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Things were not off to a good start. This was already way out of her experience. Mick’s mother looked about as pleased to see him as she would have been to find a travelling salesman on her doorstep. Sophy had had a warmer homecoming the day she’d gone for her driver’s license at age sixteen and crashed her mother’s car into a recycling bin.
The reactions of the rest of the Hollister family toward her personally were not as icy as she’d anticipated. It was clear that both Michael Hollister Senior, QC, and his elder son Marcus viewed her with slightly amused tolerance. Mick’s Bohemian bit of fluff, she rather surmised. His sister Hayley and her husband Daniel, a surgeon twice his wife’s age and half her height, completely ignored them both after the initial greeting. Marcus’s intended bride was noticeably absent. Sophy liked to think that she was in a bar somewhere, clutching a glow-stick in one hand and a dancer’s g-string in the other, but having met the groom, suspected that the missing Emily was more likely to be at the reception hall harassing the caterers with last-minute changes. Annabel Hollister handed her a glass of wine and then asked in less-than-hushed accents if she was old enough to drink alcohol. Sophy thought of several witty and acerbic replies and was entirely unable to voice any of them. They clearly expected very little in the way of social graces from her, which was fortunate, since she was going to be doing well to say “thank you” if someone passed her the peas.
Overall, however, there was no overt nastiness thrown her way.
From the moment they entered the spacious drawing room, where the family sat around a spectacular bowl of pink roses, every vitriolic barb was aimed straight at Mick.
“Well, Michael,” said his father, eventually rising to his feet after observing him impassively from his wing chair for what seemed a deliberately offensive length of time. He had acknowledged Sophy in a token polite greeting, clearly underwhelmed by his son’s choice of companion but ever mindful of his political aspirations and the importance of a façade of universal benevolence. She might be an artist, with all that the emphasis implied, but she was still eligible to vote. “I see you’ve deigned to grace us with your presence after all.”
“Sir,” Mick replied stiffly, and made no other comment.
Sophy’s eyes flicked back and forth between the two. She could read nothing at all into Mick’s expression; he was beating his own record of impassivity by a wide margin. In his father’s eyes, though, was clear, strong dislike.
Mick didn’t merely have a troubled relationship with his family. They actively disliked their own son and brother. She couldn’t wrap her head around that. The worst she usually saw of family dysfunction was on the screen, where fractured and hostile relationships were played for laughs. There was nothing in the least entertaining about observing it in person.
“I understand you’re still with Ryland Curry,” Michael went on, as openly derisive as if Mick’s company was a backwater strip club instead of a global corporation. “Making good use of an expensive St. Dominic’s education in a position better suited to a dropout from the Police Academy.”
Sophy blinked. Yikes. Evidently the claws were out and they were still in the cocktail portion of the evening. She stood tensely at Mick’s side, her nails digging into the stem of her wine glass. She despised situations like this in general and she was discovering it was exponentially worse when someone that you loved was involved. Loved. Liked. Cared for. She wasn’t quite ready to mentally tackle that point yet and she thought it was best to keep her focus on the immediate scene.
Here there be dragons.
“It’s like you said at the time, Dad,” said Marcus softly. He hadn’t bothered to get up at all, but continued to lounge in an armchair, one foot dangling negligently in an Italian leather loafer. In looks, he was a tanned, slightly less faded duplicate of his father. They both had profiles that wouldn’t be out of place on an ancient coin. The entire family, with the exception of Mick, was actually quite similar in appearance: a coterie of sleek, aristocratic greyhounds against Mick’s grizzly bear brute strength. Physically, he dominated the room. The Hollisters were all tall – she felt like a lone Lilliput in a land of Gullivers; even the shorter doctor had a good six inches on her – but Mick was at least a head taller and considerably wider. She suspected that any sort of personal disadvantage would not sit well with men like Michael and Marcus Hollister. The elder brother proved it by going on in silky accents, “A wise man plays to his strengths. Mick has two working fists.”
And no functioning brain cells, was the clear implication.
Sophy stiffened. For a moment, her anger was far, far stronger than her shyness. She opened her mouth to retort and Mick’s fist closed gently around her forearm. She looked up at him and he shook his head once, just slightly. Her fierce breath subsided in a rush. The whole point of her being here was to try to make the weekend as easy on him as possible, to return the favour for his many acts of caring and kindness to her. She would take her cue from him and, in this instance, keep her mouth shut.
But… Mick was a top security consultant. He had a commerce degree and a portfolio of apparently successful investments. He had served his country in the military, for God’s sake. He seemed like the dream son to her. What more did his family want? A knighthood? A royal marriage?
She was completely at sea in the undercurrents here.
The atmosphere was no more cordial at dinner. When they had taken their seats around a beautiful antique dining table, set with white linens and candles, a server appeared from the kitchen. An actual servant. Like they were in a period film. The whole evening was starting to feel a bit surreal. A basket of warm artisan bread was passed around and Mick’s mother, playing the helpful hostess, placed a lightly steaming roll on his plate, scattering crumbs across the surface and effectively rendering it useless for him with his condition.
He clearly wasn’t likely to confide in his family, so Sophy could give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they didn’t know about the Coeliac Disease, but she suspected it was more likely they’d either forgotten or didn’t care enough to educate themselves. Without a word, she picked up her own clean plate and switched it with his. A faint warmth touched his eyes.
“Are you still based in London?” Michael Hollister asked abruptly.
This was supposed to be Marcus’s celebration dinner, but he didn’t seem at all perturbed that it was turning into an interrogation of his younger brother. His lips were turned up into a repellently smug sneer, like a reptile basking in the sun.
“I still have the flat in London,” Mick said evenly, accepting a platter of roast lamb from the server with a polite acknowledgment and offering it first to Sophy, then Hayley and his mother. “But there’s a lot of travel involved as our team accompanies William Ryland on his business ventures. We’re on assignment in Queenstown at the moment.”
“Dare we hope that you’re picking up some business acumen by second-hand exposure?” asked Marcus silkily. “Or is it all guns and glaring?”
Sophy could cheerfully have leaned over and stabbed him with her fork. And there were at least six to choose from.
Amazingly, a smile twitched at Mick’s mouth and his dimples appeared in a brief flash.
“Oh, there’s a little more to it than that,” he said, and he glanced sideways at Sophy. “You never know what kind of situations are going to fall at your feet.”
She quirked an impudent brow at him and for a moment it was as if they were alone at the table.
Mick’s father gave a dismissive sort of snort and sliced vigorously into his lamb.
“Damned nonsense,” he muttered, and a slight tightening of Mick’s lips was his only reaction.
The single most uncomfortable meal of Sophy’s life continued in a similar vein. The Dark Side of the Hollister family took it in turns to make comments and ask questions that ran the gamut from uninterested to openly aggressive. Mick replied like an emotionless automaton, which she knew he was not, and only rose to something approaching anger on two occasions. The first was in her own defence, when his mother made a slighting remark about the moral behaviour of artists – “Not, of course, meaning you, Sophia.” He had responded sharply and his mother had subsided immediately with an almost nervous glance at him.
Sophy, too, managed to keep her cool and remain silent, unhappily aware of the inadequacy of her passive support. She couldn’t help feeling that had their situations been reversed, Mick would have silenced all of her opposition with a few short, pointed sentences.
