Читать книгу All the Romance You Need This Christmas: 5-Book Festive Collection - Romy Sommer, Georgia Hill - Страница 13

‘Brandy, boys?’ Patrick already had the bottle in his hand and three glasses set out on the table, so Lucas assumed this was a rhetorical question. Still, his father’s distraction with the perfect quantity of ice per glass gave him the opportunity he needed to talk to Tyler.

‘Aren’t you going to go and check on Dory?’ He was not getting involved, Lucas told himself. He was just… nudging Tyler into decent human behaviour. Too much time as an Alexander tended to strip people of that, and Lucas liked to think that there was still a glimmer of hope for his brother.

‘Dory? Why?’ Tyler placed his phone screen-down on the table. ‘She’s probably asleep by now.’

‘After that dinner? I doubt it.’

Tyler’s brow crinkled up. ‘What was wrong with dinner? She said she was feeling better after the car ride, right?’

Was his brother really that obtuse? Or had he just not been paying attention that evening? Lucas watched as Tyler picked up his phone again, tapping at the screen.

‘How about a cigar?’ Patrick asked. ‘I’ve got some special ones put aside in the study. I’ll fetch them. One moment.’ He strolled out of the room towards the other end of the hall.

Lucas grabbed the brandy closest to him and pushed it across to Tyler, then selected another glass for himself. ‘So. When are you going to tell them?’

‘Tell them what?’

‘The truth about Dory.’

Tyler’s gaze jerked up from the phone screen. ‘What do you mean?’

‘That she’s your assistant. Remember?’

‘Oh. That.’ Tyler’s head dipped back down and his fingers started moving over the screen again. ‘Hopefully never.’

‘So you’ll… what? Shift her to the PR department before anyone finds out?’

‘Something like that, yeah.’

Lucas watched him for a moment. This was not his business. He did not care what Tyler did about Dory. Hell, he’d deserve it if she walked out on him for being a stupid, inattentive bastard.

Except… Lucas couldn’t help remembering the way Dory had bossed Tyler around at the office. The way she’d stood her ground against him. How she’d seemed like she might actually be a match for his stubbornness and confidence – at least until she came up against Felicia Alexander.

Nobody deserved that. Especially not Dory.

‘And you’ve… spoken to Dory about the plan?’

Sighing, Tyler put his phone down again. ‘Look, don’t worry about it, okay? Dory knows the score.’

Somehow, that totally failed to make Lucas feel any better at all.

Taking a gulp of his brandy, Lucas pushed the glass across the table and got to his feet. ‘Okay, I know I’m not the world’s best advisor on women. And quite honestly, I really don’t want to get involved in your relationship, or the craziness that will follow if our mother figures out what’s actually going on here. But if you have any sense at all, you’ll go up to your room now and apologise to Dory for our parents.’ Piece said, he made his way to the door, until one final thought made him pause. ‘And Tyler, I’d take cake.’

Tyler’s confused expression suggested that his advice was destined to be ignored, but somehow Lucas felt a little lighter, anyway. He’d done his bit. Now he could go to bed without feeling guilty, and tomorrow it was back to the plan. In and out and back to his real life. Easy.

‘She’ll probably be asleep anyway,’ Tyler said. ‘I can talk to her in the morning. Besides, I want one of Dad’s cigars.’

Lucas sighed. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’ Assuming Dory didn’t smother Tyler in his sleep through sheer frustration.

***

No one had offered her a tour of Midfield House, so finding the kitchens was a bit hit and miss. Wincing as her bare toes hit the cold tiles of the back hallway, Dory figured she had to at least be getting close. She’d skirted the main hall, ducking behind a pillar as Patrick walked past with a box of cigars. Then, using a process of elimination, she darted through the small doorway to the back hallway that screamed ‘servants’ quarters.’

Then she saw it. The Holy Grail. The wide, clear, wooden surfaces, the oversized range cooker, the scrubbed kitchen table. And there, in the corner, the huge, American-style refrigerator. Somewhere in there, surely, there had to be cake.

Skipping over the icy floor tiles, Dory made her way to the fridge, yanking the door open and staring inside.

No cake.

Salad, fruit, cold meats and cheeses… but absolutely no cake.

Where the hell was the cake?

The fridge door didn’t even slam very satisfyingly. Dory clunked her head against the cool surface and thought hard. If she were a maid in this hateful house, where would she hide leftover cake?

‘It’s in the pantry fridge.’

