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Her gratitude was premature.
‘Really? I thought you were a woman who liked to always be on top of everything,’ he said in that same low drawl. ‘A lady who prefers to be in a controlling position in all her dealings—holding the whip hand over the rest of us, so to speak…’
Rachel glared levelly at him, her firm jaw clamped shut to contain her outrage. He was blatantly admitting it! He was virtually boasting about what he had done, in front of his own mother!
Thankfully Mrs Riordan was looking curious but unenlightened by his innuendo-laden comments.
‘Goodness, it sounds positively frightening,’ she said innocently. ‘What is it you do, exactly, Miss Blair?’
Rachel told her about Weston Security. Trying to keep her attention on the conversation was extremely difficult with Matthew subtly crowding her on the physical as well as psychological front. Her skin goose-pimpled where the polished fabric of his jacket sleeve brushed her bare arm too often for it to be accidental, and if she turned her head even slightly in his direction her senses swam with a heady masculine scent which struck a disturbing chord in her memory.
‘How fascinating! It must be a very exciting field.’ Mrs Riordan’s enthusiasm had the ring of genuine interest. ‘I suppose you need a lot of experience?’
‘Oh, Rachel is a highly experienced woman,’ supplied Matthew laconically. ‘She omitted to tell you that she also works as a masseuse, and I can personally testify that she’s extremely exciting in the field!’
This piece of loaded sexual innuendo did not slip by unnoticed. ‘Matt!’ His mother’s pained surprise was a parental rap across the knuckles.
‘It’s all right, Mrs Riordan.’ Rachel seized the chance to get some of her own back. ‘I’d already come to the conclusion before today that your son wasn’t spanked enough as a child.’
His eyebrows rose above the wafer-thin tortoiseshell frames. ‘Are you offering to put me over your knee, Mistress Blair?’
‘Matt!’
This time they both ignored his mother’s faint protest.
‘It would be a wasted effort—you’re obviously beyond any hope of redemption,’ snapped Rachel.
‘Is there ever any redemption to be gained through violence? And isn’t spanking considered a form of child abuse these days? Some mother you’d make…’
Her eyes became molten pools of gold as his casual thrust penetrated deep into her guarded heart. Her hands and feet felt icy while her head swam.
I’d make a wonderful mother, she wanted to scream back at him. I did make a wonderful mother…I did everything that a mother is supposed to do for her baby—suffered the pain, made the sacrifices, and created something supremely good out of a nightmare of hatred and fear…
Shaken by the wounding ease with which he had pierced her defences, Rachel smothered the painful gush of bitter memories and lifted her chin, offering him a sullen, stoic stare so different from her usual antagonistic challenge that his expression sharpened with predatory interest.
‘Mum, why don’t you take those letters along to show Dad?’ he said suddenly, not taking his eyes off Rachel’s pale mask of self-control. ‘The cardiac surgeon is still with him, so you can ask him all the questions we were talking about last night…’
Was this where he had been off to the previous evening? Rachel lacerated herself for overlooking the obvious. Some detective she was!
‘Are you ordering me to run along?’ Mrs Riordan’s wry question showed that she was no fool.
Matthew turned a sweet smile on his mother that made Rachel catch her breath. This was Mrs Riordan’s ‘sensitive little boy’ in the full glory of his maturity. ‘Would you mind? I’ve already had a good chat to Dad. Rachel is too shy to admit it, but she’s actually here to see me…’
‘Oh?’ Dorothy Riordan raised pale, pencilled eyebrows.
‘Yes, she and I have some…’ He paused delicately, sliding his hand down Rachel’s forearm and entwining his warm fingers firmly with hers, stiffening his arm in order to hold them shoulder to shoulder as he looked into her flaring eyes. ‘Unfinished business…’
‘Oh, I see…’
‘What did you have to say it like that for?’ Rachel rounded on him as soon as his mother was out of earshot. ‘You know what she thinks now, don’t you?’
‘That we have some business to conduct?’
‘The only business implied by that suggestive little act of yours is monkey business!’ she snapped.
‘Better she thinks that than realises the truth,’ he returned with a bite. Jerking her by the hand, he began marching her back down the corridor.
‘What truth?’ Rachel scorned to fight his hold, defiantly matching him stride for stride.
