Читать книгу Olivero's Outrageous Proposal - Kate Walker - Страница 8
ОглавлениеTHE HALL BEYOND the ballroom was silent, strangely unoccupied after the crowds that had packed the other room. A buffet supper was being served as part of the event, and many people were already queuing there, waiting to be served. As a result, the almost empty hallway seemed unexpectedly cold and uncomfortable, making Alyse shiver in shock at the sudden change of temperature.
‘I need my coat...’
She fumbled in her clutch bag, looking for the cloakroom ticket. She had just found it when Dario reached over and took the slip of paper from her hand with a sharp tug.
‘Wait here.’
A gesture of courtesy—or taking control? Alyse couldn’t help wondering as she watched him stride across the marble floor to where the cloakroom attendant stood on duty. She didn’t know and she didn’t want to stop and consider the question. Control was a word she associated with her father—or with the sort of behaviour Marcus had been trying to force onto her—and she didn’t want to think of either of them right now.
Just two minutes out of the ballroom—two minutes away from the warm and intimate closeness of their dance—and already the heat and sensation had started to evaporate, leaving her with an uncomfortable shivery feeling inside. She wrapped her arms around herself in a vain attempt to bring some warmth back to uncomfortably chilled skin.
She hadn’t wanted to move apart from him; hadn’t wanted to break out of that cocoon that had formed around them. From the moment they had moved, Dario turning away from her, a cold, creeping sense of reality had started to invade the little bubble of delight she had been living in.
‘What am I doing?’
She actually muttered the words out loud as she kept her eyes fixed on the back of Dario’s dark head, the width of his powerful shoulders.
Was she really planning on heading out of here with him? With a man she had only met...her eyes slid to a clock above the cloakroom door...less than an hour before.
The main door opened with a heavy swish, someone who had gone outside for a sneaky cigarette coming in and leaving it partially open. Alyse balanced on her toes like an athlete readying for the gun to sound the starting point. She could go now...
But even as she took a step forward she caught the wave of cold and damp that came into the hall from behind the new arrival. His jacket was splashed with water too, warning of a change in weather outside. She would need her coat...and her coat...
Was in Dario’s hands, the fine black velvet looking impossibly soft and delicate in the grip of those long, tanned fingers.
She couldn’t get her feet to move, freezing where she stood, her eyes locking with his over the heads of the people around them. He knew what she had had on her mind; she could tell it from the faint fast frown that drew those dark brows together, the narrowing of the blue eyes.
‘Helena!’
Behind her, just beyond the doorway into the ballroom, Alyse heard an uncomfortably familiar male voice raised in greeting and just the sound of it brought a rush of a whole new set of feelings. In the space of an uneven heartbeat she was brought back to the moment she had arrived at the ball, the desperate plan, only half formed, to make sure that Marcus saw her with someone else so that then perhaps he would take no for an answer.
A swift sidelong glance over her shoulder brought confirmation of the slow creep of unease down her neck. Marcus was here. Suddenly, from wanting him to see her with someone else it had become the last thing she wanted. She wanted to get out of here now and let this evening that had suddenly turned magical in contrast to weeks of tension and strain continue. Pushing herself into action, she turned her feet towards Dario.
‘Thank you.’
It sounded as if she had run up a flight of steps rather than across the smooth marble tiling.
‘I’m going to need this...’ She was already pushing one arm into a sleeve of her coat as she spoke, manoeuvring herself so that she could hitch it up over her shoulder. ‘Have you seen the weather outside? It’s pouring with rain.’
The shiver she affected was meant to be in response to the conditions outside but it was given an added edge by the worrying sense of unease as she saw the way his gaze went over her head, skimming the entrance hall as if looking for someone.
Automatically, his hands came out to help her pull the other sleeve over her arm, lifting the fall of blonde hair from her shoulders and smoothing it down over the black velvet.
Hurry—hurry! Alyse urged him in the silence of her thoughts. Please, let’s get out of here before Marcus intervenes.
‘We’ll have to get a taxi...’ she said, pushing her arm under his and curling her hand around the strength of bone and muscle under the fine silk of his jacket. ‘Or we’ll get soaked.’
She was almost tugging him on his way, urging him towards the door.
‘No need,’ Dario muttered, nodding towards the uniformed man who held a large black umbrella that he had fetched from a nearby stand above their heads, protecting them from the lashing rain.
