Jessica Steele – Falling for her Convenient Husband (страница 2)

‘Would you like me to leave home?’ Phelix had been brave enough to volunteer, more than hoping he would say yes.

She supposed she had known in advance that he would say no—she was the buffer between him and their housekeeper, Grace Roberts. In actual fact Phelix knew that Grace had only stayed on after her mother, the gentle Felicity, had been killed, for her sake. Edward Bradbury was under no illusion that if his daughter left then Grace, who was only a few years away from retirement anyway, would leave too. He enjoyed Grace’s cooking, enjoyed the fact that his shirts were laundered exactly as he liked them, enjoyed that his home was run on oiled wheels—he had not the smallest interest in spending his time trying to find a new housekeeper who would only measure halfway up to Grace’s standards.

‘No, I wouldn’t!’ he had reported bluntly, and stormed out of the room.

Phelix came out of her reverie and supposed she ought to make tracks for the Kongresszentrum. But she had little enthusiasm for the day’s events: a general introduction and getting to know some of the people. ‘Networking’ as her father called it.

She was more than a little off him at the moment. Had she not made that phone call to Henry from the airport before she had left yesterday she would probably not have known until today exactly why her father was so insistent that she attend.

‘Do I really have to go, Henry?’ she had asked the senior lawyer.

‘Your father will play hell if you don’t,’ he’d answered gently. ‘Though…’ He’d paused.

‘What?’ Phelix had asked quickly, sensing something was coming that she might not be too happy about.

‘Um—you’re coming back a week tomorrow, right?’

‘I’ll come back as soon as I can. Though I suppose I’d better stick it out until then. My father and all the big chiefs will be there from a week Wednesday—thank goodness I don’t have to be!’

‘Er—not all the bigwigs are leaving it until next week,’ Henry informed her kindly—and suddenly her heart lurched.

There was a roaring in her ears. No, she definitely wasn’t going! Though, hold on a minute, her father would never send her on this mission if he thought for a single moment that he would be there.

‘Who?’ she asked faintly, wanting confirmation and urgently.

‘Ross Dawson,’ Henry supplied, and a whole welter of relief surged through her.

To be followed a few seconds later by a spurt of annoyance at yet another sign of her father’s underhandedness. Ross Dawson was a few years older that her own twenty-six years. He was the son of the chairman of Dawson and Cross and, it had to be said, had a ‘thing’ for her despite Phelix telling him frequently and often that he was wasting his time.

‘Do me a favour, Henry?’

‘I’ve already done it.’ He laughed, and she laughed too. All too plainly Henry Scott had known that she would check in with him before she left London.

‘Where am I staying?’ she asked, loving Henry that, without waiting to ask, he had transferred her hotel booking.

‘A lovely hotel half a mile or so from the conference centre,’ he replied. ‘You’ll be more than comfortable there.’

‘You’ve cancelled my other reservation?’

‘Everything’s taken care of,’ Henry assured her.

She rang off a few minutes later, knowing that her father would go up the wall if he ever found out. But she did not care. It went without saying that Ross Dawson would be staying at the hotel she had previously been booked into—her father would have got that piece of information to him somehow.

Deciding she had better be going, Phelix checked her appearance in the full length mirror. She’d had her usual early-morning swim, in the hotel’s swimming pool this time, and was glowing with health. She stared at the elegant and sophisticated unsmiling woman who looked back at her, with black shiny hair that curved inwards just below her dainty chin. She used little make-up, and did not need to. She wore an immaculate trouser suit of a shade of green that brought out to perfection the green of her eyes.

Phelix gave a small nod of approval to the female she had become. There was nothing about her now—outwardly, at any rate—of the shy, long hair all over the place, gauche apology for a woman she had been eight years ago. And she was glad of it—it had been a hard road.

