Scarred by You

by Laura Carter

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 ~ Clark

  2 ~ Dayna

  3 ~ Clark

  4 ~ Dayna

  5 ~ Clark

  6 ~ Dayna

  7 ~ Clark

  8 ~ Dayna

  9 ~ Dayna

  10 ~ Clark

  11 ~ Dayna

  12 ~ Clark

  13 ~ Dayna

  14 ~ Clark

  15 ~ Dayna

  16 ~ Dayna

  17 ~ Dayna

  18 ~ Clark

  19 ~ Dayna

  20 ~ Dayna

  21 ~ Clark

  22 ~ Clark

  23 ~ Dayna

  24 ~ Clark

  25 ~ Dayna

  26 ~ Clark

  27 ~ Dayna

  28 ~ Clark

  Epilogue ~ Clark

  Thank You

  Acknowledgements

  About the author

  Also by Laura

  Connect with Laura

  SCARRED BY YOU

  By Laura Carter

  Copyright © 2016 by LBM Media Limited

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations for personal enjoyment.

  This book is a work of fiction made from the author’s imagination. Places, names, characters and happenings are fictitious. The views of the characters are not necessarily the author’s views or the views of others. Any likeness to actual persons, living or dead, places or events is coincidental. The author acknowledges the intellectual property rights of any products or brands referenced in this book and the use of such references is not expressly endorsed by the owner of the intellectual property rights.

  For Sam.

  Thank you for believing in me.

  LEANING BACK IN my leather chair, I bring the heel of one foot over my opposite leg and turn to face the city. Despite my office being on the tenth floor of a high-rise, the view leaves a lot to be desired. Early morning mist struggles to rise through the multitude of London’s buildings, battling the mid-November sun.

  I hold the ring up to the light and stare at it. Again. It’s a grotesque thing. A four-carat princess-cut diamond that’s too large for the delicate platinum band. I don’t like it. Never did. But Connie liked it, and she was as damn near perfect as a woman could be, so she got it. Connie was — is — the complete package for most men. Well-mannered, well-bred, always immaculate. She's five-ten with the figure of an A-lister and long golden-blonde hair to match.

  Now she’s gone, and I’m stuck with a fucking ugly ring and no fiancée to wear it. No wife.

  “Earth to Clark Layton.”

  Teddy. My partner in crime from Cambridge and my Chief Finance Officer.

  I lean my head back against the chair and rotate to face him, dropping the ring into the top drawer of my desk. “Ever heard of knocking?”

  “Why change the habit of a lifetime?” he says, striding across the open space of my office with a slight edge to his walk, like he wants to be a bad boy. He’s not. “You look like shit, by the way.”

  Usually I would laugh. Teddy and I always banter together, but today I’m just not in the mood. “The weekend I had will do that,” I tell him.

  Teddy shakes his head. He unfastens the one closed button of his blazer and sits down in a chair opposite mine. “No kidding.”

  “Ted, do me a favour and don’t talk about it.”

  He holds up two large brown palms. “You bet. I actually came to give you this.”

  He slides a document across my desk. The annual accounts of Subsea Petroleum, one of Layton Oil’s main competitors. One of my main competitors. My body stiffens at the sight of SP’s CEO on the high-gloss cover. My fingers rest on top of the accounts, frozen into a claw.

  Dayna Cross.

  Her brown eyes look back at me from under her blue hard hat. Her pink skin glows under the photographer’s light. I can almost smell her perfume, mixed with the fresh, hot smell of sex, as I remember how that skin feels against mine.

  Dayna fucking Cross.

  She’s become my most proximate competitor since I replaced my father as CEO eighteen months ago. Layton Oil is much bigger than SP, and SP has been through a rough few years, but Dayna is turning the company around. We’re both headquartered here in London. She’s the bane of my goddamned screwed-up life for more than one reason.

  “I read them when they were published on Friday,” I tell Teddy, pushing the accounts back towards him.

