He hadn’t even noticed that she’d lost weight!

All that work. For nothing!

‘It’s no trouble,’ he threw over his shoulder as he continued on up the stairs with the bags.

Sarah gritted her teeth, and hurried up the stairs after him. ‘Why aren’t you at golf?’

‘I wanted the opportunity to talk to you,’ he tossed back at her. ‘Privately.’

‘About what?’

He didn’t answer her, instead charging on ahead with her bags.

‘About what, Nick?’ she repeated when she caught up, frustrated by his lack of reply.

He ground to a halt on the top landing, dropped her bags then turned to face her.

‘Flora, for one thing.’

‘What about her? She’s not ill, is she?’

‘No, but she can’t do what she used to do. She gets very tired. This last year, I’ve had to hire a home-cleaning service to come in twice a week to do all the heavy cleaning for her.’

‘I didn’t realise.’

‘If you came home occasionally,’ Nick pointed out drily, ‘you might have noticed.’

It was a fair comment, evoking a large dose of guilt. Sarah recognised she’d been very self-obsessed this past year. But she’d been on a mission. A futile mission, as it turned out.

‘I…I’ve been very busy,’ she said by way of an excuse.

‘With the new boyfriend, I take it?’ came his next comment, this one quite sarcastic.

Sarah bristled. ‘I have a right to a social life,’ she retorted, taking off her sunglasses so that she could glare at him. ‘You have one.’

‘Indeed. But it doesn’t take over my whole existence.’

His critical tone was so typical of Nick when it came to her having a boyfriend, his condemning attitude often sparking a reckless rebellion in her that had her running off at the mouth.

Today was no exception.

‘Derek and I are very much in love. Something you could never identify with. When people are truly in love they want to spend every minute of every day with them.’

‘I’m surprised you came home today at all, then,’ he countered quite sharply. ‘Or will your lover be dropping by later?’

Sarah flushed. ‘Derek’s working today.’

‘Doing what?’

‘He owns a gym.’

‘Aah. That explains it.’

‘Explains what?’

‘Your new shape.’

So he had noticed! ‘You say that like there’s something wrong with it.’

‘You looked fine the way you were.’

Sarah’s mouth dropped open. ‘You have to be joking! I was getting fat!’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

Sarah rolled her eyes. Either the man was blind, or he cared about her so little that he’d never really looked at her before.

‘Maybe you just didn’t notice.’

Nick gave an offhand shrug. ‘Maybe I didn’t. Still, I suppose it’s not up to me to tell you what to do.’

‘I’m glad you’ve finally realised that!’

‘Meaning?’

‘I couldn’t count the number of times you’ve interfered in my life, and my relationships. Every time I brought a boyfriend home in the past, you went out of your way to make him feel stupid. And me to boot.’

‘I was only doing what your father asked me to do, Sarah. Which was to protect you from the money-grubbing creeps in this world.’

‘They weren’t money-grubbing creeps!’

‘Indeed they were.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that from now on, thank you very much.’

‘Not till your twenty-fifth birthday, madam. I have no intention of letting you fall into the hands of some gold-digging gigolo at this late stage. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I did that.’

‘Huh. I can’t see you ever losing any sleep over me.’

‘Then you’d be dead wrong, sweetheart,’ he grated out.

Their eyes met, with Sarah sucking in sharply at the momentary fury she glimpsed in Nick’s face. It came home to her then just how much he’d hated being her guardian all these years. No doubt he would be very relieved when she turned twenty-five next year and his obligation to her father was over.

‘I haven’t given you that much trouble, have I?’ she said, her softer voice reflecting her drop in spirits.

As much as she accepted Nick would never be attracted to her, she’d always thought that, underneath everything, he liked her. Not just because she was her father’s daughter, but because of the person she was. When she was younger, he’d often told her what a great kid she was. He’d said she had character, and a good heart. He’d also said she was fun to be with, proving it by spending a lot of his spare time with her.

Of course, that had been a long time ago, before Nick had become a success in his own right. When that started to happen, he’d begun to ignore her. Then, after her father died, the rot had set in completely. It was patently obvious that she was now reduced to nothing more than a responsibility, a responsibility that he obviously found both tedious and exasperating.

‘Does he know how rich you’re shortly going to be?’ he demanded to know.

Sarah’s mouth thinned. Here we go again, she thought angrily.

Yet there was no point in lying. Better she answer Nick’s questions now than to have him put Derek through the third degree on Christmas Day.

‘He knows I’m going to be rich,’ she bit out. ‘But he doesn’t know the full extent of my inheritance.’

‘He’ll know once he shows up tomorrow. People who live in this street have to be multimillionaires at least. It won’t take him long to put two and two together.’

‘Derek’s not a fortune-hunter, Nick. He’s a very decent man.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I just know.’

‘My God, you know nothing!’ he flung at her. ‘Your father thought he was protecting you with his will. Instead, he set you up for disaster. He should have given most of his money away, donated it to some charity, not left it in the hands of a girl such as you.’

‘What do you mean, a girl such as me?’

He opened his mouth to say something but then obviously thought better of it. Instead, he picked up her bags and carried them along the hallway to her room, the stiff set of his shoulders very telling. After dumping her cases just inside the door, he retreated back out into the hallway.

‘We’ll continue this discussion later,’ he said in that deceptively quiet manner he always adopted on the odd occasion when he was in danger of losing his cool.

Over the years Sarah had learned to recognise this tactic of his. Nick hated losing his temper. Hated losing control. He preferred to act like the consummate ice-man, both professionally and personally. She’d rarely heard him yell. He didn’t even swear any more, as he once had.

But his body language could speak volumes. So could his eyes.

Though not always. He did have the ability to make them totally unreadable. But not straight away. If you were watching him closely, you could sometimes glimpse what was going on in his head before he drew the blinds down.

‘We’ll have morning tea in the kitchen,’ he pronounced, ‘then we’ll adjourn to my study and talk.’

‘Not about Derek,’ Sarah retorted. ‘I have no intention of listening to you criticising someone you haven’t even met.’

‘Fair enough. But I have lots of other things to talk to you about, Sarah. Important issues connected with your inheritance. I want to have everything settled before Christmas.’

‘But I don’t turn twenty-five till February,’ she protested. ‘We have the rest of my summer break to settle things!’

‘No, we don’t. I won’t be here.’

‘Where will you be?’

‘I’m spending most of January on Happy Island.’

Sarah’s heart sank. She knew Nick had a holiday house there. But he rarely used it at this time of year.

‘Flora never said anything about that when I called.’

‘The subject probably didn’t come up.’

‘There’s still the week between Christmas and New Year,’ she argued, feeling very put out with Nick’s choosing to go away for so long.

‘Yes. But I’m having a guest stay during that week. And you have your new boyfriend, who you freely admit you wish to spend every minute of every day with. Better we settle everything whilst we have the chance.’