Isabelle opened and closed her mouth but she couldn’t access her voice. She felt the colour drain out of her face like one of those cartoon characters she had watched as a child. All of her extremities fizzed as if her blood pressure was dropping. This couldn’t be happening. Those shares were meant to be hers. It was her dream. Her life’s goal was to own a majority share in The Harrington. She’d been working in the hotel since she was in bobby socks. She was a Harrington, for God’s sake. The staff were her substitute family. They relied on her to keep things ticking over like clockwork. How could the hotel be handed to someone else who didn’t love and nurture it the way she did?
It was her hotel, not Spencer Damn-his-eyes Chatsfield’s.
‘As majority shareholder Spencer will now be CEO of The Harrington, New York,’ Liliana said.
Isabelle ignored the rumble of voices from the Chatsfield siblings and their father, Gene, who looked like he was about to have a conniption. Spencer remained composed and silent. Coolly composed. How he must be enjoying this, she thought as a knot of resentment twisted hard and tight in her belly. How he would be getting off on seeing her hopes dashed. He must have known this would be the outcome of the meeting. Why else would he be sitting there as if butter wouldn’t melt in his blistering-hot mouth? Had he done something to win over Liliana? Isabelle knew all too well how skilled he was at getting what he wanted by fair means or foul. Look how he’d showered her with gifts and romantic attention in the past. She had tried not to succumb but in the end she had fallen and fallen hard. But then, how could she not? Back then she had lacked street smarts while he had graduated from the school of charm with first-class honours.
‘I’m not working with him!’ she said, flashing him a livid glare.
Liliana gave her a placating look. ‘I’ve given this a great deal of thought. Believe me, Isabelle. I know this is the right thing to do. I think it’s what your father would’ve wanted.’
‘My father?’ Isabelle choked. ‘How can you say that? He’s the one who gave Jonathan forty-nine per cent to throw away in a stupid poker game. Those shares should’ve been given to me in the first place.’
Liliana let out an impatient-sounding breath. ‘Look, I know this is difficult for you to understand but I think it’s the best way forward.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ Isabelle said. ‘Why give the shares to him?’ She jerked her head towards Spencer without looking at him. She couldn’t bear to look at him and see him sitting there gloating over his prize. The prize that belonged to her. ‘Why not to me? You know how much this hotel means to me. You know how hard I’ve worked to—’
‘Sort it out between yourselves,’ Liliana said. She turned to her family—her bewildered and shell-shocked family. ‘I can only imagine what you’re thinking. But I need to tell you my side of the story...the reasons I left the way I did.’
Gene got up and stalked out with an embittered curse, slamming the door so loudly the surface of the water in the glasses on the boardroom table rippled.
Liliana let out a sigh and faced the stunned and hurt and shocked faces of her adult children. ‘And there goes reason number one.’
Isabelle watched as each Chatsfield sibling dealt with his or her mother’s presence after such a long absence. Anger, disappointment, loss, despair and frustration swirled in a torrid whirlpool that was palpable in the air.
But before she could do or say anything Spencer was at her side with a firm hand placed on her elbow. ‘I think it’s best if Liliana and her family have some privacy right now,’ he said.
‘But—’
‘We have our own business to discuss.’ His look was indomitable, his touch on her elbow electrifying, reminding her of the sensual power he’d once had over her.
Still had over her.
She could feel the latent strength of the cup of his hand. Pull away. Pull away, her brain insisted. But her body was following another script entirely, one that was firmly anchored in the past. Her body recognised his touch. Responded to it. Reacted to it with a maelstrom of excitement. His touch stirred deep longings, needs she had stoically ignored or blanked out with work. The physical contact with him, as idle as it was, awakened them, activated them into a frenzy of anticipation.