The Mistress Assignment

by Jordan, Penny

  And that was exactly what he had done...until now... Never mind the fact that their capital was long since gone, used to fund his own lavish lifestyle, used to make investments so perilously on the outside of mere risky that no one else would touch them; just the excitement he had got from backing these outsiders had given him more of a buzz than sex and even drugs ever had.

  Of course, the empty coffers of some of those early and rather clumsy siphoning-offs of funds had quickly come to light, but luckily he had been able to place the blame elsewhere and convince people that he was not the one responsible for the foolish investment and subsequent loss of their money, and he had even had the signatures of his co-investors to prove it. He had always been rather good at forging other people’s signatures. The first time he had put his skill to a financial advantage had been when he had stolen a ‘friend’s’ cheque book.

  Those had been good days; fortune had favoured him and his investments and it had been no problem to move money from one place to another as and when it was needed. But now things were different. The markets were running against him and he had made heavy losses...too heavy... He needed money and he needed it urgently. It was all Kelly’s fault. He had gambled heavily on being able to persuade her to allow him to advise her, on how best to ‘invest’ her inheritance. But now she had dropped him—made a fool of him—and no woman did that.

  It was a pity that Eve didn’t have access to her capital, and Brough certainly wasn’t going to be easy to persuade to allow her to have full control over it; but still, it was better than nothing.

  The sweat of fear that had soaked his skin was beginning to disappear and, with it, his earlier panic. He was worrying too much and too soon. What he needed was something to calm him down, help him relax...a drink...

  He went to find the bottle of gin he had discarded in the kitchen the previous evening and then stopped as he heard his doorbell ring.

  It was just gone nine o’clock.

  It had been well gone ten o’clock when Brough had seen the specialist, who had declared very reassuringly that his grandmother would make a full recovery, and then Brough had gone from his office to his grandmother’s bed to spend his allocated fifteen minutes with her. Kelly would be in the shop by now. Hurrying outside the hospital, he reached for his mobile phone.

  Kelly had just opened the post when she heard the phone ring. As she reached for the receiver her heart started to beat very fast, her face flushing a soft pink, but to her disappointment her caller wasn’t Brough but Beth.

  ‘His... How are you?’ her friend and partner asked her.

  ‘I’m fine; how are you?’ Kelly returned automatically.

  ‘Not so good,’ Beth responded. ‘I’m still trying to fix up a visit to that factory I told you about.’

  As Kelly listened to her friend’s enthusiastic voice she suddenly heard the sound that warned her that a second caller was trying to get through on her line. Was it Brough? Even if it was, she could hardly cut Beth off in mid-sentence, she acknowledged frustratedly as her friend paused for a brief breath before continuing, ‘Look, the reason I’m ringing is that I’ve decided I’m going to stay on in Prague for some more time. It could take me a while to track down this factory, and I’m determined to do it, Kelly, even if I have to learn the language to make myself understood,’ she told her friend with unusual fierceness. ‘I don’t care how much Alex tries to put me off... I want that glass. Look, I’m intending to move into a cheaper hotel for the rest of my stay, but I don’t know which one yet. I’ll give you a ring once I’ve sorted something out.’

  ‘Oh, Beth, you will take care, won’t you?’ Kelly begged her. ‘If your interpreter doesn’t think it’s wise—’

  ‘He’s just being awkward and difficult,’ Beth assured her firmly. ‘I’m an adult, Kelly, not a child,’ she added with un-Beth-like grittiness, saying before Kelly could raise any further objections, ‘Look, I have to go; I’ll be in touch. Bye...’

  Frowning a little, Kelly replaced the receiver. Beth was obviously determined to track down this elusive factory, but her determination seemed so at odds with her normal gentle, almost passive behaviour that Kelly was a little puzzled by it She certainly seemed to thoroughly dislike her interpreter, who, from what she had said, seemed to be doing his best to be extraordinarily obstructive.

