She looked at the phone and realised that whatever message she sent now, fight or flee, would set the course of the rest of her life.
She closed her eyes, put herself back in the place she’d been a few days ago, then wrote a new message.
‘Scared witless, but we can do this.’ And hit send.
A fine sentiment, she thought as she climbed from the cab and stood, clutching her rucksack, outside the Belgravia town house that had been her husband’s family home for generations.
Now all she had to do was prove it.
CHAPTER TWO
BELLE walked through the open front door and, if her heart could have sunk any lower, the view through the dining room doors to the chaos of caterers and florists in full cry would have sent it to her boots. She’d arrived in the middle of preparations for one of Ivo’s power-broking dinners that her sister-in-law would be directing with the same concentration and attention to detail as a five-star general planning a campaign.
About to toss in the proverbial hand grenade, she kept her head down and headed straight for the library, where she knew she’d find her husband.
The fact that it was barely past nine o’clock on a Saturday morning made no difference to Ivo Grenville, only that he’d be working at home rather than at his office.
He didn’t look up as she opened the door, giving her a precious few seconds to look at him, imprint the memory.
One elbow was propped on the desk, his forehead resting on long fingers, his world reduced to the document in front of him.
He had this ability to focus totally on one thing to the exclusion of everything else, whether it was acquiring a new company, a conversation in the lift with his lowliest employee, making love to his wife. He did everything with the same attention to detail, intensity, perfectionism. If, just once, he’d cracked, had an off-day like the rest of the human race, seemed fallible…