Carole Mortimer Romance Collection

‘Mr Liam rang to say that he won’t be back until much later this evening,’ Janet told her as she served the soup.

Well, he could have told her that too—then she wouldn’t have spent the whole afternoon dreading seeing him again!

‘He always was a thoughtful young man,’ Janet lingered to remember fondly. ‘And he was a lovely little boy.’

Of course, Janet had been here long enough to remember that. Strangely, Juliet couldn’t think of Liam as ever having been a ‘lovely little boy’!

Janet’s expression clouded slightly. ‘It was a pity he and his father argued so much when he was older. Of course Simon—’ She broke off awkwardly. ‘Well, a lot of young men argue with their fathers; it’s all part of the male ego,’ she amended dismissively.

Juliet looked at the older woman curiously. ‘Is it?’ she prompted softly. She had to admit she was curious about the relationship which the three men had once had. She had known them all as individuals, but somehow couldn’t quite imagine them as a family. Of course, Liam had been several years older than Simon, so the two of them had probably had little in common, but they had still been brothers, and it was a relationship that she found hard to imagine.

‘Oh, yes.’ Janet nodded knowledgeably. ‘My own brothers were horrors during their teenage years, arguing with anyone and everyone.’

‘Did Liam and Simon argue?’ she asked.

‘Like cat and dog.’ Janet sighed heavily. ‘William—Mr William was always having to get in between the two of them. I think he thought they might kill each other one day if he didn’t.’ She shook her head at the memory.

Juliet tried to imagine Liam and Simon, five years apart in age, as two hotheaded young men. Simon had always been a bit wild, which was why William had been so pleased when he seemed to settle down slightly in his relationship with Juliet, but somehow she could never imagine Liam as a wild young man; he looked as if he had always had a wise head on young shoulders. Or maybe it was just the way he always looked so damned superior!

And Juliet hadn’t missed the way that the housekeeper had slipped up and called her former employer William. Perhaps Liam was right after all about Janet’s feelings towards William, although she doubted whether Janet would appreciate her prying into those feelings now.

‘Instead of which it was William and Liam who argued, causing Liam to leave,’ Juliet said thoughtfully.

‘Only because—Well, it’s water under the

bridge now,’ Janet said briskly, straightening. ‘Eat your soup before it gets cold,’ she instructed firmly before leaving the room.

Juliet was used to the other woman’s proprietorial manner by now, knew that it was really Janet that ran the household, and that she had done so for years. And, realising now how Janet had felt towards William, Juliet could only sympathise with the other woman’s situation.

But she would have liked Janet to talk further about what had happened ten years ago, would have liked to know what had really happened. She knew William had regretted it, whatever it was, but even so he had never tried to heal that breach with his older son. Until his death. And now it was all too late.

Janet made it more than obvious by her manner, when she served the main course, that she had no intention of continuing the conversation, and so Juliet ate the rest of her meal in contemplative silence.

She intended going to William’s study once she had eaten, to see if she could find this file that Liam seemed to want so badly. She had been putting off the moment when she would have to look through William’s desk; his study was another room she found it painful to enter, and she hadn’t been near his desk in the house since he had died. But if she didn’t do it then Liam would, and somehow she found that thought even more unpalatable.

It felt as bad as she had thought it would. All of William’s personal papers were in his desk, and to look through them was like reading someone’s private diary. Consequently, Juliet kept her search to a minimum; after all, the file had to be of a certain size, and it certainly wasn’t locked away in the small box in the bottom drawer of the desk where she knew William had kept really personal things.

However, there was a large brown envelope beneath the box, of a very similar shape to the drawer itself, so that at first Juliet thought it was a drawer liner, but as none of the other drawers had a liner she realised it couldn’t be that.

The name Walters fairly leapt off the top of the first piece of paper that Juliet drew out of the envelope, and she felt her heart sink. It was the Walters file. And what was this single file doing hidden away in William’s private desk?

Even after reading all the documents inside, Juliet was no closer to answering that question!

It all looked perfectly in order to her—a project that William had supervised himself from start to finish, the building finished on time, all bills paid, all contracts honoured. So why was this file so important to Liam?

