‘Of course I’m not!’ Joking again, Katy thought. But this time she wasn’t going to act morally outraged. Just laugh it off as he expected.
Shame, Bruno caught himself thinking. Then he thought of Isobel. He’d get in touch with her in the morning. Invite her up for the Sunday but tell her that she might as well bring an overnight bag. A warm, willing woman in his arms was just what he needed right now.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘IT’S…it’s splendid.’
Joseph had been collected from the hospital in high spirits. The nurses had all found him irresistible and he had been tickled pink to find himself surrounded as he was installed in his wheelchair with Bruno and Katy right behind him. He had presented Matron with a lavish floral arrangement and several boxes of handmade Belgium chocolates and in turn they had handed over a gigantic card signed by every member of staff who had helped look after him, including his consultant.
His buoyant spirits, however, seemed to have taken something of a dive as he dubiously regarded the swimming-pool complex.
‘Come and sit in one of the chairs,’ Katy said, gently tugging him over to the two-seater wicker chair with its plump, squashy cushions before he could turn tail and head back into the house. ‘Right now, my dear? Shouldn’t I be inside, resting?’
‘We thought we’d have lunch here,’ Bruno said conversationally. ‘Maggie’s made something light.’
‘How light? I suppose,’ Joseph said gloomily, allowing himself to be led towards the little cluster of chairs and eased into one, ‘you’ve been given a wretched diet sheet. A man of my advancing years shouldn’t be confined to bland, unsalted, non-spicy foods for the rest of his days. What’s the advantage of growing older if you find yourself having to eat macaroni and grilled fish for the rest of your life? Eh?’
‘Now isn’t that comfortable?’ Katy said brightly, sitting next to him and still managing to see Bruno as he lowered himself into the other chair, even though she wasn’t really looking in his direction.
‘Not bad,’ Joseph admitted. ‘All that water’s a little off-putting, though. I expect you’ll be wanting me to get into it at some point? I’m not a very strong swimmer, you know. Never have been. I could very easily drown.’
‘It’s heated,’ Katy elaborated, reluctantly eyeing Bruno, who had sprawled into the chair and had lazily extended his legs, letting his head rest back so that his eyes were half closed.
‘And Katy will be very disappointed if you refuse to sample the water,’ he drawled. ‘She’s been a little beaver trying to get this complex up and running before you got back. Haven’t you?’ His black eyes slid across to her.
‘Have you, my dear?’ Joseph’s voice brightened. ‘You shouldn’t have!’
‘I enjoyed it. And you will have a little dip, won’t you, Joseph? The consultant says some light exercise would be very good for you. I mean, I’m not suggesting that you dash to your room for your bathing costume this very instant, but maybe tomorrow…?’
‘Tomorrow? How on earth could I possibly go for a swim tomorrow when I’m going to be meeting my godson’s…’ he leant towards Katy and threw a sly look at Bruno who was now staring at them with a little frown ‘…well, not quite sure what to call her but it must be serious considering she’s the first woman he’s ever dared bring to the house…’
Bruno was wearing a trapped look on his face. They had both casually mentioned Isobel and her imminent arrival the next day on the way back from the hospital. Bruno had been unforthcoming virtually to the point of reticence, but that hadn’t stopped Joseph from launching into a detailed interrogation, which had taken up the better part of the drive back to the house. The more detailed the questions, the more monosyllabic Bruno had become to the point where, once Joseph had been settled in the kitchen for a little chat with Maggie, who had been restlessly waiting for her employer to return, Katy had felt compelled to remind him that he was introducing his godfather to his prospective daughter-in-law.
‘I’m aware of that,’ Bruno informed her irritably. ‘Not,’ he reminded her, ‘that Joseph is supposed to know that the relationship is that serious.’
‘Why do you have to make it all so complicated? Why don’t you just tell him that you’re going to be marrying Isobel instead of dodging his questions, which is only going to make him wonder what’s going on between the two of you?’