  He nods lazily and runs a finger along his slightly plump chin. I should probably be a good friend and start dragging him to the gym with me, at least for his wife’s sake. Teddy and Yvette have been together for years, and I consider her a close friend, too.

  “Aha.”

  With a heavy sigh, I sit back in my seat, my elbows on the armrests, the tips of my fingers forming a steeple in front of my chest. “What exactly is ‘aha’ supposed to mean, Ted?”

  “Just that it’s a coincidence.”

  I’m rattled and that pisses me off. I hide my irritation from Teddy, but I can feel myself losing control. I clench my fists, digging my nails into my palms. “If you’ve got something to say… ”

  “I’m merely pointing out that you read Dayna’s annual accounts on Friday, and on Saturday your marriage was off.”

  I stand abruptly and move to the window, my hands braced on my hips to stop myself doing what I really want to do — lashing out. “I read a competitor’s accounts. Neither the accounts nor Dayna Cross had anything to do with what happened on Saturday.” The words grate through my teeth and sound even shittier than I intend them to be.

  “Alright, Clark, alright. I’m just messing with you. It’s too soon; I get it.”

  It’s not Teddy’s fault I’m pissed off, but I don’t have an apology in me right now. The intercom on my desk vibrates and flashes amber: my PA’s line. I hit the receiver and his voice plays into the room.

  “Mr Layton, I have Jay Hamilton on the line. Should I connect you?”

  Christ, the last thing I need.

  “Not now, Marcus. Tell him I’m in a meeting.”

  “Should I tell him you’ll call back?”

  “No.”

  Avoiding Teddy’s scrutinising stare, I breathe out so heavily my cheeks puff.

  “I hate to state the obvious, but he’s one of your best mates, Clark. You’ll have to talk to him some time.”

  I know. “We’ve got work to do.”

  I move to the flat-screen TV on the wall and watch the changing commodity index. I’m staring at another day of crude oil at forty-two dollars a barrel. Eighteen months ago I’d have been looking at the exact same index showing at least one hundred and ten dollars a barrel.

  “So much for OPEC stabilising prices,” Teddy says as he joins me in front of the screen, his hands in his pockets, back to his CFO persona. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is supposed to be the body responsible for unifying global petroleum policies and the efficient and economic supply of oil. Some job it’s doing right now.

  I fold my arms across my chest, watching the digital graph move as companies trade, buying and selling oil.

  “At least we’re in the same boat as the rest of the industry,” Teddy says.

  I scoff. All except one. “Tell me, Ted, when profit is falling for almost every oil company in the world, how is Dayna Cross increasing year-on-year profit for SP?”

  “She still imports a lot. Since the Persian Gulf explosion she’s had to buy in a lot of fuel. Imports
are cheap. Then there’s the blending.” His voice is warm, as it always is when he’s talking about Dayna. She’s a competitor, and a dangerous one of late, but Teddy grew up with her and would likely step in front of a bullet for her. Knowing that makes me like him even more. And it makes it ten times more awkward that my history with Dayna is… chequered.

  “She’s nailed it, Clark. She’s making blends of fuel that are ingenious, and they’re cheaper than what anyone else is putting out. Other companies are preying on her expertise and trying to get into bed with her.”

  I snap my head to face him, snarling internally. He means business. I need to get a grip. It’s just the thought of Dayna with another man… well, it kills me.

  “She’s got a damn good business model from where I’m standing, bud.” He continues as if I’m not boring holes in him, and I can tell he’s fighting a proud smile. I can’t blame him.

  “She’s been playing poker while the rest of us were playing blackjack,” I tell him. “We were counting numbers and she was forming a hand.”

  The woman is an absolute marvel. As much as I want to despise her as a competitor, even though my life would be a damn sight less complicated if she was never in it, I have nothing but admiration for the way she’s turned SP around. Dayna does nothing by halves and takes no prisoners. That I know from experience. But she’s got this other side, too. A side not many people get to see. She’s sweet, tender and funny. She could make me laugh like no one else. Like no one since.

