Passionate Winter. Carole Mortimer
don’t want it,’ she said firmly.
‘Take it!’ Gavin ordered. ‘It will help steady your nerves.’
‘They don’t happen to be unsteady!’ She glared at him with dislike. ‘And I don’t like alcohol, you know that.’ She brought one of her hands forward to brush back her dark swathe of long hair, and Gavin, thinking she had relented, pushed the glass at her in a triumphant gesture. The amber liquid upset all over her dark blue jeans and the coldness of it made her gasp.
‘Ooh!’ She brushed frantically at the fast soaking in liquid, wrinkling her nose delicately at the stickiness of her legs.
Gavin pulled out a handkerchief and began mopping up as best he could, bending down on one knee to gain better access to the largest of the wet patches on her jeans.
Leigh, seeing her chance of escape, pushed him over, and not waiting to see any more she ran blindly to the door. She found herself in an unfamiliar darkened room and realising her mistake turned to re-enter the lounge, only to be stopped in her tracks by the harsh anger of a voice she didn’t recognise.
‘Gavin! What the hell are you doing on the floor?’
Leigh resisted an impulse to chuckle at the ridiculous picture Gavin must make lying on the floor, unwilling to draw this man’s attention to herself. She wondered how Gavin was going to explain himself to this obviously angry man.
‘Dad!’ Gavin exclaimed, and Leigh shrank back against the door. Piers Sinclair! And from what his son had mentioned about him he certainly wasn’t going to help the situation in any way. ‘Why are you here?’ he asked his father lamely.
‘I happen to live here. I take it you have no objection to my staying in my own home?’ the voice asked scathingly. Leigh had to admit that she felt rather curious about the man that went with that voice, its deep tone husky and attractive.
‘Er … no … But I…’
‘Yes? God, it smells like a brewery in here! How much have you had to drink, Gavin? And where’s Lee?’
So he had told his father he was bringing her here after all! She felt some of the tension leaving her rigidly held body, or did that man assume, as Gavin had, that she intended sleeping with his son! If so, Gavin was right and the Nichols’ must have very broad minds to tolerate such behaviour from their employer. But if the money was right, who were they to complain?
‘Leigh is …’ Gavin hesitated. ‘Leigh is in your study.’
‘In my—–! What the hell is he doing in there?’
Before Leigh could move further back into the room the study door was flung open and she stood in the sudden glare of the lights staring at the silhouette of the man she only knew as a name, her violet eyes huge and terrified. The man before her took a step forward and pulled her effortlessly into the lounge.
Leigh stared up into a pair of deep blue eyes set in a ruggedly handsome face. At the moment his features were grim and forbidding, but even so Leigh found him completely devastating. It was perfectly obvious that this was Gavin’s father, the likeness between them was too great to be any other. But whereas Gavin’s face was still young and boyish, this man’s was hard and cynical, as if he had seen all life had to offer and found it wanting. He was aged between thirty-five and forty and Leigh found herself trembling at his nearness.
No man had ever affected her like this before and she found it impossible to look away from his narrowing eyes. Dark brown hair, almost black, flecked with grey at the temples, grew low on his collar and the sideburns low down his jawline. He was dressed in close-fitting black trousers and a black silk shirt unbuttoned almost to the low waistband of his trousers, and looked very lean and attractive. Over these he wore a thick sheepskin jacket, and Leigh found herself wishing he would take it off so that she could see him better. No wonder Gavin’s mother had left such a man! Any woman would have difficulty holding and keeping him by her side.
He dropped her arm, stepping back to survey her tousled dark hair and dishevelled appearance before turning his mocking eyes on his now standing son. Gavin was studiously brushing down his denims, effectively avoiding his father’s eyes. ‘Well?’ Piers Sinclair demanded, his expression deceptively lazy. To Leigh he had the look of a sleepy feline, a black panther perhaps.
‘Well what?’ Gavin asked evasively.
Gavin was playing for time and Leigh knew it, unfortunately for Gavin, so did his father. But he had told his father about her—or at least, he had told him something. Whatever the information had been she felt sure Piers Sinclair had not expected her to be here. Then why had he asked about Leigh? It was all too puzzling for her and she sighed deeply.
Piers Sinclair looked at her with cold indifference. ‘As my son doesn’t seem forthcoming perhaps you wouldn’t mind supplying a few simple answers to a few simple questions. Like, who the hell are you? What are you doing here, if that isn’t a rather too stupid question,’ he added enigmatically. ‘And why do you smell like a whisky bottle? Unless of course you’ve drunk the contents of one, which wouldn’t surprise me—your eyes look over-bright and your appearance isn’t exactly perfection.’
Leigh gasped in disbelief. Somewhere along the line she had come out of this as the person in the wrong, how she didn’t know, but she felt her temper rising at this man’s unwarranted rudeness. ‘My name, Mr Sinclair, happens to be Leigh, Leigh Stanton.’ She saw dawning realisation in his eyes and carried on, her voice stilted with disapproval at his attitude. ‘I’m here because your son chose to bring me here. And I smell of whisky because Gavin tipped a whole glassful down my jeans. And may I add that after meeting you I understand his actions much better than I did.’
‘Really, Miss Stanton?’ His voice had softened dangerously, and Leigh saw that even Gavin was beginning to shift uncomfortably. ‘It this true?’ Piers Sinclair demanded of his son.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ mumbled Gavin.
‘Don’t ever lie to me again, Gavin!’ his father said harshly. ‘You know it’s the one thing I will not tolerate, not after your mother.’
‘But I—I didn’t lie.’ Gavin’s eyes, so much like the older man’s, began to look pleading and Leigh began to feel sorry for him. ‘I did tell you I was bringing Leigh here for the weekend.’
She glared accusingly at Piers Sinclair. So he actually condoned his son’s outrageous behaviour. How dare he! No wonder Gavin behaved in this fashion with such a father for an example.
As if reading her thoughts Piers Sinclair smiled with mocking amusement, and walking lazily over to the drinks cabinet helped himself to a liberal amount of whisky before turning to face them again. At the moment his not undoubted anger was directed towards his son, but Leigh was tensing in anticipation of his attention turning on her, as she surely knew it would.
Piers Sinclair looked coldly at Gavin. ‘You told me you were bringing someone called Lee here, knowing full well that I would think it was that boy Lee you share your flat with,’ he put up a silencing hand as Gavin tried to speak. ‘All right, I accept that you didn’t lie, but you certainly didn’t tell the truth either. You omitted to mention the most important fact, that Lee was—no, is a female.’
‘It had the female spelling, L-E-I-G-H,’ she put in resentfully.
Those blue eyes flickered over her contemptuously. ‘We didn’t actually go into the spelling of it during our telephone conversation.’
Leigh picked up her case and marched purposefully towards the door. ‘I couldn’t give a damn what you talked about during your telephone call. If you and your son will excuse me, I am going home.’
‘Don’t let me spoil your little weekend,’ put in Piers Sinclair smoothly, discarding the thick sheepskin jacket in the warmth of the room. ‘Just try and forget I’m here.’
It was something Leigh knew she could never do under any circumstances, let alone now when she was alone here