Page 28 of A Winter Wish

Theo looked up, his gaze snagging on hers. For a second something flickered there, in those firelike eyes of his. Then he let go, looking around to locate the rest of the group. She brought her other hand up to rub the place his fingers had been, trying to soothe away that crackling under her skin—but the feeling lingered, even after he’d moved away.

Chapter Eleven

“Whatever would Mike say?” Lexie shook her head mockingly at Theo as they walked into the hotel lobby, her body welcoming the warmth after so long outside. “Leaving the rest of them like that?”

“Well, I think since Mike has deemed other things more important this evening, he doesn’t get a vote. Regardless, they don’t want us around. Trust me. Cynthia’s husband has finally cottoned on that she’s been trying to make him jealous and they are about to have lots of breakup or makeup sex, Mark and Jay are enjoying spending time just the two of them and do not want an audience, Christine—”

“OK, I get it. They want to fly solo.” He might not have the immediate warm personality that made you want to chat with him for hours on end, but Theo was pretty good at observing people, she’d give him that. For the business, at least. Lexie glanced around the hotel to check they were alone as they headed to the elevator, then dropped her voice for good measure. “What’s his deal, anyway?”

“Given I mentioned at least three ‘he’s’ just now, you might have to elaborate a bit there.”

“Mike. I can’t work him out. He seems nice—friendly—and he said he knew my dad…” What she really wanted to ask was how he’d been friends with her dad, what had brought them together—but she wasn’t sure how Theo would take those sorts of questions.

“Mike is…Your dad and him had a bit of a complicated relationship.”

“Right.”

“Mike cares about the company—and wants to make it work.” It was a diplomatic answer. A nonanswer, really.

Lexie tried to bring things back onto their newfound neutral territory as they stepped into the elevator together. “So do you think he’s listening to see if we’re still sniping? Reporting back to Ange?”

Theo laughed a little. “Do you know what? I wouldn’t put it past Ange to have arranged exactly that.”

“How did she meet my dad? Do you know?” She just couldn’t imagine it. Ange seemed to have genuinely cared about Richard—and Lexie already knew that Ange was a decent, kind person. So did that mean that Richard had shown himself to be decent and kind, too? She couldn’t imagine it, knowing what she did about him. Was Ange just in it for a job? But that didn’t make sense to her, either.

“She was there when I joined,” Theo said, with a quick glance down at her, like he couldn’t quite figure out her line of questioning. “I think she may have been a part of what encouraged Richard to take a chance on me, in all honesty.”

“How come?”

Theo shook his head, gave a self-deprecating smile. “Let’s just say I don’t think I made the best first impression.”

“Really? You shock me.” His eyebrows shot up, and she felt herself flushing. “So, ah, you don’t know? How Ange came to work at the company?”

Theo was quiet as the elevator opened on level two, and they both got out. “I think she’d been let go from her last job, actually. A whole host of redundancies or something.” He scowled, like he was annoyed on Ange’s behalf, even though it had happened years ago. “And she wanted flexible hours, because she helps with her grandkids, and she was struggling to find somewhere to take her on. Richard hired her because she made the best cup of tea he’d ever had. At least, that’s what they both said, if you ever asked either of them.” A corner of his mouth pulled into a smile, like he was remembering a specific time he’d done just that. “But really, I don’t know how Richard would have done any of it without her. I definitely couldn’t do any of it without her—not that she’ll ever take enough credit for that.”

Lexie went quiet as they approached her room—Theo must be farther down the corridor. She wondered at the side of Richard he was describing—the type of person to take a chance on someone, instead of abandoning them. She wondered, too, whether Ange would mind Theo relaying her story like this.

She wasn’t sure how, but Theo seemed to guess at her line of thinking. “She’d tell you herself, if you asked her.”

She couldn’t work out if that was a dig—at the fact that she hadn’t been around long enough to ask, to get to know any of them. It didn’t feel like a dig, but still. She stopped outside her room, and he stopped too.

“This is me,” she said, nodding toward the door.

“Right. Well, sleep well, I guess?”

He half hesitated, like he was waiting for her to say good night too. Instead she took a breath. “Theo?”

He cocked his head. “Lexie?”

“You were kidding, right? When you said we wouldn’t sell the company?”

His face shuttered. “How about we talk about this in a few months—it’s all academic at the moment, anyway, isn’t it?”

She huffed out a frustrated breath. “What’s the point? If you’re just going to refuse?” He said nothing, so she pressed on. “It’s half mine. You can’t—”

“It’s half mine too,” he pointed out, as if she didn’t already know that.

“You said after the tax year—”