at all. Zilch.
His lack of reaction—she’d been expecting some sort of compliment—exasperated Sarah. What did she have to do to make the man notice her, damn it?
‘Thanks, Jim,’ he said, bending to pick up her bags. ‘I’ll take these now.’
‘Yes, thanks, Jim,’ Sarah managed to echo through clenched teeth.
Jim nodded, then moved off, by which time Nick had picked up her luggage and turned to carry it inside.
Sarah wanted to hit him. Instead, she gritted her teeth even harder.
Suddenly, she couldn’t wait to turn twenty-five. The sooner she got Nick out of her life, the better. He was like a thorn in her side, niggling away at her. How could she have what she wanted most in life—which was children of her own—if he was always there, spoiling things for her? How could she feel completely happy when she kept comparing every man she dated to him?
Out of sight would be out of mind. Hopefully.
Sarah closed the front door after her, smothering a sigh when she saw Nick heading for the stairs with her cases.
‘I can take those up,’ she said, desperately needing a few minutes away from the man to regain her composure.
As much as Sarah had subconsciously always known that nothing would ever come of her secret feelings for Nick, finally facing the futility of her fantasies was a soul-shattering experience.
He hadn’t even noticed that she’d lost weight!
All that work. For nothing!
‘It’s no trouble,’ he threw over his shoulder as he continued on up the stairs with the bags.
Sarah gritted her teeth, and hurried up the stairs after him. ‘Why aren’t you at golf?’
‘I wanted the opportunity to talk to you,’ he tossed back at her. ‘Privately.’
‘About what?’
He didn’t answer her, instead charging on ahead with her bags.
‘About what, Nick?’ she repeated when she caught up, frustrated by his lack of reply.
He ground to a halt on the top landing, dropped her bags then turned to face her.
‘Flora, for one thing.’
‘What about her? She’s not ill, is she?’
‘No, but she can’t do what she used to do. She gets very tired. This last year, I’ve had to hire a home-cleaning service to come in twice a week to do all the heavy cleaning for her.’
‘I didn’t realise.’
‘If you came home occasionally,’ Nick pointed out drily, ‘you might have noticed.’
It was a fair comment, evoking a large dose of guilt. Sarah recognised she’d been very self-obsessed this past year. But she’d been on a mission. A futile mission, as it turned out.
‘I…I’ve been very busy,’ she said by way of an excuse.
‘With the new boyfriend, I take it?’ came his next comment, this one quite sarcastic.
Sarah bristled. ‘I have a right to a social life,’ she retorted, taking off her sunglasses so that she could glare at him. ‘You have one.’
‘Indeed. But it doesn’t take over my whole existence.’
His critical tone was so typical of Nick when it came to her having a boyfriend, his condemning attitude often sparking a reckless rebellion in her that had her running off at the mouth.
Today was no exception.
‘Derek and I are very much in love. Something you could never identify with. When people are truly in love they want to spend every minute of every day with them.’
‘I’m surprised you came home today at all, then,’ he countered quite sharply. ‘Or will your lover be dropping by later?’
Sarah flushed. ‘Derek’s working today.’
‘Doing what?’
‘He owns a gym.’
‘Aah. That explains it.’
‘Explains what?’
‘Your new shape.’
So he had noticed! ‘You say that like there’s something wrong with it.’
‘You looked fine the way you were.’
Sarah’s mouth dropped open. ‘You have to be joking! I was getting fat!’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
Sarah rolled her eyes. Either the man was blind, or he cared about her so little that he’d never really looked at her before.
‘Maybe you just didn’t notice.’
Nick gave an offhand shrug. ‘Maybe I didn’t. Still, I suppose it’s not up to me to tell you what to do.’
‘I’m glad you’ve finally realised that!’
‘Meaning?’
‘I couldn’t count the number of times you’ve interfered in my life, and my relationships. Every time I brought a boyfriend home in the past, you went out of your way to make him feel stupid. And me to boot.’
‘I was only doing what your father asked me to do, Sarah. Which was to protect you from the money-grubbing creeps in this world.’
‘They weren’t money-grubbing creeps!’
‘Indeed they were.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that from now on, thank you very much.’
‘Not till your twenty-fifth birthday, madam. I have no intention of letting you fall into the hands of some gold-digging gigolo at this late stage. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I did that.’
‘Huh. I can’t see you ever losing any sleep over me.’
‘Then you’d be dead wrong, sweetheart,’ he grated out.
Their eyes met, with Sarah sucking in sharply at the momentary fury she glimpsed in Nick’s face. It came home to her then just how much he’d hated being her guardian all these years. No doubt he would be very relieved when she turned twenty-five next year and his obligation to her father was over.
‘I haven’t given you that much trouble, have I?’ she said, her softer voice reflecting her drop in spirits.
As much as she accepted Nick would never be attracted to her, she’d always thought that, underneath everything, he liked her. Not just because she was her father’s daughter, but because of the person she was. When she was younger, he’d often told her what a great kid she was. He’d said she had character, and a good heart. He’d also said she was fun to be with, proving it by spending a lot of his spare time with her.
Of course, that had been a long time ago, before Nick had become a success in his own right. When that started to happen, he’d begun to ignore her. Then, after her father died, the rot had set in completely. It was patently obvious that she was now reduced to nothing more than a responsibility, a responsibility that he obviously found both tedious and exasperating.
‘Does he know how rich you’re shortly going to be?’ he demanded to know.
Sarah’s mouth thinned. Here we go again, she thought angrily.
Yet there was no point in lying. Better she answer Nick’s questions now than to have him put Derek through the third degree on Christmas Day.
‘He knows I’m going to be rich,’ she bit out. ‘But he doesn’t know the full extent of my inheritance.’
‘He’ll know once he shows up tomorrow. People who live in this street have