Till he’d looked at the photos again.
Scott’s teeth clenched down hard in his jaw after which he glanced up at his patient PA. ‘No coffee right now, thank you, Cleo,’ he told her, doing his best to sound normal and not like a man about to face a firing squad. ‘Oh, and, Cleo...thanks for standing in for me last Friday. I don’t know what I would do without you.’
Cleo shrugged. ‘Afraid I didn’t do you much good. The investor made it obvious that he didn’t like dealing with a female, especially one who’s under thirty. Still, if you want my opinion, you’re better off without his money. I didn’t like the look of him at all. He had shifty eyes.’
Scott smiled a wry smile. Cleo had the habit of judging people by their eyes. And strangely, she was usually right. She’d prevented him making errors in judgment several times. And she had liked Sarah, had thought her the loveliest, nicest girl. He supposed no one could always be right.
‘I’ll scratch him off as a potential partner, then,’ he said.
‘That would be my advice. Still, you’ll need to find someone else quick smart, Scott, or you’ll have to shut down the nickel refinery. Maybe the mine as well. You can’t keep running both at a loss indefinitely.’
‘Yes, I know that,’ he bit out. ‘Look, do some research and see who might be open to investment. Someone from Australia maybe. Ah, Harvey’s here. Come in, Harvey.’
Cleo left them to it, Harvey’s poker face revealing absolutely nothing as he walked in. Harvey was in his mid-fifties, a big burly man and totally bald, with a craggily handsome face, an uncompromising mouth and cold blue eyes. He’d spent twenty years on the police force and another ten as a private detective before he’d become Scott’s head of security. His bouncer-like appearance made him an excellent bodyguard, a job he’d done for Scott on occasion. Being a successful mining magnate did have its hazards, especially when a mine had to be closed, even temporarily. Despite his blue-collar appearance—Harvey was wearing jeans and a black leather bomber jacket—Harvey was also an IT expert, an invaluable security tool in this day and age.
Scott shut his office door then waved Harvey to one of the two armchairs in front of his desk.
‘So what have you found out?’ he asked straight away, hiding his escalating tension behind a brusque tone.
Harvey’s eyes carried the closest thing to compassion that Scott had ever seen in them.
His heart sank, his stomach swirling with sudden nausea. Slumping into his office chair, he scooped in a deep breath then let it out slowly. ‘From the look on your face, I presume you haven’t any good news to tell me.’
‘No.’
A man of few words, was Harvey.
Scott gathered himself in readiness for the worst. ‘Okay, shoot,’ he said.
Harvey leant forward and placed Scott’s phone on the desktop before settling back into the chair.
‘First things first,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘The phone used to send you those photos was a throwaway. Couldn’t be traced.’
‘I suspected that,’ Scott said. ‘Were they real, though? The photos?’
‘Yes. They weren’t doctored in any way.’
Scott swallowed the bile that rose in his throat. ‘What about the dates and times they were taken?’
‘Also real. I was able to confirm everything by checking the hotel’s security vision. They have cameras set up everywhere.’
‘And what hotel was it?’
‘The Regency.’
Scott’s gut tightened. The Regency was a five-star hotel that was a stone’s throw from the building where Sarah worked. ‘What else have you found out?’ he asked, resigned to more bad news.
‘I spoke to a member of the bar staff who was working last Friday at lunchtime. He remembered Sarah.’
Of course he did, Scott thought grimly. Any man who wasn’t blind would remember Sarah. She was a stunning-looking girl with long creamy blonde hair, big blue eyes and a mouth that would tempt Saint Peter himself. Add to that a slender but shapely figure that was always housed in softly feminine clothes and you had a package that drew every man’s eye—and kept it.
Scott had never forgotten the first moment he’d laid eyes on her. It had been just on fifteen months ago. He’d been in the process of buying a clapped-out diamond mine he’d had a hunch about and had arrived early for an appointment at Goldstein & Evans, a Sydney legal firm he always used for signing business contracts. Sarah had been sent to greet him, acting more like an accomplished hostess rather than the newly graduated lawyer that he’d soon found out that she was. Scott had fallen madly in love at first sight. She’d confessed to him one week later on their third dinner date that she’d been similarly smitten with him.
And he’d believed her. Three months later she’d become his wife. One year later, it looked as if she was about to become his ex-wife.
Scott cleared his throat. ‘What else did the barman say?’
‘He said they looked pretty cosy together. Sat off in a very private corner. Didn’t drink much. Just talked. Then after about fifteen minutes, they upped and left.’
‘Right,’ Scott bit out. They both knew exactly where they’d gone. The photos had told the story. First, the man had gone to Reception and booked a room. Then they’d ridden up in the lift and gone into the room, not emerging till forty-five minutes later.
‘On the plus side, the barman did say he’d never seen her in there before,’ Harvey added.
Terrific. But there were other hotels in Sydney’s CBD. Heaps of them.
‘The guy looked familiar, though,’ Harvey went on. ‘Been there with some other woman on a few occasions. A brunette.’
‘Did you find out who he was?’
‘Yup. His name is Philip Leighton. Mid-thirties. A lawyer.’
‘And he works for Goldstein & Evans.’
‘Spot on. In the family law section. He specialises in divorces. Society divorces mainly. People with money. His own family is wealthy. His father’s a senator. Word is Mr Leighton has his eye on going into politics himself. He’s not married and doesn’t have a permanent partner. Quite the ladies’ man, according to a work colleague of his I spoke to this morning. “A silver-tongued charmer” was the way this chap described him.’
Scott tried to blank his mind out to where that silver tongue might have been, but it was impossible, a black cloud of jealousy descending to darken his mood further. He hated being taken for a fool. And Sarah had taken him for a fool. Her outrage last Saturday morning had all been a sham to deflect attention away from her own guilt. The plain truth was Sarah had allowed herself to be seduced by that smooth-looking bastard.
Maybe if you hadn’t been going away on business so much lately, it wouldn’t have happened...
God, now he was making excuses for her!
Scott sat up straighter in his chair before sending his head of security what