It was like battering herself against a steel door. She knew that she would never succeed in so much as denting it, but she was desperate enough to go on trying.
'And what will I receive in return for such a supreme sacrifice?'
His eyes were narrowed and intent upon her pale, pinched face as she kneeled on the floor in front of him, and her heart was suddenly pounding in her ears. At any other time she might have told Vince to go to the devil, but for her father's sake she knew that she had to cast aside her pride and make a supreme sacrifice of her own.
'I'll stay married to you for as long as you want, I'll have children for you, and I'll slave for you… oh, God!' The enormity of what she was offering made her bury her quivering face in her hands for a moment, then she let them fall into her lap and gestured pleadingly. 'I'll do anything,' she ended on a husky note.
The silence in the room was intense, and when a log crackled in the grate Cara reacted to the sound with a violent start.
'Your offer doesn't appeal to me in the slightest,' Vince's harsh voice grated across her raw nerves. 'Now, if you will excuse me, I have a few telephone calls to make.'
He rose to his feet abruptly, and there was a look of such utter contempt on his face that she wanted to shrivel up and die as he walked out of the living-room.
Cara sat there, too numb to do anything while her eyes filled with hot tears of humiliation. She had only herself to blame for the stinging bitterness of his rejection, but it was a chance she had been forced to take. She had cast aside her pride to save her parents, and Vince had rejected her cruelly. She had failed; not only in herself, but in her attempt to help her father, and at that precise moment she could not decide which hurt the most.
The flames leapt crazily in the grate, and Cara felt their heat against her cheek when she wiped away her tears with trembling fingers. She stared into the fire, seeing there her hopes being burnt to ashes along with her fragile dreams as if she had literally cast herself into the flames. If she had imagined that Vince might learn to care for her in some way, then she knew now how mistaken she had been. The only thing he cared about was to avenge his father's death, and nothing, it seemed, would deter him from the goal he had set for himself.
Cara parked her Mini in the driveway on the Friday evening, and she had clutched the steering wheel so tightly that her fingers felt numb when she got out of the car. The tension had been building up in her since early that morning, and it had now reached the point where she felt as stiff as if she had run a marathon. She had been too afraid to call her father to find out if he had heard anything, and every time the telephone had rung on her desk she had jumped as if a whip had been cracked beside her.
Jackson opened the door for her and took her coat and, before he could say anything, a flash of crimson in the living-room had caught Cara's attention.
'Harriet!' she exclaimed, entering the spacious room and walking towards the flaxen-haired woman who stood warming herself by the fire. 'What an unexpected surprise.'
Grey eyes met Cara's curiously. 'Vince didn't tell you I would be coming for the weekend?'
'No,' Cara frowned, biting her lip to steady the sudden quiver in it. 'It must have slipped his mind.'
'Like hell it did!' Harriet exploded in typical Steiner fashion, her features resembling Vince's at that moment. 'Vince telephoned me on Wednesday evening and practically instructed me to be here this afternoon, or else.'
Cara felt the chill of ice sliding through her veins as she said lamely, 'I—I wonder why.'
'I've a pretty shrewd idea,' Harriet snapped, her glance holding Cara's, 'And I think you have as well.'
Fear clawed at Cara, but the sound of a car coming up the drive saved her from making Harriet aware of her feelings. 'I think I hear Vince's car now,' she said unnecessarily, thrusting her hands into the pockets of her skirt to hide the fact that they were shaking.
They did not have long to wait. Vince's long, lithe strides brought him swiftly into the house, and Cara's treacherous heart bounced wildly at the sight of him. His dark, striped suit had been tailored to accentuate the steely strength of his muscled body, and Cara trembled inwardly. Her glance was riveted to his tanned, rugged features with the sun-bleached hair which the breeze had whipped across his broad forehead. His eyes glittered strangely as if with an inner excitement, and Cara felt the tension coiled tightly like a spring inside her.
