War Of Love

She knew exactly the impression she had given with that last comment, of herself—and Lyon Buchanan. And it was him she had meant to hit out at. She didn’t particularly care for herself, knew who she was, also what she was, and the opinion of two women she was never likely to see again was completely unimportant to her. Lyon Buchanan was the one who needed to be shown that she didn’t consider herself one of his underlings whom he could browbeat with his damned arrogance, or a woman he could ‘frighten away’ with his rudeness.

Arrogant. Self-opinionated. Chauvinistic. Silke had never met a man like him before!

And she didn’t want to meet him again either.

Though there was no reason on this earth why she ever should!

* * *

‘Stop laughing, Mother.’ Silke frowned across at her mother as she rocked back and forth in the leather chair behind her desk. ‘God!’ She gave an impatient sigh. ‘I was worried sick you would be upset about annoying Buchanan himself, and instead you go off into hysterical laughter! I should have realised your warped sense of humour would find the situation funny!’ She sat down dejectedly in the chair opposite her mother.

Tina Jordan, an older version of Silke, sobered slightly, her mouth still twitching as she tried to contain her laughter, laughter that had convulsed her ever since Silke had told her what had happened to her after the discovery of the mistake over the rabbit outfit.

‘Sorry.’ She chewed on her top lip in an effort to stop herself laughing again. ‘It’s just that I would have loved to have seen the look on Lyon Buchanan’s face when he first saw you dressed up as a bunny girl and not the fluffy bunny he had been expecting!’ Green eyes, so like Silke’s, glittered with suppressed humour.

‘Believe me,’ Silke groaned at the memory, ‘you wouldn’t!’

Her mother sobered slightly. ‘Maybe not,’ she acknowledged drily. ‘Doug Moore sounded under more than a little pressure when he telephoned a short time ago.’

Remembering the grim determination on Lyon Buchanan’s face as she hastily left his office, Silke thought ‘more than a little pressure’ was probably putting it mildly—very mildly! ‘Well, I for one am not going back there, Mother,’ she said firmly. ‘You don’t pay enough for me to put myself through clashing with Lyon Buchanan again.’ She still shuddered at the thought of her disastrous morning.

‘You don’t have to go back,’ her mother assured her with a shake of her head. ‘Nadine’s audition didn’t go well this morning, so I’ve sent her along to Buchanan’s.’

Silke could hardly contain her relief. And then she berated herself for being such a coward. Who was Lyon Buchanan, anyway? Just a man. An arrogantly powerful one, yes, but still just a man.

‘What’s he like?’

She gave her mother a sharp look. She hadn’t realised she was being watched, that her every expression would give away her confused anger where Lyon Buchanan was concerned. And that would intrigue her mother—the fact that Silke had reacted to Lyon Buchanan at all. Because she hadn’t reacted to any man for almost a year. Since James. The man she had been dating for three years. The man who, on the eve of their wedding, had eloped with a girl he had only met the week before!

Since that time, Silke had considered that men weren’t worth bothering with, that she couldn’t put her trust in any of them. Her mother had been telling her as much for years, but, like the naïve idiot she had been, Silke had thought James was different. The two of them had been friends as much as anything else, so in effect she felt she had been let down not only by the man she loved but by her friend as well.

‘He’s just a man, Mother,’ she dismissed with a grimace, not wanting to give away the fact that he was probably unlike any other man she had ever met.

‘Yes, but—’ Her mother broke off the conversation as the office door opened, her smile one of polite enquiry as she turned towards what she hoped was a prospective client.

But the smile froze on her lips, and the colour faded from her cheeks, her eyes wide.

Silke frowned at this sudden change in her mother, turning towards the door herself, her frown deepening as she saw ‘Uncle Henry’ standing there. What on earth—?

‘Hal...!’ Her mother’s voice was a strangulated croak.

‘Satin!’ Henry returned with satisfaction, grey eyes glowing excitedly.

Hal? Satin! Her mother’s name was Tina, so—but what did it matter what her mother’s name was, when it was perfectly obvious that Henry and her mother knew each other, and more than casually if her mother’s stunned reaction was anything to go by, her mother standing up now, still very pale, and totally unable to tear her gaze away from Henry—Hal...?

And, as Silke looked at the two of them, she couldn’t help wondering if it had been her likeness to her mother that had caused Henry’s collapse earlier...

CHAPTER THREE

‘SATIN!’ Henry cried protestingly as, much to Silke’s amazement, her mother pushed her chair back and rushed from the room, a hunted look on her ravished face.

And Silke was amazed—because, as far as she knew, her mother had never run from a situation in her life!

Or maybe, just maybe, her mother had been running all her life...?

Silke had never quite looked at her mother’s unsettled life in that way before, but in retrospect, with her mother’s reaction to ‘Hal’, perhaps there was another reason than wanderlust for her mother having travelled so much in her life in the way that she had. It—

‘I knew it,’ Henry gasped from across the room. ‘I thought—I hoped it might be true when I first saw you, Silke, but once you had told me your name—!’ He shook his head dazedly.