  Nervously Kelly dialled the numbers that would allow her to check her answering service.

  Her heart started to thump as the recorded voice announced that she had one message.

  ‘Hear message?’ the tinny voice asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Kelly whispered, her throat suddenly constricted.

  ‘Kelly, it’s me, Brough. I need to talk to you...see you... I should be home around eleven-thirty; could you possibly call round? I’d come to the shop, but what I want to say I’d prefer to say in private... Bye now.’

  ‘Repeat?’ the tinny recording was demanding rather bossily. ‘Repeat?’

  ‘No. No...’ Kelly responded automatically.

  What did Brough mean? What was it he wanted to say to her? Her mouth had gone dry and her heart was thudding heavily in a drumbeat of doom.

  He had changed his mind, made a mistake... That was what he wanted to say to her and that was why he wanted privacy in order to do so. He didn’t really love her at all.

  Kelly started to shiver, causing the customer who had just walked into the shop to exclaim sympathetically, ‘Oh, my, you do look poorly! It’s not this virus that’s been going round, is it? I should go straight to bed if I were you.’

  If only the cause of her pain were merely a virus, Kelly reflected after her customer had gone. What time was it now? Eleven-thirty, Brough had said, his voice sounding remote and grave. He wouldn’t have asked her to go round...

  She would have to close the shop; it was too late to get someone in to take over from her. It would be the earliest lunch hour in history, she decided miserably. There was no point in trying to deceive herself or give herself false hope. Brough was only confirming what she herself had been thinking. He had had second thoughts, realised that her feelings were much, much stronger than his, and now he wanted to make the situation completely clear to her. That was the way he was. He wasn’t the kind of man simply to walk away without any explanation.

  He was sorry, he would tell her. He didn’t want to hurt her. What they had had had been good...very good... but for him it had simply been a one-off and not, as she had obviously believed, the basis, the foundation, for a lasting relationship or a permanent commitment.

  Five past eleven... She would leave at eleven-fifteen... Plenty of time for her to drive to where Brough was living. She reached mechanically for a cloth so that she could pass the time in polishing some of the items they had on display, but her hands were shaking so much she put it down again. In her present state of agitation she was likely to do more harm than good.

  Julian stared drunkenly at the screen of his computer which he had picked up off the floor. His system had crashed...just like the whole of his life. The last thing he had expected when he’d opened the door to his caller two hours ago had been to discover Harry standing on his doorstep. The other man had asked him quietly if he could come in. Automatically, Julian had agreed.

  ‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ Harry began calmly as Julian led him into his untidy, dusty sitting room, shaking his head when Julian offered him a drink, saying mildly, ‘Rather too early for me...’

  ‘It’s never too early...’ Julian responded boastfully as he poured himself another gin.

  He had no idea what Harry wanted. He only knew the other man vaguely and totally despised him. Harry represented everything that he himself loathed.

  ‘Eve has asked me to come and see you,’ Harry began quietly. ‘She and I are getting married...’

  Julian stared at him in disbelief. Was he trying to play some kind of joke on him? He searched the other man’s face, a slow sensation of sick realisation creeping like death along his veins.
This was no joke.

  ‘What the hell are you saying? She’s marrying me,’ Julian told him furiously.

  Harry said nothing but just continued to look steadily at him.

  ‘No! No! I don’t believe it,’ Julian insisted, starting to shake his head, trying to dispel the clouds of panic swamping him. ‘I want to see her...talk to her...’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think that would be a good idea,’ Harry told him politely.

  ‘You don’t think...?’ Julian gave him an ugly look. ‘Eve is my girlfriend. We’re all but engaged, dammit, and—’

  ‘She was your girlfriend,’ Harry agreed quietly, ‘although...’ He stopped and gave Julian a steady look. ‘It seems to me that you rather took her for granted. Perhaps if you’d valued her a little more...as she deserves to be valued...’