‘Leave my private life to me, Katy,’ was all he said and there was enough ice in his voice to make her realise that further questioning from her was not going to be tolerated.
Now Joseph was asking whether he would be required to dress up for Isobel or whether she was the sort of girl who would take him as he was.
Katy found it hard not to giggle at Joseph’s transparent digging and at the way Bruno greeted the question by dropping his dark sunglasses over his eyes. She would never have imagined that this big, powerful dynamo could do something as normal as squirm but he was as close to squirming as he could get. She could almost see his shoulders sag with relief when Maggie came in to ask them whether they were ready for a bit of lunch. He vaulted out of the chair with alacrity, leaving her to chat with Joseph while he made a show of helping bring in the lunch and then, over lunch, sidestepped all chat of Isobel with the mastery of a practised escapologist.
‘I’ll need you back down in the office to do some work for me,’ he told her, once lunch had been cleared away and Joseph had been taken up to his room for the rest he now claimed he no longer wanted.
‘But it’s Saturday,’ Katy protested, frowning. ‘And I know I’m not back into my normal routine with Joseph yet, but—’
‘But as far as you’re concerned, you’re now relieved of all secretarial duties with me, am I right? Even though several things still need finishing.’
‘No, of course not,’ Katy said, blushing. ‘It’s just that I assumed…’
‘Meet me in the office in half an hour and you needn’t worry that I’ll keep you there for the next eight hours. I just want those emails we were working on yesterday to be sent and I’ll need you to write a letter after I’ve had my conference call.’
At which he spun around and abruptly headed off towards the office, leaving her to wonder why he was in such a ferocious mood when Joseph was now back home, as hale and hearty as could be expected, and his girlfriend was arriving the following morning.
‘Doesn’t seem too exuberant on the subject of this Isobel creature,’ Joseph told Katy as soon as they were in his suite and she was fishing out his book for him to read. ‘Not sure I like the sounds of her, anyway.’
‘You can’t say that, Joseph. You haven’t met her as yet.’ Katy decided that she’d better err on the part of reticence just in case her own lukewarm opinions began filtering through. She turned his favourite chair towards the window so that he could have a view of the sun drenched lawns outside.
‘Why is he so uncommunicative about her? Must be keen to be bringing her here, so you’d have thought I would have been the one to have been putting a stop to his chatter!’
‘You know Bruno. He doesn’t “chatter”. Katy wasn’t looking at him when she said this. She was tugging open the sash window so that some of the light spring breeze could waft into the bedroom. She didn’t see the expression flit over his face. When he next spoke, his voice was mild, almost absent-minded.
‘Very contained, yes,’ Joseph said, sinking into the chair with a sigh of pleasure and reaching out for his book. ‘Genuine, though, that’s the thing. Glad you two got along. Now, are you going to read to me, my dear?’
‘I can’t. Well, I could but Bruno wants me to finish off some work we started yesterday…’
‘In which case, you run along and don’t let him overwork you.’
‘Oh, I’ve learnt how to put my foot down.’ She laughed softly and shuffled a little table next to him so that he had somewhere to rest his spectacles and his glass of water.
Bruno was waiting for her with his back to the door when she entered the of
fice ten minutes later.
She went straight to the computer, sat down and waited for him to fire out his usual list of instructions. He didn’t. In fact, he didn’t turn around to face her, and eventually she said, clearing her throat, ‘Are we going to get down to this work, Bruno? If we hurry, I can probably manage to take Joseph for a late stroll in the garden before dinner. I know he’s dying to see how all his plants are doing. He doesn’t believe me when I tell him that they’ve been looked after.’
‘In a minute.’ He turned to face her, blocking some of the light pouring through the window, and stuck his hands into his pockets. ‘Just need to have a chat about work, actually.’
