Читать книгу Slave To Love - Michelle Reid - Страница 6

JOEL was waiting for him when Mac strode into his office.

‘Loyal brother you are,’ he barked.

‘Loyal lover are you,’ Joel returned the insult. ‘I wouldn’t subject my worst enemy to what you subjected Roberta to on Friday night, and that’s the truth,’ he said, then lazed back in his chair to watch curiously as two strips of guilty colour washed across Mac’s high cheekbones.

‘Roberta can fight her own battles without your needing to play the shining knight!’ he muttered.

‘Turned my PA to pulp, have we?’ Joel mocked that argument. Roberta could no more fight Mac and win than she could win against a head-on collision with a double-decker bus. ‘So now you thought you’d try pulverising me. Well, sorry, big brother, but I refuse to play. You’re a fool, if you want to hear the truth—which I don’t for one minute think you do. Roberta is one in a million, and you’ve let her slip right through your selfish fingers because you care more for keeping the damned peace on the home front than you care for her.’

‘Don’t sermonise over me,’ Mac grated. ‘Not after the way you’ve played me for a fool all weekend. How many times did I call you up?’

‘Oh, about ten,’ Joel answered carelessly. ‘Pity you didn’t stop phoning and start driving, isn’t it? You might just have caught her between moves then. Ah...’ he breathed as Mac stiffened. ‘So Roberta pointed out the same error, did she? You’ve got to give it to that girl—’ he smiled ‘—she’s honest to the last full-stop.’

‘I had other commitments this weekend,’ Mac defended himself gruffly. ‘She knew that, and if she cared she would have understood.’

‘Like you understood how humiliating it was for her to be palmed off on your kid brother at your daughter’s birthday party?’

‘Oh, go to hell, Joel,’ Mac sighed, running a hand around the back of his neck then throwing himself into a chair. ‘You know how sensitive Lulu is about me and her mother. It was her night; I had to put her feelings first.’

‘Then why invite Roberta at all?’

‘Why did she have to accept?’ Mac shot back, and Joel sucked in a short breath, the handsome lines of his face hardening as he stared at his brother.

‘You bastard,’ he breathed. ‘You were covering yourself! Playing a let’s-keep-everyone-happy game so that Solomon Maclaine could feel comfortable with his conscience! My God,’ he muttered as he threw himself forward in his chair and glared at Mac, ‘you really are a selfish swine, aren’t you?’