Page 74 of Pride and Privilege

THIRTY-FOUR

Roscoe swore, stepping backfrom Poppy as she sprang away from the door, guilty, alarmed, face flushed. Her eyes were wide, her chest heaving. His own breathing was none too steady. He had a huge fucking erection and his fingers were slick and he desperately, desperately, desperately did not want to stop. But when had life ever cared about what he wanted?

His father knocked again. “Ross?”

“Yes. Just a minute.”

Poppy met his eyes, tugging her skirt down, smoothing her hair. He stepped over to his desk, cleaned his fingers on a tissue. They were sharing a look as though they both wanted to laugh. But neither could. His brain was still too far elsewhere to put this in context, his irritation at his father too great. His guilt over putting Poppy in this position. Again. First Aubrey at his house, now this…

“If you do like her, you ought to be protecting her.”

Shit.

“I’m sorry,” he mouthed as he stepped to the door. She shook her head.It’s fine.

His father walked in as soon as Roscoe opened the door.

“I was on a call—” Roscoe began.

But the other man had caught sight of Poppy. He flashed her his professional smile. “He’s keeping you late, is he, Pippa? While you’re here, though, could you nip down to reception? Courier’s just dropped off a parcel for me. Take it to my office, thank you.”

“Of course, sir.”

She left the room before Roscoe could even catch her eye.

“She’s called Poppy,” he told his father. It was an effort to unclench his jaw.

“Is she? Oh well.” He gestured back out the door, topic already forgotten. “Come with me to my office. We’re overdue a catchup.”

Roscoe followed him, trying to rein in his temper. It was hard enough recently to bite his tongue around his father, to play the dutiful, obedient son he’d spent the last two decades being. Sitting down with him when already angry, guilty, and frustrated would not be wise. Especially not when he wanted to broach the subject that had been growing steadily in his mind.

His father chose a comfortable seat in the corner of his office. The walls here were mostly glass, the view over central London broad and expensive.

“Tell me how it went with Hendrich Lissi,” his father asked as Roscoe sat down.

“Well. I think.” Roscoe attempted a casual pose as befitted a father-son catch-up—albeit one about work. He stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankle but ended up fiddling with the strap of his watch, remembering where his fingers had just been and the feel of Poppy tight around them. He clearedhis throat, his father awaiting a fuller reply. “He asked to see us again, so we can’t have made too bad an impression.”

His father nodded. “So I heard.”

“I have to give the credit to Aubrey, though. Aubrey Ford. He was only in Zurich for the equities conference, but he joined the Lissi meeting due to his expertise in the area. I think it was that knowledge that really impressed Hendrich.” That and Poppy’s extensive briefing notes. They’d given Roscoe the information he needed to perfectly angle his pitch.

His father frowned at Aubrey’s name. “Don’t be modest. It’s you that sells the company. You’re the face of it. The name behind it. Don’t forget that. It means something sending a Blackton to meet with him.”

Roscoe doubted that. From Poppy’s notes, he knew that Lissi was the self-made son of a working-class factory worker. Roscoe’s name, his heritage, was unlikely to impress the man. No. Roscoe had known, from the restaurant where he had first met Lissi, to the lavish, modern house he had taken them to for drinks afterwards, that money was the only thing that would impress the man. Money and the promise of more of it. He was the type Roscoe met often in the City. Hungry. Astute. A shark. He’d told them in some detail of his latest work, the use of Irish subsidiaries to reduce a client’s tax liability to almost zero. From Poppy’s notes again, he knew many of the people Lissi had recently helped in this way—such as the billionaire owner of the UK’s largest retail chain Actuaris. A man his father had been courting for a year.

Roscoe had stood on a glass-framed balcony, the lights of a swimming pool sparkling below, the lights of other mansions strung out down the side of the Swiss mountain, listening to it all, a glass in his hand, and he had felt very remote. A little bit sick. A sawing sense of vertigo at the back of his mind as though he was falling.

He did not want to be there.

Aubrey had saved the day, covering his distraction and his lapses into silence. He had hit it off with Lissi, the two men perhaps recognising in each other the same sort of iron stillness. That old-fashioned masculinity his father shared. The absolute conviction they were right.

“Aubrey has a depth of experience we’d be stupid to overlook,” he told his father now. “He should be on this project. In fact… I’d like to suggest he lead it. Put him on this full-time and let me focus on my actual job.”

“Nonsense. Aubrey’s a salary man. He’s been in that same PM role for years. Besides, this isyourproject, Roscoe. I intended it for you from the get-go.”

There was a knock at the door, which was just as well, because it gave Roscoe time to bite back his irritation.

“Come in,” called his father. And there was Poppy, a package in her hands.

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