Dory’s heart bounced up to her throat at the words, and she spun round so fast her foot slipped on the tiles. Grabbing the counter to keep herself upright, she stared at Tyler’s brother with wide eyes.

‘I’m sorry, I was just looking for—’

‘Cake,’ Lucas finished for her. ‘Like I say, Freya always keeps the desserts in the other fridge. In the pantry.’

Biting her lip, Dory shrugged. ‘You caught me. I like dessert.’

‘I could tell,’ Lucas said. ‘I saw your eyes widen when Freya brought it in earlier.’

‘It did look amazing.’

‘And your face fall when my mother cake-blocked you.’

‘I’m sure she had my best interests at heart,’ Dory lied. Felicia Alexander might be an utter snake, but she was still Lucas’s mother. Men didn’t tend to take too kindly to other women criticising their mothers, and the last thing she needed was Lucas reporting back to the family that Dory was badmouthing them behind their backs.

But to her surprise, Lucas laughed and said, ‘Oh, I doubt it. Usually the only interests she has at heart – or anywhere – are her own.’

‘Does that mean you’re not going to tell her if I eat the leftover cake?’ Dory asked.

Lucas’s smile turned sly. ‘Well now, that depends.’

‘On what?’

‘On whether you’re willing to share.’

Dory grinned. ‘I think I might be persuaded. Want to grab the cake?’ She stared around the massive kitchen. ‘I’ll start hunting the drawers for forks.’

Lucas was already halfway across the room, heading for a plain wood door Dory hadn’t even spotted before. The pantry, she supposed. Just as well Lucas had happened along; she’d never have found the cake there.

‘Three drawers to the left of the sink,’ he called back.

Dory counted handles along from the sink and found, lo and behold, a whole drawer full of forks. Pastry forks, cake forks, smaller forks for starters, and full-sized dining forks. Mind slightly boggled, she pulled open the next drawer. Knives. Lots of knives. Fish knives, steak knives, knives for every possible conceivable occasion. At that point, she couldn’t leave the last drawer unopened. Inside, neatly ordered into sections, were spoons varying in size from tiny coffee spoons, all the way up to serving spoons, via a number of different sizes she couldn’t even have guessed names or uses for.

‘You casing the silver?’ Dory jumped at Lucas’s words. ‘Because I’ll give you a tip. The really expensive stuff is in the chest in the main hall.’

Dory slammed the drawers shut, keeping only the two cake forks she’d picked out in the first place. ‘Just wondering who really needs that much cutlery.’ She shook her head as she joined him at the table. He hadn’t bothered with separate plates, just brought the chocolate and pistachio gateau on the serving plate Freya had left it on. ‘It’s a different world.’

‘You’re telling me,’ Lucas said, taking the fork she offered him. ‘I grew up here, and it still baffles me. Especially since I think I might be the only family member who knows where anything is in this kitchen.’

‘Yeah, I was kinda surprised by that.’ Dory cut off the tiniest sliver of chocolate cake with the edge of her fork. She wanted to savour this…

‘My room is just upstairs,’ Lucas explained. ‘And I like to save the family dining for special occasions. Which means if I want to eat the rest of the time, I had to figure out where things are.’ He shrugged. ‘Besides, Duncan and Freya are more fun to hang out with, anyway. We usually play poker in the evenings, when I’m here, but apparently party prep has taken over tonight.’

Tilting her head, Dory considered Tyler’s older brother. From his short cropped hair, lighter than Tyler’s messy style, to the stubble that was just a millimetre too long to be truly designer, he didn’t look like an Alexander. Didn’t embrace the name and all it brought with it, the way Tyler did. And here, now, she wanted to ask why.

‘You’re not comfortable here, are you?’ she said, then winced. Too blunt, again, Dory. She could almost hear her father whispering ‘a little subtlety, maybe?’ in her ear. ‘Sorry. I just mean…’

‘That I’d obviously rather be somewhere else?’ Lucas finished for her. ‘It’s okay; you’re right.’

‘So, where would you rather be?’

‘Honestly? Pretty much anywhere.’ He sighed. ‘But right now, given the choice, I’d be home on my farm.’

Dory blinked. ‘You own a farm?’

‘Kinda. But probably not the sort you’re thinking of.’

‘Pigs? Sheep? That kind of thing?’

‘Well… yeah. But to be honest, I’m not that involved with the actually farming side of things. I rent out the land to local farmers, mostly.’

‘So… what do you do, then?’

‘Enjoy the peace and quiet?’ Dory raised her eyebrows at him, and he sighed. ‘Yeah, you’re not going to accept that answer, are you?’