  Desperate to stay focussed on work, I tell Teddy, “We need more oil. A new site. A greater volume of sales. It’s the only way to stay alive in this climate.”

  “I’m not convinced now is a good time to buy. Prices are still falling, and there are rumours that trade sanctions with Iran will be lifted. If they are lifted, oil prices…” He whistles through his teeth and waves a hand through the air, demonstrating a crash and burn like he’s seen on Top Gun.

  I raise one eyebrow at his shitty fighter jet then nod. “I hear you, but we have to think medium- to long-term, too. It’s no good sitting back now and finding we have no reserves in five years’ time. Oil companies are failing. There has to be something out there going cheap. If the price is right, I want it.” The unfortunate truth is the market is littered with zombies — the name economists and lawyers give to failing companies. I don’t want that for Layton Oil. I have something to prove.

  Now it’s Teddy’s turn to nod. “Well, we could do with a big win on exports. Turkey or Japan. We could increase operations in Brazil.”

  I pat him on the shoulder. “Let’s get shopping then.”

  It’s the economy, not my leadership, that’s brought down Layton Oil’s profits since I’ve been in post as CEO. But regardless of the reason, the fact remains that my father reigned supreme, and the second he handed over his company to his son, profits started to fall. Something he’s keen to remind me of every time I see him. Something I intend to change.

  “TWO MINUTES TO landing.” The chopper pilot’s voice hits my ears through leather headphones.

  I keep my head down and finish the last couple of paragraphs of the research paper I’m reading. The conclusion, as with all previous research papers on the topic, is that my father’s cost-cutting was to blame for the Persian Gulf disaster of 2011.

  “Bollocks as ever, Dayna,” Arthur says from his seat next to me. “I don’t know why you persist with reading every report.”

  Arthur Worchester was my father’s right-hand man and best friend. Now he’s a chief consultant to Subsea Petroleum and my right-hand man since I became CEO.

  The helipad draws closer as the pilot brings us down towards Rising Star, my North Sea rig off the coast of Scotland. Already, the smell of oil permeates the chopper. It’s a familiar smell and, in a warped way, kind of homey.

  “I have this recurring dream,” I tell Arthur. “I receive a paper that delves into the details of the spill. But unlike every other paper, it’s not an attack on my father, it’s a theory… it’s the truth.”

  “Dayna, that’s exactly what it will always be, a dream. We’ll never be able to prove Kahn had anything to do with the spill.”

  I scoff. “Spill. Sure.”

  It was sabotage.

  Caspar Kahn thinks he rules oil in the Middle East. He couldn’t handle the competition from my father’s well, Little Princess. Caspar opened the valves on the rig’s main pipeline and more than four million barrels of oil spilled into the Persian Gulf. That’s the truth. Caspar wanted to bring down SP. He wanted to eliminate his competition.

  I fold the paper in half and stuff it into my black Mulberry as the pilot sets us down on the helipad. I take off my headphones, and the loud whir of the propellers assaults my ears. I screw up my face at the sound as I open the door and place my heel-clad feet on the ground. I fully acknowledge my footwear is inappropriate for a rig, but it’s necessary. The guys working offshore are usually tall and stacked, and this is a male-heavy industry. Heels put me on their level physically. In rank, I’m above each and every one of them.

  I turn, ducking slightly despite the fact I’m feet beneath the propellers, and hold up a hand to help Arthur. He used to help me out of the choppers, when I was a child visiting my father during school holidays, beside myself with excitement. Lately, Arthur’s ageing legs and increasingly rotund stomach mean the tables are turned.

  “Dayna, Arthur, good to see you.” The Head of Health and Safety on Rising Star greets us with handshakes and plants a blue hard hat on top of my long brown hair, which I’ve tied into a low ponytail in readiness. I pull my coat tight across my black dress. Scotland always feels ten degrees colder than London, but in the middle of the North Sea, it’s just bloody freezing. Arthur receives his hat, and we head onto the main section of the rig.

