The Fiance Fix

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‘I’m sure they did,’ Joey acknowledged disdainfully, easily able to imagine what some of those explanations might have been. ‘How did you discover the truth?’ She frowned.

That question had been bothering her since David Banning arrived outside her home the previous evening. She had known Daniel when they lived at Oxford, but she and Lily now lived hundreds of miles away from there. Deliberately so. Obviously Lily’s money was now paid into a local branch of the bank, but that still didn’t explain how this man had found out who Lily—and she!—actually were.

Blue eyes met hers unblinkingly. ‘Amongst Daniel’s belongings I also found some letters. Love letters. From “Josey”. At least, I thought it was Josey,’ he corrected drily. ‘You really should learn to write in a neater hand, Joey,’ he drawled pointedly.

Her mouth twisted in the paleness of her face. ‘I’ll try to bear your advice in mind,’ she dismissed. ‘OK, so you found…the letters. That still doesn’t tell me how you learnt of Lily’s existence. Or, indeed, exactly who she is.’ She looked steadily at David Banning.

He shrugged those broad shoulders beneath his tailored jacket. ‘I hired a private detective—’

‘You did what?’ Joey gasped incredulously, what little colour there was in her face immediately draining away, huge green eyes dominating the whiteness of her face now.

Just the thought of some faceless, nameless third party digging into the details of her life—without her even being aware of it—gave her a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

‘How dare you?’ she continued angrily, shaking with indignation.

David Banning shrugged again. ‘In view of the fact that I live in America—’

‘And your time is precious!’ Joey put in scathingly.

‘—it was the easiest, and most efficient way of finding out exactly what I wanted to know,’ he continued as if she hadn’t interrupted.

‘It was an infringement of my privacy, is what it was!’ Joey corrected furiously.

‘Perhaps,’ he allowed drily. ‘I—’

‘There’s no “perhaps” about it.’ Her voice shook with anger, her hands tightly clenched into fists beneath the table.

‘I do wish you would calm down, Joey,’ David Banning told her in a bored voice.

‘I’ll just bet you do.’ She glared across the table at him, her thoughts racing. Exactly what had this damned private detective found out about her? ‘But I have to tell you that I deeply resent having some seedy private detective sifting through the contents of my life—’

‘You watch too much television, Joey,’ he put in disparagingly. ‘The man was quite respectable, I can assure you.’

For respectable Joey instantly read discreet. It really wouldn’t do to have the sort of information David Banning had uncovered made public knowledge. How would the Banning family ever be able to lift their heads in New York society again if Lily’s existence as Daniel’s illegitimate child became public knowledge?

David Banning’s gaze was steely now. ‘All the man actually turned up was that you run a hairdressing salon. That your private life is non-existent. Obviously he found out your home address,’ he revealed mockingly. ‘And that you share that home with your six-year-old daughter Lily. In view of those cash payments Daniel paid for the last six years or so,’ he continued with distaste, ‘it didn’t need an Einstein to work out that Lily was the reason for those payments—that she had to be Daniel’s daughter.’

‘Lily is my daughter,’ Joey corrected harshly. ‘Daniel’s so-called payments were just to ease his damned conscience.’

She wished now that she had let her pride win in that situation. Then she would never have been presented with this other—more threatening?—situation.

‘What exactly is it that you want, Mr Banning?’ she asked guardedly, green gaze hard on the arrogant features across the table.

This man might look like Daniel, but she had quickly learnt that the similarity was only skin-deep. David Banning was hard and shrewd, things Daniel had never been, and Joey also guessed that he could be completely ruthless if the situation necessitated it.