Chapter Five

‘You don’t approve, do you?’ Michael demanded, shaking his head ruefully.

‘Just wait until you see it, though, Elena. You’ll love it. It’s a perfect example of...’

‘We’re already very close to the limit of this year’s budget,’ She warned him sternly, ‘and—’

‘So what? We’ll just have to increase this year’s funding,’ he told her with typical laid-back geniality.

‘michael,’ Elena protested, ‘you’re talking about an increase of heaven alone knows how many million dollars... The Trust...’

‘I am the Trust,’ Michael reminded her gently, and Elena had to acknowledge that he spoke the truth. Even so, she gave him an ironic look to which he responded by informing her loftily, ‘I’m just doing what I know the old man would have wanted me to do...’

‘By buying a decaying neoclassical pile in the middle of Derbyshire?’ She asked him dryly.

And she was still shaking her head as he told her winningly, ‘You’ll love it, Elena..I promise you!’

Cravenly Elena was tempted to tell him that she was far too busy and that he would have to find someone else to take charge of this particular project, but her pride—the same pride which had kept her going, kept her head held high and her spirit strong through Roth rejection of her and everything that had followed—refused to allow her to do so.

This time she and Roth would be meeting on equal ground—as adults—and this time...this time...

This time what? This time she wasn’t going to let him hurt her. This time her attitude towards him would be cool, distant and totally businesslike.

This time...

Elena closed her eyes as she felt the tiny shivers of apprehension icing down her spine. The last time she had seen Roth had been when he had unexpectedly turned up at the airport three years ago when she had been leaving England to finish her degree course in America. She could still remember the shock it had given her to see him there, the shock and the sharply sweet surge of helpless given her to see him there.

She had still been so vulnerable and naive then, a part of her still hoping that maybe, just maybe, he had changed his mind...his heart... But of course he had not. He had been there simply to assure himself that she was actually leaving the country and his life.

Lucas knew, of course, that she had once had a foolish adolescent crush on his friend and employee but, thankfully, that was all he did know; thankfully, he had no knowledge of that shaming and searingly painful, never to be thought about, never mind talked about incident that had taken place when she had still been at university in England.

No one knew about that. Only she and Roth. But that was all in the past now, and she was determined that this time when she and Roth met, as meet they would surely have to, she would be the one who would have the upper hand and he would be the one who would be the supplicant; she would have the power to deny and refuse him what he wanted and he would have to beg and plead with her.

Immediately Elena's opened her eyes. What on earth had got into her? That kind of warped, vengeful thinking was, to her mind, as foolish and adolescent as her youthful infatuation with Roth had been. She was above all that kind of thing.

She had to be; her job demanded it. No, she would make no distinction between

Roth and all the other clients she had had to deal with. The fact that Roth had once cruelly and uncaringly turned down her pleas for his love, for his lovemaking, the fact that he had once rejected and demeaned her, would make no difference to the way she treated him. She was above all that kind of small-mindedness.

Proudly she lifted her head as she continued to listen to Michael enthusiastically telling her the virtues of his latest ‘find’.

*

Roth stared grimly around the unfurnished, dusty and cobweb-festooned hallway of Haverton Hall. The smell of neglect and the much more ominous dry rot hung malodorously on the still, late afternoon air. The large room, in common with the rest of the Hall, had a desolate, down-at-heel air of weariness which reminded him uncomfortably of the elderly great-uncle who had owned the property when

Roth was growing up. Visits to see him had been something which he had always dreaded and, ironically, he could remember how relieved he had been to discover that it was not he but an older cousin who would ultimately inherit the responsibility for the vast, empty, neglected house

But now that cousin was dead and he, Roth, was Haverton’s owner, or at least he had been until a week or so ago, when he had finally and thankfully signed the papers which would convey legal ownership of Haverton and all the problems that went with it into the hands of Michael Velmer.

His initial reaction when he had unexpectedly and unwontedly inherited the place had been to make enquiries to see if any of the British trusts could be persuaded to take it over, but, as their representatives had quickly and wryly explained, the trusts were awash with unwanted properties and deluged with despairing owners wanting them to take on even more.

Faced with the prospect of having to stand aside and watch as the house and its lands fell into an even greater state of decay, Roth hadn’t known what on earth he was going to do—his inheritance had been the house and the land; there hadn’t been any money to leave for its upkeep—and then Lucas had happened to mention the existence of an eccentric American billionaire whose main vocation and purpose in life was the buying up and restoring of old properties which he then opened to the public, and Roth had lost no time in getting in touch with him.

To his relief Michael had flown over to England to view the house and promptly declared that he loved it.