‘Your car, sir...’
The sleek black vehicle had come to a growling halt at the kerb, the back door opened for Alyse to make her way under the protection of the umbrella. She had only just slid into place on the soft leather seat when the door was slammed after her, and Dario made his way swiftly to the other side. An instant after that, the chauffeur, obviously needing no instructions as to their destination, put the car into motion as he pulled away from the kerb.
Alyse’s mood seesawed again, taking her from a need to escape to another, even more unsettling feeling. One that left her breathless and suddenly cold, in spite of the warmth inside the car. Dario’s fixed determination had disturbed her so that she could almost believe that she had been kidnapped, taken against her will.
And yet she knew she had been a party to it. More than that, she had been so swamped by the response of her senses that she wasn’t thinking straight. She had been burning up with hunger, the sensual need that had uncoiled in the pit of her stomach and radiated out along every nerve. If they could have moved then, been instantly transported from the ballroom to wherever they were going, then she wouldn’t have had a moment to think, to allow any hint of second thoughts to slide into her mind.
But now, when it seemed that the cold of the evening was seeping into her bones, a slow sneaking sense of apprehension destroyed that wonderful heated knowledge that this was right. That it was what she had been looking for all her life. The restrictions she’d had to put up with in order to help care for her ailing mother had limited her chances for the sort of fun and spontaneity her friends enjoyed. Tonight was going to be so very different.
Twisting in her seat, she glanced back the way they’d come, the brilliantly lit doorway to the hotel shielded from the rain by the canopy that flapped furiously in the wind. The weather had driven almost everyone indoors so there was only the doorman on duty. But as she watched a single figure emerged from the hotel doorway and stood, feet planted firmly apart on the red carpet, his whole body turned in their direction, his gaze obviously following the progress of the car as it sped away. The lamplight gleamed on the bright red-gold of his head, making it plain just who he was. He couldn’t be anyone else.
Marcus Kavanaugh. The man whose single-minded campaign to bully her into marrying him had blighted her life for the past few weeks. She had done everything she could to make it plain that he meant nothing to her, but it hadn’t worked. Of course she’d had to be polite. He was her father’s boss’s son after all. But politeness hadn’t worked. And now that her father had joined in the campaign to see them married, insisting it was the match of the century, she’d felt hounded, trapped, driven into a corner.
It was the memory of how the other man had behaved this morning that made her shudder faintly. She could still hear Marcus’s voice telling her that she would regret it if she gave him the runaround any more, and some dark edge to it had made her blood run cold. It was that that had pushed her into the plan she’d had for tonight.
Hastily, Alyse turned back, huddling into her coat.
‘Cold?’
Dario’s enquiry sounded innocuous but there was an edge to it that brought her eyes up to his in a rush, wary green meeting assessing blue.
‘You shivered,’ he pointed out.
‘Did I?’ The inanity of the conversation brought home to her the strangeness of the situation she was in. It was the sort of overly polite small talk you made with a complete stranger when you had just met for the first time.
But that was what Dario was. A stranger. A tall, dark, devastating stranger, and yet a man she had connected with from the start. One whose touch had lit a fire inside her when he’d held her on the dance floor. A man who had driven all thoughts of common sense or self-protection from her head when he had whispered, ‘Let’s go somewhere else...’ in the same moment she had used the exact same words.
Could this be real? She couldn’t have this sort of connection in so short a time. And yet this was what she had planned on happening all along. This was supposed to be her get-out-of-jail-free card, wasn’t it?
Once more, she made herself look back over her shoulder, seeing the blond man raise his hand to hail a taxi as the car turned a corner and he disappeared from sight. She couldn’t hold back a smile at the thought that, no matter what else happened, at this moment Marcus was very definitely out of the picture. The rush of the sense of freedom to her head was like the effect of strong alcohol.
‘Feeling better?’
He’d caught the smile—that much was obvious—and wanted an explanation for it. She was never going to tell him the real truth—but then that truth had nothing to do with him. Just as what happened from now on had nothing to do with Marcus. The result was the same, but the one thing she hadn’t expected when she’d come up with the whole crazy plan was how much she had wanted to do this.
