by Laura Carter
* * *
It was unintentional, but Gregory made sure his public image was angelic tonight. Nothing has leaked about bribes. Yet. But anything is possible whilst Katrina Martin is still lurking and tonight has done no harm to his reputation. That’s something his head of PR, Sydney, and I agree on as we subtly discuss the situation over an after dinner coffee.
As I’m talking to Sydney, Francis, the jerk in finance or, more specifically, private equity, who Gregory obviously can’t stand but doesn’t upset due to his willingness to invest in a broad portfolio of business, brings his stunning and much younger wife, Adriana, to say hello. From the corner of my eye, I watch Adriana throw her head back, flicking her long black hair back and forth across her shoulder as she laughs at absolutely nothing.
“Oh Francesco,” she fake laughs. “You’re so baaaaad.”
Francesco. I’ve never heard of Francis coming from Francesco. I continue my conversation with Sydney until Lara asks me to go to the ladies’ room like we’re students in a club, smashed on Jaeger Bombs. Excusing myself, I follow Lara to the ladies’.
“Scarlett, I’m sorry if I was a little intense earlier about the wedding. I’m just excited. He’s my only child and—”
She stops when she notes the unintentional but—in hindsight—extremely obvious pull back of my head.
“He told you about her.” Her eyes immediately fill and my frosty reaction wanes.
“Elsa. Yes, he did. He told me everything, Lara.” And I’m not sure how you could put your children through that.
“Scarlett, I—”
I hold a hand up as gently as I can. “Lara, it’s not my place. Will I ever understand how you stayed? Probably not. But I’ve never been in that situation, I don’t know what it was like and...” I take a deep breath. “He’s doing well. That’s what I care about.”
She opens her mouth and I will her not to speak. One day, we might have that conversation, but not here, not now. She dips her head slightly in understanding.
Going to the bathroom in a floor grazing gown is not the easiest thing I’ve done in my life. After navigating the going and flushing part, I work at putting my dress back in the right places, twisting, shuffling.
“She’s so ordinary. I mean, a lawyer, really?”
“He’s just having a final fling before he finds the right woman. And he will, ladies.”
“I bet she’s rubbish in bed.”
“I bet she sleeps in pyjamas.”
“Well, I hate to state the obvious, ladies, but she’s beautiful and there must be something about her, to have landed the bachelor of the century. She’s finally taken Gregory Ryans off the market. That’s something women in this room have tried and failed to do.”
“Oh, please, no man is ever completely off the market.”
My hand is frozen on the door. Part of me wants to go and put them in their place, part of me thinks they’re right. Gregory could have any woman he likes, and maybe he will get bored of me.
“Let me tell you something about my son.” Lara’s voice cuts through the catty voices. “He is a good man. A man of integrity. And that woman you’re talking about is the best thing that’s ever happened to him. She’s worth a thousand of you all. So why don’t you take your bitchy tantrums back to your husbands and leave my son to be happy with a genuine and honest, good-hearted woman.”
I hold my fingertips to my mouth in a bid to suppress the giggle that forms as I imagine their faces, not moving at all, fixed in a single, Botox-induced position.
“Thank you,” I say to Lara in the mirror as we wash our hands in adjacent sinks.
“I meant it,” she says with a soft, sad smile, a hangover from our previous conversation.
Lara leaves and I hang back to reapply my Poppy Red. As far as mothers-in-law go, maybe she won’t turn out too bad.
A man in a suit catches the corner of my eye as I step out into the corridor. “Fancy seeing you here.”
Nick Henshaw, the director who tried to take Gregory’s company from him after the shooting. The director Gregory forced to resign from Constant Sources. He moves close to me, too close.
I offer him a fleeting glance of disgust before turning my back on him but he slaps the wall above my head, preventing me from walking further. As I turn, he leans towards me, forcing me back against the wall.
“I have nothing to say to you,” I spit.
“That’s good. Then you can stand there whilst I tell you a few things.”
His breath smells of alcohol. Hard liquor. His six foot, broad body towers above me. His blue-grey, stone-cold eyes stare into mine. His harsh features are taut.
“I bet you’re surprised to see me here. Of course, you remember our last meeting. You and your boyfriend tried to take everything I’d ever built. Forced me to resign from my company. And do you know what that bastard told me when I asked for a fair and reasonable sum to compensate me for my resignation? My resignation, I’ll add, which came about because he fucked up and fucking killed his own fucking daddy.” His words are wet on my face, making me squint and turn my head to one side. “Do you know? He told me to go fuck myself.” A hollow laugh bellowing from him. He leans further towards me, closer to my face. “You two took everything from me. I. Want. It. Back. And guess what, I’m going to take it back, anyway I can get it. You see, I’m starting again, ’cause that’s the thing you forgot in your clever little plan. I could just start again. Get a new company. Get funding from Francis Benedetti, a man who can see talent and a good thing. And now, my company will bring your man creeping to my door.”
Francis Benedetti? I thought he was a serious investor, not the kind to scrape the barrel for fuck ups to invest in.