‘Oh, right. Have I done something wrong?’ Katy frowned and tried to remember what particular typing disaster she might have managed to produce. She thought she had succeeded in a basic level of competence, but for all she knew he might have taken exception to something she had inadvertently rephrased. Hopefully, she hadn’t done something really catastrophic like delete files. She avoided that particular button like the plague but…
‘No need to look so chewed up,’ Bruno said, pushing himself away from the window ledge and sinking into his chair, which he turned so that he could face her squarely. ‘You’re proving to be quite an efficient little secretary.’
‘What, then?’
‘I’d thought, originally, that once Joseph was back I would return to London but I’m beginning to think that I couldn’t possibly leave just at the moment.’
Katy hadn’t actually contemplated him leaving and was disconcerted to find that the prospect of that was not exactly the shining ray of sunshine on the horizon that she would have expected it to have been.
‘Why not?’
‘I shall have to wait until I’m personally satisfied that everything is fine here.’ He reached out for his pen and began idly tapping it on the surface of the desk. ‘Which, I’m afraid, means that you’re going to have to continue working for me for a bit longer.’
‘But I really should be devoting my time and attention to Joseph…’
‘I’m sure he’ll understand and, besides, things are going to take a little while before they return completely to normal, aren’t they? He won’t be running around the minute his feet hit the ground here. If anything, we’ll have to work out an arrangement whereby you can spend some time here in the office…’
‘Well, isn’t that going to be a bit unsatisfactory?’ Katy frowned, bemused. ‘How are you going to get through what you have to get through if you don’t have someone working for you full-time?’
‘Leave me to sort that out.’
‘So will there be some sort of…timetable?’
‘Think out of the box, Katy.’ He stood up and began prowling the room restlessly. ‘There won’t be a timetable.’ He paused to stare down at her. ‘You’ll just have to be prepared to go with the flow.’
‘Go with the flow?’
‘Correct.’
‘Are you sure that’s going to work?’ She was finding it hard to imagine how he could alter his pace from ferociously work propelled into a loose ‘going with the flow’ lack of schedule. ‘If you intend to be here for a bit longer and Joseph is back, mightn’t it be better for you to get someone full-time? What about Isobel? Maybe she could take over. Does she, well…would she fit the bill?’
That suggestion was ridiculous enough to make Bruno perch on the edge of his desk, all the better to display his utter incredulity at the thought.
‘Isobel has never done a proper day’s work in her life. In fact, work for Isobel can be summed up by the efforts she is sometimes required to take when the family chauffeur is otherwise engaged and she has to take a taxi to Knightsbridge instead to do her shopping. Work, for Isobel, is deciding what colour her nails should be painted.’
‘Why are you thinking about marrying her if you disapprove so much of her lifestyle?’
‘Did I imply that I disapproved of her lifestyle?’ He was beginning to wonder what had possessed him to think that Isobel might be the ideal mate for him. But she was coming up and Joseph was already getting in a tizzy about the possibility of someone serious in his life. He could tell. All those questions, all that not very subtle tiptoeing around the suggestion that this might be The One.
He reminded himself that she was very eligible and very beautiful and would be a very agreeable woman to have on his arm in public.
Unfortunately, meeting Katy’s cornflower-blue eyes, he was still aware that he was somehow being accused by her of something. Which was really getting on his nerves.
‘She’s not that unusual,’ he was reluctantly compelled to expound.
‘Maybe not.’
‘I only hope that Joseph takes to her.’ He gave Katy a brief, uncertain glance and flushed. ‘Did he mention anything…?’
‘No.’ Katy dropped her eyes and looked hard at the keyboard of the computer. She didn’t think that Joseph was going to rush headlong into full-fledged adoration of the lady in question, but not in a thousand years would she have voiced that opinion. Bruno obviously considered her the ideal mate. He might just find that he and Isobel were the only two amongst them who shared that opinion, she thought, and then caught herself for thinking such a petty thing. It was just a shame that she was coming so soon, barely giving Joseph time to gather himself.
The following morning, she revised that opinion when she was greeted by an extremely lively Joseph, whom she helped to change into his best Sunday garb of a tweed jacket and a pair of brown trousers.
