As she rose from her desk she heard Harry and William come into the hallway from the kitchen. It was a butler’s job to answer doorbells, Ashley reminded herself, but she was drawn to the office door to see who was calling anyway.
It was a florist. Harry took receipt of a magnificent bunch of white carnations, thanked the delivery person, shut the door and turned to present them to Ashley as she came forward.
‘Wow! Chocolates and flowers!’ William remarked with unconcealed glee. ‘You’re doing real good, Mr. Cliffton.’
It drew an ironic smile from Harry. ‘They’re not from me, William.’
His face fell. He frowned at Ashley as Harry handed her the carnations, two dozen of them prettily set off with sprays of baby’s breath. ‘Who’s giving you flowers, Mum?’ he demanded.
Ashley was at a loss to answer until she read the accompanying card. Then she laughed. ‘It’s a peace offering from Gordon Payne.’ Harry must have fired a whole salvo of cannons to wring these expensive blooms out of her erstwhile enemy.
William was not amused. ‘Who’s Gordon Payne?’ he asked in a darkly disapproving tone.
‘A gentleman who did some business with me,’ Ashley replied, and took the opportunity to deliver an appropriate rebuke. ‘He was here yesterday afternoon and but for some very timely intervention, young man, you would have broken the windscreen of his Daimler.’
‘Wish I had,’ William muttered.
‘I beg your pardon?’
Mutiny looked her in the eye. ‘I don’t want him coming around to our house and giving you flowers. You didn’t even tell me about him,’ he went on accusingly.
‘I’m not in the habit of discussing my business with you, William,’ Ashley reproved, taken aback by what was plainly an aggressively rebellious stance.
‘If he’s sending you flowers, it is my business,’ he argued. ‘I want Mr. Cliffton to be my uncle. I reckon he’ll be tons better than any uncle Rodney Bixell’s ever had.’ He marched over to Harry’s side. ‘So I’m telling you right now, Mum. This is where I stand.’
Ashley was stunned speechless. She knew children were growing up rather too fast these days, but to have her nine-year-old son claiming the right to choose a live-in lover for her was a bit much to swallow. Even if he was echoing her own secret fancies.
A flood of embarrassment swept a tide of heat up her neck. She couldn’t meet Harry’s eyes. What had William been telling him? Or worse, proposing to him? Did he think she was to be had as easily as Rodney Bixell’s mother?
Harry, characteristically, took William’s declaration in his stride. ‘Thank you for your vote, William,’ he said with superb aplomb. ‘I don’t think you need worry about Gordon Payne.’
William looked up, eyes glistening with hope and something suspiciously like hero-worship. ‘You mean you’ll fight him for Mum?’
‘A duel to the death,’ he promised, blithely uncaring that William was taking a personal and not a professional slant on this totally misdirecting piece of gallantry.
Ashley found her voice. ‘That’s enough!’ she snapped, her eyes flashing a fury of pride between the two of them. ‘I will not have either of you arrange my life for me.’
‘It’s my life, too,’ William pointed out with irrefutable logic.
‘Go upstairs this instant, William,’ Ashley commanded, losing patience with him. ‘I’ll talk to you later.’
She thrust the bunch of carnations at Harry. ‘You finagled these. You deal with them. And after you’ve done that, I want to see you in my office.’
Having seized control out of threatening mayhem and impressed her displeasure on both of them, Ashley strode into the private sanctum where she had always ruled the roost. She slammed the door behind her to drive home the fact that she was the boss here. Her own boss. Those who lived under her roof had better toe her line.
Which was all very well, but as Ashley paced around her office in a ferment of passionate conviction about her own autonomy, an insidious little voice in her mind persisted in questioning what her line was. It was utter hypocrisy to deny that her own desires ran parallel to her son’s feelings as to Harry’s role in their lives. How, in all honesty, could she reprimand her son for virtually giving her the go-ahead to take what she had been dreaming about most of the day?
But Harry shouldn’t have encouraged him to believe there was a chance of him becoming his uncle, going so far as to suggest he would fight any other man for the position. It was wrong, without conscience.
Unless he meant it.
HARRY STEPPED INTO the office and closed the door quietly behind him. His demeanour was completely unruffled. To Ashley’s intense relief he wasn’t smiling. Nor was there any amusement twinkling in his brilliant blue eyes. She was so churned up, any trace of a humourous response from him might have triggered a burst of angry frustration.
She realised, after a few fraught seconds, that the tension in the room wasn’t entirely hers. His relaxed air was a cloak, another act of self-discipline. She felt the same sense of connection she had felt yesterday, stronger now with their knowledge of each other, pulsing with the need to broaden it, deepen it.
Goose flesh shivered over her skin. Her heart skipped to a faster beat. She faced him defensively across the desk, yet there was no defence in objects or space. His eyes held hers with searching intensity, with indomitable determination, and she stared back, caught in a thrall of desire that would not be repressed, despite the doubts that plundered her mind of any peace.
‘Why did you do it?’ she asked. ‘It wasn’t fair to involve William with our…with—’ She couldn’t find appropriate words.
‘He is naturally involved,’ Harry answered quietly. ‘He is not separate from you, Ashley.’
‘But you let him think…’ She gestured helplessly.
‘That I want to be your lover?’ he finished for her.
She nodded, her throat too constricted to speak.
‘I do,’ he said simply. ‘Why should I pretend other-wise?’
She struggled with his apparently open honesty. ‘Last night—’ she forced the words out ‘—you spoke of your love for Pen.’
‘She was a very meaningful part of my life. I will not deny or hide what I felt for her. But as you yourself pointed out to me, Ashley, that’s in the past. You and I occupy the present.’
It was precisely the argument she had comforted herself with last night, but she knew there were other considerations—their backgrounds, the countries they inhabited, the lives they lived…so much to separate them, even if these feelings could be trusted.
‘What of the future?’ she asked, struggling to decipher what was right, whether to seize the moment or give more weight to consequences.
‘Who can foretell the future? At this moment I want you. More than any woman I’ve wanted in years.’
She wanted him, too. More than any man she had ever met. She couldn’t deny it. Nor could she hide it from the blue eyes relentlessly boring into hers, revealing their own naked desire, compelling an unmitigated response from her. Yet how could she give it? How, when there were so many uncertainties plaguing her?
She had a responsibility to herself and to William to make the right decisions, the best decisions. How could she recklessly turn a blind eye to consequences and take what she wanted at this moment, for this moment,