“I wish you and Francis every success, Nick, but the reality is, you already ran one company to its knees and it was Gregory who had to come and bail you out then. Let’s just say I won’t be holding my breath.”
I try to move away from him but he slams his free arm to the other side of my head, pinning me to the wall.
“Not so tough when you’re on your own, sweetheart, are you?”
“This is what you do now? Try to intimidate women? Perhaps your time would be better spent improving your business acumen.”
My heart is pounding in my chest. I hold his gaze even though there’s no denying I’m afraid.
“You think you’re so fucking perfect, don’t you?” He removes one hand from the wall and swirls a finger in my face, a sadistic grin drawn on his plump lips. “I know your dirty secrets. Oh, yes, Katrina Martin has told me about your corruption. How you’re covering up for your fiancé, how he bought his way out of prison. Bought his way out of prison so he could steal my company out from under me. Yes, I know all about it.”
Katrina told Nick Henshaw? What does she have to do with Nick Henshaw? My head is spinning. In part from the new information but mostly because I need to get out of this situation.
“Let me go,” I snarl, taking advantage of his dropped hand to step away from him.
I get two steps before he pulls my waist and rams me back against the wall, my head crashing against the plaster, fuzzing my vision for a second.
“Don’t rush, I haven’t said congratulations yet. I’m pleased you two are getting married. Really, I am. You know how I like fucking other people’s wives.”
His face is ripped away from mine and slammed back against the opposite side of the corridor as a large vase shatters across the tiled floor. Gregory pins Nick Henshaw by the throat, the sinews of his neck rigid and bulging, his body tall and strong. He’s raging and this time, there’s no one to stop him. He slams his fist into Nick’s face, drawing blood from his nose and eye, then lets his limp body fall to the floor as staff, then guests, teem into the corridor.
I can do nothing but stare in shock.
�
��Let’s go,” Gregory says, tugging my shoulder and moving us quickly down a staircase. He takes his Blackberry from his inside pocket and dials. “Now. At the back entrance.”
I follow in a daze as he leads us along corridors and eventually out of a back door where Jackson is waiting with the Bentley.
Jackson opens the back door and Gregory holds me by the shoulders, gently shaking me until I look at him. “Are you okay?”
I nod, first slowly, then quicker, until my brain starts to function in real time. “Yes. Yes. I’m fine. Your hand.”
“It’s fine,” he snaps, taking it to the rim of the door and encouraging me to climb into the backseat.
I wait for him to open the door and slide in beside me but he doesn’t, he gets into the front passenger seat and before I’m over that subtle gesture, he rolls up the partition between the front and back of the car, blocking me out of his conversation with Jackson.
He just knocked a man’s nose across the other side of his face. He got us out of there before the press could show interest. Despite his red and swelling hand, he asked me if I’m okay. This is what I keep telling myself in an attempt to rationalise my building anger at being isolated in the back of the car like a child as he has a private conversation with Jackson.
It’s not the solitary confinement that irritates me most though, it’s the fact he didn’t overhear the majority of Nick’s venom before landing his fist in Nick’s face. Sitting here now, I realise that’s because he didn’t need to. He already knew.
Jackson parks the Bentley and I’m out of the car first, slamming the door, heading straight for the basement’s lift vestibule.
“Scarlett.” My name is bundled amongst frustration, tiredness and yes, ironically, anger.
He is angry with me? You’ve got to be kidding.
I turn quickly, my breaths jagged with rage. My reaction stills him and we stand facing one another, staring, both of us indignant.
“You knew,” I fire. “You knew he was there tonight and you knew he was in bed with Francis.”
“Yes.”
Jackson moves slowly in the background, feigning interest in nothing on the side of the car.
“Why have you sat chatting with Francis as if it means nothing?”
“Because it doesn’t. It’s business. He’s made an investment. And just in case, I like to keep potential enemies where I can see them.”
As I process that new information, I shake my head, my anger easing marginally now that he’s talking. I move into the vestibule, punching the button harder than necessary to call the lift.
My arms are folded across my chest and I glare at Gregory as he and Jackson join me in the lift, Jackson hitting 64.
“And Trina? Did you know she’s spoken to Nick? She’s obviously digging for dirt. She told him her bribe theory. Except, of course, we know that isn’t just a theory, Gregory, don’t we?”
As soon as I’ve said that last part, a pang of guilt strikes my gut. Hacking at old wounds is low and I know it but right now, the guilt is losing out to temper and the question I can’t find an answer to. Why would Katrina Martin go to Nick Henshaw?
“Yes. I knew.”
“How? Since when? More importantly, why don’t I know?”
The lift doors open and despite his tense body, Gregory remains still, waiting for me to exit first. I want answers and I won’t break the silence until they come.
I expect Jackson to leave and head to his room when we’re in the lounge. Instead, he takes three crystal glasses and a decanter of Scotch and brings them to the breakfast bar where Gregory is standing with his hands locked onto the edge of the granite worktop. One hand shows white, strained knuckles, the other is red and angry.
