‘That’s very generous of you.’ Sienna gave him a bright, unfaltering smile. ‘But can you safeguard my position until I come back?’
‘If I have to.’
Of course. The Conan Ryders of this world could get anything they wanted. They snapped their fingers and lesser mortals jumped to do their bidding. How stupid of her even to ask!
‘I take it, then, that that’s a yes?’ he pressed.
She didn’t answer, deciding to wait to tell him that if she did agree to what he wanted she had no intention of taking a penny of his precious money. Why spoil his mean and miserable opinion of her? she thought, following his gaze to where it was resting on Shadow, who was making violent sucking noises now as he burrowed with increasing ferocity into his fur.
‘Does that dog of yours have a problem with ticks?’
‘No, he doesn’t!’ What was the emotion that was turning down the corners of his superbly masculine mouth? she wondered. Disapproval? Dislike? And why was she even looking at his mouth? she thought, annoyed with herself. Let alone considering it superb?
Refraining from telling him that Shadow’s problem sprang from rolling on a chocolate wrapper while on his walk this evening, much to the surprise and angry retaliation of a few disgruntled wasps, she enquired breezily, ‘Don’t you like dogs?’
A broad shoulder lifted beneath the tailored jacket. ‘I can take them or leave them. Let’s just say I wouldn’t choose to share my home with one.’
Well, tough! Sienna thought, but said brightly, and with some relish, ‘That’s all right, then. Because if you want to take Daisy and me away with you for the summer I’m afraid you’re going to have to take us all.’
‘I thought you said Conan never had much time for his brother?’ Faith Swann commented when Sienna rang her parents to tell them where she would be going and why. ‘That he was positively heartless towards him, and that Avril Ryder was always making you feel inferior and criticising the way you were bringing up my granddaughter?’ Faith was fiercely protective of those she loved, and was constantly trying to persuade Sienna to bring Daisy to join her and her husband in Spain.
‘He was—and she was,’ Sienna averred, and though she hated having to acknowledge it she said, sighing, ‘But they’re Daisy’s family too. And no matter how they treated me, or Niall, as his mother’s not well I have to go.’
‘I expect he can be quite persuasive,’ her mother was remarking distractedly about her late son-in-law’s brother. ‘I only saw him in the flesh that once …’ She meant at the wedding. ‘But I saw a picture of him recently in one of our English newspapers,’ Faith continued. ‘He’s quite a looker, isn’t he? Not so obviously handsome as Niall was, but the more moody and magnificent type that a lot of women go for. At least he looked moody in that photograph,’ she added with a little chuckle. ‘Probably because he was caught hurrying from the executive lounge of some airport with his latest adoring companion. You know that chat show hostess? Petra Somebody-or-other?’
‘Petra Flax,’ Sienna supplied, not unfamiliar with the raven-haired beauty whose twice-weekly programme was a little too gossipy for her own taste.
‘Just wait until I tell the regulars and our friends at the golf club that my daughter’s hobnobbing with the likes of Conan Ryder.’
‘Mum!’ Sienna burst out, cringing at her mother’s penchant for dropping names—the more influential the better. ‘I’d appreciate it if you didn’t.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Faith remonstrated, having clearly lapped up the news that Sienna was going to be in the bosom of her late husband’s family. ‘I’m proud that my daughter had the good sense to marry a man with such illustrious connections. So should you be.’
‘Yes, Mum.’ Sienna sighed resignedly, reminded of how much her mother enjoyed basking in other people’s reflected glory, and remembering that it was those very traits of Faith Swann’s that had gone a long way to letting Sienna and her family down with Avril Ryder and her friends on that one inauspicious occasion when their families had met.
‘Don’t take any notice of your mother. She means well,’ Barry Swann placated, when he came on the line to talk to his daughter. ‘I know you’ve always liked to play things close to your chest, but just remember we’re here, love, if you need us. For anything at all.’
Strangely, that simple token of kindness from her father produced a welling of emotion in Sienna.
She’d never worried her parents with the reason for her estrangement from Niall’s family, or with the extent of Conan’s accusations—that he’d not only as good as accused her of being a gold-digger, but also of cheating on his brother. If she had, her father would have come over here to sort him out, she thought sadly, yet with a wry grimace, because she didn’t give much for the chances of anyone who tried locking horns with Conan Ryder.
And anyway, what could she tell them? That Conan was right? That the morning he’d come looking for her to tell her that her husband had died he’d discovered she’d spent the night in another man’s flat.
She shuddered at the prospect of all the hurt and anger that would follow if she did disclose the truth to them. She couldn’t.
Wouldn’t! she vowed grittily, aching under the weight of it.
‘Thanks, Dad,’ she murmured gratefully, and rang off.
‘So who’s this guy you’re going to be spending the summer with?’ Jodie Fisher asked as Sienna, returning from some last minute shopping before Conan arrived to pick them up, joined her on her porch after locking up her clapped out little red saloon.
‘He’s my brother-in-law—and I’m not spending the summer with him, as such,’ she corrected, keen to dispel any hopes her neighbour—a wild-haired blonde, who was noticeably pregnant and the mother of a four-year old—might be harbouring about her having designs on any man … least of all Conan Ryder. ‘Well I am, but not in the way you think. My mother-in-law’s sick,’ she outlined, feeling a nagging unease about how the woman would receive her. She didn’t elaborate to Jodie. Although Jodie was a good friend, often looking after Daisy at a moment’s notice—as she had done today—Sienna hadn’t confided to her exactly what the situation was with her late husband’s family. Such things were private. She had simply told Jodie that they lived miles away and she didn’t see them very often.
‘You wouldn’t be lying to me now, would you?’ Jodie’s attention was caught by something over Sienna’s shoulder. ‘Great Jumping Jacks! Wowee! Is that a BMW? Or is that a BMW? Is that him? No, don’t tell me! Let me guess! He’s pulling in here. It’s him! What I wouldn’t give for a brother-in-law who looked like that!’
Jodie was clearly knocked sideways. But why the man made every woman who cast eyes on him want to swoon at his feet was beyond her, Sienna though grudgingly, with a careless glance over her shoulder. Yet the dark magnetism of the man behind the wheel of the graphite grey monster that had just pulled up in front of her own pathetic little excuse for a car caused a peculiar fluttering way down in her stomach.
‘It isn’t what you think, Jodie,’ Sienna told her when her friend continued to stand there agog. ‘You’ve got a one-track mind where anyone who isn’t hitched and as happy as you are—i.e. single and content—is concerned.’
‘Don’t give me that!’ Jodie pooh-poohed, sending her a sceptical glance. ‘You’re too young to settle for contentment, and you can’t hang on to the past for ever.’
‘Well, perhaps content’s the wrong word, but I’m adjusting to my life,’ she admitted, only just stopping short of telling Jodie that the last thing she wanted was another man in her life. ‘So if you’re thinking I’d consider making a match with Niall’s brother, then I’m afraid you’re going to have to think again. He’s far too arrogant, overbearing and too darn cocksure of