Born in Fire (Born In Trilogy #1)

Born in Fire (Born In Trilogy #1) Page 77

He held up a hand as if to regain his balance. “I think I should leave you alone.”

“No need.” She fumbled for her purse. “He won’t listen to me. It was my mistake to believe he would. That he was the only one who really would.”

“Patricia.”

“Don’t Patricia me in that tone,” she snapped at Joseph. “All my life I’ve been told what to do and how to do it. What’s proper, what’s acceptable, and I’m sick to death of it. I tolerated the criticism over opening my school, and the damnable unspoken belief of my friends and family that I’d fail. Well, I won’t fail.” She whirled on Rogan again as if he’d spoken. “Do you hear, I won’t fail. I’ll do exactly what I wish, and I’ll do it well. What I won’t tolerate is criticism of my choice of lovers. Not from you, not from my mother, and most certainly not from the lover I’ve chosen.”

Chin up, she looked back at Joseph with tear-drenched eyes. “If you don’t want me, then be honest and say so. But don’t you dare tell me what’s best for me.”

Joseph stepped toward her, but she was already darting out the door. “Patty! Damn it.” Better to let her go, Joseph told himself. Better for her. “I’m sorry, Rogan,” he said stiffly. “I would have found a way to have avoided that scene if I’d known you were coming in.”

“Since you didn’t, perhaps you might explain it.” Equally stiff, Rogan rounded his desk and sat, assuming the position of authority. “In fact, I insist.”

Joseph didn’t bat an eye at Rogan’s seamless switch from friend to employer. “It’s obvious I’ve been seeing Patricia.”

“I believe the term she used was sneaking about.”

The color washed back into Joseph’s face. “We—I thought it best if we were discreet.”

“Did you?” A fire kindled in Rogan’s eyes. “And treating a woman like Patricia like one of your casual affairs was your idea of discretion?”

“I was prepared for your disapproval, Rogan.” Beneath his tailored jacket, Joseph’s shoulders were rigid as steel. “I expected it.”

“And well you should have,” Rogan said evenly.

“So I did, just as I expected the reaction I got from her mother when Patricia talked me into dining with them last evening.” His hands tightened into fists. “A gallery manager without a drop of blue in his blood. She might as well have said it, for it was in her eyes. Her daughter could do better. And by Christ she can. But I won’t stand here and have you say that what’s between us is a casual affair.” His voice had risen to a shout by the time he was finished.

“Then what is it?”

“I’m in love with her. I’ve been in love with her since the first time I saw her, nearly ten years ago. But then there was Robert…and there was you.”

“There was never me.” Baffled, Rogan rubbed his hands over his face. Was the world going mad? he wondered. His grandmother and Maggie’s uncle, himself and Maggie and now Joseph and Patricia. “When did this happen?”

“The week before you left for Paris.” Joseph remembered those giddy hours, those wonderful days and nights before reality had set in. “I didn’t plan it, but that hardly changes anything. I realize you may want to make other arrangements now.”

Rogan dropped his hands. “What other arrangements?”

“For managing the gallery.”

What he needed, Rogan thought, was to go home and find a bottle of aspirin. “Why?” he asked wearily.

“I’m your employee.”

“You are, and I hope you’ll remain so. Your private life has nothing to do with your work here. Good Christ, do I look like some kind of monster who would fire you for claiming to be in love with a friend of mine?” He indulged his now throbbing head a moment by pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. “I walk in here—into my own office, I’ll remind you—and find the two of you snapping like terriers. Before I can take the next breath, Patricia’s clawing at me for not believing her capable of running a school.” He shook his head and dropped his hands. “I never thought she was incapable of anything. She’s one of the most intelligent women I know.”

“You just got caught in the backlash,” Joseph murmured, and gave in to the desperate need for a cigarette.

“So it seems. You’ve a right to tell me it’s none of my business, but as someone who’s known you for ten years, and Patricia longer than that, I do take an interest. What the devil were you fighting about?”

Joseph huffed out smoke. “She wants to elope.”

“Elope?” If Joseph had told him Patricia wanted to dance naked in St. Stephen’s Square, he’d have been no more staggered. “Patricia?”

“She’s cooked up some mad scheme about us driving up to Scotland. It seems she had a row with her mother and came storming straight over here.”

“I’ve never known Patricia to storm anywhere. Her mother’s not in favor of the relationship, I take it.”

“Anything but.” He offered a weak smile. “The truth is, she thinks Patricia should hang out for you.”

Rogan was hardly surprised at this news. “She’s doomed to disappointment there,” he said. “I’ve other plans. If it helps matters, I’ll make them clear to her.”

“I don’t know as it could hurt.” Joseph hesitated, then sat as he was used to, on the corner of Rogan’s desk. “You don’t mind, then? It doesn’t bother you?”

“Why should it? And as far as Anne’s concerned, Dennis will bring her around.”

“That’s what Patricia said.” Joseph studied the cigarette smoldering between his fingers, then pulled out his little flip-top ashtray and crushed it out. “She seemed to think if we just ran off and got married, her mother would soon fall in with the idea as if it had been hers all along.”

“I’d lay odds on it. She wasn’t keen on Robbie at first either.”

“Wasn’t she?” Joseph had the look of a man who was beginning to see the light.

“Not at all sure he was good enough for her darling daughter.” Speculating, Rogan rocked back in his chair. “It didn’t take long for her to begin to dote on him. Of course, he didn’t wear an earring.”