‘I could feel even better,’ she murmured, sliding over the seat and moving closer to the big, lean body of Dario Olivero. Wanting, needing his arms around her again. ‘Yes,’ she sighed as the heat from his closeness thawed some of the chill of apprehension inside her. ‘Like that.’
* * *
He couldn’t see her face, Dario reflected as she rested her head against his chest. But the faint purr in her words told him it would still be there on her lips. She felt like a small cat, curled up close, the blonde silk of her hair brushing his chin, the aroma of her perfume swirling around him, making him inhale deeply to draw in more of it. Held as close as she was, she couldn’t be unaware of the heat and hardness of his body, the way his heart kicked up at every move she made so that it was almost impossible to keep his breathing steady and controlled. When her head tilted slightly upwards towards his, he knew that she wanted him to kiss her. But not now, not yet.
‘We’ll soon be there,’ he told her, the swift sidelong glance towards the chauffeur meant to imply that they needed to wait until they were alone. And that was definitely true. But there was more to it than that.
He wanted to know what that smile had meant. And why it had appeared on her lips, warming her expression, just after she had looked back through the car window. There had been nothing there to make her smile. Only that one glimpse of Marcus.
And Marcus was nothing to smile about.
Dario’s own smile, reflected in the black glass of the window, was grimly triumphant, the flash of lights as they passed showing up the cold curve of his lips, the determined set of his jaw. Marcus had lost this round—and, with any luck, the rest of the contest.
‘Just round this corner.’
And, as he spoke, the car swung round the bend, sending a spray of dark rainwater up over the kerb from a puddle that had gathered as a result of the storm. A short way down the road, they pulled up outside the building where his newly bought apartment took up the whole of the top floor.
‘We’re here,’ Dario urged Alyse, his tone suddenly rough with the knowledge that if he didn’t get her out of here and up to that penthouse fast then what little was left of the control that had been fraying mercilessly with every sway and pitch of the vehicle that brought her slender warmth even closer to him would snap completely. He would have to have her under him, his hands plundering her soft curves, her silken skin, and to hell with the audience of José the driver or anyone else.
‘Time to get inside...’
The image of being inside her that the words flung into his brain was almost his undoing. He grabbed at Alyse’s shoulders, wrenching her up from the half lying, half leaning position before he claimed her hands. Folding his around both of hers and pulling her along with him, he exited the car backwards, not even flinching as his broad shoulders met the force of the wind, the slash of the icy rain that was splattering down over his head.
‘Come on.’
He pulled his jacket up high to cover her head like an improvised umbrella, protecting that silky hair from the onslaught of the downpour.
‘José, I won’t need you any more tonight...’
He tossed the command at his driver as he slammed the car door shut behind them, not needing the man’s nod of agreement—or the knowing smile that said his employee had already recognised that fact before they’d arrived.
* * *
It was like travelling blind, Alyse reflected, her eyes not quite focusing in the glare of the brilliantly lit building after the darkness of the night. She knew that she was crossing a highly polished floor, heard Dario speak some greeting to the man at the desk as they passed, and then they were at the polished steel entry of a lift, the doors sliding open immediately in response to his long bronzed finger pressed on the call button.
So she had to be grateful for the curve of his arm around her. It felt safe and supportive there, the heat and scent of his body enclosing her, and it was as if that warmth was melting away the worries, the apprehension she had felt at first in the car. Now she felt her limbs soften, leaning towards him, resting her head, her weight against the power of his body. The clean scent of his skin surrounded her, blended with some sort of lime cologne, and she gave herself up to the delight of the physical sensations she was experiencing.
‘Alyse...’
His tone was soft, slightly roughened at the edges. She lifted her face, her eyes connecting with his, seeing the intense darkness of his pupils, the tiniest edge of blue around their rim. For a moment she was held, mesmerised, unable to look away, and instinctively her lips parted, a faint sigh escaping to blend with his hot breath as his mouth descended towards hers.
His kiss was warm, slow, infinitely seductive. It took her mouth in a wave of languorous delight, lifting her up onto her toes to wrap her arms around his neck, tangle her fingers in the black silk of his hair. The arm that was curled around her shoulder tightened sharply, drawing her closer, bringing her up against the hardness of his body. Lean, strong fingers stroked down the delicate skin of her neck, slipping under the collar of her coat, making her shiver in need. Her heart rate kicked up sharply, sending her blood pulsing through her body, so that she wriggled even closer in burning awareness.
