Carole Mortimer - Ice In His Veins

Her golden eyes were shadowed. ‘How can you accept it so calmly? I thought he was a friend of yours. Doesn’t it affect you at all?’

‘Of course it affects me,’ he said impatiently. ‘But should you be reacting quite this strongly to hearing of the impending death of a man who you say means nothing to you?’

Eden turned her head away. ‘God, you’re cruel,’ she choked.

Jason stood up, pulling her to her feet to manoeuvre her out of the room with the minimum of effort. Eden looked up as he took her into one of the waiting lifts and pressed the button. ‘Where are you taking me?’ she demanded.

‘To my suite,’ he replied abruptly, keeping a firm hold of her arm.

‘Won’t that be misconstrued?’ she taunted sarcastically, reminding him of his comment of yesterday.

‘Possibly. But that would be preferable to you causing a scene in the dining-room,’ he added.

She glared up at him, resenting his superior height at that moment. ‘I wasn’t going to cause a scene.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Really?’

‘Yes, really!’ she said crossly. ‘Obviously what you’d just told me came as something of a shock, but——’

‘Obviously,’ he cut in dryly.

‘But it was your attitude that upset me!’

He gave her a gentle push out of the lift, moving forward to unlock the door to the suite before ushering her inside. A flick of a switch illuminated the spacious sitting-room, the impersonality of its luxury not alleviated by any of this man’s personal possessions.

He moved to the extensive array of drinks on the trolley, pouring out some amber liquid into a glass before holding it out to her. ‘Why should my attitude upset you?’

‘Because it did.’ She looked at the glass he had given her. ‘What’s this?’

‘Brandy.’

Eden wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t like brandy.’

‘I thought it might help you over your apparent shock.’

‘I’m over it.’ She put the glassful of liquid down on the table untouched.

‘Sit down,’ he invited.

‘No, thank you,’ she replied stiffly. ‘Shall we go back downstairs?’

‘No.’

‘No?’ She licked her lips nervously.

Jason shook his head. ‘I’ll ask for dinner to be sent up.’ He picked up the telephone. ‘We can talk more freely up here.’

‘That may be so, but I——’

‘I don’t have any designs on your body,’ he said impatiently.

Colour flooded her cheeks. ‘I didn’t think you had, Mr Earle.’

‘Jason—call me Jason. After all, I call you Eden.’

‘I thought that was a privilege of your age,’ she taunted.

He showed by a tautening of his mouth that he didn’t appreciate her comment, talking into the telephone as he repeated their order for dinner to be sent up here. He turned to her. ‘Let’s leave my age out of it. And you might as well sit down, you aren’t leaving yet.’

‘Aren’t I?’ she challenged.

‘No.’

She had the feeling he would keep her here by force if she didn’t comply, so she sat down, saving herself the embarrassment of physically losing against him, because she would lose, she knew that. ‘My gran—David Morton——’ she broke off in confusion.

‘Your grandfather,’ he put in softly, standing over her and making her even more nervous.

‘David Morton,’ she said pointedly. ‘Has he been ill long?’

Jason poured himself a drink before coming to sit in the chair opposite her. ‘He had the first attack about six weeks ago.’

‘I see.’ She bit her lip. It was strange how the man’s illness affected her. After all that he had done to her mother she shouldn’t have cared. And yet she did—she did!

‘It was a very bad attack,’ Jason continued. ‘And the next one could come at any time.’

‘Probably fatal, you said?’

‘That’s right.’ He crossed one leg over the other, stretching them out in front of him. ‘And he would like to see you before he dies.’

This information put her in an intolerable position. She had no wish to go to England, no desire to see her grandfather, but she wasn’t normally a vindictive person, didn’t like to deliberately hurt anyone, and this appeared to be the wish of a dying man. She had the feeling that Jason Earle knew exactly what pressure he was putting on her, the emotional blackmail that not many people would be able to refuse. His final comment was a deliberate ploy to make her feel guilty, although why she should be made to feel that way when David Morton had been the one in the wrong all these years she had no idea. But she did feel guilty—and Jason Earle knew it.

She took a deep breath. ‘Why should he want to see me?’

‘I would have thought that was obvious.’

‘Not to me. You don’t ignore a grandchild all this time and then suddenly decide to take an interest because you have no other family.’

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