Anna Fry said she had no idea where he was. ‘Is Mr Scott free?’ Phelix asked. And, when she was put through, ‘Henry? Phelix. Do you know where my father is? I need to contact him rather urgently.’
Henry did not know where he was either. But, alarmed at her anxious tone, he was ready to come over at once to help with her problem, whatever it was. Phelix thanked him, but said it was nothing that important.
So she went back to Nathan, gave him the evening paper to read—and started to grow anxious on another front. The sky had darkened to almost black when she heard the first rumble of thunder. Thunderstorms and their violence terrified her.
She tried to think of something else, but at the first fork of lightning she was again reliving that night—the night her mother had died. There had been one horrendous storm that night. She had been in bed asleep when the first crack of thunder had awakened her. She had sat up in bed, half expecting that her mother would come and keep her company—her mother did not like storms either.
It was with that in mind that as the storm had become more fearsome, Phelix had shot along to her mother’s room to check that she was all right. Only as she had quickly opened the door a fork of lightning, swiftly followed by another, had lit up her mother’s room—and the scene that had met her eyes had sent her reeling. Phelix had plainly seen that her mother was not alone in her bed. Edward Bradbury was there too.
‘What are you doing?’ Phelix had screamed—he was assaulting her mother!
Her father had bellowed at her to leave in very explicit, crude language. But at least her interruption had had the effect of taking his attention briefly away from her mother, and her mother had been able to dive from the bed and pull a robe around her shoulders.
‘Go back to bed, darling,’ she’d urged.
Phelix had not known then which terrified her the more: the violent storm or the dreadful scene she had happened across which was now indelibly imprinted on her mind for evermore.
But there was no way she was going to leave. ‘No, I’ll—’ But she had been urged from the room.
‘We’ll talk about it in the morning,’ her mother had promised, and pushed her to the other side of the door. They had been the last words she had ever said to her. By morning she’d been dead.
A fork of lightning jerked her to awareness that she was in her father’s drawing room with the man she had that day married. It looked as if it was going to be another of those horrendous storms. Rain was furiously lashing at the windows, and as another fork of lightning speared the room Phelix only just managed to hold back from crying out.
‘W-would you mind very much if I left you to wait by yourself?’ she asked, feeling that at any moment now she would disgrace herself by either shouting out in panic or bolting from him.
‘Not at all,’ Nathan replied and, realising he would probably quite welcome his own company, she fled.
Hoping she could get into bed, hide her head under the bedclothes and wait for morning, when her father would have paid Nathan the money he’d promised, Phelix quickly undressed. No way, with that storm raging, was she going to take her usual shower.
She got into bed, but left her bedside lamp on. She did not want to lie in the dark, when she would again see that ugly scene in her mother’s bedroom that night. Phelix closed her eyes and tried to get some rest. It was impossible.
She had no idea what time it was when, wide awake, she heard the storm which she had hoped had begun to fade return with even greater ferocity. It seemed to be directly overheard when there was a violent crack of thunder like no other—and then the lights went out.
Only vicious forks of lightning, in which she again saw her father’s evil face, her mother’s pleading, illuminated her bedroom. Striving desperately to banish the images tormenting her mind, Phelix made herself remember that she might still have a guest—a husband she had abandoned to his own devices.
Pinning her thoughts on Nathan, who had already been dealt a raw deal by her father and who might now be sitting in the drawing room in the dark, Phelix left her room and raced down the stairs. ‘Nathan!’ she called, her voice somewhere between a cry and a scream as thunder again cracked viciously directly overhead.
In the light of another fork of lightning she saw he was still there, had heard her, had come from the drawing room and had seen her.
‘You all right?’ he asked gruffly.
Words failed her. The fact that he was still there showed how very badly he needed that money. ‘Oh, Nathan,’ she whispered miserably, and in a couple of strides he was over to her, his hands on her arms.
‘Scared?’ he asked gently.
‘T-terrified.’ She was too upset to dissemble.
Nathan placed a soothing arm about her shoulders. ‘You’re shaking,’ he murmured.
‘It was a night like this when my mother was killed,’ she replied witlessly.
‘Poor love,’ he murmured, and she had never known that a man could be so kind, so gentle. ‘Come on, let’s get you back to bed,’ he said.
And, when she was too frozen by the empathy of the moment to be able to move, he did no more than pick her nightdress-clad body up in his arms and carry her up the winding staircase, his way lit by fork after fork of blinding lightning.
Phelix had left her bedroom door open in her rush, and Nathan carried her in and placed her gently under the covers of her bed.
‘Don’t leave me!’ she pleaded urgently as another cannonshot of thunder rent the air.
She was immediately ashamed, but not sufficiently so to be able to tell him she would be all right alone, and, after a moment of hesitation, Nathan did away with his shoes, shrugged out of his suit jacket and came to lie on top of her bed beside her. It was a three quarter size bed, but for all she was five feet nine tall there was not much of her.
‘Nothing can harm you,’ he told her quietly, and in the darkness reached for her hand.
She had gone down the stairs with some