‘Somehow I can’t imagine you sitting in a rocking chair on a porch somewhere, while other people do all the fun stuff.’

‘Fair enough.’ He dropped his cake fork onto the plate. There wasn’t much cake left now, anyway. ‘How much do you know about me?’

Dory shrugged. ‘Only what it says in your Wikipedia entry.’

‘I have a…’ He shook his head. ‘Never mind. I’m sure it told you that I kinda… dropped out of society a couple of years ago.’

‘When you got divorced,’ Dory said, then bit her lip. ‘Sorry about that.’

‘Don’t be,’ Lucas said, absently. ‘Besides, that’s the wrong way round. Cheryl left me because I wasn’t living the life she married me for anymore.’

‘Why not?’ Dory asked, curious. ‘I mean, most people would kill for this sort of existence.’

‘Would you?’

‘Well… no. But lots of people.’

‘Yeah, well, not me either.’

‘But you did,’ Dory said. ‘You ran the company before Tyler took it over.’

‘And I ran it damn well. But then…’ Lucas paused, as if trying to find the words. ‘You know how, sometimes, something happens that changes your whole life. The whole way you see the world.’

‘I guess,’ Dory said. Losing her job, she supposed. Or agreeing to move to New York. Or the day she came home to find Ewen in bed with the hot, blonde, Manhattan socialite. That was a big one.

‘There was an accident.’ Lucas looked down at his empty hands. ‘My best friend… he died. He was showing off, living the high life, fooling around on his speedboat to impress his fiancée. Except it went wrong. I was in hospital for weeks, unconscious for most of it. And when I woke up, he was gone.’

Dory’s heart clenched at the matter-of-fact way he told the story. However hard he tried to sound unemotional about it, the tension in his jaw, the way his fingers flexed, told her otherwise. ‘That’s… God, Lucas, that’s awful.’ Without thinking, she reached across and grabbed his hand, holding those tight, tense fingers in hers.

Lucas looked up, giving her a half smile. ‘Yeah. It was. Tyler never told you about this?’

Dory shook her head. ‘Tyler doesn’t really talk about… well, you.’

‘The black sheep, huh?’

‘Pretty much.’

He squeezed her fingers, then let go of her hand. ‘Well, at least it was my choice. I took my money – not the business’s money, or the family’s, just what I’d earned myself over the last however many years – and I left. I bought my farm, holed up there for a while. And then, well, I got bored.’

‘Thought as much.’ Dory took one last mouthful of cake from the plate. ‘So, back to my original question. What do you do now?’

Lucas shrugged and picked up his fork again. ‘I wanted to do something new, but using what I’d learnt in the family business. Something I could get in on the ground floor of, not be stuck up in some office somewhere. So I set up my own restaurant, in one of the old barns at the edge of the farm, closest to the road into the nearest town.’

‘I’m guessing this restaurant is not another Alexander’s.’

‘No.’ Lucas laughed. ‘My father would hate it. It’s all organic, local food on the menu, for locals to eat. We grow or rear most of it on my farm.’

‘Sounds wonderful.’ And totally unlike the corporate, establishment Alexander Corporation and its identikit chain restaurants.

‘We’ll see. It’s still just starting out. I guess I was just looking for something that’s mine. That I can build up myself.’

Dory thought about how she’d followed Ewen across an ocean, only to be cut adrift. And now she was at Tyler’s beck and call instead. ‘I can understand that.’

‘Yeah,’ Lucas said, staring at her, an odd look in his eye. ‘Somehow, I thought you might.’

***

Lucas tore his gaze away from Dory, from the way her lips wrapped around that last mouthful of chocolate cake, and how her shoulders wriggled under her strappy pyjama top at the taste. It took considerably more effort than it should. Was that why he couldn’t shake the feeling he was doing something wrong? In reality, all he’d done was make polite conversation with a woman who might one day be his sister-in-law. Perfectly reasonable.

Except it hadn’t all been polite. And a lot of it had been things he hadn’t spoken about to anyone else since Cheryl left. Least of all his actual family, mostly because they simply weren’t prepared to listen.

Dory listened. Dory not only showed interest in what he had to say but… she seemed to care about it, too. On less than twelve hours’ acquaintance. A hell of a better record than his parents or brother had in this matter.

But she was Tyler’s. So a good listener was all she could ever be to him, however well they’d bonded over cake.

Still… at least he should return the favour.

Clearing his throat, Lucas speared a few cake crumbs and some icing with his fork. ‘So, what about you? What would you really be doing for Christmas if you weren’t here? And not the story you told my mother at dinner. Where would you want to be?’

