Carole Mortimer - Witchchild

Leonie nodded, her bright red hair moving silkily against her cheek as she got gracefully to her feet. ‘What if they leave it three more months before coming to any decision about marriage?’

‘A year,’ he insisted instantly.

‘Six months appears to be the middle line.’ She gave him one of those guileless smiles, her eyes wide and innocent.

He had been out-classed, out-manoeuvred, at a game at which he had always been considered an expert. And all because of a pair of wide green eyes—and a taut little bottom beneath tight denims, he acknowledged self-derisively. You are getting senile, Sinclair, he berated himself, when the mere movement of a woman’s body against her clothes can distract you from your purpose!

He straightened. ‘I told you, I don’t want a gold-digger in my family,’ he snapped insultingly. ‘Six years wouldn’t be long enough for me to accept that!’

‘You may have to,’ she told him heavily. ‘Laura might be willing to accept any terms you care to make, but Hal has definite plans of his own, and he’s the one you’ll have to convince that you’re only doing this for his own good.’

She was right, this little witchchild. Hal was his son all right, and there was no way he would have stood by and meekly accepted his father’s interference in his life in this way, at any age. But he wasn’t about to let Leonie Brandon know that he realised they might all have to compromise, him most of all!

‘I’ll deal with my son, Miss Brandon,’ he said confidently. ‘And when the time comes I’ll deal with your sister too!’ He turned to leave.

Leonie followed him out of the room. Even if she had made no sound as she walked, her perfume, the elusiveness of a spring flower, told of her presence; Hawk had never been so aware of a woman’s perfume. He turned to face her all the more sharply because of that as she spoke quietly at his side.

‘I’m afraid I still haven’t introduced myself to you properly,’ she shrugged as his eyes narrowed. ‘My name isn’t Brandon, it’s Spencer.’

She was married! This witchchild was married ? He glanced at her left hand, noticing for the first time the thin gold band on her finger that he had missed when he looked at her earlier. And he knew the reason he had missed it—he had been too intent on the beauty of the delicate hands, had imagined them caressing his body—Damn it, this couldn’t go on! He could have his pick of women, he certainly didn’t need to get mixed up with this strange, married one!

‘It’s what you are that matters to me,’ he ground out. ‘And as far as I’m concerned you’re just the sister of the woman trying to trick my son into marrying her!’

Leonie stood shaking her head as she watched him leave. Laura and Hal were in love, genuinely in love, and the objection of Hal’s father to that love could cause a rift between them all that might never heal.

She had to admit that she had been dismayed herself when Laura returned home, from speaking at one of the literary meetings Leonie took such pains to avoid, to drop into an armchair and dreamily sigh that she was in love. Laura had always been the level-headed one, the sensible one, and an announcement like that had to be taken seriously.

‘But he’s too young for me,’ Laura wailed regretfully. ‘A boy disguised as a man!’

A boy? Dear God, what did that mean? ‘Tell me about him,’ Leonie prompted softly.

‘He’s so tall and—and handsome.’ Laura blushed. She was her sister’s mirror image, except that her eyes were occasionally filled with an unspoken sadness. ‘He was the manager of the hotel where we held the meeting, and—–’

‘Then he can’t be that young,’ Leonie said with some relief.

Laura’s eyes rolled expressively. ‘His family owns the hotel!’

Leonie became suddenly still. ‘He’s one of the Sinclairs?’ Everyone had heard of the multi-millionaire family!

‘Son of the Sinclair,’ her sister nodded, her dismay reflected in sea-green eyes. ‘Oh, Leonie, he’s young, so much younger than I am, but when he looked at me I knew I loved him. And he said he felt exactly the same way!’

‘You talked to him, then—–Of course you talked to him,’ Leonie chastised herself for her stupidity. ‘Otherwise how would you know his name?’

‘He said he’s coming to see me tomorrow night,’ Laura groaned. ‘That we should start discussing our wedding plans!’

‘He said that ?’ Leonie gasped at the speed with which the relationship had progressed. When Laura had left this evening she had been heart-free, yet a few hours later she was obviously deeply in love.

‘Yes.’ Her sister blushed again. ‘Oh, Leonie, he asked me to marry him!’

And he had continued to ask every day since that evening three and a half weeks ago!

Leonie had liked Hal instantly; she had found him not to be the boy Laura had led her to believe, that he had been a man for some time, possessed of a confidence that had been inborn in him. And he was obviously deeply serious about his feelings concerning Laura, spending every moment that he could with her.

Hawk Sinclair wasn’t going to find it at all easy to ‘deal with’ his son!

Hawk’s temper hadn’t cooled in the least by the time he returned to the penthouse suite of the hotel.

Jake Colter, his assistant and friend for the last fifteen years, looked up from the contracts he had been working on, his blond brows rising over laughing blue eyes as Hawk let out a bellow for Sarah, his private secretary. ‘How did the meeting with the mercenary author go?’ he drawled.

Hawk’s scowl deepened. ‘It didn’t! Sarah, where the hell are you?’ he bellowed again.

The elegantly calm woman who had organised his business life for more years than he cared to think about emerged from her bedroom that adjoined the lounge, not at all perturbed by the chaos Hawk seemed to have brought back with him. After ten years she was probably used to it!

‘Yes, Hawk?’ she prompted softly; a beautiful woman, she usually knew what he wanted before he did.

It had been her complete efficiency at her job that had thrown him into a panic four years ago when her marriage began to flounder and she had considered the idea of leaving her job to see if that might stop her husband jumping into bed with every woman who so much as smiled at him. Knowing her husband as he had, Hawk hadn’t believed anything would stop him playing around with other women, but he hadn’t tried to interfere; he knew that if Sarah loved Paul she should stay with him. However, he had been very supportive when she decided to divorce the bastard after finding him in her own bed with a woman she had thought was her friend. He hadn’t been averse to using a little of his charm to persuade her to stay on with him either, after she had voiced the possibility of perhaps making a completely new start; he knew that he would never be able to find a more efficient secretary, wining and dining her until she agreed to stay on.

But for once her cool control irritated him. ‘Find out all that you can about a Leonie Spencer— Mrs Leonie Spencer,’ he added grimly. ‘Especially anything about Mr Spencer. She lives in the wilds of Buckinghamshire,’ he supplied absently. ‘I want to know everything there is to know about her, and I don’t care who you have to disturb on this English Sunday afternoon to get it,’ he warned harshly.

‘Will that be all?’ Sarah arched blonde brows.

‘Yes!’ Hawk glared at her. ‘Damn woman,’ he muttered once he was alone with Jake.

‘Who, Sarah?’ his assistant mocked disbelievingly.

Grey eyes raked over him mercilessly. ‘Why do I keep you on the pay-roll?’