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Roman picked up on the defensive note that had entered the attractive voice and his brows drew together in a disapproving straight line.
‘Why the hell not?’ he demanded. ‘I need the car,’ he added seamlessly as he turned to his attentively hovering PA, who, like all good assistants, knew when to say nothing. ‘And cancel all my appointments for the rest of the morning, then tell Phil to meet me at the university.’
‘Our flight…?’
‘Cancel.’
‘What if Dr O’Connor is busy—?’
Roman turned his head and looked at her; Alice took the hint.
‘Right, I’ll tell him to drop everything, though that might be hard if he’s in the middle of heart surgery.’
‘He’s a medical man; he doesn’t operate,’ Roman retorted. ‘Just explain to him what’s happened, Alice, and tell him to bring his bag.’
‘Your mother wouldn’t let me call a doctor or an ambulance.’
Roman turned around as if to face the bleating voice. ‘Let you? She was unconscious,’ he derided scornfully.
‘For less than a minute.’
Roman knew when he heard someone covering their back; there was nothing he despised more. He came down hard on people who preferred to shift the blame because they lacked the guts to carry the can for their own mistakes.
‘Let me tell you, Miss Smith, if my mother suffers a broken fingernail that could have been avoided if you had called for medical assistance I’ll sue the pants off you and your university!’ he promised darkly before cutting her off.
His PA was unable to remain silent. ‘Really, you can be so mean!’
‘What is this? Sisterly solidarity?’
‘I don’t think you realise how much you terrify people,’ she reproved, shaking her head.
‘No, Alice, I know exactly how much I terrify people.’ He gave a white wolfish smile. ‘It’s the secret behind my success.’
‘Nonsense,’ returned Alice. ‘The secret of your success is you live for your work and don’t have a life,’ she observed disapprovingly. ‘You lack balance.’
‘A little more terror, Alice, and a little less lip would be appreciated,’ Roman drawled.
‘That poor girl is probably crying her eyes out.’
‘Pardon me but I don’t empathise with incompetence, especially when that incompetence puts my family in danger,’ he explained grimly.
Contrary to Alice’s prediction, the ‘poor girl’ in question was neither terrified nor crying. She was walking down a university corridor where people who would normally have called out a cheery greeting took one look at her usually sunny face and changed their minds.
Others stared curiously when she walked past practising out loud—the acoustics were excellent—one of the cutting home truths she would like to deliver personally to Mr Roman O’Hagan.
‘Get to the point,’ he’d said. What did he think she’d been trying to do while he’d been cracking jokes at her expense?
Of course she should have called for an ambulance, she knew that—did he think she didn’t know that?
David Anderson, the university’s vice-chancellor, looked incredibly relieved as she walked through the door.
‘I thought you were only going to be a second, Scarlet?’ he said, drawing her a little to one side and out of earshot of the pale-faced woman sitting in the chair.
‘How is she?’ Scarlet asked, responding to his hand signals to keep her voice low.
‘Better than she was, I think. She wants me to ask her driver to bring her car around.’
‘I wouldn’t bother, David; her son is on his way over,’ she revealed casually.
On the whole, and considering how stressed David was already, Scarlet didn’t see much point explaining that the millionaire property developer in question was in a very vengeful and litigious mood.
Obviously threats were part and parcel of Roman O’Hagan’s modus operandi. Scarlet knew the type; she had suffered in silence at the hands of bullies during a lot of her school years. Years of unhappiness that she could have been spared if she had realised earlier that all you had to do with a bully was show them you weren’t scared—even if you were!
It hadn’t been bravery in her last year at school that had made her turn around and tell her gang of tormentors exactly what she thought of them, it had been simply a matter of reaching the end of her tether.
The experience had left Scarlet with a loathing of bullies and a determination to never again put herself in the role of victim. Every time she replayed the phone conversation in her head she felt her anger rising. How dared he threaten her? It wasn’t just what he had said, it was the way he had said it.
And that voice; she recalled the inexplicable reaction she had had to the low drawl. Incredibly it had actually produced a physical response. She had reacted to it like a cat whose fur had been stroked the wrong way, her skin literally prickling in an uncomfortable way.