‘You look good enough to have tea with the Queen,’ Katy joked as they had breakfast in the kitchen. There was no sign of Bruno and she felt a little stab of sourness at the thought of him decking himself out to greet his guest. He hadn’t gone out of his way the last time he had brought Isobel over, but then this was different. This time she was meeting family.
As the morning ticked past she felt more and more like a spare wheel and the effect was complete when, at ten-thirty, Bruno appeared to join them in the garden. In the clear light of early summer, he looked breathtakingly beautiful in a cream polo shirt and some beige trousers. His hair gleamed in the sunlight and she found herself staring at the classic, hard profile as though it were the first time she was seeing him.
She shouldn’t really be here. She didn’t belong. This was a family affair and she shrank into the background, keeping silent as Bruno and his godfather chatted, listening out for the sound of a car purring up the drive and wondering how she might be able to slink away when no one was looking.
By the time the car finally did pull up, Katy had lapsed into a complex reverie involving her imminent escape, barely aware of Bruno’s frowning glances in her direction or of Joseph’s watchful eyes flitting between the two of them.
‘I hope you intend to be a little chattier when we go in,’ Bruno muttered into her ear and Katy blinked and looked at him.
‘Why?’ For once she had no desire to be anything but blunt and he narrowed his brilliant dark eyes on her.
‘Because it would make for a more comfortable atmosphere? Because Joseph might feel a little more relaxed if he didn’t know you were there in the background, fulminating?’
‘I don’t fulminate,’ Katy muttered back under her breath. ‘In fact, I don’t even know what that means.’
‘Why are you sulking?’
‘I wasn’t sulking. I was just thinking that I’d be better off somewhere else. Then the three of you could get to know one another without me being around.’
‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself. It’s a very irritating trait. I thought you’d got past that.’
He left her with that thought to go and open the front door and then for a few minutes she actually succeeded in forgetting how redundant she felt as Isobel swept in, leather holdall in one hand, the other reaching up to curve around Bruno’s face so that she could draw him down and plant a lingering kiss on his mouth. She was one of those women who carried about them a flurry of activity.
There was nothing restful about her. Out of the corner of her eye, Katy noticed that Joseph was looking a little dazed by the six-foot blonde as she commandeered the attention and lavished her conversation on him, drawing him towards her with the proprietorial air of someone who had launched herself into a mission with one hundred and ten per cent enthusiasm. Katy wondered whether in fact Bruno had already proposed. She certainly seemed to be playing the part of intended bride with everything at her disposal.
The performance, however, did not extend to her, Katy noticed. She was resolutely relegated to the background and was quite happy to take up her position there and observe from the sidelines.
Isobel made her nervous and she didn’t quite understand why. Maybe it was because she was so over-the-top in everything. Her clothes were dashing and bold; her voice reached every corner of whatever room they happened to be in; she never appeared to be short of conversation. It was quite awe-inspiring, really. Whether Joseph was responding to all this lavish attention was very hard to tell. He was, as always, perfectly polite in his usual understated, gentlemanly way, listening with his head slightly cocked to one side and showing just the right level of interest.
It was only when lunch had been served that Katy noticed a certain tiredness around his eyes and she gently suggested that it might be time for him to go upstairs and get a little rest.
‘My goodness!’ Isobel exclaimed, turning away from a red-faced Maggie who had found herself the object of effusive compliments on the sumptuousness of her salmon. ‘Darling, I barely remembered that you were there! Such a silent little thing, isn’t she?’
‘Serene.’ Joseph paused with his hand on the door and looked at Isobel. ‘Calming. I have always considered those very alluring traits in a woman.’ It was as close to a criticism of their guest as it was possible for Joseph to direct and it embarrassed the life out of Katy who, having retreated into observant silence, was now subjected to Isobel’s resentful stare and Bruno’s narrowed, inscrutable eyes.
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