Witchchild. Carole Mortimer

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      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?’

      The other man grinned. He possessed the type of fair-haired good looks that had caused more than one female to bemoan the fact that he was determined to remain a bachelor since his divorce sixteen years ago. ‘Probably because I’m a damned good assistant,’ he drawled.

      ‘Oh yeah,’ Hawk acknowledged dryly. ‘I knew there had to be some reason why I put up with you!’

      Jake’s grin widened. ‘You’re just put out because the woman on the plane last night offered me a date instead of you.’

      Hawk gave the other man a scathing look. ‘So that’s why your bed wasn’t slept in last night! I should watch it, my friend,’ he drawled, remembering the over-familiarity of the beautiful brunette on the plane; it was far from the first time she had picked up a man in that way! ‘You expose yourself to—all sorts of dangers that way,’ he added derisively.

      ‘Ouch!’ Jake grimaced, putting the contracts to one side. ‘So your meeting with the author didn’t work out,’ he remarked thoughtfully. ‘Don’t you think, in this day and age, especially with two old reprobates like us as an example, that perhaps you should be grateful Hal just wants to marry a woman you don’t approve of?’

      ‘I think that if Stephen came home and told you he intended marrying a woman he’s only known three weeks, a woman who’s older than him, you’d react the same way I did,’ Hawk grated.

      Jake shrugged. ‘I can think of plenty of worse things he could come home and tell me.’

      ‘Maybe,’ Hawk accepted grudgingly. ‘Maybe I should have made Hal go to college with Stephen instead of giving in to him when he said he wanted to learn the business by experience. They always got on well together, and Stephen might have been good for Hal, stopped him growing up quite so quickly.’

      When Jake had come to work for him fifteen years ago he had just been awarded custody of his five-year-old son after his divorce, and with Hal being a similar age the two boys had gravitated to each other from the first. Their friendship was probably as deep as his and Jake’s was. The two young men were opposites, Stephen always getting СКАЧАТЬ