‘Shh, you’re all right,’ he soothed. ‘It will be over soon.’ And, maybe because her grip was threatening to break his fingers, he let go her hand and to her further comfort placed an arm around her thin shoulders. Instinctively she turned into him, burying her face in his chest.
Quite when, or how, she managed to drop off to sleep, she had no notion. But she was jerked awake when her bedside lamp suddenly came on—power restored.
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, sitting up. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed again. Nathan was still on the bed with her. He got to his feet and stood, unspeaking, looking at her. ‘Oh, Nathan, I’m so sorry,’ she apologised. The storm was over; normality was back.
He surveyed her troubled eyes, her blushing complexion—and more shame hit her. This man had married her—for nothing. He had trusted her father’s word—for nothing. She wanted to cry, but managed to hold back her tears. This man, her husband, had suffered enough without him having to put up with her tears too.
‘You didn’t have dinner!’ she gasped, suddenly appalled, although she could not have eaten a thing herself. But just then the headlights of a car coming up the drive flashed across the window. ‘My father’s home,’ she offered jerkily, though was not taken aback when Nathan declined to rush out to meet him.
‘I’m surprised he bothered,’ he answered, bending to put on his shoes. But Phelix did not miss the hard note that had come to his voice.
‘What will you do?’ she asked, feeling crushed, sorrowfully knowing for certain now that her father did not intend to honour the deal he had made.
‘Frankly, I honestly don’t know,’ Nathan answered tautly, and suddenly Phelix could not bear it.
‘You can have my money,’ she offered. ‘I don’t know yet how much it will be, but you can have it all. I’ll—’
Nathan smiled then, a grim kind of a smile. ‘Enough is enough,’ he said.
‘You—don’t want it?’
Nathan shook his head. ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, little one, I’d cut my throat before I’d touch a penny of Bradbury money,’ he replied bluntly.
That ‘little one’ saved his remark from being as wounding as it would otherwise have been—and then they both heard the sound that told them that her father was coming up the stairs.
With the light of battle in his eyes, Nathan grabbed up his jacket and went out to confront him. Phelix hated rows, confrontation, but it started the moment her father saw Nathan coming from her bedroom.
‘What the hell game do you think you’re playing?’ Edward Bradbury roared.
‘I might well ask you the same question!’
‘I checked—you married her.’ There was a satisfied note in her father’s voice.
‘I kept my side of the bargain,’ Nathan agreed coldly.
‘Hard luck!’
‘You’re saying that you never had any intention of handing over that cheque?’
‘I thought you’d have twigged before now,’ her father gloated—and that was when Phelix discovered she had more backbone than she had thought. Which made it impossible for her to sit there and listen to the way her father, so careless of her, was so blatantly pleased with himself. ‘You can forget all about getting a cheque from me,’ he crowed.
‘Father!’ Phelix rushed from her room and out to the landing, ashamed, disgusted, and never more embarrassed to have such a parent. ‘You can’t possibly—’
‘Don’t you dare tell me what I can and cannot do!’ her father bellowed.
‘But you owe—’
‘I owe him nothing! He can forget about the money, and—’
‘And you, sir,’ Nathan cut across—furiously, ‘can shove your money!’ And somehow or other—perhaps in the thinking time during the long hours of his wait, perhaps with Phelix offering him the money she was due—Nathan seemed to sense now, when he hadn’t seen it before, that there was more in this for Edward Bradbury than allowing his daughter to have her own money. ‘And while you’re about it,’ he went on, his eyes glinting fury, ‘you can forget about the annulment too!’
That stopped Edward Bradbury dead in his tracks. ‘What are you saying?’ he demanded, looking more shaken than at any time Phelix had ever known.
‘Exactly what it sounds as if I’m saying!’ Nathan Mallory stood up to him.
Phelix saw her father’s glance dart slyly to her bedroom—and saw unadulterated fury sour his expression, none too sweet before. ‘Is this true?’ he turned to demand of his nightdress-clad daughter, his voice rising to a screaming roar when she was not quick enough to answer him. ‘Is this true?’ Hot colour flared to her face. She might be naïve in certain areas, but she knew what he was asking. ‘Is it?’ he shouted.
Her throat felt suddenly dry. She wasn’t sure what was happening here, but by the sound of it—if she’d got it right—Nathan wanted to score off her father by letting him think they had been—lovers.
Colour flared to her face again. Even her ears felt hot. But just then she truly felt that, in the light of her father’s conduct, she owed more loyalty to Nathan, the man she had married, than to her father.
‘If you’re asking have I slept with Nathan since our marriage, Father, then the answer is yes. Yes, I have,’ she answered. She did not dare look at Nathan as she said it, but realised full well what the huge lie implied—just as she realised that she must have said the right thing.
Because without a word to her Nathan, his chin jutting, leaned to her father, told him to, ‘Put that in your dishonourable drum and bang it, Bradbury,’ and walked down the stairs and out of the house.
And that was the last time she had seen him. Though even with her father’s plan for the marriage annulment scuppered it had not prevented Edward Bradbury from searching for an alternative route to get the marriage annulled. He’d still been nefariously plotting when, a few days later, Phelix had discovered exactly why that annulment was so important to him.
Feeling sickened that her own flesh and blood could care so little for her that he could so deliberately attempt to cheat her, Phelix had lost what little respect she’d had for her father. For the first time ever she had dug her heels in and refused to listen to any further talk of an annulment, or for that matter a divorce.
Had Nathan wanted a divorce or an annulment she would have agreed at any time. But he had not made any representation to that effect.
The church clock in front of her chiming the quarter hour brought Phelix back to the present.
Knowing she had to get back to the conference, she jumped up from the sun lounger, her thoughts promptly shooting back to Nathan Mallory. The night of their wedding was the last time she had seen him or had had any contact with him until today. She remembered his gentleness, his arm about her…
Stop it! She made her way to the conference knowing she was going to have to stop drifting off to relive matters that had taken place so long ago. She supposed it was just seeing Nathan again so unexpectedly that had set her off.
It was for sure she would have given Davos a very wide berth had she thought for a moment that he would be here this week. She had been aware, of course, that Mallory and Mallory had long since pulled themselves out of the financial crater they had been in. They were now one of the most top-notch companies in the business. But she had been certain that the heads of such large companies would not be bothered with this week’s conference, but would be circling around from next week, when the big noises from JEPC Holdings would be leading the show.
And yet,