Fortune in the Stars Read Free Page B

your maternal grandparents bring you both up?' she
asked.
    'Just the grandfather—he was a widower,' he
replied, the grimly closed look returning to his face.
    Penny watched in awkward silence as he studiously returned
his attention to shelling prawns, an action telling her more plainly
than any words that the subject, which he himself had re-opened, was
once more closed.
    'What do you do for a living?' she eventually asked,
responding more to a need to fill the uncomfortably lengthening silence
between them than to any particular interest, yet realising the instant
the words were out that it was hardly the most apt of questions to be
putting to a man probably worth millions.
    His eyes flickered towards hers, a hint of something like
amusement in them.
    'Nothing—I'm a playboy. Didn't you know?' he
drawled. 'And since my grandfather died six months ago and his entire
business empire passed to me, I have an ever bigger and better toy to
play with.' He leaned over and refilled both their glasses, a cold
smile on his lips. 'I seem to have shocked you, Penny—though
I can't for the life of me think why.'
    Penny picked up her glass and almost drained it in an
attempt to recover her wits.
    'Why on earth should I be shocked?' she asked, shocked to
the core not only by the casual malevolence with which he could dismiss
a grandfather so recently dead, but also by the realisation that six
months ago she had been seeing Lexy more frequently than usual and
could, in retrospect, remember no hint of anything resembling grief in
her friend at that time.
    'Why indeed—yet you obviously are. Haven't you
come across a self-confessed playboy before?'
    Penny looked at him, plainly having difficulty in
believing her ears. 'You know perfectly well it's nothing to do with
that! It's your attitude towards your grandfather!' she exclaimed,
belying completely her claimed lack of shock.
    'What about my attitude towards my grandfather?' he
enquired, managing to sound genuinely intrigued.
    'Well, he… I mean, most people would at least
be upset at losing a grandfather—especially one who had also
been surrogate mother and father to them.'
    'Surrogate mother and father,' he repeated, chuckling
reflectively. 'Yes, I dare say you're right—most people
would. More wine?'
    Penny's nod was absent-minded. Though she still felt
residual shock at his callous attitude, she was at the same time
realising how completely and irrationally subjective her own reaction
was. She took several more gulps of the wine—it really was
very good—while trying to sort out her thoughts.
    'I admit I was a little shocked… And I had
absolutely no right to be,' she apologised a little disjointedly.
'After all, I know nothing whatever about your relationship with your
grandfather… He could have been a complete ogre, for all I
know.'
    'You're beginning to sound as though you knew him
intimately,' he murmured wryly. 'But your spontaneous reaction
intrigues me; do you hold that blood ties automatically engender
respect—love, even?'
    'No, I…' Penny found herself once again
resorting to draining her wine glass in order to give herself time to
think. 'To be honest,' she eventually stated, 'I've had rather a long
day.' A perfectly honest statement, she told herself. 'And I'm so tired
I can hardly think straight.' She detected no honesty at all in that
last statement because tiredness had little or nothing to do with her
inability to think coherently.
    'How inconsiderate of me,' Dominic replied, rising
instantly. 'I'll show you the way back to your room— unless
you'd prefer a little more to eat first.'
    Penny shook her head, rising also. 'No, that was
delicious, thanks.'
    She found herself wishing she hadn't shaken her head, then
realising exactly how little she had had to eat all day as three,
possibly even four glasses of wine started wreaking their merry havoc
throughout her senses.
    'Perhaps we could finish this interesting conversation
tomorrow,' he startled her by