Tall, Dark... Collection. Кэрол Мортимер

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СКАЧАТЬ the company. Her own desk was of the same mellowed oak and a plush fitted blue carpet covered the floor.

      But, at the same time as Laura acknowledged the luxurious appointments of her office, she knew Liam was no more interested in their surroundings at the moment than she was.

      What was he doing here?

      She eyed him warily as he strode further into the room, blue denims old and faded, grey shirt beneath a loose black jacket. No wonder Ruth had tried to block his path into Laura’s office; he hardly looked the part of a successful author, let alone a millionaire!

      ‘Mrs Shipley,’ he murmured, almost to himself, it seemed.

      Laura stiffened. It wasn’t what he had said so much as the way he had said it. Insultingly. Deliberately so, she was sure.

      ‘Mr O’Reilly,’ she returned with equal deliberation. ‘Or do I mean Mr O’Shea?’

      After all, if he now knew who she was, there was absolutely no longer any point in any pretence on her part concerning his own attempt at subterfuge. At least she had only lied by omission—which was no lie at all; Liam had never asked her for her married name!

      Blue eyes narrowed as Liam looked her over speculatively.

      Which was a little like being studied under a microscope! Laura felt as if, just by looking at her in this way, Liam was trying to discover what else it was he didn’t know about her.

      ‘If it’s not too stupid a question,’ she began when she couldn’t stand that cold scrutiny any longer, ‘how did you know where to find me?’

      ‘I asked downstairs and was directed to the top floor,’ he returned satirically.

      ‘Very funny, Liam,’ she said wearily. ‘You know very well that isn’t what I meant at all!’

      ‘Isn’t it?’ he replied sharply. ‘Tell me, Laura, have you enjoyed the little game you’ve been playing with me the last two days?’ he rasped harshly, blue eyes dark with anger.

      ‘Game?’ she echoed dazedly, in no way recovered yet from the shock of his being here, in her office. A place he had no right to be! ‘I haven’t been playing any games, Liam—’

      ‘No?’ he cut in scathingly. ‘Yesterday afternoon at the hotel you and Perry Webster gave no indication that the two of you knew each other, and yet you’re his employer. Last night, when we met for a drink, you deliberately didn’t tell me that you know exactly what I’m doing in London at the moment—’

      ‘Not deliberately,’ she interrupted firmly. ‘Never that. I simply didn’t see the point in—’

      “‘Didn’t see the point”!’ Liam repeated with cold fury, moving across the room with deceptively light footsteps. ‘I’ll tell you what the point is, Laura.’ He stood just across the other side of her desk now, leaning forward menacingly as he spoke to her. ‘The point is that you deliberately made a fool of me.’

      ‘I did not!’ she gasped.

      ‘Oh, yes, Mrs Shipley,’ he insisted, ‘you did.’

      Laura shook her head. ‘I told you I was married—’

      ‘But not who you were married to,’ Liam scorned.

      ‘What difference does it make who I was married to?’ she challenged heatedly. ‘I didn’t see it bothering you last night when you—’

      ‘Yes?’ he taunted softly, suddenly very still. ‘When I what?’

      ‘Oh, never mind, Liam,’ she dismissed, heated colour in her cheeks now. ‘As I see it, you are the one who has been hiding behind another identity, not me!’

      ‘And as I see it,’ he returned forcefully, ‘you’ve known from the beginning that I was Reilly O’Shea—and you’ve used that knowledge to extract a little revenge.’

      ‘A little—!’ She was so angry now she couldn’t even complete her sentence. ‘If you think that’s true, Liam, then you must have a very low opinion of me,’ she said furiously. ‘And an even more inflated opinion of the role you once played in my life!’

      They glared at each other wordlessly across the width of the desk for several long minutes. Laura was determined not to be the first to look away, but Liam was equally determined, apparently.

      And then the atmosphere between them shifted slightly, changed, no longer charged with anger but with something else entirely.

      ‘Do I?’ he finally said.

      Laura’s gaze was locked with his, her breathing low and shallow. ‘Do you what?’ she repeated softly.

      ‘Have an over-inflated opinion of what we once meant to each other?’ he encouraged huskily.

      What they once meant to each other—!

      His implication was enough to break the spell. For Laura, at least. She shook her head, her expression derisive. ‘I think we covered that quite well last night, Liam—I was an infatuated young student; you were an older, more worldly-wise man, flattered by—’

      ‘I’m well aware of the fact that I am some years older than you, Laura,’ he interjected, straightening away from the desk. ‘I certainly don’t need to keep being reminded of it!’

      She was relieved he had moved his overwhelming presence away from her desk, but at the same time she was determined to put their past relationship in perspective. The way that she’d had to do for herself eight years ago, when she had thought her world was falling apart!

      ‘You—’

      ‘But talking of older men,’ he continued hardly, blue eyes narrowed again, ‘I believe Robert Shipley—’

      ‘I told you last night. I will not discuss Robert with you. Under any circumstances,’ she added tautly as Liam would have spoken, her eyes flashing a warning.

      ‘Robert Shipley was fifty-three when you married him,’ Liam continued, undaunted.

      Laura half rose from her chair. ‘I—’

      ‘And fifty-eight when he died two years ago and left you as his widow and sole heir,’ Liam finished softly.

      Laura dropped back into the leather chair, the colour draining from her cheeks.

      Every thing that Liam said was true but one.

      Robert had been fifty-three when they’d married seven and a half years ago. And he had only been fifty-eight when he’d died five years later. Leaving her his widow.

      But Liam was wrong about her being Robert’s sole heir; the houses and half his fortune were hers, yes. But the other half of the money, and Shipley Publishing, she only held in trust. Robert Shipley Junior—Bobby, Liam’s own son—was actually heir to all of that…

      CHAPTER FIVE

      ‘YOU have been doing your homework, haven’t СКАЧАТЬ