‘Ideally?’ Dory asked. ‘I’d be at home in Liverpool, drinking mulled wine and eating mince pies. Playing board games with my family. Watching Doctor Who on Christmas Day. Opening our stockings. That sort of thing.’

‘Sounds nice.’ His Christmases had never been like that, even as a child. There were always guests – usually people his parents were trying to impress – and itchy, formal outfits to be worn. ‘And instead, you’re here.’

‘Instead, I’m here,’ Dory agreed.

‘You must really love my brother,’ Lucas joked, but Dory didn’t laugh. In fact, she looked positively uncomfortable. ‘Still, you survived your first Alexander family dinner. Think you can make it through the next few days without losing your mind?’

The face she pulled suggested that Dory wasn’t entirely sure she could. ‘I’m just focusing on getting to go home for two whole weeks after this.’

He wasn’t surprised that she’d rather be with her own family, whatever Felicia’s assumptions. ‘Think Tyler will be able to cope without you for that long?’

‘He’ll have to,’ Dory said, face stubborn. ‘That was the deal.’

‘Deal?’

The colour faded from Dory’s cheeks, as if she’d said something she hadn’t meant to. ‘Um, yeah. Well, I mean, he promised that if I came and spent Christmas with his family, he’d give me a couple of weeks off to visit mine over New Year. Not that I didn’t want to be with him for Christmas, or anything. Or here. Um…’

‘I get it, Dory,’ Lucas said, deciding the only decent thing was to put her out of her misery. ‘It’s okay to want to be with your own family for the holidays. Especially when the other option is my family.’

She gave him a faint smile, but nothing like the way she’d beamed at him when he’d placed the chocolate cake on the table. She looked… scared, almost. Lucas couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d missed something, somewhere. Something important. His mind flicked back over every conversation he’d had with Dory, through cake and cutlery and Christmas music until it reached… the phone call. His call to Tyler’s office.

He frowned at the memory. ‘You know, I was thinking. You never said anything about you and Tyler when I called that day.’

‘Oh. Well. It wasn’t really… I mean, I didn’t know I would be coming for Christmas until later. Until your mother demanded that Tyler bring the woman in the photos home to meet them. You know?’

She was talking too fast, too sure, and her fingers kept twirling the fork around and around. He was definitely missing something here.

‘But you knew it was you in the photos,’ he pressed. ‘And you didn’t say anything.’

‘Well, yeah, sure. But it was kind of a delicate situation, right? I mean, I hadn’t even seen them until you called. And Tyler didn’t want people to know about us, I guess.’

Dory knows the score. That was what Tyler had said. But Lucas was starting to suspect that ‘score’ wasn’t what he’d imagined it to be.

‘That makes sense,’ he said, because it did. Even if he was almost certain it wasn’t the whole truth. ‘But I’m kind of surprised. I’d have thought, given everything… Well, I’d have expected him to be a little more protective of you this weekend. Or at least more attentive.’

‘You mean, protect me from your mother?’ Her hands finally stopped moving, dropping the fork to the wood of the table. ‘Well, you know Tyler,’ she said, with a small smile. ‘He probably doesn’t even realise what she’s doing.’

‘Maybe not,’ Lucas conceded.

‘Is she like this with every woman you guys bring home?’ Dory asked.

Lucas thought back to his conversation with Tyler in the car. ‘Not every woman,’ he admitted.

‘Just me, then,’ Dory said. ‘It’s the accent, isn’t it?’

‘I like the accent.’

That earned him a real, wide smile. ‘You do? Good.’

For a long moment, they just looked at each other, and Lucas wondered how he’d got here, sitting in the kitchen with his brother’s girlfriend, desperately trying to think of something more to say, anything to keep her there with him. To stop her going to bed with Tyler.

But he couldn’t. He had to let her go. Whatever his suspicions and hopes, he had to let Dory go for tonight.

‘I’d better go to bed,’ she said. Was that reluctance he heard in her voice? Or was that just wishful thinking? ‘Tyler will be wondering where I am.’

He nodded. ‘Good night, then. You’d better rest up for more family fun tomorrow.’

‘Can’t wait!’ Dory pushed her chair back and padded to the door, giving him an excellent view of her faded pyjama bottoms curving over her ass. ‘Night, Lucas. Sleep tight.’

He nodded, but he knew he wouldn’t. Not least because, before he could think about sleep, he had some photos to look at. And some suspicions to resolve.