Relentless - By Cherry Adair Page 0,10
echoing discreetly inside.
“Where are we?” They’d already checked in to the hotel, and one wouldn’t ring a doorbell at a hotel in any case. Trying to guess where they were and why they were there, she glanced around at the neatly trimmed boxwood hedges surrounding a beautifully manicured Stepford-perfect flower bed filled with deep purple salvia. Bright red petunias would look better than the stick-straight salvia, she decided.
There wasn’t a bend or a curve to be seen. Everything was precise, straight, uniform. In fact, she bet that whoever was in charge of the plants had cut back any stragglers so they were exactly even in number on each side.
Before he could respond the door was opened by a distinguished, unamused man with snow-white hair and a beak of a nose. He wore a starched black suit so stiff it appeared to have the hanger still in it. Isis buried her instant levity, wondering if the man was aware he’d caricatured himself. “Master James,” he said in round, self-important tones. “This is something of a surprise.”
“To all concerned,” Thorne replied dryly as the man stepped back to let them inside. “Is His Lordship at home, Roberts?”
The butler glanced down his nose at Isis for a moment, his nostrils flaring, as if he smelled something unpleasant. “I’ll inquire, sir. Shall I bring tea to the yellow room?” The butler held himself with stiff dignity.
“Coffee and a diet cola. Heavy on the ice.”
“Certainly.” Roberts half-bowed and went right, while she followed “Master James” to the left. Roberts, she noted, disappeared like magic, and it was only her imagination that had her smelling sulfur in the air, which otherwise bore the scent of lemon polish and flowers.
Wowza! She’d been in hotels smaller than this place. “Your name’s James?”
He picked up speed, his hard-soled shoes and cane landing slightly uneven, staccato strikes on the marble floor. “Thorne.”
“Okay by me,” she said easily, looking around with interest as she trailed behind him. Tension rolled off him in almost visible waves. Isis closed the gap between them in a probably misplaced sense that he needed someone to stand with him. She kept her tone light as she tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and adjusted her steps to match his. “My father always said, ‘A child with many names is a child loved.’ ”
He didn’t shake her off but made a derisive noise under his breath as they circumvented a large wood and marble table with an enormous floral arrangement dripping from a blue and white vase half as tall as she was. That many hydrangeas and Casablanca lilies couldn’t possibly get enough to drink, they were crammed in so tightly. “Not in every case,” he said coldly, finally disengaging from her hold to slip his hand in his jacket pocket.
Ow. “This is your parents’ home?” Isis asked in exaggerated hushed tones as their shoes clicked loudly on marble the color of beach sand and the tap of Thorne’s cane echoed in surround sound off all the hard surfaces.
“Already amused, I see.” Thorne let her catch up to him again in the vast entry hall. He wasn’t letting the grass grow under his feet. Whatever the reason for the cane and slight limp, the man moved fast. She had to trot to keep up.
She couldn’t imagine a child scampering through the halls or sliding down the magnificent curved teak banister. Not that she could imagine Thorne as a child, either. Feeling his unbearable tension as if it were a living thing in the too-still, unbearably grand house, she forced a small smile. “I was just thinking I’d like to get Roberts into a room filled with white Persian cats and photograph his reactions. I bet fluff never lands on that suit of his—it has super-repellent on it, doesn’t it?”
His lips twitched. “You have a very interesting mind, Isis Magee.”
She would have loved to linger, because the place was magnificent in an overly gilded, museumy kind of way, and her fingers itched for her camera. She got the quick impression of miles of pale marble, busy wallpaper, and gold… everything; of potted palms and large portraits of stern-faced people in period costume, as she hurried to keep up with Connor’s long-legged, if slightly uneven, strides.
“House. Not home. But yes. Rosebank House is their primary residence.”
The “House” seemed too tame a name for the palatial mansion. “Did you grow up here?” Isis asked, doing a quickstep to sync her steps with his.
“Third floor, corner bedroom. I