‘Xander looks tired too, Mummy,’ Daisy observed softly.
‘Mr Sterne, darling,’ Sam corrected distractedly, more than a little concerned for him herself.
Daisy frowned. ‘He told me this morning that I should call him Xander.’
Sam looked down at her daughter in surprise. ‘He did?’
‘Yes.’ Daisy gave a gap-toothed smile; she looked adorable in the amethyst-coloured knee-length party gown that had been bought especially for the occasion. Sam had happily missed out on lunches to see her daughter looking so happy.
She regarded her daughter quizzically. ‘You like him, don’t you?’
Daisy nodded. ‘He’s nice.’
After spending the last twenty-four hours with him, that was even less the word Sam would have used to describe Xander Sterne than it had been when Daisy had asked about him yesterday afternoon!
He was impossible. Infuriating. Arrogant. Most certainly outrageous on occasion; Sam still hadn’t forgotten that intimate conversation the previous evening regarding whether or not she had any tattoos, and where she might have them if she did. A tattoo that the scooped neckline of her gown barely managed to cover...
But nice? Xander was much too immediately male to be described with such an insipid word.
And yet Daisy, who was so often shy in the company of men, seemed totally relaxed in Xander’s company.
Obviously Daisy saw something in him that Sam didn’t.
Or, more likely, not...
Being only five, Daisy wouldn’t be aware of Xander’s immediacy, of how disturbingly male he was. Or recognise that the man possessed a lethal and sensual magnetism. And the naked body of a Norse god—
‘Ready?’
And the stealth of a predator!
Sam had been so lost in her own thoughts that she hadn’t even been aware of Xander’s return, despite the sound the rubber end of his walking stick must surely have made on the marble floor.
She straightened her shoulders determinedly. ‘Ready.’ She nodded briskly. ‘If you and Daisy would like to sit here and wait, I’ll go down in the lift to the car park and bring your car round to the front of the building?’ She looked down questioningly at Daisy.
‘Good idea.’ Xander nodded. ‘We’ll be okay here together, won’t we, Daisy?’ He hadn’t missed Samantha’s deference to her young daughter over the suggested arrangements.
Did Samantha somehow sense that inner rage Xander was at such pains to try and keep under his control?
He and Darius had found plenty of time to chat this morning, once Samantha had dropped him off at his brother’s apartment. Darius had once again been at pains to reassure Xander that the reason for his rage six weeks ago was perfectly understandable, that he would have reacted to that situation in the same way, and that Xander had only responded so strongly to that situation because of their own family history of having an abusive father. That it didn’t mean Xander would ever feel that angry again.
But what if Darius was wrong? And what if Samantha had sensed that rage inside him?
Xander gave a jolt of surprise as Daisy smiled up at him shyly as she slipped her warm little hand into his much larger one. ‘I’ll stay here and look after Xander for you, Mummy.’
Xander was so bemused by having that little hand resting so trustingly in his that it took him a second or two to register exactly what Daisy had said. Causing him to grimace, when he looked up to find himself the focus of the laughing eyes of Daisy’s mother.
Great; not only was his blasted leg aching like the devil, because he had been on it for most of the day and had stubbornly refused to use his crutches, but now he was the focus of Daisy’s sympathy and the butt of Samantha’s amusement.
Still, there was some compensation to remaining here with Daisy, Xander decided as the two of them sat down in two of the armchairs in the marble reception area, and so allowing him to watch the sexy sway of Samantha’s hips and bottom as she walked over to the lift that would take her down to the car parked in the underground car park, which he had insisted she use to drive herself and Daisy to the wedding earlier.
For all that she was only a little over five feet tall, Samantha’s slender legs looked long and silky above the three-inch-heeled shoes she was wearing today.
Causing Xander to muse as to how it would feel to have those silky legs wrapped about his waist...
What the...?
While Xander had been sitting there imagining how he would make love to Samantha, another man had approached her and was now holding tightly to her arm as he talked to her.
A man, Xander noted grimly as Samantha turned briefly to shoot a worried glance in his own and Daisy’s direction, who had caused her face to pale.
Xander instantly felt that rising tide of anger he had hoped never to feel again. And for the same reason: the sight of a man roughly manhandling a woman.
The man’s fingers painfully gripped the top of one of Samantha’s arms as he talked to her in a lowered and intense tone.
* * *
‘Take your hand off me, Malcolm!’ Sam snapped agitatedly as she stared up into the face of the man she had once been married to but had hoped never to set eyes on again after the divorce.
It was a handsome face still, dominated by glittering blue eyes, the darkness of Malcolm’s hair, at the age of forty-one, showing only a distinguished sprinkling of grey at his temples, his perfectly tailored suit emphasising the width of his shoulders, and narrow waist and hips.
What were the chances, the probability, that Malcolm would be at the London Midas Hotel on the very same evening that Sam happened to be here for Andy and Darius’s wedding reception?
What were the chances, with Sam’s change in circumstances after their separation and divorce, that she would ever have been inside the exclusive Midas hotel at all, let alone on the same evening as her ex?
Unless...
Was it possible that Malcolm could be one of the evening guests invited to Andy and Darius’s wedding?
Sam had mentioned her brief marriage and divorce to Andy, of course, but only in passing, and in relation to how that might affect Daisy. She certainly hadn’t told her friend the name of the man she had once been briefly married to.
Sam knew the newly married couple had invited fifty or so guests for the evening part of the wedding reception, most of them parents of the children to whom Andy taught ballet, or business acquaintances of Darius’s.
Was it possible that Malcolm was one of the latter?
It was more than possible, Sam acknowledged with an inward groan, wondering why it had never occurred to her before that Malcolm and Darius might know each other. Malcolm was a successful businessman, just as Darius and Xander were, and—
Did that mean that Xander knew Malcolm too?
‘I asked what you’re doing here, Sam,’ Malcolm rasped harshly, her request that he release her obviously having had absolutely no effect, as his fingers continued to bite painfully into the top of her arm.
Her eyes flashed. ‘And I told you that it’s absolutely none of your business what I do any more.’ She glanced behind him to where a beautiful blonde stood waiting for him.
‘And aren’t you being a little rude just leaving your date standing over there alone while you verbally abuse your ex-wife?’
‘I don’t give a damn whether it’s rude or not.’
‘Well, I do!’ Sam snapped, her days of being intimidated by this man—visibly, at