‘Isadora is coolly elegant,’ Griffin continued consideringly. ‘But Izzy—well, Izzy is something else!’ he murmured appreciatively.
The red colour that flooded her cheeks at this comment almost matched the colour of her hair. ‘I thought we’d agreed never to refer to that again!’ she bit out stiffly.
He shrugged unconcernedly. ‘That was before. Things are different now.’
‘Not for me, they aren’t,’ Dora cut in sharply, her hands tightly gripping two books she had picked up to replace back on the shelf.
That green gaze swept scathingly over her appearance once again. ‘Obviously not,’ he derided, shaking his head reprovingly. ‘Charles was my brother, Izzy, and as such I loved him but nevertheless I was also aware of his faults. And one thing I’m damned sure of—he was not the type of man to inspire a love that would result in a lifetime of mourning at his death!’
Dora gasped. ‘You’re so—’
‘Good God, woman,’ Griffin continued, as if she hadn’t spoken, ‘even my mother has picked herself up from the blow Charles’s death was to her plans of continued glory for the family name! And we all know how determined she was that Charles should have a respectable marriage—so that he could follow our father into politics and eventually obtain a Knighthood!’ Griffin’s mouth twisted derisively at the latter.
But he was right, of course. Dora had always known of Margaret Sinclair’s ambition for her eldest son to take over in the political arena where her late husband had left off after his death twenty years ago. And as the daughter of Professor Baxter, famous university lecturer until his retirement ten years ago, Dora had been the perfect choice as a wife for Charles.
Unfortunately Charles had been killed in a car accident ten months ago, and all of Margaret’s plans with him. Because even if Griffin Sinclair had been in the least bit interested in politics—which he most assuredly wasn’t!—he was not a man, at aged thirty-four, to be moulded into anyone’s else’s ambitions, and least of all those of his mother!
‘Something else I’m damned sure of,’ Griffin continued, his eyes glittering. ‘If the boot had been on the other foot—if you had been the one to die in that crash instead of him— Charles wouldn’t still be mourning you! After a period of grief, followed by a respectable time-lapse, he would have been looking around for your replacement! Or my mother would—so that he could get on with his career!’
Dora knew that he was right about that too, her face pale now at the deliberate cruelty of his words.
‘And how about you?’ Griffin challenged. ‘Hasn’t your father found you another rising star yet, who can be moulded into a suitable son-in-law for him?’
Dora thought briefly of Sam, a doctor she had seen several times during the last few months, and knew that he didn’t fit that description at all. Sam was dedicated enough; it was just that Dora didn’t feel that way about him. And her father, she knew, on the one occasion he’d happened to meet Sam, hadn’t been impressed.
‘You know…’ Griffin shook his head disgustedly, his smile humourless now. ‘I always thought, with both their partners passed away, your father and my mother should have been the ones to marry each other—they’re both ruthless, conniving, manipulative—’
‘My father died last week, Griffin,’ Dora cut in flatly. ‘That’s the reason I’m wearing black.’
He looked stunned for a moment, and then his mouth twisted wryly. ‘Are you sure? Did you double check before they—?’
‘Griffin!’ she gasped, incredulous at his complete lack of feeling for her loss, as well as the death of another human being. In their short acquaintance, Griffin had struck her as many things, but unfeeling wasn’t one of them…
‘His sort don’t die, Izzy,’ Griffin maintained grimly. ‘They’re usually stuffed and put on exhibition—’
‘He wasn’t a ‘‘sort’’, Griffin,’ she bit out tautly. ‘He was my father.’
‘Oh, I know who he was, Izzy,’ he dismissed scathingly, ‘I also know what he was,’ he added grimly.
She shook her head. ‘I’ve never understood this dislike you had for my father.’ What had he ever done to Griffin? Except disapprove of the younger man’s whole lifestyle, of course!
Griffin was everything her father despised in a man: no permanent home, a job that he did if and when he felt like it—and Dora would be surprised if he even so much as possessed a suit! And as for that overlong hair—! No, Griffin wasn’t a man her father could ever have approved of. But she had never quite understood why Griffin felt the same aversion towards her father… Maybe it was the reverse, and Griffin had despised her father’s own respectable lifestyle? Whatever it was, the two men had heartily disliked each other from the moment they had been introduced.
‘I realise that,’ Griffin answered harshly. ‘And I’m not about to be the one to shatter your illusions about him!’
She sighed. ‘Griffin, when you arrived you said you had just called in to do something,’ she reminded him firmly. ‘Perhaps you would like to tell me what that ‘‘something’’ was, and then I can get on with my work?’ She looked at him with steady grey eyes.
He looked about them pointedly at the bookcases of mainly leather-bound books. ‘Not exactly bursting over with customers, are you,’ he said dryly. ‘What are you going to do with this place now that your father is gone? Sell it, I suppose.’ He nodded in answer to his own statement. ‘There can’t be too much call—’
‘I have no intention of selling this shop,’ Dora burst out indignantly. ‘I—have plans of my own. Changes in mind,’ she added guardedly.
It still sounded more than a little disrespectful to talk of making changes in the shop which had been her father’s work for the last ten years of his life when he had only been dead for ten days.
Her father had been—difficult; she acknowledged that. Since her mother had died, ten years ago, when Dora was sixteen and studying for her A levels, it had been just the two of them. And, once her A levels had been completed and attained, Dora had spent her time taking care of their home and helping her father in the shop, putting her own plans for going to university on hold.
Until her father no longer needed her, she had told herself at the time, not realising that that time would never come. Her father’s health hadn’t been particularly good after the death of Dora’s mother; his heart-attack ten days ago had been devastating, but not exactly unexpected.
So now, at twenty-six, Dora was at last free to pursue her own aborted plans. But after all this time she felt it was too late. She had the house, and this shop, and had every intention of making something of her life. Despite Griffin Sinclair’s derision!
He really was the most incredible man. It seemed he abided by none of the conventions that most other people lived by. His remarks concerning her father’s death, for example, had been disgraceful.
Oh, Dora accepted there had been no love lost between the two men, her father considering the younger man to be a Bohemian reprobate while Griffin had believed her father to be—what had he called him earlier?—ruthless, conniving and manipulative.
Dora didn’t completely agree with either of those opinions, but she had been left in no doubt that the two men disliked each other intensely.
And as for Griffin’s reference to ‘Izzy’…! That wasn’t just something they had agreed never to talk about; it was something she preferred not to even think about, either!
‘What sort of ‘‘plans’’?’ Griffin was watching her with narrowed eyes. ‘Don’t tell me you’re actually going to drag this place into the twentieth century?’
He could mock all he liked, but her plans were her business,