The Baby Verdict by Cathy Williams Read Free Book Online

that the evening would be this late, and...’ Inspiration! ‘I completely forgot that my mum was supposed to call tonight...’
    â€˜Ah. Important call, was it?’
    â€˜My sister-in-law was due to have her baby today...’ Or around now, anyway. ‘Mum lives in Australia with my brother and his wife,’ she explained. True enough. Three weeks after her father had died, her mum, faced with sudden freedom, had taken flight to the most distant shores possible and was having a wonderful time out there. ‘She’ll be terribly disappointed that I wasn’t at home. Anyway, the sooner I get back the better, so if you don’t mind I’ll just jump in a taxi and tell him to go as quickly as he can...’ She knew that she was beginning to ramble, so she stopped talking and smiled brightly at him. What a pathetic excuse.
    â€˜Of course. At times like these, every second counts.’ He ushered her out of the restaurant, and as luck would have it hailed a cab within seconds.
    â€˜There now,’ he said, opening the door for her and peering in as she settled in the back. ‘Feel better?’
    She felt a complete fool, but she smiled and nodded and tried to inject an expression of relief on her face.
    â€˜Tomorrow,’ he told her. ‘My office. Eight-thirty.’ He stood back slightly with his hand on the door. ‘Make sure you bring your brain with you. You’ve got important work ahead of you. Can’t have your head addled with thoughts of babies.’ With which he slammed the door behind him, and Jessica ground her teeth together in sheer frustration and watched as he strode off along the pavement in the direction of his building.

CHAPTER THREE
    â€˜I SHALL have to look at a drawing of the part in question. Is there any chance at all that it could have been made slightly askew? Grooves in the wrong place? Too many grooves? Too few? Anything at all that might have caused that car to malfunction?’
    â€˜Don’t be ridiculous.’
    Jessica sighed and looked across the table to where Bruno was sitting, his chair pushed back, his legs loosely crossed, with a stack of papers on his lap.
    The boardroom was enormous, but he had insisted from the start that it was the only place that could guarantee his uninterrupted time. She still felt dwarfed by its vastness, however, and their voices had that hollow quality peculiar to when people spoke in cavernous surroundings.
    â€˜You’ll be asked that in the witness box,’ she said calmly, ‘and I don’t think that the answer you just gave me is going to do.’ They had been working closely together for three weeks and this was not the first time that she had had to remind him that his answers would have to be laboriously intricate, leaving nothing to the imagination. He had a tendency to bypass all those tedious details, which he assumed everyone should know without having to be told.
    â€˜Why not?’
    Jessica sighed again, this time a little louder. It was late, her eyes were stinging and she was in no mood to launch into a debate on the whys and wherefores of what could and couldn’t be said on the stand. He tapped his fountain pen idly on the stack of papers and continued to look at her through narrowed eyes.
    She was certain that he knew precisely how to make her feel uncomfortable. He knew that she was fine just so long as they stuck to their brief, but an errant gesture or a look that hovered just a fraction too long was enough to make her feel hot and bothered. She never showed it, but he could sense her change in mood and was not averse to preying on it for a bit of fun.
    â€˜You’re being difficult,’ she said at last. ‘It’s late. Perhaps we should wrap it up for the day.’ She stood up and he followed her with his eyes, leaning back and clasping his hands together at the back of his head.
    She had thought, initially, that she would become immune to