gabble, she was telling herself as that embarrassing admission of insecurity tumbled from her lips.
‘Who from?’ Sev enquired, initially intrigued by the idea of her in borrowed finery even if it made him appreciate that he would have to buy her a presentable dress for the Lawsons’ big pre-Christmas party. Of course, she wouldn’t have the money for something like that. No, he intended to choose the optimum moment to unveil her identity. At the same time, it annoyed him that Oliver Lawson’s daughter lived in such poverty compared to her father. Surely Lawson could have helped her out beyond the level of paying child support? Amy Taylor had had to struggle even to complete her education after a less than promising upbringing.
‘Gemma, she’s a friend,’ Amy framed, striving to look back levelly at him and calm down, and utterly failing in that aspiration because she was so overpowered by both him and her deluxe surroundings that she felt as though she were trying to function in some strange dreamscape.
‘Would you like a drink?’
‘Yes, please...that would be great,’ she declared, trying not to gape as a liquor cabinet operated by a button emerged from the plush leather and glass division between driver and passenger. But when he uncorked a bottle of pink champagne there was no hiding her consternation.
‘Are you celebrating something?’
‘Hopefully the moment when you relax,’ Sev told her lazily.
‘Well, you could be waiting a long time for that,’ Amy admitted ruefully. ‘Right now, I feel as though I’ve walked onto a movie set. I’m not used to this level of extravagant living.’
‘I’m still the same man,’ Sev murmured.
‘But what on earth are you doing with me?’ Amy countered. ‘I don’t fit in your world.’
‘Never try to define me by my income. We live in the same world.’
‘Doesn’t feel like it, right now,’ she admitted tautly as he passed her a moisture-beaded glass brimming with bubbling palest pink liquid.
She sipped, grateful to have something to occupy her restless hands, and by the time they arrived at the world-renowned hotel where they were to dine she was on her second glass, taking even tinier sips to carefully control her alcohol intake while encouraging Sev to talk. And my goodness, getting Sev to talk at all, she discovered, was an uphill task.
Asked about his day, he muttered, ‘Work...meetings,’ and that was that. Asked to tell her about something that had annoyed him, he looked at her with a frown and claimed that it took a great deal to annoy him. Asked to describe one positive development, he looked downright blank, and he said drily as he walked her into the hotel where he was greeted by name by the uniformed doorman, ‘Where are you trying to go with these strange questions?’
‘My foster mum, Cordy, used to tell me to think of something positive to say about every day, especially if it was a bad day,’ she stressed wryly, struggling not to react to that revealing word, ‘strange’.
Sev gritted his teeth because he thought that was a terrible idea. ‘Be careful or I will christen you Little Miss Sunshine. There was nothing positive about my day. It was stressful.’
But as she gave him a forgiving smile for that honesty, he knew he had lied. She was probably the most positive development in his day because she made negativity and pessimism a challenge, he acknowledged ruefully. They were polar opposites in character. Sev knew himself to be dark right down to his innermost soul and a case-hardened cynic. He expected the worst from people. He let nobody get close to him. He might be attached to Annabel and his birth father, Hallas, and his happy family, but he confided in none of them. What he thought and felt, he kept strictly to himself because it was safer not to let anyone get too close and learn too much about him. His childhood had taught him the art of self-protection. Even Annabel, in her innocence, had betrayed him once or twice with her loose chattering tongue.
He could still recall sitting at the Aiken dinner table when he was ten, the evening his half-sister had chosen to announce that he was unhappy at boarding school. Even better did he recall her sobbing incomprehension as the parental storm of rage had broken over his head while he was shouted at and humiliated for his ingratitude as though he were some charity case taken in off the street. He could never have dreamt then that, in point