Having hired a car in Zurich and driven to Davos, she opted to walk to the conference centre, and left her hotel quietly seething that her father so wanted an ‘in’ with Dawson and Cross that he was fully prepared to make full use of Ross Dawson’s interest in, not to say pursuit of her to that end. He was obviously hoping that by spending a week in close proximity of each other, with limited chance of her avoiding Ross, something might come of it!

She wouldn’t put it past her father to even have telephoned in the first instance on some business pretext, and then casually let Ross, a director of Dawson and Cross, know that his daughter would be in Davos for a whole week.

She felt hurt as well as angry that her father, having sold her once, cared so little for her he was fully prepared to do it again. Over her dead body!

But, thanks to Henry having got wind of what was going on, he had been able to forewarn her, and at least do a little something to limit the time she had to spend with Ross. Not that she didn’t like Ross. She did. She just had an extreme aversion to being manipulated. And, in the light of past events, who could blame her?

She knew that her father had been having a liaison with his PA, Anna Fry, for years. She wished he would concentrate his attentions more on Anna, and leave his daughter out of his scheming.

As Phelix neared the Kongresszentrum she saw other smartly dressed representatives making their way towards the entrance. She would be glad to see Chris and Duncan, she realised, and hoped nobody else would wonder, as she had before Henry had tipped her off, what possible reason she could have for being there. At least she had been spared the surprise of seeing Ross Dawson unexpectedly.

She made her way inside the building, hoping there were no other unexpected surprises waiting for her on this trip.

‘Where did you get to?’ She turned to find that Duncan Ward and Chris Watson had spotted her coming in and had come over to her. ‘We looked high and low for you last night. Reception said you hadn’t checked in.’

It was gratifying to know that they had been concerned about her. ‘I should have let you know,’ she apologised. ‘I’m sorry. I thought I’d prefer a hotel a bit further away.’

‘As in I might have to put up with you two talking shop during the day, but I want some rest from it in the evenings?’ Chris grinned.

‘Not at all.’ She laughed, and did not have a chance to say anything else because someone was calling her name.

‘Phelix!’ She looked over to where Ross Dawson was making his way over to her. ‘Phelix Bradbury!’ he exclaimed as he reached her.

‘Hello, Ross,’ she replied, and was about to make some comment with regard to his act of being surprised to see her there when, even as Ross kissed her on both cheeks, she caught a glimpse of a tall, dark-haired man standing with a blonde woman and another man. But it was the dark-haired man that held Phelix riveted. She felt a deafening silent thunder in her ears, but even as she tried to deny that he was here after all, it took everything she had to keep her expression composed. She glanced casually away, but not before she noticed that he had been looking at nowhere but her!

Her insides were all of a jangle. She had not seen him in eight years, and only twice before then, but she would know him anywhere! She had been just eighteen then, he twenty-eight. That would make him thirty-six now.

Phelix began to get herself more of one piece when she realised that, thankfully, he could not possibly have recognised her. She was nothing remotely like the awkward and, in her view, late-developing teenager she had been then. But that was it—she was out of here!

But, having grown a veneer of sophistication, even if her insides were now feeling like just so much jelly, Phelix knew she could not just simply cut and run. But she wasn’t staying, that was for sure! As soon as she possibly could, she would tell either Chris or Duncan that she had forgotten something, had a headache, a migraine, athlete’s foot—she didn’t care what—and was going back to her hotel. From there she would make arrangements to fly back to England.

Hoping against hope that he was a figment of her imagination, she found she was irresistibly drawn to glance over to him again. It was him! He was tall, but even so would have stood out from the crowd of people milling around.

She slid her glance from him to the other man standing with him, and on to the close to six feet tall glamorous blonde woman. His girlfriend? Certainly not his wife.

Oh, heavens, he was looking her way again. Phelix flicked her glance from him. She was not unused to men giving her a second look, so knew his second glance was no more than passing interest. But, apart from his female companion, herself and several other women, the conference seemed to be a predominantly male affair.