'Ah, Harriet, I'm glad to see you have arrived safely,' he smiled that twisted smile when he brushed his lips in a brief kiss against Harriet's cheek, then he turned towards Cara, and she felt his cool mouth brush against her warm cheek in much the same manner it did Harriet's. 'You look a little tired, liebchen,' he remarked with mocking concern. 'Have you been working too hard today?'
'Not more than most days,' she replied stiffly, aware of Harriet leaning a casual arm along the mantelshelf while she observed them together.
'I think I have the perfect tonic for all of us,' Vince announced, walking towards the cabinet and producing a chilled bottle of champagne.
'Champagne?' Harriet's eyebrows rose cynically as they watched him remove the wrapper and ease the cork from the neck of the bottle until it shot out with a loud bang that made Cara flinch. 'What are we celebrating, Vince?'
Cara stood as if she had been nailed to the floor. Her skin felt heated and damp, but her insides were slowly turning to ice.
'We are celebrating my success, Harriet,' Vince announced, his deep-throated voice triumphant. 'My tender has been accepted for the new steel plant.'
The sound of clinking glasses jarred Cara's nerves, and there was a soaring in her head that made her fear that her tight control would snap if she did not hang on to it desperately. Her thoughts flew at once to her father, and she knew a sudden desperate need to be with him at that moment.
'Excuse me,' she forced the words past her frozen lips and, snatching up her car keys, she headed towards the door.
'Cara!' Vince's authoritative voice halted her abruptly in her stride. 'You will come back here.'
Harriet detached herself from the mantelshelf. 'Vince, don't you think you are—'
'Don't interfere, Harriet,' he silenced his sister, but his cold grey eyes never left Cara's white face. 'Come here, Cara,' he ordered.
His voice was quiet, but ominous, and Cara knew that she dared not disobey him. She walked towards him unwillingly on legs that felt like jelly and, when she paused a little distance from him, she raised her chin to say coldly, 'I'm here.'
Vince passed a glass of champagne to Harriet and raised his own, then he turned to Cara and gestured towards the remaining glass on the low table close to them. 'Pick up your glass and drink to my success.'
A storm of protests rose in her throat, but they died there when she looked into the glacier coldness of his eyes. She knew that she had to obey him, but she knew also that she could not pick up that glass. 'What you're expecting of me is totally monstrous.'
'Do as you're told.'
'I would be displaying a disloyalty to my father if I drank to your success,' she protested helplessly, wishing he could know how he was tearing her in two.
'Surely as your husband, I am entitled to your loyalty?' he demanded derisively, and an icy anger emerged from her helplessness.
'You have done nothing to deserve it,' she snapped.
'You will nevertheless do as you're told,' he countered with a calm, hateful arrogance. 'Raise your glass, and drink to my success.'
Their eyes locked in silent battle for interminable seconds before Cara surrendered to his superior strength. She picked up the glass of champagne, her fingers curling about the stem, and she caught a glimpse of sympathy in Harriet's eyes when she straightened. That unexpected sign of sympathy was almost Cara's undoing, but she blinked back the tears, and raised her glass with a touch of defiance in the set of her chin.
'I shan't drink to your success, Vince, but I'll drink to the sincere wish that your desire for revenge will at last be satisfied
so that you may rid yourself of the hatred which is slowly destroying you.' She raised the glass to her lips, and swallowed down a mouthful of the bubbling liquid. 'Now, if you will excuse me, I'd like to go and see my father,' she added, returning her glass to the table.
'You will do nothing of the kind,' Vince stopped her once again before she reached the door, but this time her anger was an uncontrollable force that shuddered through the length of her slender body.
'You have succeeded in grinding my father into the dust beneath your heel, and there is nothing I can do about it, but don't expect me to live with your hatred,' she spat out the words furiously. 'I'm going to see my father; I have a right to see him, and you need not fear that I shan't be back to act as hostess at your dinner table this evening.'