‘Satin’ and Silke...

‘—I just knew it had to be true,’ Henry continued wonderingly—before promptly collapsing.

For the second time that day!

But this time Silke knew exactly what to do, getting one of the pills from the bottle in his breast pocket, forcing it into his mouth, down on her haunches beside him as she waited for the pill to begin to work.

Except that this time he still looked ashen when he regained consciousness, though considering this was the second attack he had had in as many hours, that wasn’t surprising. Besides, this time he had fallen too, albeit on to a carpeted floor.

Silke smiled at him reassuringly as he blinked up at her dazedly. ‘I’m going to call for an ambulance,’ she told him gently, not wanting to alarm him further, but knowing he really should see a doctor this time.

He swallowed hard, shaking his head. ‘Call Lyon,’ he bit out, in obvious pain still. ‘He’ll know what to do.’

She didn’t doubt for a moment that Lyon Buchanan would know exactly what to do! She also knew she shouldn’t let her aversion to him influence her actions when this elderly man’s health was at stake. But the very thought of seeing Lyon Buchanan again...!

‘Please call Lyon.’ Henry looked up at her pleadingly, grey eyes dull with pain.

‘Of course I will,’ Silke instantly assured him, swallowing down her own aversion to seeing that hateful man again—so much for her being sure she would never have any reason to do so! And she had her mother’s strange behaviour to deal with yet, too. ‘But first, do you feel well enough to move over to the chair?’ she prompted encouragingly.

His eyes brightened slightly. ‘Satin’s chair?’ he suggested hopefully.

There was that ridiculous name for her mother again... Silke really had to find out the story behind that. But not yet. Right now she had something more important to deal with. ‘If that’s what you want,’ she nodded agreement, helping Henry to his feet, holding his arm supportively as he swayed slightly.

The look of supreme satisfaction on the face of the elderly man as he sat in the chair Silke’s mother had so recently fled from—to where?—was almost painful to see, Henry relaxing back in the leather chair with a relieved sigh, his eyes closed, his thoughts goodness knew where. Silke intended finding out exactly where as soon as she could find her mother—if she hadn’t done one of her flits again. And, knowing her mother as well as she did, Silke wouldn’t put that past her, either!

But for the moment she put thoughts of her mother to the back of her mind, concentrating on what she had to do here and now—and that was telephone Lyon Buchanan!

The telephone number of Buchanan’s was in the file on her mother’s desk, the switchboard immediately putting her call through to Lyon Buchanan’s secretary.

‘Could I ask the reason for the call?’ the woman asked warily once Silke had identified herself.

She wouldn’t put it past Lyon Buchanan to have instructed his secretary to vet any calls from Jordan’s Miracles! ‘It’s personal,’ she snapped unhelpfully, feeling immediately guilty for allowing her resentment towards Lyon Buchanan to affect her response as she glanced across the room and saw how pale and haggard Henry still looked. ‘I have to talk to Mr Buchanan immediately,’ she added more urgently.

There was a click, a short pause—very short!—and then the arrogantly sure voice Silke recognised only too well came on the line. ‘I thought we had concluded our earlier—conversation, Miss Jordan,’ Lyon Buchanan drawled contemptuously.

Silke still cringed when she thought of that double-edged conversation, wishing now that she had never engaged in such a futile verbal battle with this particular man. It had been an act of bravado on her part, not to say childish, and it made talking to him now all the more difficult. ‘It’s Henry,’ she said without preamble—she still didn’t know the surname of the elderly man, and at the moment he didn’t look capable of telling it to her. ‘He’s collapsed again, and—’

‘My God,’ Lyon Buchanan exploded. ‘What have you done to him now?’

Her cheeks burned with indignation. ‘I haven’t done anything to him!’ Henry was actually asleep at the moment. ‘He—’

‘Where are you?’ Lyon Buchanan interrupted harshly.

‘At the agency. But—’

‘I’m on my way,’ he told her coldly. ‘Just don’t do anything else to him before I get there!’ He slammed his receiver down, the noise resounding in Silke’s ear.

Silke slammed her own receiver down too—and then glanced guiltily at Henry. But he continued to sleep—thank goodness.

Just what did the Lyon think she had ‘done’ to his uncle? Remembering the conversation they had had earlier, she could make a pretty accurate guess. My God, the arrogance of the man; did he really think that because she had denied being an out-of-work actress her other line of business had to be...? He did think that, she was sure of it from his tone of voice just now. He probably believed his uncle had collapsed again because they had been— Arrogant, arrogant swine!

She could not remember ever feeling this angry in her life before, not even once she had got over the initial pain of James’s defection on the eve of their wedding. And it was an anger that didn’t lessen as the time ticked by!

