‘Why? So that you can call the paparazzi and have them take close-ups?’ Feeling worse than she’d ever felt in her life, Polly stalked into the bathroom, slammed the door and defiantly turned the key in the lock.
Damn.
Discovering that tears stung the cut next to her eye, she ground her teeth and held back the emotion, knowing that a crying fit would simply add to her throbbing headache.
‘Miserable man—vile, inhuman machine—’ Venting in front of the mirror, she wet the corner of a towel and gingerly touched her head. ‘Oww.’ Gritting her teeth, she tried to analyse why she felt so let down. She was used to looking out for herself, wasn’t she? She’d always done it. She didn’t need Damon Doukakis flying to her rescue.
So why did she feel so let down? Why did it matter that his reasons for dumping his date to come and find her had been self-serving?
Polly stared at her white face in the mirror.
Because, just for a moment, she’d been taken in by those distracting flashes of chemistry. Just for a moment she’d forgotten this was all about his sister and made the mistake of thinking he cared about her a little bit.
That was what you got for dropping your guard.
Trying to ignore the pain, she took her time in the bathroom, wanting to make sure he’d gone before she emerged.
When she finally opened the door, the room was empty.
On the bed was a suitcase, presumably packed with the clothes she’d put on the list.
Fantastic Franco obviously worked fast.
On the table next to the bed were painkillers and a jug of water.
Polly sniffed, determined not to be grateful. Delivering painkillers didn’t make him thoughtful.
She swallowed them and then pulled on the lacy shorts and camisole she wore to bed, trying not to think about the serious-faced Franco packing her clothes. Digging out her BlackBerry from her bag, she checked her e-mails. Having satisfied herself that there was nothing that couldn’t wait until the morning, she settled on top of the bed, pulled out her notebook and started to scribble down thoughts for the following day’s meeting. Determined to show Gérard that he’d done the right thing appointing them as his agency, she sketched out a few new ideas until drowsiness got the better of her and she flopped back onto the pillows.
His hand locked around a glass of whisky, Damon watched the news report from the hospital. There were stills of Polly being lifted into an ambulance, blood visible on her face, and an interview with the doctor who refused to comment on her patient’s condition. It was enough to drive to most laid-back parent to the nearest telephone.
But the phone remained ominously silent.
What would it take, he wondered, to flush Peter Prince out of his love nest? Clearly more than an injured daughter.
What sort of man saw that his daughter was in hospital and still didn’t call her?
Contemplating that question, Damon drained the whisky. Responsibility towards family flowed through him, as much a part of his being as the blood that was his life force. He could no more abdicate that responsibility than he could stop breathing.
From the moment the police had broken the news about his parents he’d buried his own feelings and focused all his energies on providing for his sister.
Clearly Peter Prince felt no such sense of obligation.
Damon thought back to that day a decade earlier when he’d received the call from the school. He’d walked out of an important meeting to go to his sister and, yes, he’d given her a hard time. Children, especially teenagers, needed rules and discipline. But his abiding memory of that day wasn’t anything to do with Arianna. It was of Polly Prince, standing in one corner of the office, alone and defiant as he’d torn strips off her. Alone. There had been no sign of her father. At the time, Damon had taken that evidence of lax parenting to be the reason his daughter had slid so far off the rails.
Now he was wondering whether ‘lax’ should be replaced with ‘absent’.
Just what part had the man played in Polly’s life?
His phone buzzed. As he answered the call Damon glanced towards the guest room but the door remained firmly closed and he wondered uneasily if he should have checked on her again. The doctor had told him she needed someone around.
Trying to block out an unsettling image of Polly stretched unconscious on the floor of the guest bathroom, he spoke to his pilot an then terminated the call and considered his options.
Of course she wasn’t unconscious.
The girl was tougher than Kevlar.
But the image stayed with him as he gave a soft curse and strode through the apartment towards the guest suite. One look, he promised himself. As long as she was breathing, he’d leave her alone.
Pushing open the door, he saw her curled up in a ball on top of the bed, a notebook face down on the white silk cover, ink from a discarded pen spreading black blotches across the delicate fabric.
But it wasn’t the ink that caught his attention. It was the exceptional pallor of her face. Remembering the doctor’s comment that she should have stayed in hospital, he crossed the room swiftly, his overriding emotion one of concern. Was the wound bleeding again? He gently pushed her hair away from her face and the soft strands flowed over his hand like liquid gold, the scent of it distracting him from his purpose.
Reminding himself that he was supposed to be checking her head, he stroked her hair back and studied her face.
There were dark violet shadows under her eyes and the livid bruise on her forehead was an angry smudge. Asleep, she looked younger than ever.
How did she feel, he wondered, knowing that her father didn’t care enough to call?
Staring down at her, he remembered the words she’d thrown at him in the boardroom.
‘If there’s an emergency, I’m expected to handle it.’
To her credit, she’d been trying to handle it all day. Whatever he might think of the way he used office space, there was no denying that she’d worked hard to help settle the staff into their new surroundings and she’d defended them with a passion that had surprised him.
Wondering how anyone so small could be so monumentally aggravating, Damon gently removed the offending pen from her limp fingers and put it on the table next to the bed.
As he leaned forward and pulled the duvet over her, the pink notebook tumbled onto the floor.
Damon retrieved it, smoothed the crumpled pages, and was about to close it when something caught his eye.
Run, breathe, live…
She’d scribbled the words over the pages of her notebook in scrawling, loopy handwriting but what caught his attention were the other combinations.
Run, live
Run right
Live to run
Feel alive
She’d obviously been playing with a million combinations in an attempt to come up with a tagline that worked for the brand.
His attention still fixed on the book, Damon sank onto the side of the bed. With no qualms about delving into her privacy, he flicked back to the beginning, reading what she’d written.
One thing stood out with startling, unsettling clarity.
He’d been completely and utterly wrong in his assessment of Polly Prince.
The