He had the sort of voice that could make an eviction notice sound sexy.
The vice-chancellor shot her a look of annoyed disbelief, which she pretended not to notice.
‘You called Roman O’Hagan after she specifically asked you not to?’ He groaned.
‘Did she?’
‘I know she did, Scarlet, because I was there at the time and I heard what she said, not once, but twice.’
‘So maybe she did,’ Scarlet conceded. ‘But she also specifically asked us not to call a medic or ambulance,’ she reminded him. ‘And I thought that was wrong too.’
‘She’s a very important woman; we can’t go around ignoring her wishes.’
‘You didn’t; I did.’
David looked somewhat mollified by this reminder. ‘That’s true.’
‘Just call me Scarlet the scapegoat,’ she suggested cheerfully.
David shot her a reproachful look from under his halfmoon specs. ‘I’ll just go and organise someone to meet Mr O’Hagan.’
A three-man job at least, Scarlet mused scornfully: one person to grovel, another to sprinkle rose petals in his path and, last but not least, one to stroke the guy’s massive ego. She for one didn’t envy anyone the task of being nice to him. Even allowing for his concern over his mother, the mega-rich playboy had come across as a nasty bully of a man. Being rich, in her view, did not give anyone carte blanche to be rude.
‘Where’s a spare red carpet when you need one?’
David shot her a wary look. ‘I hope you weren’t rude to him.’
Scarlet adopted a puzzled expression, her eyes wide and innocent.
‘Don’t look at me like that, Scarlet, it worries me. I’ve known you since you were six years old,’ he reminded her drily.
‘Why would I be rude to the man? I rang to tell him his mother wasn’t well.’
‘Hummph.’ David left her with a firm admonition not to take any further unilateral decisions if she wanted to keep her job.
‘Are you feeling any better?’ Scarlet asked, approaching the slim, elegant figure who was dressed in a soft apricot suit that hinted tastefully at a good cleavage.
‘Much better, thank you,’ Natalia O’Hagan replied in her soft, attractive Italian accent.
She didn’t look nearly old enough to have a son the age of Roman O’Hagan.
Unless he had begun his infamous playboy lifestyle when he was still at school he had to be in his early thirties at least to have fitted in all the beautiful women who had reputedly enjoyed his admiration. As aloof and arrogant as he was widely reported to be, he was rarely photographed without some lush beauty gazing adoringly up into his face.
Scarlet smiled at Natalia. She had taken to the older woman immediately. Unlike her son she came across as a warm, genuine woman with no airs and graces. Just thinking about the vile son with his hateful, sarcastic drawl sent a shudder of antipathy down Scarlet’s spine.
Maybe Roman O’Hagan had inherited his arrogance from the paternal side of the equation. It was quite a combination of genes, Italian and Irish, Scarlet reflected, and on the evidence so far she’d say the result of that fusion had produced a person who lacked the charm of the Irish and the charisma of the Italians.
Despite her reassurance as she lifted the glass of water, there was a visible tremor in the older woman’s hand.
‘Let me,’ Scarlet said, taking the glass from her and placing it back on her own desk.
On closer inspection she could see that the scary bluish tinge had receded from around the older woman’s lips. This was good news, but despite these small signs of improvement the woman still looked far from well.
‘Can I get you anything else?’
Natalia O’Hagan lifted her head, her lips formed a weak smile, but she didn’t appear able to respond to the question.
Scarlet’s anxiety increased. She privately called herself every sort of weak idiot for not having stood her ground in the first place and rung for a doctor straight off as she’d wanted.
In that at least her wretched son had been right.
She could have insisted, but when the university bigwigs, who had tagged along with David for the official opening ceremony of the crèche, had overruled her, what had she done? She’d meekly rolled over.
As far as the powers that be were concerned they weren’t going to risk upsetting the woman whose generous donation had been responsible for the refurbishment and extension of the crèche facilities, not to mention the new state-of-the art IT building. And Natalia O’Hagan had managed to make it quite clear despite her weak condition, that she did not want a doctor.
That was fine and their call to make, but where were they now, those men and women in suits who knew better? Their absence from the vicinity was pretty conspicuous.
