desk for several seconds and then turned to face her, admitting, ‘All the more reputable agencies are rather dubious about the fact that I’m a single man, and as for the rest.’ His grim expression startled her a little. ‘Well let’s just say I’m not too keen on the idea of adding an eighteen year old au pair to my other problems.’
Lissa knew she should have felt triumphant, but the emotion uppermost in her heart was pity and concern for the children. She had experienced too much trauma and heartache during her own childhood, to treat the miseries of any other child’s lightly.
‘When can I see the girls, Joel?’ she asked huskily.
‘Soon … When we’ve finished talking.’
‘How are they?’
How she hated having to ask him for anything, even something so mundane as information about her nieces, and she knew it showed in her voice from the twisted smile he gave her, his eyes glinting dark gold as he turned to look at her.
‘Poor Lissa,’ he mocked watching her. ‘Forced to actually ask me for something. How that must hurt. Why are you so frightened of me Lissa?’
‘I’m not.’ Her chin firmed and she stared back at him. ‘I simply don’t like you very much that’s all.’
He laughed then, the warm rich sound startling her. What could she possibly have said to make him laugh. It was obvious that he wasn’t going to tell, so she insisted coolly, ‘The girls, Joel. How are they coping?’
‘On the surface, quite well,’ he told her. ‘Louise of course being older is finding it harder to accept that they’re gone. Emma … well I can barely understand a word she says as it is. Louise seems to be able to interpret her chatter all right though. They’ve been asking for you,’ he added abruptly. ‘I didn’t realise they knew you so well.’
‘I’ve spent quite a lot of time with them.’ It was true. She had looked after them for the odd weekend for her sister. Amanda knowing how much she loved children, and not being overly maternal herself had been delighted to leave them in her care.
‘You really care about them don’t you?’ he said curtly, further surprising her.
Instantly she was defensive, glaring at him from angry emerald eyes as she responded bitterly, ‘Why should that be so surprising? I happen to like children … I always have done.’
‘And yet you’ve never given any indication that you’d like to get married and have your own,’ Joel put in softly, ‘I wonder why?’
Lissa had to turn away from him so that he couldn’t read her expression. Her heart was thumping frantically, her pulse beat rocketing way out of control.
‘Perhaps I just haven’t met the right man yet,’ she told him flippantly, hoping he wouldn’t guess at her emotional turmoil. How could she ever have children of her own, feeling as she did about sex? It wasn’t only the ability to love as a woman he had robbed her of, she thought, hating him, it was also the ability to mother children … And now he even wanted to take her nieces away from her.
‘I’m not prepared to give up the girls, Joel,’ she told him, pivoting round to face him. ‘Amanda left them in my care … and I don’t care what you say,’ she cried out passionately, ‘I can’t really believe that any caring judge would rule that the care of strangers—because that’s what your nanny will be—will be more beneficial, even with all the material advantages you can give them, than my love. You don’t love them Joel … not the way I do.’ She was close to tears and had to blink them away, horrified when she opened her eyes again to find that he was looming over her, the gold speckles in his eyes igniting with fierce heat.
‘Like hell I don’t,’ he told her thickly. ‘You seem to have conveniently forgotten that their father was my brother … I only want what is best for them Lissa …’
‘No, you don’t. You just want to take them away from me.’
Her voice was high and strained, hysteria edging in under her self-control. She could see Joel looking at her, and she could feel his anger.
‘Don’t be such a bloody fool,’ he flung at her. ‘You seem to be developing a persecution complex where I’m concerned, Lissa. Oh yes,’ he gritted grimly watching her with cold eyes. ‘I’m well aware of the extraordinary lengths you go to avoid my company. I know quite well that Amanda had strict instructions never to invite you to the house when there was any chance that I might be around. Just what have I ever done to warrant such antipathy Lissa. Tell me?’
She shrugged lightly, struggling for self-control. It seemed impossible that the events that were burned so painfully into her memory should not exist for him. But perhaps it was safer for her that he did not remember, she told herself, her nerve endings jumping tensely when the next minute, he said with silky softness, ‘Or can I guess? Does all this haughty disdain you exhibit towards me spring from the fact that I once caught you in bed with your boyfriend?’
The brilliant wave of scarlet flooding her skin gave her away, and she watched his mouth twist in wry mockery, hating him with all the intense passion of her nature when he drawled tauntingly, ‘You should be grateful that you were stopped when you were. A teenage pregnancy is no fun …’
God, how she hated him, Lissa thought feeling the nauseous loathing rise up inside her. She wanted to scream and cry … to tear that smooth smile from his face with her nails. She hated him … hated him … Her attention was deflected from her own inner turmoil when she heard Joel saying calmly, ‘No Lissa, I don’t think the best thing for the girls is for them to be constantly shuttled between us, as though we were divorced parents. Children, especially children such as Louise and Emma who had already suffered the loss of their parents, need security and stability, and in an attempt to give them both, I’ve decided that what I need is not a nanny, but a wife.’
Lissa could only stare at him, but hard on the heels of her shock came the knowledge that if he did marry, she would lose her nieces, because surely a judge was bound to favour the suit of a man who had not only wealth but also a wife, above the claims of a girl, struggling alone on a little more than adequate salary.
‘No comment?’ she heard Joel saying, the words reaching her through a fog of thoughts. ‘You don’t want to know the identity of my wife-to-be?’
‘Why should I?’ Lissa managed to croak the denial. ‘It’s nothing to do with me?’
‘On the contrary,’ Joel assured her with smooth silkiness. ‘It has everything to do with you my dear. You see, I’ve decided that the very best solution to Louise and Emma’s problem would be for you and I to marry thus uniting both their guardians and providing them with a stable background.’
Lissa barely heard his last words. ‘You and I …?’ She stared at him, the colour leaving her face on an ebb tide of shock. ‘No, I …’
‘Lissa, neither of us are foolish teenagers any longer.’
‘We don’t love one another … we don’t even like one another,’ Lissa interrupted harshly. ‘How can you even think of a marriage between us?’
‘Oh quite easily.’ He was smiling at her in a way that told her that little though he might like her, he found the shape of her sexually desirable. Shock hit her on a tidal wave, swamping her. Joel desired her.
‘You see,’ he mocked her softly, ‘we could have a lot more in common than you think. There is no need for our marriage to be a sterile one Lissa. On the contrary …’
Lissa felt as though she were drowning in some whirlpool far too frenzied for her to fight. ‘But you’ve always avoided marriage,’ she whispered huskily, ‘I remember Amanda once saying that she thought you’d never marry.’
‘At one time I thought that myself,’ he agreed laconically, ‘but that was before John died.’
‘And if I refuse …?’ What did she mean ‘if’. Of course