Carole Mortimer Romance Collection. Carole Mortimer

to stop this man doing exactly as he liked. Again. At least, she had looked apologetic, until the door was firmly closed in her face!

      ‘I came to see your mother,’ Lyon told Silke dismissively, brows raised at the fact that she obviously wasn’t here.

      But Silke was. ‘And doesn’t she deserve your respect either?’ she challenged, unnerved at having him walk in here, even though she had been half expecting to hear from him.

      His mouth tightened as he crossed the room. ‘Where is she? No—let me guess; playing the loving fiancée at the clinic with Henry?’ he scorned.

      Silke gave him a pitying look. ‘She isn’t “playing” anything, Lyon. My mother happens to love your uncle. And, more importantly,’ she added as she could see he was about to make a scathing reply, ‘your uncle loves her.’

      Lyon sat down in the chair opposite her, placing a large brown envelope on the desk in front of him. ‘Henry is an old man; he doesn’t even—’

      ‘Don’t be so damned patronising!’ Silke snapped angrily, getting to her feet, looking very slim in fitted black trousers and a soft green jumper. ‘My God, you make him sound ten degrees off being senile!’ she accused heatedly, eyes blazing indignantly, having become very fond, during the last three days, of the man who was about to become her stepfather. She certainly had no intention of standing by and listening to Lyon denigrate him.

      ‘At the moment that’s exactly how he’s behaving!’ Lyon rasped back, looking at her coldly between narrowed lids. ‘My God, he calmly announces to me that he’s about to marry a woman he hasn’t even seen for thirty-five years, and I’m supposed to accept that he’s completely in control of his faculties!’ He shook his head disbelievingly.

      Silke glared at him. ‘You aren’t supposed to accept anything, Lyon,’ she told him disgustedly. ‘They’re two grown adults, with—’

      ‘Who have suddenly “found each other” again after all these years?’ Lyon derided contemptuously. ‘Spare me that, Silke,’ he scorned. ‘Henry may never have married, but he’s hardly lived a celibate life the last thirty-five years—’

      ‘No one is claiming that he has,’ she defended, her whole body taut with indignation, her hands clenched at her sides. Just who did this man think he was, talking about her mother and Henry in this way?

      ‘—and your mother’s life has hardly been blameless either,’ Lyon continued firmly. Pointedly.

      She became suddenly still, her expression wary now as she looked at him. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she prompted softly.

      His mouth twisted. ‘Your mother’s life, over the last thirty-five years, makes interesting reading,’ he told her challengingly, dark brows raised.

      Silke frowned down at him—before glancing across the desk at the brown envelope he had put down so pointedly on his arrival. He suddenly took on the appearance of a cobra about to strike!

      She couldn’t believe it. This man, this—this... Words failed her as to describing exactly what he was. How dared he have her mother’s past investigated? Because Silke knew, with sickening clarity, that was exactly what Lyon had done, that this was the reason for his silence of the last three days.

      ‘You’re despicable!’ she finally told him disgustedly. ‘Absolutely beneath contempt!’

      She could imagine all too clearly how that report on her mother would read, knew how her mother’s life would sound written down in black and white, the flitting from job to job, country to country, the finally settling down for two years with Silke’s father, seeming barely to give birth to Silke before she was off again, this time dragging her child around with her. There had been relationships with men before Silke was born, other relationships in the years that followed her birth. Once she was old enough to understand, her mother had been completely honest with her about those, and, loving her as she did, Silke had accepted her mother’s life.

      But baldly written down on paper, without her mother’s emotions to back it up, it would all look very irresponsible, probably promiscuous too. Which, looking at Lyon’s contemptuous expression, was exactly what it looked like to him. Damn the man!

      ‘Henry has a right to know about the woman he says he wants to marry,’ Lyon told her tightly in answer to her accusation.

      Silke glared at him, angry on her mother’s behalf. ‘Anything your uncle wants to know about my mother, she will tell him.’

      ‘Will she?’

      Silke bristled even more at Lyon’s sceptical tone. ‘Yes!’ In fact, she was sure her mother and Henry had done little else but talk the last three days, that and arrange a special licence so that they could be married as soon as the other arrangements could be made. Which this man probably knew nothing about. And which Silke, after what he had just said about her mother, had no intention of telling him, either! ‘Tell me, Lyon, what’s happened in your life to make you so damned cynical?’ she challenged.

      God, she was more than a little cynical herself after James had let her down so badly, but that didn’t stop her feeling happy for her mother and Henry—it just meant she had no intention of ever falling in love again herself!

      Lyon stiffened at the familiarity of the question. ‘We weren’t discussing me—’

      ‘Oh, but I think we were.’ Silke shook her head, her hair a silver-blonde frame to gamin features. ‘It seems to me that it’s your own experiences with relationships that is making you judge the past situation between Henry and my mother; that you—’

      ‘Don’t try any of your amateur psychology on me, Silke,’ Lyon scorned harshly. ‘The Winter-Buchanan money has always been the draw—’

      ‘My mother gave all that up once,’ she pointed out softly, looking at him searchingly; was it possible this man had been through a similar experience to her own, that he had also been let down in love? But she didn’t want to have anything in common with Lyon! Certainly didn’t want to find they had an affinity because of past hurts. Considering the physical reaction there seemed to be between them—no matter how much they both wished it weren’t there!—that could be dangerous, very dangerous...

      Lyon shrugged now. ‘She was young at the time, didn’t realise quite what she was giving up. Besides, when it came down to it, she obviously didn’t want the responsibility of someone else’s brat!’ His mouth twisted with distaste. ‘I doubt taking on someone else’s baby with the wedding-ring was the lifestyle she had in mind at all!’

      Silke frowned. ‘Is that really what you think happened?’

      ‘Don’t be so bloody naïve, Silke; of course that’s what happened!’ he scorned.

      She shook her head again. ‘That explanation doesn’t make sense either, Lyon; with all that Winter-Buchanan money at her disposal my mother wouldn’t have had to have anything to do with you herself if she didn’t want to. She could have paid people to do that!’

      ‘Henry wouldn’t have allowed that—’

      ‘Henry did it!’ she reasoned forcefully, clearly remembering the conversation between the two men on that first day. And Lyon might not like her ‘amateur psychology’, but it was becoming more and more obvious, despite Henry’s efforts—and that damned Winter-Buchanan money!—that Lyon had always had a very lonely life.

      ‘Because he had no choice,’ Lyon bit out harshly now, eyes glittering dangerously. ‘He was a man on his own, with a business to run—’

      ‘If you know that, why do you give him such a hard time over your childhood?’ she prompted softly. Her own childhood hadn’t exactly been ‘normal’ either, and her experience with James hadn’t been fun, but she was sure she didn’t have the same cynical approach to life Lyon did. Did she...?

      He stood up forcefully, glaring down at her, a nerve pulsing in one tightly clenched cheek. ‘Silke, I don’t