  I try to hear the latest H&S statistics being shouted at me above the noise of the offshore drill and the cranks of machines moving the extracted oil. I avoid Arthur’s eye as we listen. He’s not convinced by the hefty sums SP spends on health and safety and contingency planning each year. I confess it’s probably more than every other player in the oil industry. But I won’t let people ever again say that SP was cutting costs. If there’s ever another disaster, people will have to look in a different direction for answers to the root cause.

  If they stopped looking in the wrong direction over the 2011 spill, they’d find Caspar Kahn opening pipeline valves. But Caspar was clever; he made sure nobody would ever be able to prove his involvement. Hell, if it hadn’t been for him shooting his mouth off once I became CEO, trying to test my nerves for the industry, I’d probably never have found out the truth.

  We sit around a metal table in a large cabin — me, Arthur, my Head of H&S and my Officer in Command on Rising Star.

  I cross one leg over the other as I take a sip of godawful vending machine coffee. “I asked you to prepare new figures on the abandonment timeline,” I say. “I’d like to go through those now.”

  My commanding officer might be in a position of power on the rig, but his stonewashed jeans and thick, checked shirt couldn’t be less corporate. He’s a roughneck. Down to earth. And one of the most reliable men I have working for me. He pulls a pencil from behind his ear and dangles it between his teeth as he taps on his laptop keys.

  “The fall in price per barrel has brought us down to around thirty-six months before we have to fill her in and close up shop,” he says, gesturing to the graph he’s projected against a blank wall. “But it could’ve been much shorter if we didn’t have the new blending capabilities.”

  I nod in agreement. The engineers I brought in a couple of years ago to work on SP’s blending infrastructure are clever — like, really bloody smart. If it weren’t for them giving SP the ability to blend more efficiently than anyone else in the industry, we could’ve imploded. Instead, while oil prices are hitting most companies hard, SP is holding its own.

  Wincing through the last, and most potent, mouthful of necessary caffeine
, I ask the team to talk me through the exit strategy for shutting down the rig three years from now.

  BACK ON DRY land, Arthur and I sit on the heated seats of a Mercedes, me picking off the low-hanging fruit in my inbox and sending replies, him reading The Guardian. The beauty of Arthur is that we can sit in comfortable silence. He’s ten years my father’s senior, and I’m certain he would have retired by now if he didn’t feel a sense of obligation to look after his best friend’s daughter. He’s like a father, a grandfather and a business adviser, all wrapped up in one sixty-five-year-old bundle. While I’m independent and I like to think things through on my own, I don’t mind admitting he’s the one person I really rely on in business. I was still training when I was catapulted to CEO of SP. Many days — no, most days — I think I was too young for the role at twenty-five. Now, at twenty-nine, I’m still too young. SP is a heavy burden to carry. But I wouldn’t have it another way. I wouldn’t have let anyone else take control of what my father built.

  Arthur’s mobile rings. I can tell from the twinkle in his eyes when he looks at the screen that the caller is Teddy.

  “Son, how are you?”

  “Tell Teddy I say hi,” I whisper.

  Almost as soon as the message is relayed, Arthur holds out the handset for me to take. “He wants to speak to you.”

  “Fred,” I say when I press the mobile to my ear.

  “Snot Face.”

  It shouldn’t be funny at our age, but we both laugh. When I was growing up, Teddy was always around. Arthur and his wife, Evelyn, adopted Teddy when he was five. I was three at the time. Once, Evelyn allowed us to watch Drop Dead Fred on VHS. We proceeded to watch that VHS until all that was left on the screen were grey-black squiggles. We’d act out the scenes — Teddy was Fred and I was, well, Snot Face.

  “How was the wedding?” I ask, purely for Teddy’s sake. He was excited to be a best man on Saturday, and while I don’t approve of his choice of groom, I do care about Teddy.

  “You haven’t heard yet?”