‘Burning the midnight oil?’

She looked up with a guilty start at the sound of his voice. The only light in the room came from the desk-lamp that stood on one side of William’s desk. Liam looked dark and ominous as he stood in the open doorway.

He was still wearing the suit and shirt he had worn all day, although the formal tie was missing now and the top button of his shirt undone. ‘Isn’t it a little late still to be working?’ He moved with cat-like grace further into the room, the single light throwing his face into dark shadow, giving him a menacing appearance.

Juliet glanced briefly at the clock on the wall. Midnight. She had had no idea it was that late! She must have been poring over this file for over two hours. And she was still none the wiser!

She sat back tiredly, her shoulders aching from where she had been leaning over for so long. ‘Did you have a good evening?’ she said politely—distantly, she hoped. It had been a long evening, and she had no wish to prolong this conversation more than was necessary. If she had heard him enter the house it probably wouldn’t have been taking place at all—she would have made sure that he hadn’t found her here. But he moved with all the quiet and grace of a jungle cat, so that she never seemed to hear his approach.

‘Not particularly,’ he rasped, sitting on the edge of the desk to look down at her.

What did that mean? She supposed it all depended on whom he had spent the evening with; if it had been a woman he was home very early, probably hadn’t expected to be back at all. She couldn’t help but feel curious about the fact that there must be a woman in his life somewhere. He was too sexually attractive for it to be any other way.

‘I’m sorry.’ She frowned, not knowing what else to say.

‘Are you?’ he derided sceptically. ‘Just how much did Diana tell you at lunchtime before I arrived and interrupted your cosy little chat?’

Diana? What did Diana have to do with the fact that his evening hadn’t been very successful? She knew that she had had her suspicions concerning the two of them, but Diana had talked so lovingly about her family today that she had become convinced that she had to be wrong about that. Surely Liam wasn’t now saying that she hadn’t been wrong at all?

‘We had only just arrived and ordered, ourselves,’ Juliet told him stiffly.

He nodded abruptly. ‘I have no objection to the two of you having lunch together, but I do not want my private affairs discussed,’ he said coldly.

Juliet stared up at him. ‘We didn’t discuss your private affairs!’ she gasped indignantly.

He stood up. ‘I’m just reiterating that I don’t want you to do so. Diana has always been extremely discreet, but she could be put in an awkward position where you’re concerned, given the circumstances.’

‘What circumstances?’ Juliet could feel the anger building up inside her.

‘You are, at the moment, my business partner,’ he shrugged dismissively.

Juliet didn’t miss that ‘at the moment’. Did that mean he had already come to some sort of decision concerning Carlyle Properties?

But she was being side-tracked; she had no doubt that, whatever decision Liam had come to about the company, he would only tell her it in his own time. For now she had another issue to deal with.

‘I’m sure—in the circumstances!—both Diana and I can be relied on not to talk about your private life.’ She bristled. ‘Diana obviously knows better, and I, quite frankly, am not particularly interested in it!’ Her eyes glittered with anger as she looked up at him.

‘Aren’t you?’ he challenged softly. ‘That wasn’t the impression you gave last night!’

She could feel the colour receding from her cheeks. Last night had been—well, she didn’t quite know what had happened between them last night. It was an incident which she would rather forget had ever happened at all!

Liam’s mouth turned back scornfully. ‘You don’t even know if I’m married or not!’ he said sneeringly.

Hadn’t he said he wasn’t, back when they’d first met? Had he been lying?

She knew little about his private life since he had left here ten years ago, she admitted that, but surely she would have known if he was married? There had been no woman with him, other than Diana, in Majorca, and so she had assumed…

But she shouldn’t have assumed anything; not all wives travelled on business with their husbands. In fact, if there were children involved in the marriage too, that would be extremely difficult to do. Children. Oh, God, she just hadn’t thought…

‘Relax, Juliet,’ Liam taunted as he watched the deepening expression of horror on her face. ‘I’m not married. At least,’ he added softly, ‘I’m not any more.’

He had been married! Were there children? Where was his wife now? Did he…?