Cara turned on her heel and walked out of the room with Vince's eyes boring into her back. She had a horrible feeling that he might make an attempt to prevent her from leaving, but this time he let her go, and five minutes later she was driving as fast as she could towards her parent's home on the other side of town.
Fear had taken second place to fury for a few moments, but, as her fury subsided, her fear returned like a cold gust of wind blowing up against her. No construction engineer can feel confident when the competition is as powerful as the Steiner Company, she recalled her father's words when she had called on him not two days ago, and she could not help thinking that he must have known he did not stand a chance against Vince. Something told her that Vince had been equally aware of this, and she was convinced that part of his triumph at that moment was because he knew this would be the final blow; the final humiliation which would crush her father completely. There was no possibility now of the loan ever being repaid unless her father sold everything he possessed, and that was the only degrading solution.
Cara drew in an anguished breath, but it sounded more like a sob. She loved Vince, but at that moment she hated him for what he had done to her father, and she was almost too afraid to think of what she would find when she arrived at her parent's home.
'Cara, I'm so glad you came,' her mother greeted her anxiously in the hall, and the strained, anxious look on her mother's face was a painful, uncommon sight to Cara. 'Your father's tender was not accepted for the new steel plant.'
'I know, Mother.' Cara spoke with a calmness she had dredged up from somewhere. 'Where is he now?'
'In his study.' Lilian pointed towards the panelled door in the hall, then her hand gripped Cara's arm, and there was a look of uncertainty in her eyes when they met Cara's. 'Is there something I—I don't know about?' Lilian asked, and she was almost pleading.
Cara looked away, unable to sustain her mother's glance. 'If you know that Dad has lost that contract, then you know everything.'
'I'm not a fool, you know,' her mother said, and there was a hint of exasperation in her voice. 'I've known for some time that your father has been anxious and troubled about something, but he refuses to tell me what it is, and I'm also terribly worried about his health.'
'That makes two of us,' Cara thought, but aloud she said: 'May I go through and see him?'
'Yes, my dear,' her mother agreed at once, 'and please see if you can find out anything.'
'Oh, God, how tired I am of this deceit,' Cara thought as she turned towards the study door. She knocked once, but when there was no response, she opened the door and went inside. David Lloyd was sitting with his elbows resting on his desk, and his head buried in his hands. He looked dejected and totally beaten, and Cara's heart contracted with pity and compassion as she closed the door behind her.
'Dad…' she began, not quite knowing what to say as she approached his desk hesitantly, and only then did he look up.
A tremor of shock raced through her at the pasty colour of his skin and, as if he needed to do something with his shaking hands, he lit a cigarette and drew the smoke almost savagely into his lungs.
'I suppose you have heard the news,' he grunted, raising glazed, empty eyes to hers.
'Yes, I have.' She searched for something to say; something to reassure him, but she could think of nothing except a rather lame, 'I'm sorry.'
'Not half as sorry as I am,' he laughed with a cynical harshness she had never heard before, and there was something rather frightening about it.
He looked ill; terribly ill, and it was doubly painful knowing that it was Vince who had done this to him. 'What are you going to do?' she asked, seating herself on the corner of the desk close to him.
He puffed agitatedly on his cigarette, surrounding himself as well as Cara in a cloud of unsavoury smoke. 'I shall have to declare myself insolvent and start again somewhere.'
The thought of her father having to start all over again at his age was something she could not envisage for a moment. 'You will have to sell this house.'
'I know that,' he said abruptly, drawing hard on his cigarette and surrounding himself with yet another smoke screen.
'Have you told Mother?' she asked, but it was a silly question to which she already knew the answer.
'Not yet.'
'She suspects something, she has told me so, and there's no longer any sense in putting it off,' she warned him, recalling her conversation with her mother in the hall.
'I know, I know,' her father muttered, pushing a shaky hand through his hair, then an odd little smile suddenly twisted his mouth. 'I imagine Steiner must be very pleased with himself?'