  ‘Oh, my God, now I’ve heard it all—you telling me how to treat a woman...’ Julian gave him a contemptuous look and tossed back the last of his drink. ‘What the hell do you know about women? Nothing...’ he jeered. ‘She loves me; she told me so... She’s besotted with me...’ he boasted.

  Harry said nothing, refusing to retaliate, simply watching him with a look in his eyes that goaded Julian into walking unsteadily across the floor and pouring himself another drink.

  ‘You can’t do this to me...and don’t think I don’t know who’s behind it. It’s that precious brother of hers; he never wanted—’

  ‘This has nothing to do with Brough,’ Harry corrected him. ‘Eve and I are in love...’

  ‘Eve in love...with you? Don’t make me laugh. She loves me.’

  She did love him. She had told him so in a soft, nervous little voice, her eyes big with wonder and excitement. It had been so easy to trick her into believing he had fallen for her. She was so trusting... She hadn’t even questioned the fact that he hadn’t taken her to bed.

  ‘I respect you too much,’ he had told her untruthfully.

  The truth was that his drinking and the intense pressure of his lifestyle meant that sex was the last thing on his mind, the last desire he had. It took a woman like Kelly to arouse that need in him, not a babyish innocent like Eve.

  Julian knew that it was her brother who was behind her decision to drop him. Brough had guessed that Julian was after her money, of course. Julian gave a small mental shrug. So what? He didn’t give a damn what Brough had or hadn’t guessed, and as for preferring Harry to him... That was ridiculous...impossible...

  ‘I don’t believe you... I’m going to see Eve—talk to her,’ he announced, walking unsteadily towards the door, but oddly, when he got there, Harry was standing in front of it, barring his way.

  ‘No, I’m sorry, but you’re not,’ Harry told him calmly.

  Julian looked drunkenly at him.

  ‘What is this? You can’t stop me...’

  Harry stood solidly in front of the door, simply looking at him. A little to his own surprise Julian discovered that he was actually backing off. What the hell was he doing? He wasn’t afraid of Harry.

  ‘I think you’ll find it would be best for everyone concerned if you simply accept the situation,’ he heard Harry saying gently to him, to his utter amazement.

  ‘People will soon forget. After all, it isn’t as though you were actually engaged, and neither Eve nor I shall say anything. People will simply believe that the two of you drifted apart. It happens all the time.’

  Julian swayed and focused vacantly on Harry’s face. What the hell was he trying to suggest? That he, Julian Cox, was in danger of being humiliated by people thinking that Eve had dropped him? No way!

  ‘Eve mentioned that you have business interests in Hong Kong. I’ve heard it is a fascinating part of the world, even more so these days... Have you ever been there? I haven’t myself... Farming doesn’t combine well with travelling...’

  Julian continued to gape at him.

  Was Harry actually daring subtly to suggest to him, to warn him, that he should leave town...? No, it was impossible. Harry simply wasn’t like that. He didn’t have the nerve...nor the subtlety. No, he was imagining it, Julian assured himself. The other man was too unworldly to know that there was no way Julian could visit Hong Kong right now, not with the money he owed out there, the enemies he had made.

  ‘I’ll let myself out,’ he heard Harry saying mildly. When he reached the front door, Harry turned to him and commented quietly, ‘I should keep off the drink for a while if I were you.’ Then he turned round and opened the door to leave.

  Now as he sat staring blindly at the screen in front of him, Julian couldn’t believe it. His life was in chaos, ruins... He had been counting on Eve and her inheritance. By God, but she wasn’t going to do this to him. No way... He could soon make her change her mind.

  He needed a drink. He lurched over to the kitchen worktop, frowning impatiently when he saw the empty bottle. Well, he would just have to go out and buy some more, wouldn’t he? He still had enough money for that...he could still afford to buy himself a drink...to get drunk... By God, yes, he could still afford to do that, and once he had...

