Alex stiffened, looking at her sharply. ‘What engagement?’
‘Jane’s,’ she supplied. ‘She and Robin are getting engaged tonight, that’s what this party is about.’
‘I see. Well, I’ll only keep Lauren an hour,’ he told Steve. ‘We—we have some things to discuss.’
‘Jane will be very disappointed if you aren’t here,’ Steve warned her.
‘I’ll be here,’ she called as Alex literally dragged her away.
‘So Mummy and Daddy approved of her,’ Alex drawled on the way to the hospital.
Having met Mr and Mrs Harley tonight Lauri didn’t envy Jane her future parents-in-law. They were both too much like Robin, with no sense of humour or fun, and Mr Harley was terribly henpecked by his wife. ‘There’s no need to sneer,’ she snapped, indignant for her aunt. ‘Jane thought it important.’
‘And I don’t. We’ll have to agree to differ.’
‘We usually do—differ, I mean,’ Lauri answered absently, most of her thoughts with the man lying sick in a hospital bed, the man she had recently discovered was her father.
‘Not all the time,’ Alex said huskily. ‘I can remember a few occasions when we both wanted the same thing.’
‘I’m trying to forget them,’ she said curtly, knowing she would never be able to erase the memory of being in his arms from her mind. ‘You said Laurence was worse,’ she changed the subject.
‘I said he wanted to see you,’ he corrected.
Lauri turned to give him an accusing look. ‘So he isn’t worse.’
‘He’s still a very ill man.’
‘But no worse.’
‘No worse,’ he confirmed coolly. ‘In fact, a little better.’
‘Then why—’
‘But not well enough,’ he cut in on her heated query, ‘to be able to come after you, which is what he has been wanting to do all week.’
‘He has?’ she asked uncertainly.
‘You’re his daughter, he loves you.’
‘He doesn’t even know me,’ she scorned.
‘Maybe not, but I do, and I’ve told him all about you.’
‘All?’ she blushed.
Alex grinned. ‘Well, perhaps not all. Some things are too private to tell a third person, especially if he happens to be your father.’
Laurence Daniels looked so pleased to see her she felt guilty about her desertion of him earlier in the week.
‘You came,’ he said dazedly. ‘Alex said he would get you here, but I didn’t believe him. Knowing Alex as I do I should have realised he would succeed.’
Lauri was amazed at how much better he looked, a more healthy pink to his cheeks, a little more flesh on his bones, although his eyes remained sunken and ill-looking. But her animosity towards him wasn’t completely forgotten, and her reply to him was sharp. ‘Alex was as unscrupulous in getting me here as he is in all of his other dealings,’ she glared at the subject of their conversation, meeting only amusement in those steady blue eyes. ‘And if I’m not back for the announcement of my aunt’s engagement I’ll personally throttle him!’
Laurence frowned. ‘Your aunt?’
She gave him a concerned glance. ‘Yes. Jane is getting engaged tonight, and—’
‘Jane!’ he repeated in a strangulated voice. ‘You have an aunt called Jane?’