He felt the same, she could tell. There was the undeniable evidence of the hard swell of arousal pressed into the bowl of her pelvis, the faint groan that escaped from between their joined lips before he brought his mouth down harder, stronger, crushing her lips back against her teeth.
‘Dario...’
Somehow she choked it out, not wanting to lose the pressure of his mouth on hers. He tasted wonderful, and the moment that his tongue slid over her lips, tracing the seam where they joined, had her sagging against him, losing her breath, losing all sense of where she was.
Would the lift never reach its destination? She wanted to be there—somewhere, as Dario had said, they could be alone together, private, intimate. Yet at the same time she didn’t want this moment to end. She wanted to go on and on for ever in this warmth and closeness.
But even as the thought crossed her mind the compartment jolted slightly, came to a halt, throwing her off balance and right into Dario’s arms as the doors slid open again.
‘We’re here.’
Somehow he managed to ease his keys from his pocket and unlock the door while still holding her close, never easing his grip on her arm, her waist.
In spite of the darkness it was obvious that the room was huge, no light illuminating it other than the reflection of the buildings and the streetlamps far below. The faint gleam of the heavy swell of the river was like a silver ribbon, and over to the left the ethereal spider web of a blue circle that looked impossibly delicate to be the London Eye.
She barely had time to adjust to the change in light or look round any more before Dario had tossed his jacket away to the side, heedless of whether it landed on a nearby chair or not, and reached for her again.
‘Come here,’ he muttered, his voice rough, his accent thickening on the words. ‘I’ve been waiting—wanting to do this ever since the moment I saw you.’
His hands were clamped around her shoulders, rough and bruising, but Alyse neither fully registered it nor truly cared. All that mattered was the passion of that beautifully cruel mouth on her lips, on her skin, the pressure of the hard frame of his chest crushing her breasts. The heat of him surrounded her, flooding her body along with the burn of her own arousal until she was astonished that the pair of them didn’t go up in flames.
‘I—I—yes...’
It was all she could manage, all she could snatch in, in the moment he allowed her to breathe before his mouth took hers again. His hands closed over her arms as he swung her round, half walking, half carrying her towards the shadowy shape of a huge dark sofa. Her shoes slipped from her feet as he lifted her up, left behind on the soft carpet as his right hand reached round to the back of her neck, finding the zip at the neckline of her dress, swiftly and expertly tugging it down. The release from even the slight constriction of her clothing was like a rush of release to her feelings. Inside the delicate lace of her bra, her breasts stung, pressing against the soft silk, seeming to demand the attention of those strong, rough-palmed hands, and she moaned her encouragement as he stroked his powerful fingers down her body, making her writhe upwards to meet his touch, wanting it stronger, harder. Wanting more.
Then she was lying on her back on the settee, the soft buttery leather cool against the skin that his hands had exposed. And Dario was coming down on top of her, the heavy heat of his skin, the weight of his frame crushing her back into the cushions. One long, finely trousered leg pushed between hers, easing them apart so that she could feel the swollen heat of him pressing against her, crushing into her pelvis, coming so close to the throbbing core of her femininity where the bite of primal need fought against the restriction of their clothing.
‘Dario...’
She was reaching for his hands, wanting them on her, wanting to place them where she needed his touch most. She was trying to draw them down to her yearning flesh, but at the same time she wanted to reach for him, hungry for the heat of his skin, the taste of him hard upon her mouth.
‘I want—I wa...’
But her scrambled words were halted, all train of thought shattered by a sudden violent sound. Someone was at the door, banging hard and slamming a fist against the wood until it seemed that it might actually shatter under its force.
‘What?’
Braced hard against the leather settee, Dario froze, his whole body stiffening, his dark head coming up, slightly cocked towards the door, listening intently.
‘Who?’ Alyse whispered, but he stilled her with a glance, laying one finger across her mouth to silence her. And now, although the scent of his skin was so very close, when all she had to do was to open her mouth and take him in, taste the intensely personal flavour of him as she had wanted just moments before, it was suddenly the last thing she could do. The last thing she dared to do until she knew who had intruded on their seclusion, blasting their way into the heated intimacy they had created and threatening to destroy it totally.
‘Olivero!’ Another bang at the door clashed with the darkly furious use of Dario’s name. ‘Open this door, damn you! Open it now!’