  As Julian opened his front door the brilliance of the bright morning hit his eyeballs in fiery darts of pain. Oblivious to the looks on the faces of other pedestrians, he started to stagger towards the centre of the town. His car was parked outside the house, but some vestige of self-preservation warned him that it would be extremely unwise for him to drive.

  Kelly too had made the same decision, but for very different reasons. It wasn’t drink that made her aware that her reactions were simply not good enough for her to drive anywhere safely. She was trembling from head to foot as she opened the shop door, dreading her coming interview with Brough, and yet knowing that she was too proud to ring him up and simply tell him that it wasn’t necessary for him to say anything; that she had already guessed what he wanted to tell her and that she understood.

  Pride, was it? Was she sure it wasn’t more of a desperate, anguished yearning on the part of a woman far too deeply and vulnerably in love to deny herself the masochistic pleasure of spending some last precious minutes with the man she loved?

  It seemed to be adding an even finer edge of cruelty to her unhappiness that it should be such a wonderful day, the sun shining, the air soft and fresh, people walking about dressed in light clothes, smiling...

  As she turned the corner at the bottom of the street she could see across the town square to the river, glinting happily in the sunshine. Rye-on-Averton was such a pretty town that normally just to walk through it lifted her spirits, but not today—no, definitely not today.

  Head down, fighting to hold back the tears threatening to overwhelm her, Kelly walked quickly to Brough’s house.

  She was less than five yards away from it when she suddenly heard someone calling her name. Lifting her head, she froze as she recognised Julian Cox staggering towards her from the opposite direction. He was quite obviously drunk and looked totally repulsive, she decided as she saw his stubbly jaw and creased clothes.

  ‘Kelly... What are you doing here...or can I guess? Come crawling round after Brough, have you? What happened? Dropped you, has he?’ he tormented her jeeringly. ‘Well, what did you expect? Surely you aren’t really stupid enough not to guess what he was up to? He wanted to draw you off me because of his sister. That was all... Didn’t you guess? Surely you must have realised that a man like him would never look seriously at someone like you, someone who’s been to bed with half the town... Not that he minded getting a taste of what you’ve got to offer himself... He told me that...said he might as well have full value for his money...’

  Julian had gone straight from his house to the supermarket, where he had discovered, contrary to his belief, he did not have enough money on him to buy any alcohol. Infuriated, both by this and Harry’s interview with him, he had, instead of going home, headed for Brough’s house, intending to try to persuade Eve to see reason and change her mind. She would more than likely be on her own at this time of day and he was
pretty sure he could persuade her to listen to him.

  But just as he had reached the house he had seen Kelly approaching it from the opposite direction, and immediately he had remembered just how she had rejected him and how, because of that rejection, Brough Frobisher had humiliated him—and, no doubt, brought pressure to bear on Eve to end their relationship.

  All the fury and vindictiveness caused by this suddenly found a target in Kelly. What better way of getting back at Brough than by destroying his relationship with Kelly? If he knew anything about women—and he did—she would never stay if he told her that Brough had discussed her sexually with someone else.

  Now, looking at her face, he knew he had been right—God, he was enjoying hurting her, making her pay for rejecting him.

  ‘Did you really think he wanted you?’ he taunted her cruelly. ‘How could he? He saw the way you were all over me at the ball... He’s a proud man, our Brough...far too proud to want my leavings...’

  Brough had not made as good time coming back as he had hoped. Some unexpected road works had held him up and then, to make matters worse, he hadn’t been able to park his car outside his house but had had to leave it much further down the street.

  It was already gone half past eleven. Quickening his stride, he turned the corner to see Kelly standing outside the house with her back to him, facing Julian Cox. What the hell was he doing...?

  Immediately Brough started to run.

  Julian, who was facing him, saw him first, smirking triumphantly at him as he reached them, taunting Brough drunkenly, ‘How did it feel having my leavings?’ He waved his arms towards Kelly. ‘She’s pretty good, I know, but just in case you’re interested I can recommend someone even better... They say that an enthusiastic amateur is better than a professional any day, I know, but...’