CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM SLOW DANCE WITH THE ITALIAN BY SCARLET WILSON
CHAPTER ONE
WHAT THE HELL was Edward saying to Will? Because Will was exploding off his chair, gesticulating at the solicitor so hard Quinn could practically feel the waves of his fury pulsing through the soundproof glass. And then his head whipped round, his eyes seeking hers, locking on.
She felt her blood draining. Why was he looking...no, glaring at her like this? She was only in line for some small token of Anthony’s affection: a keepsake or maybe a donation for the homeless shelter where she volunteered. That was why she’d been asked to come, to be ‘on hand’ at the reading of Anthony’s will. That was why she was waiting out here while he was in there for the important business.
Outside the family. Outside the boardroom. Waiting for a small bequest. Made sense. Nothing else did. Could! Because Anthony had more than done his legal duty by her already. Giving her a home when Dad died. Caring for her, supporting and guiding her, even granting her the interiors contract for the Thacker Hub hotel in Kensington when she was just starting up her business, still wet behind the ears. She owed Anthony Thacker big time, and he owed her precisely nothing. But now Will was bruising her with his eyes, and he wouldn’t be doing that without a reason, would he? Not when, for years, he’d barely looked at her at all.
She cut free, forcing her gaze to the floor. What was going on? She didn’t know Will, had never quite got the chance to get to know him, but it didn’t take a microscope to see he was bleeding hard, wounded by whatever Anthony had put in that will.
But why would Anthony do that—hurt his son—when he’d loved him so fiercely, respected him for the great job he was doing as Thacker’s Head of Business Development? Anthony had admired Will’s drive, his sharp intellect. Not so much his gambling and his casual sexual encounters, admittedly. They’d used to fight about that apparently, but the fight was because of the love, because Anthony wanted better for Will.
That was how she’d read it anyway, from the distance of her own life, and it tallied with all the things Anthony had said during those long chemo afternoons: that he loved Will more than life itself, wished he’d handled things better, drawn him in closer, especially after his mother left, drawn him in and held him there instead of losing his grip, messing up...
Confessional talk. Out of character for Anthony. She’d said to him that it was Will he should be talking to, that it wasn’t too late, but he’d said it was, that Will would see it as a selfish act, just a father trying to salve his own conscience before the inevitable happened. She hadn’t known what to say then because what did she know about the way Will saw anything?
That was the thing about Will. Everything about him was a guess. Like guessing he’d gone from being shyly kind to her when she’d first moved in, to being distant, because she’d been grieving too hard for Dad at the time, feeling too displaced in the strange house to respond to him properly. And like guessing that the reason he didn’t hang around for long during his uni holidays was because he really did have better places to be than the Cotswolds house, better things to do than joining her and Anthony for pub lunches and mad rural hikes.
And of course, Christmas at home couldn’t possibly compete with skiing in Chamonix, staying at his friend Jordan’s family ski lodge, could it? Easter? Guess he did the right thing there, never coming home at all, staying ‘up’ so he could revise, because it paid off. He got a First, not that she went to the graduation. There were only tickets for family. Nothing she didn’t know, but when Will said it to her, it had felt like a stone sinking in her chest.
That was the stone she could feel again now, sinking lower. And it was so stupid, so wrong for them to be distant like this when they had Anthony in common, this terrible grief to share. And no, Anthony wasn’t her father, and no, he hadn’t been the easiest person, but was it any wonder after losing his eldest son to a speeding white van like that, then losing his wife eighteen months later to some hedge fund manager with a place in Jersey, all while steering Thacker Hotels to ever greater success? He wasn’t perfect. He’d made mistakes, especially with Will, but he’d been good to her, and she loved him, missed him, wanted to talk about him. But Liam the Scumbag had gone, found some other girl to love, so she couldn’t talk to him, and Sadie was a diamond, always a good listener, but she hadn’t known Anthony, whereas Will...
Her heart twisted. Talking to him made sense. And she’d thought he’d see that, want to talk to her too, but when she’d touched his arm at the funeral, trying to build a bridge, all she’d got back was the same curt nod he used to give her when he arrived at the hospice—dismissive. Hurtful! And then he’d stepped back, turned a cold shoulder.
And she didn’t deserve that, didn’t get it, because Will wasn’t heartless. If he was, he would never have hovered in her bedroom doorway all those years ago with his kind blue eyes and his hands pushing into the pockets of his jeans, saying he was sorry about her dad dying, that he knew how she was feeling, that if she wanted to talk—
‘Quinn?’
Edward... Standing in the open doorway, holding the door she hadn’t heard opening. Could he see her mouth going dry, her blood trying to march backwards? If so, it wasn’t showing on his face, and it certainly wasn’t changing anything because he was opening the door wider, stepping aside for her.
‘Could you come in now, please?’
Quinn was shaking her head, frowning. ‘I don’t know if I can—’
He cut in, relieved. ‘See, Edward. She can’t do it anyway—’
‘No, Will!’ Cutting right back in, pinning him hard with her clear gold-brown gaze. ‘She isn’t saying she can’t do it. She was going to say that doing it inside six months is going to be a stretch.’
He felt a flame thrower blasting his ears. Putting him in his place, and rightly so. He’d been rude, letting the old wounds bleed too freely. He inclined his head by way of apology, which she accepted with her eyes.
Her eyebrows drew in again. ‘The problem is I have other work scheduled, other commitments...’
‘Which I understand...’ He forced out a smile, opening his hands to seem reasonable and calm, which he wasn’t. But he’d thrown his toys out of the pram with Edward once already and that hadn’t got him anywhere, so calm and reasonable was the only option. In any case, whatever he thought about Quinn Radley, this one wasn’t on her; this was on Dad, one hundred fricking percent. He gave a little shrug. ‘I’m just saying that if you were to turn the project down on the basis of being too busy then—’
‘It won’t make a blind bit of difference.’ Edward’s voice was sharp as glass. ‘For the third time, William, the terms of the will are this: you inherit Anthony’s estate only when the Lisbon hotel has been up and running for three months; you must take personal charge of the project from here on in and Quinn is to be your interior designer. It is not negotiable since Quinn’s personal bequest is contingent on her doing the work...’ His gaze shifted to Quinn ‘Work which you were already discussing with Anthony, I believe?’
She gave a strange sideways nod. ‘We talked about it...’ And then she was closing her eyes, evidently reining in some emotion. ‘When Anthony first bought it, I mean, before he was diagnosed...’