Steiner. An odd mixture of bitterness and guilt was locked up in the use of Vince's surname, and she could not fully understand it, but she imagined it had to be something like the love-hate feeling she had for Vince at that moment.
'I wish you would tell me what actually happened between you and Vince to lead to this destruction of everything you have worked for,' she broached the subject which had been puzzling her over the past months.
'It's a long story, Cara, and I'm too tired to even think straight at the moment,' her father side-stepped the issue once again. 'All I know is that I have ten months to scrape together the amount owing to Vince, and I know I'm not going to meet that deadline unless I sell everything.'
'I could ask you not to come to a hasty decision, but I know it is absolutely futile to sit back and hope for a miracle,' Cara said logically.
'God knows, I could do with a few miracles,' her father grunted, crushing his cigarette into the over-full ashtray and lighting another.
Cara was on the point of saying something about his recent habit of chain-smoking, but she stopped herself in time. This was not the moment for a lecture she decided, as she placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. 'I wish there was something I could do.'
'You've done enough already,' he said, raising his hand to grip hers briefly, and she knew that he was referring to her marriage to Vince. 'Go home to your husband, Cara, and your mother and I will sort out this mess together.'
Cara was reluctant to leave him, but she knew that if she stayed she would not be able to help him in any constructive way. She was powerless to do anything to prevent her father's downfall, and knowing this made her feel like lashing out at anything and everything that came her way.
'Cara?' her mother's voice halted her when she walked quickly across the hall, and Cara felt a swift rise of panic within her at the thought of the questions her mother was going to ask. It was important that she knew the truth, but it was for her father to tell her mother in his own good time.
'I must hurry, Mother,' she said quickly, planting a kiss on her mother's soft, perfumed cheek. 'Vince hates having dinner delayed, and I have already stayed too long.'
That, in itself, was not a lie. Vince would not want dinner to be delayed on that specific evening, but Cara was disgusted with herself for using that as an excuse to escape from her mother. She felt like a coward, which she was not, but she could not shake off that feeling. Along with her father she had practised deceit in hiding the truth from her mother, and the only thing that appeased her was the knowledge that her father was the best candidate wh
en it came to a confession. He knew the complete truth, which had, to date, been withheld from Cara, and she dared not intervene at this stage.
CHAPTER NINE
The atmosphere at the dinner table that evening was highly explosive, but Cara was positive that it was not entirely due to the incident which had occurred between Vince and herself before she had gone to see her father. Judging from the stabbing glances which passed between Vince and Harriet, they had had a furious argument after Cara's departure, and their differences had obviously not been resolved.
Harriet excused herself immediately after dinner to go up to her room, and one glance at Vince's thunderous expression made Cara follow suit a few minutes later.
It was a cold, dark night, and Cara bathed quickly before going to bed, but she could not sleep. She was anxious about her father, and she had to admit that she was also concerned for Vince. His desire for revenge was alienating him from his sister, the only person for whom, Cara felt sure, he cared. A pang of envy shot through her, but she suppressed it at once. Harriet was his sister, and she had a right to Vince's affection, but Cara could not help wishing that a fraction of that affection could have been directed at herself.
Cara was still awake two hours later when Vince came into the bedroom. Her hair lay in disarray across the pillow, and her eyes were troubled when she glanced up at him, but she forgot her problems for a brief moment to study him. His hair was damp after his shower. It lay in a disorderly fashion across his forehead, and she knew from experience that his muscled frame had nothing on beneath that brown towelling robe which was tied so carelessly about his waist. His masculinity was as potent as a drug, and her pulse quickened against her will when he approached her side of the bed and stood looking down at her with a hint of derision in his eyes.
'It's a pleasant change to find you lying awake instead of pretending to be asleep,' he mocked her openly. 'Is it that your concern for your father has overshadowed your distaste for my presence in your bed?'
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