Silke’s heart sank—and she felt like leaving herself when she emerged from the building that housed her mother’s agency to find an all too familiar silver Mercedes screeching to a halt beside the pavement, a furious-looking Lyon Buchanan climbing jerkily out from behind the wheel, the violent slamming of the car door behind him evidence that his mood hadn’t improved from earlier—in fact, from the glittering fury in his eyes as he spotted her, it had got worse! What on earth had she done now? Silke wondered warily.
He towered over her ominously as he came to an abrupt halt in front of her, a nerve pulsing in his cheek the only sign that he wasn’t as in control as he usually appeared to be.
‘You’re a fast worker, I’ll give you that,’ he ground out between clenched teeth, the nerve in his cheek pulsing even more erratically.
Silke blinked up at him frowningly. ‘Sorry?’
‘Not as sorry as you’re going to be,’ he assured her hardly, the lean fingers of one hand tightly grasping the top or her arm as he began to march her towards his car.
This man was far too fond of frog-marching and bullying her into going places she didn’t want to go, and quite frankly Silke had had enough of it. More than enough!
She wrenched out of his grasp, wincing at the pain this caused to exactly the same bruised spot where he had grasped her earlier. She was going to be very badly bruised by the time he had finished with her. Or she had finished with him, which she was just about to do!
‘I don’t know what your problem is now, Mr Buchanan,’ she told him heatedly. ‘And, quite frankly, I have no wish to know either! Just as I have no wish to be manhandled by you again—’
‘Think yourself lucky it’s only your arm I’ve hurt,’ he rasped as she rubbed the bruised spot. ‘What I would really like to do is wring your damned neck!’ He glared down at her.
Considering they were standing in the middle of a busy street, office workers pouring out of the building on either side of them, pushing past the two of them in their rush to get home, it might be a little difficult for him to actually carry out that particular threat at the moment. Although, knowing him as she did, Silke wasn’t so sure of that...
What on earth had she done now?
‘My uncle,’ he bit out viciously, ‘has just informed me that he’s met the woman he intends making his wife!’
Silke looked up at him blankly. But, as Lyon continued to glare down at her, realisation began to dawn!
‘Don’t look so innocent, Silke,’ Lyon rasped savagely. ‘You know damn well I’m talking about you. Henry has just informed me that he intends marrying you as soon as he can persuade you to say yes!’ His coldly contemptuous gaze raked over her. ‘Which I’m sure won’t take him too long!’
Silke couldn’t speak, couldn’t have uttered a word if she had tried. What was the man talking about?
LYON BUCHANAN’S mouth twisted derisively as Silke continued to gape up at him. ‘Don’t try and tell me the news has come as a surprise to you,’ he snapped contemptuously. ‘You must have done something to encourage Henry to think along those lines.’
She shook her head dazedly. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘No?’ Lyon said scathingly. ‘Henry has lived for sixty-seven years without contemplating marriage to any woman, and yet after meeting you this morning he suddenly decides to take the plunge; forgive me, Silke, if I find your shock a little hard to believe!’
She was starting to come out of the shock now, and as she did, she knew that Lyon had made an error of some sort. Most unusual for him, she was sure! But she had seen the way Henry looked at her mother earlier, her mother’s reaction to seeing him, knew that there had once been—possibly still was, if her mother’s flight at the mere sight of Henry was anything to go by!—some very strong emotion between the older couple. In fact...
‘What exactly did your uncle say?’ she prompted guardedly.
Lyon’s nostrils flared angrily. ‘I told you—’
‘I said exactly,’ Silke reminded him quietly, her mind racing.
He drew in a harsh breath. ‘Henry was slightly groggy by the time I managed to talk to him; Peter had given him something to help him relax. But Henry made a point of telling me he was going to marry you as soon as he’s out of hospital,’ his voice rose angrily again over the last.
‘Not me,’ Silke told him firmly, frowning, positive now Henry hadn’t been talking about her. Just what sort of relationship had Henry and her mother had in the past for Henry to have made such a statement to his nephew?
‘Of course it was you, damn it!’ Lyon looked as if he were about to explode. ‘You—’
‘Satin,’ Silke said with certainty, preoccupied with thoughts of her mother and Henry. ‘I’m sure Henry told you he was going to marry Satin.’ She looked at him enquiringly.
‘Silke, Satin, it’s the same thing; I told you, he was groggy when I spoke to him,’ Lyon dismissed impatiently.
Not too groggy to know exactly who he was talking about—and what he wanted! My God, her mother had some explaining to do!
‘You’re wrong, Mr Buchanan,’ Silke shook her head ruefully. ‘It isn’t the same thing at all. And I’m sure when your uncle feels less—groggy he’ll tell you that himself.’
‘And I’m telling you that I have no intention of letting a little gold-digger like you marry my uncle!’ he bit out contemptuously.
Silke frowned up at him. He really was the most insulting—! ‘And just exactly what right do you think you have to tell anyone who they should or shouldn’t marry?’ she scorned. ‘From the little I’ve seen of you, you wouldn’t know love if it jumped up and bit you on the nose!’ She was breathing hard in her agitation. What right did he have to call her a gold-digger? He didn’t even know her. Or her mother. Which, if she wasn’t mistaken, was going to be more to the point—because she was sure it was her mother Henry had decided he was going to marry. And she was no more a gold-digger than Silke was.
Lyon’s face might have been carved out of granite, his mouth a thin, angry line. ‘You aren’t trying to tell me you love my uncle?’ he derided harshly.
‘Not yet,’ she answered vaguely. But if what she suspected were to become fact, she had a feeling she was going to be put in a position where she could possibly learn to love him as a stepfather. If Henry ever persuaded her mother to stop running. And Silke was positive he was going to have a damn good try at doing exactly that!
‘But you might be able to force yourself,’ Lyon rasped with contempt. ‘Taking into account his bank balance—and his obvious ill-health. After all, the chances are, with his heart complaint, that you wouldn’t have to be married to him for too long before he—’
Silke had never hit anyone in her life before. Until that moment. And there was no thought behind it now either, just an instinctive response to the insult Lyon was making to both her and Henry. Just who did this man think he was? How dared he say those things about her after knowing her for so brief a time?
But if she thought she was angry then, her emotions were mild in comparison with his; his face was deathly white, a nerve pulsing in one rigidly clenched cheek, the red marks where her fingers had made contact standing out lividly against that abnormal paleness. But as usual it was his eyes that were most expressive, glittering dangerously, almost silver in their intensity.
Silke stared up at him wordlessly, shocked by her own actions as much as by his reaction to it.
‘You’re going to regret you ever did that,’