The Reluctant Surrender

‘It is not my choice that you be my point person on this project,’ Saul pointed out. ‘And given what I already know about your inclination towards theft I must warn you that you will be very much on probation. The first sign I see that you are using the same unscrupulous methods you used to gain access to my parking space in your work, you will be out of a job.’

‘I made a mistake—’ Giselle tried to defend herself, but Saul wasn’t in any mood to be compassionate.

‘A very big mistake,’ he agreed. ‘And you will be making another if you don’t show some honesty now and tell me why you turned down two prestigious jobs. I won’t have someone whose morals I find suspect working for me in a position of trust.’

His meaning was perfectly plain, and it caused Giselle to blench.

Watching her, Saul felt confident that now she would tell him what he could do with his job. That was certainly what he wanted her to do. Loath as he was to admit it, somehow or other she had got under his skin in a way that he was finding increasingly hard to ignore—like an annoying, irritating, unignorable itch that needed to be scratched. He didn’t want that kind of intrusion in his life.

Giselle was trying not to let Saul see how vulnerable and anxious she felt. He wanted her to hand in her notice, she suspected. But she was not going to do so. She couldn’t.

His accusations might be unjust, and she might feel angry, but anger was a luxury that she couldn’t afford, Giselle was forced to concede.

She took a deep breath and said, as calmly as she could, ‘Very well. I will tell you.’

Her response was not what Saul had been expecting—and very definitely not what he had wanted.

Lifting her head, Giselle continued, ‘I turned down the other jobs because the great-aunt who brought me up now needs full-time care, and in addition to helping fund that I want to be here to ensure that the care is as good as the care she gave me. I can’t expect her to leave Yorkshire after she’s spent her whole life there, but I do expect myself to be here for her, doing everything I can to ensure that she has all the comfort and care she deserves. Working in London means that I can see her regularly. If I worked abroad that wouldn’t be possible.’

Against all his own expectations Saul felt an unwilling tug of grudging respect—and something more.

‘You were brought up by your great-aunt? What happened to your parents?’ he felt impelled to ask, the words almost dragged from him against his will.

‘They died, and I was orphaned,’ Giselle answered as steadily as she could, proud of how calm she managed to keep her voice.

Damn, damn. Saul swore inwardly as the result of his forcefulness was made plain to him along with something else—something that touched the deepest part of him, no matter how much he might wish that it did not. That single word ‘orphaned’ had such resonance for him—such personal and deep-rooted private emotional history.

He might have forced a confession from Giselle Freeman, but he wasn’t going to be able to force a resignation from her, given what she had just told him.

He started to turn away from her, and then something stopped him. ‘How old were you when…when you lost your parents?’

His voice was low, the words betraying something which in another man Giselle might almost have thought was a hushed, respectful hesitancy. But this man would never show that kind of compassion to anyone, Giselle was sure—much less someone he disliked as much as he had made it plain he disliked her.

‘Seven.’ Well, nearly seven. But there hadn’t been a party to celebrate her November birthday that year—just as there hadn’t been the year before either. A picture slid remorselessly into her head: coffins, two of them, one for her mother and one for the baby brother who had been buried with her, his coffin heaped with white flowers. And the house she had returned to with her father, filled with the agonising silence of his grief and her own guilt. She had longed so much for her father to hold her and tell her that it wasn’t her fault, but instead he had turned away from her, and she’d known he did blame her, just as she blamed herself. They had never talked about what had happened. Instead he had let her great-aunt take her away because he couldn’t bear the sight of her.