She had still been in awe of her father in those days. But, having only a short while ago been party to the biggest untruth of all time, she had again felt the stirrings of breaking free from the chains of his life-long dictatorship over her.
‘Actually, Father, I’m eighteen now, and no longer require your permission,’ she had dared.
He had taken a step nearer and, purple with rage, had looked as though he might strike her. And it had taken every scrap of her courage not to cower back from him, but to stand her ground.
‘I’m not paying for your years of training!’ he had spat at her, enraged.
‘You don’t need to,” she had answered, still watching out for his clenching and unclenching fists at his side. ‘I’ve been to see Grandfather Bradbury’s solicitors. They tell me—’
‘You’ve done what?’
He had heard, she was not going to repeat it. ‘They were most surprised to learn that the letters they had sent me had gone astray.’ Not half as surprised as she had been to hear the full contents of her grandfather’s bequests to her—nor the conditions imposed. ‘But what happened to my private and confidential mail is no longer important. I now know I have sufficient money to fund my own studies.’
Edward Bradbury had thrown her an evil look. She’d always been aware that he had no love or liking for her, and in the days when it had mattered to her she had wondered if it would have been different had she been the son he had so desperately wanted. But his love and liking had never been there, and had he ever loved her mother that love had died stone cold dead when she had failed to produce the male heir he’d so badly wanted.
‘Would you like me to leave home?’ Phelix had been brave enough to volunteer, more than hoping he would say yes.
She supposed she had known in advance that he would say no—she was the buffer between him and their housekeeper, Grace Roberts. In actual fact Phelix knew that Grace had only stayed on after her mother, the gentle Felicity, had been killed, for her sake. Edward Bradbury was under no illusion that if his daughter left then Grace, who was only a few years away from retirement anyway, would leave too. He enjoyed Grace’s cooking, enjoyed the fact that his shirts were laundered exactly as he liked them, enjoyed that his home was run on oiled wheels—he had not the smallest interest in spending his time trying to find a new housekeeper who would only measure halfway up to Grace’s standards.
‘No, I wouldn’t!’ he had reported bluntly, and stormed out of the room.
Phelix came out of her reverie and supposed she ought to make tracks for the Kongresszentrum. But she had little enthusiasm for the day’s events: a general introduction and getting to know some of the people. ‘Networking’ as her father called it.
She was more than a little off him at the moment. Had she not made that phone call to Henry from the airport before she had left yesterday she would probably not have known until today exactly why her father was so insistent that she attend.
‘Do I really have to go, Henry?’ she had asked the senior lawyer.
‘Your father will play hell if you don’t,’ he’d answered gently. ‘Though…’ He’d paused.
‘What?’ Phelix had asked quickly, sensing something was coming that she might not be too happy about.
‘Um—you’re coming back a week tomorrow, right?’
‘I’ll come back as soon as I can. Though I suppose I’d better stick it out until then. My father and all the big chiefs will be there from a week Wednesday—thank goodness I don’t have to be!’
‘Er—not all the bigwigs are leaving it until next week,’ Henry informed her kindly—and suddenly her heart lurched.
There was a roaring in her ears. No, she definitely wasn’t going! Though, hold on a minute, her father would never send her on this mission if he thought for a single moment that he would be there.
‘Who?’ she asked faintly, wanting confirmation and urgently.
‘Ross Dawson,’ Henry supplied, and a whole welter of relief surged through her.
To be followed a few seconds later by a spurt of annoyance at yet another sign of her father’s underhandedness. Ross Dawson was a few years older that her own twenty-six years. He was the son of the chairman of Dawson and Cross and, it had to be said, had a ‘thing’ for her despite Phelix telling him frequently and often that he was wasting his time.
‘Do me a favour, Henry?’
‘I’ve already done it.’ He laughed, and she laughed too. All too plainly Henry Scott had known that she would check in with him before she left London.
‘Where am I staying?’ she asked, loving Henry that, without waiting to ask, he had transferred her hotel booking.
‘A lovely hotel half a mile or so from the conference centre,’ he replied. ‘You’ll be more than comfortable there.’
‘You’ve cancelled my other reservation?’
‘Everything’s taken care of,’ Henry assured her.
She rang off a few minutes later, knowing that her father would go up the wall if he ever found out. But she did not care. It went without saying that Ross Dawson would be staying at the hotel she had previously been booked into—her father would have got that piece of information to him somehow.
Deciding she had better be going, Phelix checked her appearance in the full length mirror. She’d had her usual early-morning swim, in the hotel’s swimming pool this time, and was glowing with health. She stared at the elegant and sophisticated unsmiling woman who looked back at her, with black shiny hair that curved inwards just below her dainty chin. She used little make-up, and did not need to. She wore an immaculate trouser suit of a shade of green that brought out to perfection the green of her eyes.
Phelix gave a small nod of approval to the female she had become. There was nothing about her now—outwardly, at any rate—of the shy, long hair all over the place, gauche apology for a woman she had been eight years ago. And she was glad of it—it had been a hard road.
Having hired a car in Zurich and driven to Davos, she opted to walk to the conference centre, and left her hotel quietly seething that her father so wanted an ‘in’ with Dawson and Cross that he was fully prepared to make full use of Ross Dawson’s interest in, not to say pursuit of her to that end. He was obviously hoping that by spending a week in close proximity of each other, with limited chance of her avoiding Ross, something might come of it!
She wouldn’t put it past her father to even have telephoned in the first instance on some business pretext, and then casually let Ross, a director of Dawson and Cross, know that his daughter would be in Davos for a whole week.
She felt hurt as well as angry that her father, having sold her once, cared so little for her he was fully prepared to do it again. Over her dead body!
But, thanks to Henry having got wind of what was going on, he had been able to forewarn her, and at least do a little something to limit the time she had to spend with Ross. Not that she didn’t like Ross. She did. She just had an extreme aversion to being manipulated. And, in the light of past events, who could blame her?
She knew that her father had been having a liaison with his PA, Anna Fry, for years. She wished he would concentrate his attentions more on Anna, and leave his daughter out of his scheming.
As Phelix neared the Kongresszentrum she saw other smartly dressed representatives making their way towards the entrance. She would be glad to see Chris and Duncan, she realised, and hoped nobody else would wonder, as she had before Henry had tipped her off, what possible reason she could have for being there. At least she had been spared the surprise of seeing Ross Dawson unexpectedly.
She made her way inside the building, hoping there were no other unexpected surprises waiting for her on this trip.