‘You look just like your mother when you’re angry, my dear.’

Silke looked sharply across the room at Henry, a blush darkening her cheeks now as she realised he had woken up and had obviously been watching her for some time.

She drew in a deeply controlling breath. ‘I probably feel like her when I’m angry too!’ she told him with feeling.

‘Lyon has that effect on people,’ he nodded, sobering slightly, a little colour having returned to his cheeks after his ten-minute nap. ‘I remember I used to make your mother angry a lot,’ he said heavily. ‘Do you think she’ll come back?’ He looked longingly towards the door where her mother had so recently fled.

Silke sighed as she moved to his side, offering no objection as he lightly clasped her hand as he had the last time. ‘I’m really not sure,’ she answered him honestly. ‘My mother has always been a law unto herself.’ She grimaced as she remembered the chaotic years of her early childhood, when she had never been quite sure what her mother might do.

Henry gave a half-smile. ‘I remember that too,’ he nodded.

Despite the fact that she realised how ill this man was, Silke’s curiosity momentarily got the better of her. ‘How—?’ She broke off abruptly as the office door burst open without warning, her initial hope that it might be her mother immediately dashed as Lyon Buchanan strode purposefully into the room.

He came to an abrupt halt just inside the door, taking in the scene with one cold glance, his narrowed gaze raking scathingly over Silke’s hand so cosily enfolded in his uncle’s much larger one.

Silke’s initial reaction was to pull her hand sharply away, but at the first sign that she was about to do that Henry’s hand tightened its grip. She looked down at him, knowing by his determined expression that he wasn’t about to release her without a fuss. And that she could do without!

Instead she turned her frustrated anger on Lyon Buchanan—he was the reason for it anyway! ‘What did you do?’ she said scathingly. ‘Fly here?’ She returned his gaze as challengingly as he was now looking at her.

‘Almost,’ he bit out grimly, his attention turning to his uncle, although the older man was obviously slightly recovered now. ‘When are you going to realise you’re nearly seventy years old?’ Lyon said impatiently.

‘Sixty-seven, boy,’ his uncle returned with some of his earlier spirit. ‘And don’t worry, I’ve just decided I’m going to be around for a lot more years yet.’ His softened gaze rested on Silke after he had made this statement.

Lyon Buchanan’s hard gaze returned to her too, a sharp questioning in those icy eyes as he took in the blush that seemed to be becoming a permanent fixture in Silke’s usually creamy cheeks. ‘Indeed?’ he finally bit out tersely. ‘Well, I think we should get you to Peter Carruthers and let him decide that, don’t you?’ he said scathingly. ‘Can you walk, or shall I—?’

‘I can walk,’ his uncle assured him firmly. ‘And I want Silke to come with me.’

Now it was Silke’s turn to look at him sharply. She was worried about him herself, and, much as she would have hated having to contact Lyon Buchanan again, she had intended telephoning him later to assure herself that his uncle was indeed OK. But she hadn’t considered actually going along with Henry to see his doctor!

‘Now that I’ve found you, I’m not going to let you out of my sight again until we’ve talked further. I’m sure you can guess why,’ Henry told her ruefully.

Because of her mother. ‘Satin’ had run away, but he had no intention of letting her daughter escape as easily. And if Silke was honest she was more than a little curious to know more about ‘Hal’ and ‘Satin’ herself!

But she could see from Lyon Buchanan’s furious expression, and the angry glitter in his eyes, that he had completely misread the situation—and that he didn’t like his conclusions one little bit! Well, Silke didn’t give a damn how he felt about it; she would accompany Henry!

‘Of course I’ll come with you.’ She squeezed the elderly man’s hand reassuringly. No matter how much Lyon Buchanan might hate it!

And as they helped Henry out of the office and down to Lyon Buchanan’s car—parked illegally on double yellow lines; what else?—it was obvious how much he did hate Silke’s presence there, his eyes glittering down coldly at her as they stood either side of Henry to help him down the stairs and out into the street. And his face was set in grimly disapproving lines as Henry insisted he wanted Silke to sit beside him in the back of the silver Mercedes.

‘You’ll have more room to make yourself comfortable if Miss Jordan sits in the front next to me,’ he told his uncle harshly, somehow managing to infuse a wealth of contempt into the ‘Miss Jordan’.

Making Silke feel like kicking him up the seat of his tailored trousers! In fact, the temptation was so strong that she had to turn her attention firmly to Henry to actually stop herself carrying out the action. ‘I think, in this case, your nephew is probably right,’ she told the elderly man gently, seeing an answering humour in Henry’s eyes as his lips twitched in appreciation of her insertion of ‘in this case’. But, as far as she was concerned, Lyon Buchanan was wrong about most other things; he was a man who made assumptions and then acted upon them. ‘It isn’t far, is it?’ she prompted the arrogant man as she climbed into the passenger seat, concerned at how white Henry now looked as he slumped down in the back seat.

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