Lindsay Armstrong - By Marriage Divided

She stared at him, struck dumb.

‘I know, for example, that there’s a mortgage on your mother’s principal place of residence that was raised to cover some disastrous investments your father made, so that the profit from the sale of Lidcombe Peace will mostly be swallowed up in repaying that mortgage and all the outstanding interest.’

‘How…how…?’ Domenica stopped in the act of saying, How dare you? and rephrased stiffly. ‘I don’t know how you know all this but if you think it makes me like you any better, you’re mistaken! I—’ She stopped exasperatedly as their plates were removed by the waitress and a plunger pot of aromatic coffee was put down.

‘It may not matter a whole lot whether we like each other,’ he said and poured two cups of coffee.

Domenica’s fingers hovered over a little dish of finely dusted pale pastel Turkish Delight that had come with the coffee. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

He didn’t answer. But his smoky-grey gaze travelled from her glorious dark hair to the smooth pale skin of her throat and the outline of her figure to her waist beneath the camellia voile. She had very fine, narrow hands, he observed, and on the little finger of the hand still poised above the dish of Turkish Delight she wore a rather unusual plaited gold ring. Then his gaze drifted back to her mouth and he contemplated it silently.

Domenica dropped her hand to her lap sweetless and suppressed a tremor that was composed of both outrage and awareness. Because she knew exactly what Angus Keir meant and, while she’d contrived to ignore it until now, one all-encompassing glance from him had spelt it out. ‘Liking’ one another was not what it was about between them.

Liking one another had nothing to do with wondering about a man on a physical level, which, heaven help her, had plagued her again while she’d watched him discard his jacket to hook her car up to a towline he’d produced from his vehicle. It hadn’t been a great physical exertion for him, but enough to make her conscious of the long lines of his back and the sleek, powerful muscles beneath the midnight-blue cotton of his shirt.

And at the garage she’d stood silent and feeling oddly helpless as he’d made arrangements with the local mechanic with the kind of authority, not only of a man as opposed to a woman who knew nothing about starter motors anyway, but the kind of man who almost had the mechanic bowing and scraping.

Then, for some reason, his wrists and hands had specifically plagued her during their lunch. He’d taken off his jacket again and, beneath the cuffs of his shirt, his wrists were powerful and sprinkled with black hairs, but his hands were long and well-shaped and he wore a plain watch on a brown leather band. Strong, but nice hands, she’d caught herself thinking a couple of times.

But she now had to put it all into context, she realized, and find a way to make him believe that ‘liking’ a man was important, for her anyway.

She compressed her lips and decided to opt for honesty and forthrightness and didn’t give a damn how she sounded. ‘I don’t go in for that kind of thing, Mr Keir.’

‘Mutual attraction and admiration?’ he suggested lazily.

She paused, then shot him a telling little look. ‘Not with people I do business with, no. And not with people I don’t happen to like. But most of all, not with people—’

‘Men—shouldn’t we be specific?’ he put in blandly.

She shrugged. ‘All right, men, then, who I don’t know from a bar of soap!’

‘That’s commendable,’ he remarked. ‘I even applaud you, Miss Harris. But I’m not suggesting we leap into bed, only that we get to know each other.’

Domenica felt the surge of colour rising up her throat but she ignored it to say coolly, ‘Thank you, but no, and, while you may not be suggesting we leap into bed, it is how you’ve been looking at me. And I find that—unacceptable.’

He laughed, but with genuine amusement that caused his eyes to dance in a way that was rather breathtaking. ‘I’d be surprised if most men don’t look at you that way, Domenica.’

Her eyes flashed. ‘On the contrary, Mr Keir, most men are a bit more…mannered.’

His lips twisted. ‘Oh, well, if nothing else, at least you know where you stand with me, Domenica. Incidentally, I believe your mother owns another property, a warehouse in Blacktown?’

‘Yes.’ Domenica blinked as she tried to make the adjustment. ‘It’s leased to a catering and party hire company. So?’

‘Sell it,’ he said.

She did a double take. ‘Why? At least the rent provides some steady income!’

‘You may not realize it,’ he broke in, ‘but you’re sitting on a small gold-mine there. A new road proposal resuming land nearby has given several companies around you the headache of having to put their expansion plans on hold, or move entirely to another industrial estate, a costly exercise. But don’t sell it for a penny under this figure.’ He drew a black pen from his shirt pocket and wrote a figure on the back of the bill that had come with the coffee.

Domenica stared at the figure, swallowed, and, raising wide eyes to his, said huskily, ‘You’re joking! I know the valuation—’

He stopped her by gesturing a little impatiently. ‘Things change. It’s an established estate with good facilities and the new road will make it better and even more accessible. And you’ll be in the position of being able to play several potential buyers off against each other. Believe me.’

‘How…how do you know all this?’ she asked after a long pause.

He smiled slightly. ‘I do my homework.’

‘You…you wouldn’t be in the market for some extra space in this estate, by any chance?’

‘No, Domenica, I wouldn’t. Do you think I’d be advising you to ask this for it—’ he tapped the bill ‘—if I were?’

They stared at each other, she tensely, he rather mockingly. Until she said a little awkwardly, ‘I just can’t imagine why you would…just because you wanted Lidcombe Peace…investigate us so thoroughly.’

He didn’t answer immediately. Then he shrugged. ‘It had some bearing on what I’d get Lidcombe Peace for.’

‘You said you—’ her voice quivered ‘—you paid what you thought was a realistic price.’

‘Yes. Taking everything into consideration.’

Her awkwardness changed to contempt. He could see it in her eyes and the way her beautiful mouth set severely. And he knew what to expect before she said it. ‘That’s despicable, Mr Keir. I assume you mean taking into consideration that I was fairly desperate!’

He shrugged. ‘Life can be a bit of a jungle, Miss Harris. But if you take my advice on the warehouse, and if you invest some of the profits as I would be prepared to advise you, your mother should be well provided for, for the rest of her life. She may even be able to continue to live in the manner to which she’s accustomed.’

Domenica breathed deeply and fought a tide of emotion, an unusual, for her, desire to scream and shout at this man—but what if he was right? she wondered suddenly.

Her mother was one of those people you loved, especially as a daughter—excepting on those days when you wondered why; days when she was impossibly impractical, when she was being a raving snob as if she still queened it over society and had her parents’ great wealth to fall back on, when she was unbelievably extravagant. But the thing was, it was impossible to see Barbara Harris unhappy. It was a bit like closing down the sun…

She said slowly, ‘I might just take you up on that, Mr Keir. Unless you have a certain kind of repayment in mind?’ Her blue gaze was steady, and satirical.

‘Your body for my financial expertise?’ he hazarded gravely.