Scarlet had only been half joking when she’d called herself a scapegoat. If anything went wrong it wasn’t difficult to figure out who would be left to carry the can, especially if Roman O’Hagan had anything to do with it. She couldn’t see the men and women in suits leaping up to take responsibility.
‘Won’t you let me get someone down from Occupational Health, at least—?’ Scarlet began, only to be cut off by an impatient, slightly imperious nod of the smooth dark head.
‘You sound just like my sons.’
Scarlet had no control over the expression of horror that spread across her face. ‘Me?’
‘You know, I consider myself a lucky woman,’ Natalia revealed. ‘Two sons who I love dearly, and they are so good to me. But,’ she explained with a shake of her head, ‘they are both ridiculously overprotective. Roman is possibly the worst.
‘He has a terrible habit of thinking he knows what is best,’ Natalia continued ruefully. ‘If I’d let him he’d run my life, I swear he would.’
‘You have to stand up to him!’
Natalia’s delicate brow lifted at the heat of Scarlet’s stern declaration.
Scarlet coloured self-consciously and forced her expression to relax. ‘I suppose it’s a son’s job to be protective of his mother. I expect mine will one day,’ she added lightly.
‘You have a son?’ Liquid dark eyes scanned Scarlet’s slim figure. She was wearing her usual work garb, jeans and one of the bright child-friendly tee shirts all the helpers in the crèche wore. It had been suggested that, as the manager of the centre, she ought to wear something more in fitting with her management role, but Scarlet, a hands-on sort of manager, had stuck to her guns and her tee shirt.
‘Goodness, you look so young, or maybe that’s just me getting old.’
‘You’re not old.’
‘When I look at those little ones I feel…’ She suddenly went very still as she looked through the plate-glass partition to the room beyond. It should have been empty; the children were enjoying the party on the lawn. ‘That child—what is his name?’
It was a casual enough question, but casual in Scarlet’s experience didn’t equate with the lines of tension bracketing the older woman’s soft mouth or the tortured twisting of the hands clasped in her lap.
‘Which one? We’ve got quite a few here. Should you lie down, perhaps…?’ she suggested tentatively. ‘If you’re not feeling well?’
‘I’m feeling fine.’ The strained smile she produced to prove the point did nothing to soothe Scarlet’s fears. ‘The little boy I’m talking about is the one who gave me the flowers? The one sitting there.’
Scarlet followed the direction of the ashen-faced woman’s strangely haunted gaze as Natalie nodded through the glass partition that separated Scarlet’s office from the big, newly equipped play room, towards a small dark-haired figure sitting cross-legged on the floor.
Sam was meant to be outside with the other children watching the magician they’d engaged as entertainment. With the party in full swing he had obviously managed to slip away unnoticed. Sam was a very resourceful child.
He had wanted to finish his jigsaw earlier, and when he wanted something, as she knew to her cost, he could show remarkable focus. His little face was a mask of concentration as he slotted the final piece into a complicated wooden jigsaw and gave a triumphant smile.
‘Sam,’ Scarlet replied, a puzzled frown forming between her brows as she registered the throb of emotion in the other woman’s attractively accented voice.
‘I hope I didn’t alarm him.’
‘Sam takes most things in his stride,’ Scarlet returned honestly.
‘I thought he might,’ came the puzzling dry rejoinder. ‘His mother…does she work at the university?’
‘Sam’s my son, the one I mentioned.’ Scarlet was trying very hard not to glow too obviously with pride. ‘One of the perks of running the university crèche is I get to bring him to work with me.’
This hadn’t happened by accident. Early on Scarlet had realised to leave Sam on a daily basis would be too painful, not necessarily for the child, who possessed an adaptable and sunny personality, but for herself.
‘You?’
Scarlet endured with equanimity the astonished, searching scrutiny that came her way. The reaction didn’t surprise her. Sam was an exceptionally beautiful child, and Scarlet knew the only thing exceptional about herself was her ordinariness, but even so the softly breathed, ‘Unbelievable!’ did bring a faint flush to her pale cheeks.
As if she realised her lapse in manners, a flicker of something akin to embarrassment flickered across the beautiful features of the VIP guest.
‘And how old is Sam?’
‘He was three in April.’
‘He seems very advanced for his age.’