Despite my need to see out this argument, I don’t want him to suffer for protecting me, so as Jackson pours three glasses of Scotch, I fill a towel with ice from the dispenser on the front of the refrigerator. I knot the top of the towel then lay Gregory’s hand flat on the worktop and hold the ice against it. I can feel him watching me but I don’t look, knowing my need to take care of him is winning out over my rage.
“Sit,” I say, hooking a stool with my free hand and moving it behind him.
He does and takes the glass Jackson offers to him, draining half the Scotch in one.
“After Dubai, I had Trina followed.” I look at him now, grateful that he’s letting me in. “You were right. She won’t give up until she finds something.” His words are tired, exhausted even. “She was photographed with Nick weeks ago. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to put two and two together and come up with a thousand explanations. There’s been no contact since.”
I would have done that, he’s right. As he generally does these days, he knows me better than I know myself.
“You still should’ve told me. If you’ve had her followed since Dubai you’ve known she’s threat all this time and I’m not crazy.”
He says nothing, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. That’s my cue to leave. He has some thinking to do and, as he knows they will, the cogs in my head need space to turn. I need to process everything from today and I can’t do that around him. I balance the ice on his hand, drain my Scotch, and make my way to the stairs.
“I’m sleeping in the spare room.”
His silence makes my weary limbs heavier as I trudge the staircase in my gown and heels.
Chapter Twenty
My father used to say you should never go to bed on an argument. I guess that’s true because I’ve woken even more pissed at Gregory than I was when I fell asleep. Yet, I’m now staring at the muscles of his naked back as he climbs out of bed.
Damn it. I know my body and I know I’ll have caved. Whenever he carried me in here from the spare room, I’ll have given myself over to him, probably cuddled into his chest and wrapped my legs up in his. Hell, as I watch him move into an arms-raised stretch, I want him, too.
“Good morning, beautiful.”
I scowl my silent response, unsure whether I’m more annoyed with him or myself. On a head shake, he leaves the bedroom and when I hear him bound down the stairs to go out for his five thirty run, I know the coast is clear for me to go to the gym.
“Still pissed?” Jackson asks me with a smirk as I pummel the punch bag.
I land a right hook. “What do you think?”
“I’d say you’re getting a lot of power in those arms these days. Let’s get your elbows involved.”
Mopping my brow with my forearm, I turn my back on the bag, then holding my gloves together in front of me, I thrust an elbow back and up into the throat of the bag like he taught me.
Katrina Martin and Nick Henshaw. Why? Did she question his motive for resigning from Constant Sources? And Francis. Why would someone in private equity invest in a man who ran one company into the ground and was pushed out of another?
I’m on blow number three with my elbow when the gym door opens and Gregory removes his plugs from his ears, looking damn fine with wet hair, masculinity radiating from him. I pause and watch as he peels off his hoody and reveals his toned, bare chest.
God, help me. I can feel Jackson’s silent amusement by my side.
As Gregory moves towards the bag, I take off my gloves. This is the routine. Now Jackson trains Gregory whilst I stretch out and leave to get ready for work. But today, petty though it may be, I throw my gloves so they land on the weight bench at one side of the room, then I barge past Gregory.
“Don’t you have anything to say to me? Shout, rant, anything?”
I pause before turning to face him, trying desperately to look only at his face.
“Yes. Actually, I do. I reviewed the draft joint venture agreement with Shangzen Tek yesterday. You need to agree a share option. GJR is bringing more knowledge to the joint venture than Shangzen and bo
th companies are getting equal equity and voting rights. If the JV company makes a profit, I would suggest you have an option to increase GJR’s stake, exercisable on the annual accounts of the first and second years in operation.”
“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”
“Yep.”
“You don’t have anything to say about this?” He holds my engagement ring in the air between his forefinger and thumb.
“I took it off to go on the bag, Gregory. If I’d taken it off because I’m pissed at you, I probably would’ve thrown it at your head.”
I snatch the ring from his fingers and make to leave.
“I’ll need you to draft that option into the agreement,” he calls as I open the gym door.
I reply over my shoulder. “It’s already done. Now you need to agree it.”
“Well, I’ll do that.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
“Fine!”
* * *
I’m eating Amy’s expertly round poached eggs on an English muffin, talking to her and drinking coffee. It’s impossible to be angry in the company of one of the happiest people in the world and my mood has improved tenfold. As she tells me about her son’s rugby game last night, she looks over my shoulder to the staircase.
“Poached eggs, flower?” she asks Gregory when he takes a seat on the stool next to mine.
“Please.”
Amy cracks two eggs into her already hot pan of water, then places a black coffee and a glass of fresh orange in front of Gregory.
“I’m sorry.”
I look up from my plate, almost choking on his unexpected words. He’s wearing a navy suit with a crisp white shirt and sky blue tie and Christ does he smell amazing. Not ending last night the way I thought we would is clearly playing havoc with my hormones.