Looking After Dad

‘OK, but—’

‘But, what?’ he enquired, when she paused.

‘Whilst you may consider your daughter to be the best thing since hole-in-the-wall cash dispensers, the only reason a single woman would show such an interest in her would be because she’s interested in you.’ Jess offered him a sunny smile. ‘A bizarre concept, I know, but such are the foibles of human nature.’

‘You’re good at the smartarse comment, Miss Pallister,’ he remarked, ‘but do you have a better idea?’

‘No. I was just pointing out—’

‘Then we’ll stick with it.’

‘Yes, sir. If we’re supposed to be one-time colleagues you ought to call me Jess. Short for Jessica,’ she told him.

‘And it’s Lorcan,’ he said, a mite reluctantly.

She angled him a look. ‘Lorc for short?’

‘Only if you’re a dear, dear friend,’ he said grittily.

‘But I don’t fit into that category?’

‘Not quite.’

‘You don’t believe Charles Sohan has any connection with the note?’ she asked as they skirted the grassy area of Regent’s Park and sped up past Lord’s cricket ground.

‘None. Granted, he and Sir Peter are in competition, and Sohan was eager for me to build him a flagship hotel in Mauritius, but—’

‘Why Mauritius?’ Jess interrupted.

‘Because he originally comes from the island. Around seventy per cent of the population are of Indian extraction, mainly descended from labourers who went there to work in the sugar plantations.’

‘And the other thirty per cent?’

‘Creoles, Franco-Mauritians and Chinese. When Charles Sohan discovered I’d been engaged to design a hotel complex for the Warwick Group, he immediately offered to double my fee,’ Lorcan continued, ‘and later to treble it. I refused. Although I’d barely started, it wouldn’t have been ethical to pull out.’

‘Mr Sohan was annoyed?’

‘Hopping mad. Apparently he’d been on the point of contracting me himself and he swore that Sir Peter must’ve found out and sneaked in first. But he’s not the type to seek revenge and, besides, he has a soft spot for Harriet.’

‘Sir Peter believes that although the note threatens you and your daughter it’s intended to hit at him,’ Jess said, ‘but it could also be hitting against you. Is there anyone you know who might bear a grudge?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t have any enemies—or, at least, none that I’m aware of. But the note is mischief-making,’ he dismissed.

‘It was still sent for a reason. You may not have enemies as such, but there could be people you’ve annoyed,’ she continued, and skewered him with a look. ‘For example, people whom you’ve shouted at or blamed for something which was beyond their control.’

His fingers tightened around the steering wheel. ‘OK, OK, I lost my cool in the lift. But when Gerard rang this morning to say there’d been a death threat against Harriet and me he made it sound so imminent, so serious that it scared the—it wound me up,’ he adjusted, ‘which was no doubt what the guy intended.’ Drawing the coupé to a halt at traffic lights, he turned to face her. ‘I reacted with less grace than I should’ve done. Will you forgive me?’

‘You aren’t going to grovel?’ Jess enquired, for his apology had been clipped.

‘I never grovel to anyone,’ he replied. ‘However, in this instance I do acknowledge that I was less tolerant than I should’ve been. So?’

She made him wait for a long moment. ‘I forgive you, Lorcan.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Now you can see the funny side?’

The green light shone and he accelerated away from the junction. ‘Don’t push it, Jess,’ he said.

‘Why would Gerard want to wind you up?’ she enquired as they motored along. ‘In my work I’ve shared all kinds of confidences with all kinds of people and I can be trusted,’ she told him. ‘I won’t blab.’

He subjected her to a discerning look, then nodded, accepting her assurance. ‘The guy’d enjoy winding me up because he resents my friendship with his father, plus he feels he should’ve been consulted about the designing of the hotel.’

‘Gerard is an architect, too?’ she said, in surprise.

‘No. He started to study architecture, but thanks to dabbling in drugs he got himself thrown out of college halfway through the course. He claims he would’ve sailed through his finals with flying colours, though whether that’s true is anyone’s guess.’

‘Your guess is no?’

‘My guess is that the guy has difficulty walking and chewing gum at the same time,’ he said succinctly. ‘However, this doesn’t stop him from thinking he should be running the show in Mauritius and not me. When he visited the site a month ago, he made that abundantly clear.’

‘Sir Peter let him run the show earlier,’ Jess observed. ‘Most of the time.’

‘That’s because he’s his only child and his weak spot. Sir Peter’s wife disappeared with some local heart-throb when Gerard was a few months old, so there’s always been just the two of them. I understand that when he was a kid he gave him everything he wanted and by the time it dawned that he could be raising a monster he was halfway there.’

‘Is Gerard still on drugs?’

He shook his head. ‘After the trouble with the college his father halved his allowance, which persuaded him to kick the habit, though now there’re rumours he gets his highs from gambling, plus he’s a heavy drinker. And he runs around with a very flaky crowd. But Sir Peter’s involving him more and more in the business in the hope that he’ll develop a taste for hard graft and take over when he retires.’

‘Gerard doesn’t come over as the hard graft type,’ Jess said.

‘Anything but. You don’t come over as a bodyguard,’ Lorcan remarked, and slid her a look. ‘Shouldn’t they have hair-trigger reflexes?’

‘My reflexes are excellent,’ she protested. ‘All right, when the champagne exploded—’

‘You screwed up.’

‘Well, maybe, but—’

‘There’s no “maybe” about it. You made a total, full-blown, unmitigated mess of things.’

Jess glared. There was a gleam in his blue eyes which said he was deliberately riling her—and enjoying himself.

‘The reason I wasn’t as alert as I should’ve been was that today nothing’s gone right,’ she informed him huffily. ‘So I was distracted, and a little slower off the mark and—’

‘You’re premenstrual?’ Lorcan suggested, when she sought around for another excuse. ‘I believe there’re some excellent remedies for PMT on the market.’

‘I am not premenstrual and that is so sexist! But maybe the reason you lost your cool earlier is because you’re in the throes of the male menopause?’ she said, in a feisty tit-for-tat.