Boss Meets Baby(119)
‘That won’t be necessary.’
‘I don’t mind—’
‘Didn’t you hear what I said? I said that won’t be necessary!’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’
Throwing her hands up in the air in exasperation, Georgia stared at him in disbelief. There was clearly something about her that was pressing all the wrong buttons with him this morning—something she just didn’t get. Either that, or he was unhappy about something that had happened on his trip.
As soon as the idea had planted itself in her mind, she— found she needed to have it confirmed. Georgia didn’t want to add to his troubles—all she wanted to do was help alleviate them. Her nature was that she always tried to help.
‘Did something go wrong in New York?’
‘What?’
‘Is that why you seem so on edge?’
Georgia was beginning to wonder if it was a woman that was at the root of his bad mood, and she didn’t include herself—in spite of Keir’s suggestion last night that he’d looked forward to coming back to see her. Had there been a woman Keir liked in New York? A woman he might even be in love with? Had that woman rejected him?
Jealousy vying with fear inside her, Georgia had to work hard to keep her expression impassive.
‘Nothing went wrong in NewYork, Georgia…other— than the fact that I didn’t really want to be there!’
‘But you seemed in such a hurry to go there!’ she— exclaimed.
‘Did I?’ His handsome brow creased as though he were perplexed.
‘You really are completely impossible!’ Georgia accused him, frustrated that she clearly wasn’t going to get any answers that made any sense to anything today. Dropping her hands to either side of her shapely hips in the red linen dress, she sighed heavily.
‘That aside…perhaps we should both just get down to the business of the day and restore a little peace to the morning? We’ve had enough storms of one kind or another for a while—wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Fine! What would you like me to do for you first?’ Her temper helplessly simmering, Georgia tossed back her hair and waited for instructions.
Silently surveying him for a moment, she saw a distracting dimple appear at the corner of Keir’s disturbing— mouth.
‘That could take us into a whole new interesting arena if I were deliberately to misconstrue that question.’ He grinned. ‘Want to ask me again? But perhaps this time with a little less provocative passion?’
CHAPTER SIX
A SHAFT OF SUNLIGHT beamed in from a small side casement window and created a pool of light in the middle of the floor. It lit up the muted reds and golds of an old faded Persian carpet that had been unfolded there a long time ago—possibly even before Keir had been born. Round the edges of that eye-catching pool of light were some of the now superfluous remnants of his family’s past.
In one corner were a pair of discarded Tiffany lamps that had once resided in his father’s study—the— study that now belonged to Keir—and next to them an old oak dresser-cum china cabinet, long empty of any fine display of porcelain and pottery, and— now home to a generous coating of dust.
Piled around the room in general haphazard fashion were myriad cardboard boxes, splitting at the seams with books and ornaments and trinkets, and possibly somewhere in amongst all that the beloved chess set that his mother had surprisingly presented to him one Christmas when his father had been away on business. It was a gift that had often been utilised as a means of escape and distraction from James Strachan’s sour temper, and its home had nearly always been this attic.
Robbie and Keir would steal away up here as often as they could, to shut the door on their parents’ terrible— rows, and locked in the strategy of the game would briefly escape the trauma that seemed to underline their childhood. After their mother had died there’d been no more refuge in the attic to play chess.
Both boys had gone to a local public school, as their father had done before them, but they hadn’t been allowed to board like most of the other pupils. If they had, Keir sometimes wondered if the bleak-ness— of his home life wouldn’t have scarred him quite as badly—but James had seemed to take particular delight in demanding that his sons came home at the end of each school day, just so that he could remain in rigid control of every aspect of their lives and plague them further with his meanness and ill temper.
Made to do various jobs round the house as well as work on the estate, they’d also regularly had to listen to his various rants and small-minded preju-dices— over the political situation, or his belligerent belief that ‘people just don’t know their place these days,’ and that they should show the gentry more respect. When Keir had invariably started to disagree with his point of view and dared to express his own his father had demonstrated his fury with his fists…
Feeling slightly nauseous at the relentless tide of unwanted memories that washed over him—each one like a stinging cut that had never healed—Keir moved with trepidation into the room and acciden-tally— trod on something hard underfoot. Looking down to see what it was, he picked up a once lovingly painted miniature replica of a nineteenth-century Scottish soldier. For a few moments he scarcely breathed. Then, his palm curling tightly round the small toy, so that the metal edges dug painfully into his flesh, tears stabbed the backs of his eyes like dagger points.