A slight gleam in the moonlight showed how Dario’s eyes slanted once, briefly, towards where Alyse’s head rested against the leather-covered arm of the sofa, then swung back again in the direction of the door.
‘Open this door, you bastard! I know you’re in there—and Alyse with you too.’
‘No!’
The word escaped Alyse in a panic as she recognised the sound, even though distorted through the wood. She knew just who was on the other side of that door, and the fury in his tone reminded her uncomfortably of his threatening warning earlier that day.
‘Olivero, you coward, come out and face me...’
‘Dario—no!’
Alyse’s cry was drowned by another slam of a heavy fist against the wood, and as she reached for him Dario was already levering himself up and off her, that last insult clearly too much for him to take.
Not troubling to rake a hand through his disordered hair or even to smooth down his rumpled clothing, he was striding towards the door, twisting the handle with a violent movement and yanking it open ferociously.
‘Well?’
The momentary silence that greeted his appearance, the angry demand of his single word, made Alyse’s skin crawl, a cold slimy trail of apprehension sliding down her spine. From where she lay she could see the door, and the man who stood on the other side of it. She had been right, as she knew she’d had to be. The red-gold hair, clashing painfully with a furious scarlet face, the blazing blue eyes were unmistakable. The furious intruder was Marcus Kavanaugh.
But what was he doing here? And how?
He had seen them leave the hotel, had watched them drive off together. She had seen him staring after them when she had looked back through the rain. But how had he known just where to find them? He wouldn’t have had time to catch a cab and trail them to Dario’s apartment, so how had he known to come straight here and to catch them...?
‘Alyse...’
Marcus had turned his attention to her now and, with a small sound of horrified embarrassment, she scrambled up from her place on the settee, forcing herself to her feet. She might have wanted him to get the message—but not like this.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘I would have thought that was obvious.’
Marcus’s spluttering blaze of fury was bad enough, but the edge of laughter in Dario’s retort was far worse, setting her teeth on edge and bringing home to her just how dreadful this must all look. She had been sprawled on the settee, her hair tumbling down around her face and shoulders, her legs wide apart, and her clothes...
Cheeks flaming, she tugged her skirt down, struggled to pull her dress up around her shoulders once again, desperate to restore her appearance to a degree of order. Her hands shook so badly that she couldn’t reach the zip to pull it up and when she tried to draw Dario’s attention to the fact, telegraphing wildly with her eyes and her brows that she needed help, his only response was a blank-eyed stare. Either he didn’t understand or...
Her heart quailed inside her, her stomach turning over in sudden nausea. Was it possible that Dario knew only too well what was troubling her but had no intention of making any move to help her? It certainly looked that way. He had barely spared her a glance; instead, all his attention was focused on his raging adversary.
‘I— This isn’t what you think, Marcus...’
She stumbled over the words, lost them completely when she saw the way that Dario turned, casting a darkly contemptuous look in her direction as if he could barely believe that she had actually said such a stupid thing. Listening to herself as the idiotic comment hung in the air between them, she couldn’t believe it either. There was only one possible interpretation of the scene in front of Marcus, and that was the right one. It had also been the one she had wanted him to have, but that had been before this dark fury had erupted around her—and before Dario had seemed to turn away from her.
‘And what the hell else would I think it might be?’ Marcus spat at her now, making her flinch from the poisonous venom of his tone. ‘Unless you’re trying to claim that he forced you?’
‘I— He... No—I’m not claiming that...’
How could she do any such thing, even to save herself from this hellish embarrassment? She just wished that Dario would say something—anything—to break the tension that stretched tight between the three of them. But after that one demonic touch of humour, the coldly blazing scorn he had turned on her just moments before, he had now frozen where he stood, arms crossed over his broad chest, dark brows drawn together, a silent, watchful observer of the scene in front of him.
‘Not that I’d put it past him,’ Marcus stunned her by declaring now. ‘A man with his reputation.’
‘Rep...reputation?’ Alyse managed, stunned to learn that Marcus seemed to know something about Dario—more, in fact, than she did herself. ‘What...?’
But Marcus wasn’t listening, intent instead on turning the venom he had directed at her previously onto Dario himself.
