there was the rub, she noted rawly. She was not important enough to Mac for him to care what his attitude did to her. And if the last twelve months had not made him care, then nothing would.
She was fighting for a lost cause, and the realisation of it hit her like a runaway train, smack bang in the chest, lifting her perfectly shaped breasts and dropping them again in a single wrenching gasp of pain.
It was time to cut her losses and get out. Where she loved, Mac only desired. And why she had never realised it before was quite beyond her!
‘Uh-oh...’ Joel chanted drily. ‘Those lovely green eyes of yours tell me that trouble is a-brewing!’
You’re not so happy with this situation yourself! she wanted to snap. But, ‘I’m quite ready to leave if you are,’ was all she replied, holding herself stiffly, forcing her face to reveal as little as possible of what was going on inside her. Joel could see that something momentous was, but then he was standing barely a foot away from her, and also Joel knew her perhaps better than anyone else.
‘OK, sweetheart.’ Suddenly the mockery had gone from his voice, and he reached out to take one of her hands, squeezing it gently when he felt how much it trembled. ‘Let’s leave the gracious way, shall we?’ he suggested with false lightness. ‘Through the door with our chins up.’
‘You see too much,’ she muttered as he began leading her through the milling throng and out into the empty hallway of Mac’s elegant country home.
‘And you too little, angel-face,’ he replied rather drily, then with a gentle push, which was almost a gesture of sympathy, sent her towards the stairs. ‘Go get your coat.’
Her slender body was exquisite in the black velvet, and Joel watched her move gracefully up the stairs. She was beautiful; no one could deny that. Mac would not have given her a second glance if she hadn’t been. He liked his women beautiful, blonde, sexy. And Roberta possessed one of the sexiest figures that Joel had ever laid eyes on. She was all soft lines and seductively rounded curves, with skin like milk and hair that bubbled softly around her lovely face. Looking at her, you would be forgiven for mistaking her as the archetypal dumb blonde.
But Roberta Chandler was far from dumb—as those sharply intelligent green eyes would tell you, if you could bring yourself to look that high.
It had been to his advantage that Joel had bothered to look beyond that sizzling sexual allure when she’d come for her interview last year, because it meant that he had got himself the best personal assistant he had ever had, and Mac—by his good fortune of being his brother—had got himself the rarest woman he had ever had.
‘Where’s Roberta?’
Think of the devil, Joel thought drily as he turned around. ‘Fetching her coat,’ he replied.
Mac’s thick black brows took on a downward swoop. ‘So soon? It’s only—’ he glanced at the solid gold watch that he had strapped to his wrist ‘—ten-thirty. The night’s still young.’
‘Is it?’ Joel murmured cryptically. ‘I thought it well and truly done to death, myself.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Mac demanded frowningly. ‘You’ve been throwing out sarcasm at me all evening, Joel,’ he grunted. ‘And I would like to know just what the hell you’ve been trying to get at!’
‘Would you?’ Joel just sent him one of his sardonic looks. ‘Put a week or so aside some time, and I’ll take great pleasure in telling you.’
Mac stiffened, the frown becoming more pronounced. ‘What the hell’s got into you?’ he demanded bewilderedly. ‘To listen to you, anyone would think I’d offended you in some way!’
You have, Joel wanted to confirm, but at that moment Roberta appeared at the top of the stairs, with her black velvet evening coat draped across her arm, and Joel lost all Mac’s attention when the other man saw her. Those lazy eyes of his darkened dramatically at the enchanting picture she presented as she paused at the top of the stairs when she saw him, then came gliding downwards, eyes cool, face as inscrutable as a face as sensual as hers ever could be.
‘What’s this?’ Mac murmured huskily when she reached them, his expression so tenderly intimate that her senses quivered. ‘Running out on me with my kid brother?’
She glanced at Joel, wishing in some ways that it were Joel she was involved with. But, although both men were good-looking, smooth, sophisticated, Joel’s wood-ash handsomeness had never attracted her.
‘I’m—tired,’ she answered Mac quietly, the well-modulated tone of her voice like rich cream on honey, giving nothing away of the cold, hard sense of death she was experiencing inside right now. ‘It’s been a long day, all told,’ she added rather drily.
‘The man was in his counting-house, counting out his money,’ Joel put in, smiling as always. ‘Here, give me your coat.’ He took the velvet wrap from her before Mac could grab the honours. ‘Take-over deals take it out of one, don’t you agree, Mac?’
Mac leaned back against the rich mahogany newel-post, sensing no threat in the way that Joel was smoothing fine velvet over Roberta’s shoulders. This was his home and here, where Roberta counted for nothing, he saw Joel as his safe substitute.
‘The Brunner deal.’ He nodded. ‘You clinched it today.’ Not a question but a well-informed statement of fact.
‘Not quite,’ Joel denied, then shifted uncomfortably under Mac’s sudden black frown. After all, brother or not, Mac was also his boss. ‘But all bar the shouting,’ he quickly assured him. ‘I fly out to Zurich on Tuesday to tie it all up.’
‘Is Franc Brunner playing footsie with you?’ Mac asked sharply.
Joel just shrugged. ‘He knows he owns the patent to a very lucrative product if placed in the right hands. I can’t blame him for being cagey.’
‘Well, I can,’ Mac argued. ‘He approached us, not the other way around. What stopped him signing the deal today?’
‘The legal bods his end,’ Joel said drily. ‘Finding problems when none is there.’
‘Deliberately stalling, you mean,’ Mac said, and looked grimly thoughtful. ‘Do you want me to get involved?’ he offered.
‘No, I damned well do not!’ Joel indignantly replied. ‘The Brunner thing isn’t your baby, it’s mine! So keep your nose out, big brother!’
‘Whoops.’ Mac grinned. ‘Hit a raw nerve, did I?’
‘I can handle it,’ Joel said gruffly while Roberta looked down at her feet, too aware of why Joel was getting so hot under the collar to want Mac to see it written in her face.
The trouble with Joel was that he was a hands-on engineer at heart. Show him a revolutionary new product and he tended to go a bit overboard with enthusiasm about it. Hence the ‘footsie’, as Mac had put it, that Franc Brunner was playing with him. He saw too much eagerness to possess in Joel’s manner and had been playing on that by pushing Joel for a better deal ever since.
‘Can’t we, Roberta?’
His long fingers were stroking the rolled collar of her coat around her slender throat. But when she didn’t immediately answer, they paused to chuck her gently beneath her chin, demanding her support.
She gave it. ‘No problem,’ she said. ‘Nothing daunts the three musketeers.’
‘Three?’ Mac quizzed.
‘Mitzy,’ Joel explained. ‘Our indispensable third arm.’ He meant their shared secretary, and Mac nodded in recognition.
There was no one else wandering around the hallway, and a short silence fell, broken only by the sound of an old-fashioned waltz seeping out from the huge drawing-room to one side of them.
Mac’s eyes were on Roberta, moving with a lazy warmth over her, though he still made