‘Dragged up in the gutter by a mother who was anyone’s for the price of—’
It was only the tiniest movement. Just a tensing of Dario’s long body, a curl of his fists, a hint of a step forward. But that, when combined with the black thundercloud of his frown, the way his sensual mouth was clamped hard and tight into a thin line, was enough of a warning to have Marcus biting off the last of his insulting sentence and clearly backing down. He obviously didn’t think that it was safe to risk baiting Dario any further, however much he might want to.
And the other man’s reaction turned Alyse’s legs to water at the memory of the way that this had been just what she had planned as part of her original scheme in the first place. It had all seemed so exciting, so brilliant—so possible when she had come up with the idea as a way of getting rid of Marcus’s unwanted attentions. Give him the impression that she was involved with another man, that she was seeing someone else—maybe even sleeping with someone else—and then surely he would back off and leave her in peace?
But now, finding herself in exactly the situation she had anticipated, with Marcus at the door, having found her and Dario in a decidedly compromising situation—far more compromising than she had ever planned—things were not at all as she had foreseen. For one thing, Marcus, though looking disgusted and furious, didn’t seem to have the intention of turning round and walking away, as he had in her mind when she’d imagined this happening.
And Dario...
She risked a glance at the tall, dark, glowering man to her left, and immediately wished she hadn’t. He wasn’t actually snarling but he might as well have been and she could practically see his hackles rising in hostile threat to the intruder into his territory. The sparks that seemed to flash between the two men made her feel like some tasty but already wounded prey that was the subject of a face to face confrontation between two powerful and equally ravenous lions.
Giving up on trying to fasten her dress, she folded her arms tightly around her waist, as much to hold herself together as to keep the blue silk from falling into a pool on the carpet at her feet.
‘No matter what my reputation,’ Dario drawled now, making Alyse start because she was so used to him being silent, ‘it seems that Alyse doesn’t give a damn about it, mi caro fratello.’
My—what? Alyse shook her head faintly, unable to believe she had heard right. The stress must be getting to her so that she was imagining things. He couldn’t have said...
But, whatever he had said, it had been deliberately provocative. And it had the desired effect, enraging Marcus so that his whole face went white with fury, pulling taut over his bones.
‘Marcus...’ she tried, desperate to have this appalling stalemate broken, to avoid what she was now starting to fear might actually bring these two to blows. There was something here between these two that was evil. Something she didn’t understand but if she could just avoid an actual fight...
‘Look, I’m sorry if this has upset you, but really you know I never said...’
He wasn’t listening, all his attention focused on Dario’s hard, set face. But, even as she watched, Alyse was stunned to see the faint flicker of a smile on the Italian’s sensual lips. A smile that was there and gone again in a moment and had nothing warm about it at all.
‘I could kill you...’
Marcus’s threat, directed at Dario’s impassive face, was a low, savage mutter, one that sent a horrified shiver slithering down Alyse’s spine. In a panic she stepped forward, her hand coming out as she forgot about holding her dress up and could only think about stopping him.
‘Marcus, I tried to tell you that I couldn’t see any future for us, so I thought—’
‘Thought you’d teach me a lesson?’
‘No—I...’
But her voice had no strength, no conviction. Wasn’t that really what she had wanted to do? To convince him that she was not for him? That she wasn’t at all interested in the proposal he had pushed at her so unexpectedly and had kept pushing for days.
‘You thought you’d rub my face in it,’ he snarled, the look he turned on her scraping over her body like the burn of acid.
It was only now, when that hateful look paused and lingered deliberately, that Alyse became aware of the betraying damp, darkened patches directly over her breasts where Dario’s hot mouth had sought out the sensitive peaks that had strained against her bra. The realisation dried her throat in a moment.
‘No...’ she tried but, even though her lips moved, no sound managed to come out. And when she glanced uncertainly at Dario, the darkness and focus of his eyes told her that he had something else on his mind other than belief in her declaration.
From a shadowy corner of her thoughts came an uncomfortable memory of the time in the car when she had looked back and seen Marcus staring after them. She’d been careless enough to smile just briefly. And Dario had caught it. Could he think this was what she had wanted?
‘Well, you couldn’t have made a better job of it than this, you bitch.’ Marcus was continuing his rant. ‘You must have known if there was one thing that would guarantee I’d want nothing more to do with you—something that would turn my stomach—it was the sight of you getting down and dirty with my bastard brother.’
